Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

shouted, and Bis’s red eyes widened in alarm.
    “I’m not getting in the line,” I said, glancing at Trent to see him watching me with the same intensity as Jenks. “You think I’m out here sniffing fairy farts? Bis knows what some of the lines are supposed to sound like, and by comparing that to what they sound like now, maybe we can find the imbalance, bubble it, and move it out . . .”
    My words trailed off when Trent tilted his head. “That wasn’t our original idea.”
    Jenks hovered right before my nose, wings clattering belligerently. “Yeah? Then what?”
    I winced. “Maybe if I move it out, it might just get sucked back into place?”
    Bis was making this weird noise, and we all turned to him. I think it was his version of clearing his throat, but it sounded like rocks in a garbage disposal. “Ah, bubbled imbalance won’t get sucked anywhere,” he said apologetically. “But if you tune the bubble holding it to the same vibration as its parent line . . .” His words trailed off and his wings shifted.
    Trent’s exhale was long and slow. It wasn’t the immediate no I had expected, and seeing him consider it, Jenks seemed to become even more frustrated.
    “Tink’s little pink rosebuds,” he grumbled, landing next to Bis and checking the sharpness of his sword. “Now I’ve got two of them to watch. Whose idea was this?” He looked up at Bis. “Yours?”
    I waited nervously as Trent thought it over, his boots scuffing the gravel. “Tuning your aura to a line pulls you into it, so tuning a bubble, which is basically an aura-tainted field of force, will pull whatever is in the bubble to the line? It’s worth a look, since we have the rings as a safety net.” He turned to Jenks. “Jenks, what do you think?”
    My eyebrows rose. Asking Jenks for his opinion? Maybe the time they’d worked together had made an impact after all.
    “I think you’re all screwy in the head,” he said when Bis nodded his encouragement. “But go ahead. I’ve got Quen’s number in my phone. I’ll call him if you both explode in a flash of black underwear and money so I won’t have to fly all the way home.”
    Bis made a snuffing snort of a laugh, but I was thrilled, and my heart gave a thump and settled. “Let’s do it,” I said as I turned to the line. “Bis? You want to sit on my shoulder?”
    He nodded, and as Jenks crossed his arms over his chest and hovered over the wall, Bis made the three-beat wing flap to me, landing with his toes spread wide so he wouldn’t gouge me when he landed. The lines flashed into existence at his touch, but prepared for it, I gritted my teeth at the tinfoil-like sensation. It was awful, seeing as we were so close to a line, and I could understand why the gargoyles on both sides of reality were having issues.
    “Rache?” Jenks said suspiciously when my eyes closed in a strength-gathering blink.
    “Fine,” I said, then choked when Bis tightened his tail around my neck.
    “Sorry,” he said as he loosened his hold. The little guy was the size of a cat but had the weight of a bird, smelling like cold stone, leather, and feathers from the pigeons he ate.
    “My God,” I said as I stared at the line, a sharp pain starting just over my right eye. “This is awful. Bis, can you show me what one of the line signatures you’ve learned looks like?”
    Trent cleared his throat. “You want to use that safety net, or keep it in your pocket, Ms. Morgan?”
    I jerked, sheepish at Jenks’s severe look as I wiggled the rings out and extended them to Trent on my palm. Bis wiggled his toes as they glinted in the lantern’s light. “I think you’d have more control if you took the bigger ring,” I said, and as Trent reached for it, I closed my fist. “No funny stuff,” I warned, opening my fingers again.
    Trent put his hand under mine to hold it steady, jerking back in alarm when the full force of the lines hit him through Bis. “Holy . . . ah, wow,” he said, eyes wide in the low light, distress clear on him. “Is that what the line feels like to you?”
    Bis’s feet tightened on me. “It kind of hurts. Can we hurry up?”
    Immediately Trent took the larger ring. I put the smaller one on my pinkie, but if it was like our practice run earlier, nothing would happen until he put his on. It bothered me that the only way I could take off my ring now was if Trent slipped his over mine, nesting them on my finger to remove them both at once. It had been a scary five