Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

aware of what he’d done. He’d make his demands soon enough, and until then, I had to believe that Ceri and Lucy were okay. “Thanks,” I said as I looked at the stack of rubble. “Shouldn’t the line be over the rocks? That’s where I came in.”
    Al began picking his way to my ley line, his cane knocking jagged chunks of rock from his path. “Lines drift,” he said, his head down. “Move. They’re like magnets repelling each other. They will shift across continents given enough time and impetus. They only appear to be stationary because they’ve balanced with each other ages ago. Yours here . . .” Al sniffed in consideration. “It likely won’t move much anymore. Has it always been this size?”
    I nodded as I came even with him and faced the barely visible shimmer in the air. The ley line the university was built on was wide enough that you could drive a team of horses down it for a quarter mile. The one in my graveyard was about four feet wide and twenty feet long, an admittedly small line. Mine here was about the same, maybe a little longer.
    Al pressed his lips together, puffing his air out as he gazed at seemingly nothing, but he was probably looking at my line with his second sight. “You got out fast. The longer it takes, the wider the wound.”
    “Really?” So a small line was a good thing, which made me wonder who made the line in my graveyard. Then I wondered who had taken forever to get out of the one at the university. Al maybe?
    Walking the length of the shimmer in the air, Al turned and strolled back, the line a haze between us. “A line this size can’t be leaking this much on its own.”
    “It wasn’t when I left it.” I cocked my hip, feeling naked without my usual shoulder bag.
    Al’s focus landed on me. “Can you hear it?” he asked, and my lips puckered in distaste. “You’re not using your second sight,” he added, and I shook my head, tucking a gritty strand of hair behind an ear. But at his dramatic prompting, I exhaled and opened my second sight.
    The ringing worsened, scraping across my awareness in a discordant jangle the way the red sun seemed to rub my skin raw. But as bad as it sounded, it looked even uglier. The line was the usual red shimmer at chest height, but there was a sharply defined line of purple at its center running the entire length, thickest at the center and thinning to nothing at the ends. It was almost black at its core, and streamers of fading red were funneling into it like bands of energy slipping into a black hole. I could actually see the leak as it sucked in everything around it, and it made my stomach twist.
    “Is it safe to use like that?” I said to Al, looking distorted and red through the line’s energy. Behind him, the rubble loomed ominously.
    He shrugged. “We used it to get here.”
    Distressed, I put a hand to my middle and dropped my second sight. “Al,” I said. “That purple core wasn’t there the last time we were here.”
    “I know.”
    “What did Ku’Sox do to it?” I said, frustrated.
    Hands on his hips, Al searched the line with his eyes. He reminded me of Jenks, somehow, even though he didn’t look anything like him. “I don’t know.”
    He believed me. Relieved, I eased my shoulders down. I debated walking through the line to stand beside him, then edged around it as he had done, my boots kicking rocks and pebbles out of my way. “So-o-o,” I drawled, feeling small beside him. “How do you unbalance a ley line?”
    Shifting his arms at his side, he glanced at me and then away. “No idea,” he said, looking as if it had physically hurt him to admit it. “Tell you what. Toddle through it to the other side to reality and see what it looks like from there.”
    I backed up a step. “Seriously?”
    Frowning, he gave me a once-over, the wind blowing his hair about his glasses. “Get in the line, will yourself through, and see what the line looks like from reality. If we’re lucky, it won’t be like this. Maybe it’s merely a curse we can break.”
    I hesitated, then jumped when he swooped forward and took my arm, stepping us into the line together. “Hey!” I yelped as my stomach dropped and the sensation of an unending chalkboard scrape serrated over my nerves. Stiffening, I yanked out of his grip, but I didn’t leave the line since he was still standing in it. If he could take it, I could, too.
    Nauseated, I brought up my second sight. The purple line was so close I could touch it. My