Kim Harrison - Pale Demon

I thought about that as Trent started to hum, the sound going deep into my psyche and setting my blood to slow. Elven magic stirred, rising like fog in a dusky meadow, tingling and heavy. It didn’t hurt like the ley lines did, and my muscles grew slack. Suddenly my eyes opened wide. “You’re going to kill me!” I exclaimed, and the magic faltered as Trent’s humming cut off.

“I’ll keep it alive. Get it on life support. Your soul needs to regain its strength. It can do that in a bottle, and when it does, I’ll put it back in.”

He began humming again, rocking me. The prick of wild magic tingled across me, heady and slow. Until a thought pinged against the muzzy softness and shredded it into pinpricks. “You can do that?” I asked, and the magic broke. “You want to put me in a baby bottle?”

The humming stopped. “You’re going to have to trust me. I’ve been practicing this, but I need your consent. I’m not good enough to do this without it.”

I blinked up at him, trying to understand. My breath came in and out, and Trent waited, impatience in his eyes. “How many times have you done this?” I asked.

“And had it work? Never. But I’ve only tried it with birds, and they are rather stupid. Be quiet. I’ve got to concentrate.”

I felt like I was floating. “You want my permission to kill me?”

He sighed, and Bis shifted his wings nervously. “Yes,” Trent said.

I was numb, his magic already having taken hold. It was either that or I was dying in his arms. “Okay,” I said, closing my eyes, and he sighed again, but it was different—as if he finally believed I trusted him. The world got spongy and black as the humming evolved into words I couldn’t understand, the vowels deep in his throat and the pitch rising and falling in unexpected beauty. It was the wind in the leaves given voice, and the movement of the stars in the heavens, and I started to cry again as I remembered the elf under the arch singing me to sleep.

“Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay, cooreen na da,” he sang, the words circling, going around and around in my head, pulling energy into existence from his soul, not a ley line, and giving my thoughts something to hide behind from the pain. His voice coated me in soothing darkness. My heart slowed until it decided to stop, but I didn’t care. I didn’t hurt anymore, and Trent’s aura was warm.

So very warm.

Ilooked at my hands as they pressed the cookie cutter into the dough, realizing that I’d been making cookies for quite a while—but not consciously aware of it. It was as if I’d been sleepwalking. Maybe I still was. A pleasant sense of lassitude lay heavily on me, and I used a pancake turner to carefully set the cut cookie, smelling like milk, onto the baking tray. I was making trees, but it didn’t feel like the solstice. It was too warm.

Setting the cutter down, I shifted a second cookie to the tray, then hesitated. The one I’d just put there was gone. My head came up, and I calmly looked at the sink. The light beyond the window was too bright to see anything. The ceiling, too, was a hazy white, as well as the floor. I didn’t see my feet down there, but it didn’t bother me.

“How odd,” I said, going to look out the window, but it was as if the sun had washed out the world. I turned, unafraid as I realized that the wall against which Ivy had her big farm table pushed was gone, too. The table was there, but the wall was a hazy white mist.

That didn’t bother me, either. It had been like that for a long time—I’d just now noticed, was all. Even the sight of the unmarked circle of cookie dough and the empty cookie tray was okay. I’d been making cookies forever. Unconcerned, I went to the center counter and cut out another. It didn’t matter.

I hummed as I moved cookies to an empty tray, the same tune going around and around in my head. Ta na shay, cooreen na da. It spun over and over, and I moved to it, feeling good with it in my head. I didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t hurt, and not hurting was good.

It was awfully quiet for my kitchen, though, so often full of pixy chatter, and after setting another cookie on the empty tray, I looked back at the hazy wall. There was a dark spot on it, about eight inches tall, a few inches wide, at chest height. I squinted, trying to decide if it was getting closer.

Kisten? I thought, and it took on a masculine outline, wavering like a heat mirage, but the shoulders weren’t broad enough for him.

Maybe it was Jenks? But there was no sparkle of pixy dust. And besides, Jenks wasn’t that tall. The figure’s arms moved as it paced forward, becoming my size. Taking on a sudden flash of color, it stepped into my kitchen.

“Trent?” I said in surprise as he shook off the mist, looking refreshed and collected in a pair of black slacks and a lightweight short-sleeved shirt, clean and bright and well pressed.

“Not really,” he said, and I wiped the flour from my hands on an apron I hadn’t realized I was wearing. “Well, sort of?” he amended, then shrugged. “You tell me. I’m your subconscious.”

My lips parted, and I looked again at the floor that wasn’t there and the ceiling that wasn’t there, either. “You put my soul in a bottle,” I said, surprised I wasn’t scared.

Trent sat on Ivy’s table and leaned forward to snatch a bit of cookie dough from the perfect circle waiting to be cut. “I didn’t. I’m just a figment of your imagination. Your mind, not me, is creating all of this to cushion itself.”

Frowning, I focused on him. “So I could imagine Ivy standing there instead?” I said, thinking of her, and Trent chuckled, licking the last of the sweetness from his fingers.

“No. Trent is trying to reach you. That’s why I’m here. Bits of him are getting through, just not enough.”

But I already knew that, seeing as he was simply a part of my subconscious, voicing what I was figuring out the instant I was realizing it. It was a weird way to have a conversation.

Trent slid from the table and came around to me. His hands were outstretched, and I backed up when he got too close. “What the hell are you doing?” I said, giving him a shove, and Trent rocked back, his arms dropping.

“Trying to kiss you,” he said.

“Why?” I said, peeved. God, dreams were weird.

“Trent is trying to get your soul back in your body,” Trent said, looking mildly embarrassed. “He can’t do it unless you agree.”

Oh yeah. Elven magic. It worked by persuasion and trickery. Sounded about right. “And a kiss is the only way to show agreement?” I mocked, putting the center counter between us. The floor had shown up, looking faded and scratched. My soul was starting to put things together. “Hey, how long have I been in here?” I asked, and Trent shrugged. Apparently my subconscious didn’t know.

Looking unconcerned, Trent picked up the cookie cutter. “You want to leave, right?”

I eyed him standing in my kitchen, and I wondered if he really looked that good or if my subconscious was adding to his sex appeal. “Yes,” I said, coming closer.

He handed me the spatula. “We have to work together.”

I figured he meant more than making cookies, but I slid the spatula under the cut dough and moved it to the tray. “I want to leave. Isn’t that enough?”

A second cookie joined the first, and my eyebrows rose. The first one hadn’t vanished this time. “Now you’re getting it,” Trent said, then seemed to shudder. “You’ve been in here three days,” he said, his visage losing its clean, pressed look and becoming haggard. His hand working the cookie cutter was swollen, and he was missing two digits on his right hand, a very white bandage hiding the damage. I hadn’t imagined him looking like that. It was something outside—impinging on me.