Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

smelled of darkness and earth as she eased up beside me. “Anything you take he’ll know and tell Ku’Sox.”
    “The ones I really wanted are gone, anyway,” I said, wishing I had my cheat sheet, then remembering Marcie had one. “Jenks, check Marcie’s sketch there. Who donated the demon slave rings?” Slave rings. This was a mistake. This was a mistake in a big way, but I had to take a huge leap if I was going to survive.
    He whistled, his dust a shade brighter as he darted to the woman and leafed through her papers. “Ahh, Cabenoch.” He flew up, his dust settling on the velvet background to look like stars on a moonless light. “Cabenoch. That’s German, isn’t it?”
    “It’s elvish,” I said, finding the rings I wanted. Something in me quivered seeing them there, plain circles of battered metal. They were both tarnished, but one looked as if it had been on a hand that had never seen dirt, and the other had never seen the sun. Slavers. That would work, though it curled my lip thinking about reinvoking them.
    “Okay. It’s rigged, right?” I said, and Ivy carefully slid the entire box almost entirely off the table. Jenks darted under it, and from the door, Marcie groaned. We had maybe thirty seconds. I didn’t want to hit her again. “Jenks?” I prompted, and a wash of depressed blue bathed our feet.
    “Standard stuff,” he said, not coming out. “I dusted you about ten seconds of electronic memory, so make it fast. Ready?”
    I nodded, eyeing the rings I wanted and pulling the fake ones off my finger.
    “I still don’t see how this is going to help,” Ivy griped. “He’s going to know the ones you took.”
    “Just hold it still,” I muttered. “Ready, Jenks?”
    “On my mark . . . go!” he said, and I opened the lid, feeling a pull of a magnetic field. Breath held, I grabbed the rings, slipping them both on my index finger as I dropped the fake rings in their place. Ivy’s eyes widened when I then moved the “donated by” card, then another.
    “How long, Jenks?” I said. “Give me a count!”
    “Four, three,” he said, me moving cards like a con artist on the corner. “Two,” he said, and I pulled my hands out, shutting the lid. “One!”
    My eyes met Ivy’s, and she exhaled. Muscles easily managing the weight, she slid it back onto the table. Jenks flew up, and all three of us looked at the lumps of metal sitting in my hand. They felt as dead as they looked, but something in me quivered. I could bring them back to life. I could make this anew. Demon slavers. I shuddered.
    “Can we go now?” Jenks said, his dust still that dismal blue, and I nodded, not looking back at Nick as I walked out the door.
    Next time I had the chance, he wouldn’t be so lucky.

Chapter Twenty-Two
    M y protection circle hummed with the satisfyingly pure sound that I was identifying with the narrow ley line out back in the graveyard, the bell-like ting a spot of beauty in the chaos of sound and abrupt faults every other ley line was spitting out right now. Frustrated, I set the nested slave rings on my palm, and after Jenks’s somewhat unenthusiastic thumbs-up, I peeled my aura off my hand, leaving it bare to everything all the way to my wrist.
    The steady, ringing snick, snick, snick of Ivy sharpening her second-best katana in the corner was a soothing rhythm, but I still felt uneasy as I imagined the thinnest whisper of red aura spilling down my arm, mirroring the shadow of veins to puddle under the rings, rising to gently enfold it and breathe the first hints of life into the cold metal.
    “Looking good, Rache.”
    But it wasn’t good, and my heart pounded as I exhaled, empting my mind of everything but the rings. The red had taken, I could feel the cold metal resonating, and I shifted my aura to orange, pinpricks racing over my arms like goose bumps.
    Jenks’s wings clattered, and my brow furrowed. The sliding sound of Ivy sharpening her blade hesitated, and I stiffened as the orange rose up and over the ring, completely unabsorbed. Take it, damn it! But I knew it wasn’t going to. I’d been trying all afternoon, and I had never gotten any further than this, and I didn’t know why.
    “Damn it all to the Turn and back,” I muttered, letting the rings drop into my palm and lowering my hand. My full aura raced down my arm, and I shivered, feeling protected again. Jenks’s wings slumped, and I shoved the rings into my pocket like a guilty secret.
    “If I hadn’t done it