Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

against the rock until it wedged itself. His craggy hind feet cracked the stone as he shifted his grip. “Balance the line?” he said, his voice rising and falling. “That’s short term, but possibly the only answer that I will allow. For now. I know you. Your gargoyle is too young to facilitate fixing the new. This is your line. It rings with your aura. You let him break it. Why?”
    Him? I thought, trying to shade Al with my body. He must be talking of Ku’Sox, and I wished a gargoyle’s testimony would hold up in a demon court. “I didn’t let him break it. He did it to blame me for destroying the ever-after. Do you know how I can fix what he did?”
    The gargoyle yawned and looked at the sun. “Change damaged it. Change will fix it. In time it will fix itself, destroying everything here along with it.”
    From my feet, Al moved, whispering, “Newt. Call Newt.”
    My gaze jerked to him, glad he was conscious. “Newt?”
    His eyes opened, and I started at his black eyes. “She can jump us,” he breathed, clearly not seeing anything. “She’ll be listening for you. She’s worried about you, the insane bat.” Wincing, he tried to move, then thought better of it. “Do hurry. I feel less up to par than usual.”
    Nauseated, I loosened my hold on my thoughts, searching for the demon collective. I’d never tried to contact anyone without a scrying mirror, but as he said, she was listening. “Newt!” I shouted, and the gargoyle lifted his wings in alarm. “Newt, I need you. We need you!”
    The gargoyle made one leathery down pulse of air, then hesitated, his feet still gripping the ruins of the castle. “You won’t find enough time to fix it before it fixes itself. The lines are failing. The world breaker wakes. We need to leave. Save who you can.”
    He jumped into the air, the wind from his departure making me squint and sending my lank hair blowing back. He circled once before becoming lost in the red sun. Desperately worried, I looked at Al, out cold again. The sweat had dried on him, and he was shaking.
    “Maybe I should’ve asked him for help,” I whispered, then spun at the clink of stone on wood. It was Newt, and I was struck dumb for a moment, reminded of the first time we’d met. She’d been a referee to see how long I’d last after the sun went down, marooned in the ever-after by Trent’s “best friend.” She was wearing a long, flowing robe like a desert sheik, her black staff in one hand, the other holding her robe closed against the wind. Her awareness, though, was clear this time, her step sure as she made her way to us with a new urgency.
    “Help me get him home,” I said before she had closed the gap, and I shocked myself with the knowledge that I’d pay just about anything for it.
    Her long, somewhat bony hands were gentle as she crouched beside him, holding a hand over him as if testing his aura. “What did he do?” she asked tersely, then paused as her glance fell on the sword the gargoyle had left behind.
    I sniffed, backing up a step with my arms wrapped around my middle. “He tried to find out if Ku’Sox made that purple line and fell to the bottom of it.”
    Newt spun, finding her feet in an instant. “And you let him?”
    “He didn’t say it was going to scrape his aura off!” I yelled back. “I got him out, but . . .” My words faltered, and I felt the prick of tears, hating them. It was Al, for God’s sake.
    “You got him out?” Newt blinked her black eyes at me, drawing herself up when she saw the ring on my hand. “Oh.” She hesitated. “He gave you . . . Where is the other one?”
    Nervous, I held up my other hand to show her my thumb. “He took it off. He took all the pain so I could call you.”
    Newt made a harrumph of disagreement. “He took all the pain so it wouldn’t kill you.”
    Fidgeting, I came closer. Was she going to help or not? “Newt. Please. The sun.”
    Her androgynous face twisting to look more feminine somehow, she squinted up at it. “Indeed,” she said sourly, twitching the hem of her robe off Al. “It’s like breathing in acid.”
    The gritty wind gusted against me with a sudden force, and I closed my eyes, feeling the dust suddenly halt and drop away before it could hit me. It was Newt yanking me into a ley line, and with a nauseating twist, the horrid red sky winked out of existence.
    My heart thudded once, twice, and still we hadn’t reemerged anywhere. My lungs started to ache, and at the last moment,