Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

quiet, Quen asked, “Do you want something to drink? Eat?”
    “No-o-o,” I drawled, feeling like I was close to something.
    Hesitating, Quen shifted his chair forward. “I’d like to go out with you the next time you look at the Loveland ley line.”
    I thought of his sluggish left leg. He probably couldn’t tap a line yet either. I said nothing, embarrassed. He wasn’t ready to battle demons again. Maybe next week. But next week would be too late.
    Quen frowned at my silence, knowing what it meant. Clearly frustrated, he leaned closer until I could smell his aftershave over the characteristic woodsy wine-and-cinnamon scent. “I think I know how Ku’Sox made that event horizon.”
    I paused in my reading and looked up. “Event horizon?” Jenks asked, but that was what Al had called it, too.
    “The purple line within a line sucking everything in,” he stated, and I shuddered. No wonder I’d felt squished, even if it had only been my mind. Al was lucky to be alive. That the collective had something for him to pattern himself on was probably how he had survived.
    Quen carefully lifted the book toward him, his eyes on the yellowed pages. “I think Ku’Sox made it by gathering up the small imbalances that already existed in the other lines, concentrating them in the leaking line you made,” he said, carefully flipping back to the paragraph where the author mentioned the possibility of small line imbalances having no effect if the individual lines were spaced out enough and aligned to the polar forces of nearby lines.
    I scooted my chair closer to Quen’s and read the first passage again. “Al did say that the lines were balanced to within safe parameters, implying they all leaked to some degree.”
    “Must have been small leaks,” Jenks said, hands on his hips as he hovered over it all, his dust bringing the print back to a new-edged brightness.
    “That’s just it,” Quen said, his thick fingers tapping the table. “They don’t add up to what’s in the Loveland ley line.”
    “They would if they acted on each other exponentially,” I said.
    Quen’s expression twisted in doubt. “Why would they do that?”
    “How should I know? I’m shooting at fairies here.” My fingers were starting to cramp from holding the book, and I took my gloves off to rub them. I had enough information to go on a fact-finding mission out at the line. I figured things out by doing, not reading about them. “Al told me that the lines push each other apart, like giant magnets,” I said, unclenching my teeth. God! Am I the only one hearing this whine? “If the lines are positive, pushing away from each other, then maybe the imbalance is negative. Maybe you can’t have a line without a little imbalance.”
    “Like those little black and white magnet dogs that don’t like each other unless they go face-to-face?” Jenks laughed, but I thought he had it almost exactly right.
    Quen adjusted his position, inadvertently telling me his hip was sore. “Lines don’t move.”
    “Mine did,” I said. “A good hundred feet from the second floor of the castle to the garden outside. Al said lines moved a lot when they were new, but they stabilized.” Reaching over, I tapped the page with my naked finger, which made Quen wince. My head gave a throb, and I curved my fingers under, wondering if this might be why Al wore gloves.
    “Maybe all the lines leaked at first like mine,” I said, wishing I could ask Al about it. “But the farther apart they got, the smaller the leak became. And when Ku’Sox put the imbalances together again, bang! Big leak.”
    Quen’s lips twisted in doubt, which made his hospital stubble more obvious. Jenks, though, was bobbing up and down. “Like one sticktight stuck to your tights compared to a ball of them.”
    “Or a bunch of dust scattered in a huge vacuum having no effect compared to the same amount balled up into a planet,” I added, and Quen’s expression smoothed as he considered it. “If that’s how Ku’Sox got that purple sludge in my ley line, then all I have to do is divvy the imbalance back up again, and the leak will go back to its original pace. Clear the crud out, and anyone can see the curse that Ku’Sox used to break my line. They’d have to side against him!”
    Jenks dusted an excited gold, but Quen still had doubts if his sour expression was any indication. “He’ll simply break it again,” he said as he closed the book and stood.
    “Maybe,” I admitted,