Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

minutes figuring that out.
    “Here we go,” Trent said as he took his gloves off, and Jenks frowned, still not convinced. The glint of the pinkie ring twin to my own caught my eye, and I wondered at the connections we had. I still wore Al’s demon mark. Was it the same thing, or different?
    My shoulders wiggled as the ring fitted about Trent’s finger and a weird sensation of entanglement sprung up around me. Bis actually sighed in relief as the connection to the discordant line dulled. It was still there, but it felt diluted—the best I could put it was that the energy was now going through a maze of passages to find me. It was the chastity ring, and when I nodded, Trent eased the grip of it until the flow was again its normal self, almost as if he had lifted me above the maze and I could connect normally.
    Trent’s presence was faint in my uppermost thoughts, sort of like a teacher walking the aisles during a test. We were ready, and I closed my eyes.
    “Okay.” Bis loosened his tail about my neck and shivered. “Ah, I’m going to sing you Newt’s line first.”
    My concentration shattered. “Newt’s!” I exclaimed, heart pounding.
    “Newt has a gargoyle?” Jenks exclaimed, and Bis’s tail tightened until I nearly choked.
    “Rachel, will you listen? I think I’m going to spew pigeon feathers. Newt’s was the first one I learned, okay?”
    I nodded, closing my eyes again, which made me feel dizzy. “Give me a sec,” I said as I sat down in the puddle of lantern light, but then it only felt like the world was tilting.
    “Rachel?”
    Trent’s voice was close, and I put my palms on the ground for balance. “Dizzy,” I said, smiling at him. “We’re okay.”
    Jenks’s wings clattered. “This is as smart as sleeping outside in November,” Jenks grumbled. “You sure you got her, cookie maker?”
    “I’ve got her. Just watch the woods, pixy.”
    “Listen,” Bis demanded as he resettled his wings, and I closed my eyes, feeling the pure ting of a rise and fall of sound, glittering in my mind’s eye like a silver thread of light, a bare hint of jagged red and gray and silver, half a beat out of step with the glorious hum. It sounded sort of familiar, comfortable. Like the line in the graveyard . . .
    “Got it?” he asked, and I mm-hmmed. “This is what it sounds like now,” he said, and I jerked as if struck when the world seemed to hiccup. The feeling of the line I was looking at with my mind shifted slightly, and sure enough, the ragged half step was gone.
    “No way,” I whispered, and my eyes opened. Trent was standing guard with his eyes on the forest line. Jenks was hovering at my eye level, his angular features pinched. Behind him, the line glowed like a deranged fair ride, dangerous and unreliable.
    “Rache . . .” he warned, and I held a hand up to forestall his next words.
    “Trent has me, and I’m not going to do anything Bis doesn’t want.” I reached up to touch the gargoyle’s feet. “Bis? You want me to try to find that ragged half step in the imbalance?”
    Bis jumped to the ground before me. The expansive backdrop of the lines in my mindscape had vanished along with his touch, and my shoulders relaxed. Bis shifted from foot to foot as his tail whipped about until he curved it over his feet and sat like a little lion. “I’m sure this is how to fix the line,” he said, and I heard a big unsaid however.
    “I’ll be careful,” I said to Jenks, then looked at Trent. “I won’t do anything until Bis tells me I can, okay?”
    Jenks squinted at me, and when Trent nodded, the pixy gestured sourly to Bis to get on with it. A four-inch man ruled us all.
    “Maybe you should bubble yourself first,” Trent suggested. “In case Ku’Sox shows.”
    It was a good idea, but as I sketched a small, easy-to-hold bubble around Bis and myself, Jenks’s dust went an alarmed red.
    “Okay! That’s it!” Jenks shouted, hovering before all of us. “I didn’t like this before, and I like it less now! Rache, there has to be another way!”
    Bis met my eyes, shaking his head so narrowly it was almost no movement at all. I looked past him to Trent, his stance stiff and his expression fixed. Ku’Sox was stronger than me. If we couldn’t fix the line and prove that Ku’Sox had made it, then how would we ever get Lucy and Ceri back?
    “Jenks,” I said softly, and he hummed irately at me. “It’s going to be okay. Trent will yank my butt out if I get