Kim Harrison: Pale Demon

“My God,” I whispered, seeing his missing fingers in a new way.

“Vivian tried to stop him—”

Worry pulled my heartbeat into a faster pace. “No…”

“She’s in intensive care,” Trent said, and I eased back into the pillow, not relieved, but not as frightened. “She’ll be okay,” he added, his eyes on the floor, undoubtedly reliving it.

“I’m sorry.”

Trent wiped his face in an unusual show of agitation, and I remembered the feel of his bristles on me. “You were brain-dead. He never noticed the bottle. Bis took you, your soul, and hid it away. As far as Al knows, you are still dead.”

He was looking at my sunburned arms and the band of charmed silver, and I saw it in a new way. Al thought I was dead? “You bested him,” I said, and Trent gave a bark of laughter. It was a bitter, angry sound, and it struck through me cold.

“Bested him?” he said, uncrossing his legs. “We survived. And that was because of Pierce.”

Again fear took me. Trent had said Al thought I was dead. Al was still alive. “Where is Pierce?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Trent stood, turning to the window. I couldn’t read his tells. I was afraid to. “Pierce knew you were alive in the bottle,” he said softly, the hospital noise coming in faintly. “He also knew that I was the only one who could get you safely out. If I died, you would die.” Trent turned, his head bowed, looking nothing like himself in his wrinkled clothes and with his hair unstyled. “Pierce doesn’t like me much, but he took the blame. Said he was the one who caused your death by his failure to protect you and keep Ku’Sox from taking you into the lines. Al dropped me and took him instead.”

My face lost its expression. Pierce had sacrificed himself. To save me.

Panicked, I sat up, swinging my feet to get out of bed and coming to a frustrated halt. Damn it, I had a catheter. “Where’s my mirror?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t have it. I started pulling at the silver around my wrist again. “I have to talk to Al.”

Trent’s face was empty of emotion when he turned back to me. “He did it because he loves you. I pity him.”

“Al won’t kill him,” I said frantically, not knowing if it was true. “He’ll be okay.”

Shaking his head, Trent smiled sadly. “I don’t pity him because he’s a demon familiar. I pity him because he loves you.”

I took a breath to say something but couldn’t exhale. Damn it, he’d sacrificed himself so that I would live. He knew I didn’t love him, and he’d done it anyway. “I-I…,” I stammered, fingering the band of silver around my wrist. It was humming with wild magic, slumbering deep within it. I could feel it. I looked up at Trent, confused.

“Al saw you comatose,” Trent said. “He told the demon collective. Perhaps you should keep it that way. This is why I gave you the charmed silver. It was a chance for me to…” He hesitated, sighing as he sat back down. His head was bowed over his knees, and his eyes were on his hands—his beautiful hands, now broken and marred. He might never be able to work some of the finer ley-line charms again, and I shivered.

“My father made you into a tool to save the elven race,” he said softly, his voice pained. “It saved your life but took it from you at the same time by making you into something that most people would deem too dangerous to live.” His head came up, and he met my gaze squarely. “I don’t know why, but I feel responsible. For everything. You weren’t given a choice, and I’m sorry for that.”

“You didn’t do anything,” I said, my mouth dry. “And your father saved my life.”

“By twisting it to his own ends, without asking your permission.” Trent exhaled. “I wanted to give you your choice back. That’s all.”

I followed his gaze to the band of silver around my wrist. That’s all? That was everything.

“It’s not a normal zip strip,” Trent said as he straightened up from his hunch over his knees. “It doesn’t simply cut off your contact to the lines but to the demon collective as well. Otherwise, they would know you were alive, even if you shunned the lines for the rest of your life.”

My lips parted in understanding. If Al had seen me comatose and I was cut off from the collective, then I was as good as dead. Free?

“You can do earth magic still, and ley-line magic will work on you like any human, but demon magic won’t if it goes through the collective,” Trent said, and I brought my wandering thoughts back to him.

“Curses won’t touch me,” I said, and he nodded, his expression more earnest and open than I’d ever seen it. It was as if he was down to his bare essence, too tired and beaten to hide it.

“I didn’t do it to protect you. I did it because my father made you into something, and unless you choose to be that person, then you are nothing but a tool. You are not a tool, Rachel,” he said earnestly, almost frighteningly. “You are a person. You can stay as you are and be, well, not normal, but as close as you can get to it seeing that the coven has denounced you as a day-walking demon. Or you can take the charmed silver off and be who you really are. It’s up to you. It’s your choice.”

He was silent and still now, and I looked at the band, circling it around and around my red wrist. I was a day-walking demon who couldn’t do magic. But I could feel wild magic in me, simmering. Was it coming from the band of silver? Or had it been there all the time, and I only now noticed it, now that my contact with the ley lines was utterly and absolutely cut off?

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Trent said, not understanding my silence. “A choice?”

I took a deep breath, pulling my gaze up as I gathered my thoughts.

“Yes. Yes it is,” I said, and he smiled weakly. “Thank you.”

It was what I wanted. What I had always wanted. So why did it feel so empty?

Trent’s long black car pulled up to the curb, a soft hush in the dark. In an instant, Ivy was reaching for the handle. The front passenger’s door opened, and she was standing in the street, her eyes on the church’s steeple. Looking back in, she glanced first at Quen, then at Trent, sitting in the back with me and Bis, Lucy in her car seat between us.

“Thanks for the ride, Trent. Quen,” she said, her voice low but sincere. And then she was gone, boot heels clicking on the night-cooled pavement, visibly shaking off being too far from home for too long. Vampires truly were the homebodies of Inderland society, and it had been hard on her in ways I could never imagine. That Trent had chartered a specially designed, low-flying jet to get us home in hours, not days, had been a godsend.

“Tell your pilot his pressure control still sucks,” Jenks said through the open window in parting, and then darted to join Ivy. Giving me a toothy grin, Bis hopped to the open sunroof, and launched himself after them and into the dark.

I held a hand to my head to keep my hair from flying around in the draft from his wings, and Lucy frowned in her sleep, her hand flashing out as if she was falling. Together, Jenks, Ivy, and Bis ascended the stairs in the dark, pulling the heavy oak doors open to let out a flood of light and pixies. I glanced at the headache-inducing cloud of silk and gossamer, then settled back in the soft leather, reluctant to get out—even as glad as I was to get home.

A flash of liquid light turned into Jenks darting to the steeple as he checked in with the pixy on sentry duty. I heard a sharp wing chirp and a high-pitched harangue start. Jenks wasn’t happy about something. More reason to just sit for a moment.

With the sound of clicking metal, Quen undid his seat belt and got out. There were kids shouting somewhere in the next street over, and the revving of a car engine. The trunk whined open, and I shifted my new shoulder bag onto my lap. I didn’t know what had happened to my old one. My phone was gone, but at least Vivian had given me my scrying mirror—for what it was worth. “Thanks for the ride home,” I said to Trent softly, so as not to wake Lucy. “Don’t mind Jenks. The pressure was fine.”