Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

burned away.
    “Al?” I croaked. The sun hurt, but I couldn’t reach the parasol, shifting back and forth in the wind that scoured me to my bones.
    “I thought you’d . . . left . . . me.”
    I could barely hear him, and I leaned on his shoulder as I scooted closer. He gasped at the added weight, and the pain in my head doubled. “I couldn’t pull you out into reality,” I explained. “I had to move to the ever-after to do it.”
    “I’m out?” he said, and his jaw clenched as he opened his eyes. He’d lost his glasses somewhere, and his eyes were black—like Newt’s. He closed his eyes at my fear.
    “We’re out,” I said, still panting at the pain. We were out, but I didn’t think it mattered.
    “I’ll get us home,” he said, and then we both screamed as he tried to jump to a line. Fire burned down both our synaptic lines, and I fell back, groaning as I forced my lungs to keep working. If I was breathing, I was alive, right? How could it hurt so much? I was on fire. We were burning to death from the inside out.
    “Oh God. Oh God,” I moaned, looking in my hand in wonder. It looked the same, but it felt like it was burning, charring. “Don’t. Don’t do that again. Please.”
    “I can’t jump us, Celfnnah. I’m sorry. Save yourself.”
    The heartache in Al’s voice cut through the agony, and I focused on him, seeing him curled up against the pain. Celfnnah? “You want me to leave?” I said in disbelief as my tears started again, but whether they were to clear my eyes of the grit or because of Al, I couldn’t tell.
    Al groaned, and with a sudden jerk, he finally got the ring off his finger. My breath sucked in as the pain vanished. He took one last shuddering breath, and then he passed out, his entire body going limp. My hand flashed out as Al’s ring pinged against the rock and I caught it.
    Silence filled me, the cessation of pain almost unreal as the wind shifted a lank curl into my line of vision. There was only a fading ache, deep in my tissues as if I had been in a fever. “Al?”
    I touched his shoulder, my hand coming away with a sheen of sweat bleeding all the way through his clothes. He still breathed, but he was out cold. “Don’t you go to sleep, Al!” I shouted, shifting to kneel before him. “Stay with me!” I might as well be talking to the dead, and I put his ring on my thumb so I wouldn’t lose it. Stretching, I reached for my parasol, holding it over both our heads. Damn it, we were in big trouble now.
    My head jerked up at a clink of rock, and my heart seemed to clench at the skinny, raw figure silhouetted against the red sky, his tattered clothes drifting in the never-stopping wind, looking like the remnants of an aura as it fluttered. I tensed. Where there was one surface demon, there were many, and they only attacked the weak.
    Yeah, we fit that category now.
    “Al!” I hissed, shaking his shoulder, but he only groaned. “Wake up! I can’t jump us. Damn it, I knew this was a bad idea!”
    A huge shadow covered us and was gone. Looking up, I tapped my broken line, crying out and shoving it away as the discordant jangle cut through me. Either I’d damaged my aura, or the line was truly poison. Eyes on the empty sky, I scrambled up, not knowing if I could reach another line from here, but willing to try. But I froze when I saw what had made the shadow. It was a huge gargoyle—his skin gray and pebbly, and his leathery wings bigger than a bus is long. Slowly my panic ebbed to a cautious alarm, leaving me shaking and standing askew.
    The surface demon had vanished, and I stared as the huge gargoyle made one last circle and landed where it had been, as if daring it to return. My gaze flicked to the sun. Either this gargoyle was very old or they went by different rules here in the ever-after.
    My attention dropped to the heavy, notched sword he had in his clawlike hand, and I edged back to Al, feeling scared for an entirely new reason.
    “Who are you?” the gargoyle said, his vowels sounding like rocks grinding, his consonants like iron shavings stuck to a magnet, sharp and pointy. “What are you doing to the new rift?”
    His sword had drooped slightly, and I took a slow breath. Gargoyles were protectors. Either I was in big trouble or I finally caught a break. “We were trying to balance it. Please, can you help us? He’s burned. We need to get out of the sun.”
    The gargoyle dropped the sword as if it were a worthless stick, and it pinged