The Witch with No Name

“Rachel isn’t the only one dabbling in elf magic, eh?” Dali said, clearly disgusted as he pushed back from the desk and stood.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Newt hid her hands in her sleeves. I suddenly felt like two kids having been caught setting off stink spells in the girls’ bathroom. Not that I had experience there—much.

Brow furrowed, Dali took a sip of his drink, not as irate as I would’ve expected. But then Newt was known to be crazy. “You knew about this?” Dali asked Al.

Al shrugged. “I didn’t believe her. How could a demon hide that she and the Goddess—”

Newt’s head came up. “I won’t sit and do nothing as Rachel goes insane trying to hide what she is, what we all are. The Goddess will speak to us, answer us as well.”

“And leave us to die,” Dali said bitterly. “To fight and scratch out an existence when she turns her back on us? No. Never again. She has her favorites and I’ll not be played for a fool once more.”

It was starting to come together, this bitter rivalry between the elves and the demons, and I watched, silent, when Newt, her robes rustling faintly, crossed to where Dali now sat against Trent’s desk, his head bowed as harsh thoughts spun through him.

“You don’t have to,” Newt said softly as she touched his arm.

A haze shifted between them, and Dali looked at his hands, feeling the energy she had given him, filling his chi with a portion of her own. His breath caught as he accepted that there was a way out of this—if he could let go of a lifetime of hatred. “How long have you hidden this?”

Newt turned away. “I don’t remember. So long that the Goddess’s mystics don’t look to find me anymore.”

Her expression was pained, and I started when Trent’s hand landed on my shoulder in support. I knew how she felt, and I imagined that the hurt of losing the exaltation the mystics imparted never dulled with time but only intensified.

Dali looked tired as he shifted his attention to me, eyes flicking listlessly to Trent standing protectively beside me. “You taught her how to hide them as well?” he asked Newt.

“I changed her aura so they can’t easily find her, but Rachel has a newer bond, one they haven’t forgotten yet.” She hesitated. “They’re still looking for her, knowing that the Goddess must become again. Her eyes have seen reality through Rachel, and the need to partake in it has left the rest predisposed to becoming anew.”

Becoming. The Goddess had said that as well, but she’d feared it, as it would destroy her.

“Dali, we can reopen the lines before sunrise with elven magic.”

Trent’s hands on my shoulder tightened. “I’ll rally the dewar and the enclave.”

“No.”

Dali’s word was soft. He never looked up, his mien holding regret as he stood against another man’s desk, in another man’s house, in a world that didn’t want them while the prison they’d desperately tried to escape stood poised to crumble and destroy the very world they wanted to live in but were afraid to.

“You’d have us live like this?” Newt said bitterly, pulling at her clothes as if the tattered and stained remnants were their pride and power. “We can reopen the lines, but it must be done before sunrise. I’ve been talking with the Goddess—”

“What!” Dali’s head snapped up. In the corner, Al clinked several glasses together, and my mouth became dry at the sound of water being poured into them.

Undeterred, Newt lifted her chin. “She’s actively looking for Rachel, but she knows that if the lines stay shut, she’ll have reduced sight. She’s already starving. The only access she has to reality is through failing pixies and Weres who don’t even know she exists. She’s not listening to the elves anymore thanks to Landon tricking her into destroying the lines.”

Interesting, I thought, wondering if this was why elven magic had failed. A tiny wisp of possibility took hold, pulling me straighter in my seat. I could do this, maybe. I had wrestled control of the mystics’ individual power from the Goddess’s will before. Several times before.

And every time, I ended up fighting to disentangle myself from her so my thoughts wouldn’t kill her, change her beyond recognition, make her . . . become something new.

“I cannot live by reality’s rules without magic to make it tolerable,” Al said. “Dali, we have a chance to not only survive, but in the doing, the world will thank us. Perhaps give us a place again.”

“Give us a place?” Dali thundered. “We are demons! We don’t take charity, we take what we want!”

“Well, what I want is to belong!” Al suddenly yelled. “I want to try it this way for a while. What the hell, Dali. If you don’t like it, you can go back to bartering souls to fill your waitstaff, but I think we can do well here with other people’s rules.” He hesitated, eyebrows rising wickedly. “Finding our ways around them. Making them squirm within their own . . . laws.”

Newt’s face was flushed. “But first we need to reopen the lines.”

I held my breath, waiting. There was more being decided here than if we should try to save the ever-after.