The Witch with No Name

Al’s expression twisted even more. “Exactly,” he said, the words dripping scorn and hatred. “Love has made you into a tool, Rachel, and like a tool, you are oblivious and will be cast aside when your job is done.”

“I am not,” I whispered, cold, but the thought that Trent would soon remember his place among his people weighed heavily on me. Quen was right. I was a phase, a happy dalliance.

“You are blind, Rachel, even as you are a part of it.” Al pointed at me, his anger stemming from a deep wound. “Elves ask too much. They bring only destruction. That is what they are. They’ve always been such, even when we tried to crush them from existence. And it will kill you.”

“But you loved Ceri,” I pleaded, and Trent grunted as if only now getting it.

Al’s pointing finger slowly dropped, his depth of hatred chilling me.

“Just so,” he said bitterly, looking at his empty room. “You begin to understand?”

“You can’t blame this on Ceri,” I said, a new fear slithering through me. He’d loved her, loved her enough to break the rules and free her from her servitude in such a way that I could save her life. From there the world changed as Trent used her to begin to pull his people back from extinction. Love had turned my goals to his, and I found a pre-curse DNA sample so Ceri’s baby would be free of the curse. And now, bolstered by the mere hint of success, the elves had begun to eliminate everyone more powerful than themselves. Perhaps Al was right.

Horrified, I watched him stuff the last of the things on the mantel into the bag like Santa in reverse. His thick fingers hesitated at Mr. Fish, and then he closed them, leaving the brandy snifter where it was. “Where has everyone gone?” I asked, scared.

Gaze flicking to Trent, then Bis, sitting wide-eyed on Ceri’s chair, he hesitated. “Anywhere they want,” he said, waving at Bis until he moved to Trent’s shoulder.

Anywhere? My thoughts went back to the empty state of Dalliance, and then the celebration of familiars at the mall. He said it had been a cry of joy . . .

“Oh, your elven brethren have made a large mistake,” Al said to Trent as Ceri’s chair was wreathed in a haze of black and shrank down to the size of my hand. “One we will exploit to the fullest and wipe them from existence once and for all,” he said, using both hands to shift the smaller but clearly just as heavy chair into the bag. “Revenge is a tricky beast. Her claws face both ways. I don’t mind a few more scars. They’ll be unnoticed among the rest.”

Trent paled. “The curse that attacked you . . . ,” he whispered, and then he reached for the slate table, his balance gone. “The Goddess help us,” he whispered, expression haunted. “That’s what I felt. It was a call to break the curse.”

“What curse?” I said, feeling as if I was on the brink of a precipice.

Al snapped the bag shut and lifted it easily. “Not break exactly, but when they modified it to force the surface demons to reality, they created a loophole.” He spun to his fire and took the iron, rapping the ash from it. “I’m leaving now. You can have the tapestry. I never liked that thing anyway.”

My heart thudded. “Al, wait!” I called out, but with a tweak on my awareness, he vanished in a curl of black-tainted ever-after.

Bis shifted his wings, and the room abruptly seemed a lot colder. I turned to Trent at his soft scuffing of feet. He had sat down, sinking into Al’s simple three-legged stool, elbow on the table and head in his hand as his thumb ran over a tiny scratch in the surface. I’d seen Al like that more than once. The hatred between the elves and the demons went far deeper than I’d thought. “Trent? What happened?”

He looked up, a hint of the fear of the unknown in the back of his gaze. “It must have taken the dewar working in concert with a good portion of the enclave,” he said, and then his focus sharpened on me. “That’s what you felt in your mom’s spelling room. The unbinding spell recognized you as a demon, and when it couldn’t find the curse keeping you in the ever-after, it just kept trying to take something, anything. The demons figured out what was going on, and now they’re free.”

My lips parted. Free? As in reality?

Suddenly I got it—the entire mess. Landon had made a huge error. He’d freed the surface demons to get rid of the undead, but once they walked into the sun—which I was sure they would—it’d be the demons who’d replace them as the rule makers and breakers, not the elves.

Grimacing, I reached for Mr. Fish. I didn’t think Al was coming back. “We should go,” I said, bending to pick up my bag. There was nothing here. Everything that had meant anything had been taken, held in that little carpetbag.

“Cincinnati?” Bis spread his wings in anticipation. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”

Trent edged from the softly mewling tapestry. “It doesn’t matter now.”

No, it didn’t matter. And I was not going to help Landon save the world. He’d made his choice, and it wasn’t my responsibility.