The undead controlled by the living? I thought, seeing the sense of it.

“I want to try,” Ivy said, and I turned to Nina.

Nina stared at us, her gaze pained and her desperation shining. “Ivy can have my soul,” she whispered, voice ragged, in ribbons. “She already has my heart,” she panted, head drooping so her hair hid her face. “Oh God, it hurts. That you might be able to do this hurts. Please. Just do something. I can’t exist like this.”

The need to fix this seemed to warm me from within. My hands shook, and tingles raced through me as Trent slipped an arm around my waist. I felt ill, breathless. “This will break the original curse, won’t it?”

A rare smile holding a long-held pain crossed Al’s face. “As no other thing can, but it must be done on an individual basis and will be reassuringly slow as it filters through the population and gives us something to pay our rent with.”

“The transition will be gradual enough that it won’t destroy the current balance,” Trent said, his expression hopeful as he saw the possibilities in what we were about to unleash. I thought it fitting we’d do it here in a broken church.

“What do we need?” I said, and Al clapped his hands once, making me jump and Jenks ink a bright sparkle of silver and black.

“Salt,” he said, eyes glinting. “Lots and lots of salt.”

Chapter 30

We didn’t have salt, thanks to my kitchen being firebombed, but we did have pixy dust. Jenks was almost his old self as we readied the charm, feeling needed as we moved the furniture to make a large space in the sanctuary. Candles glowed from the sills of the stained-glass window, and Bis slumbered, hanging from the light over the pool table. He’d never woken when Trent transferred his clawed feet to the cold metal, and he looked like a huge bat hanging there. I hoped he was all right, and I promised myself I’d see this through—one thing at a time.

My stomach hurt as Al finished wiping down the old oak floor, his goat-slitted eyes worried as he threw my silk dress into a corner, having removed “excess stray ions” with it. “Ivy goes in the middle,” Al said, sounding unsure. “The spiral is etched outward from her.”

“Ivy?” I called, and I heard her coaxing Nina out of their room. She was still bound, but she numbly sat where Ivy put her. Suspicious, I turned to Al. His motions were too fast, too quick. He wanted this even as his regret and worry grew with every moment. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Jenks, dust a spiral, please,” the demon said, avoiding me, and my eyes narrowed. “Start at the center and move widdershins. Three arms is traditional. And keep enough space so that if Rachel should fall she won’t hit one of the other arms.”

Fall?

“You want it flammable?” Jenks asked, and Al hesitated.

“Ah, no, but the longer you can make it glow the better.”

Hands on my hips, I frowned up at him. “Why are you doing this?” I asked again, and his eyes flicked to mine.

“You’re in the way.” Hands on my shoulders, he pushed me closer to the pool table. Peeved, I watched Jenks happily dust a sparkling silver path, skating a bare inch off the floor as he laid down a glow that I could tell would last a good five minutes. Plenty of time to save or damn a species—and my friends.

“Al,” I prompted, and he turned fast enough to make his coattails spin—if he’d been wearing his usual green crushed velvet instead of his forties suit.

“I never agreed to this,” he said, his distant gaze making it clear he was talking about the original vampire curse. “I maintained that it was unsporting to curse those who had no original intent, but Celfnnah was sustained by bitterness.”

Celfnnah. My eyes widened as I remembered. Al had a ring with her name on it. He had loved her. He had loved her so much that he couldn’t deny her revenge—her dark bile poisoning a thousand lives, a thousand lifetimes.

“If we’re to survive a return to this world we’ve been exiled from, we need to end this. We need to let the pain go and heal, no matter where the source comes from,” he whispered, but his heartache was not for me, but for her.

“Al, I’m sorry . . .”

“And the cost to perform this curse of binding will be exorbitant,” he added, gaze going everywhere but to me. “It will keep even Newt in new socks. I swear, that woman can put holes in her socks in one afternoon.”

“Al . . .”

“It’s a simple curse,” he said, ignoring that I’d seen his guilt and aching need to move on, to be accepted. “Most of it was prepped when you made the curse to bind the soul in the bottle. You’re simply moving it to a new container. Walk the spiral with Nina’s soul. It will draw it from the bottle as you go, and when you get to the end, you peel it off you and bind it to Ivy.”

Peel it off me? I didn’t like the sound of that. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it?”

“Because Ivy is not my friend,” Al said, his hands heavy on me as he moved me to stand right before the beginning of the spiral.

“I’ll do it,” Trent said suddenly.

“Because you, Rachel, are covered in elf shit,” Al amended, dramatically wiping his hand on his suit, “and you’re the only one they are listening to. Walk the spiral. I’ll catch you when you fall.”

He wasn’t talking about me falling because of my leg, and “covered in elf shit” meant the mystics. I believed him. My fingers had been tingling for the last five minutes, but even more telling was Jenks darting about as if nothing was wrong. Even Bis’s color had darkened to his normal pebbly gray, though he showed no signs of waking up. But if the mystics had found me, then the Goddess could, too. Make this fast, Rachel.

My heart pounded. Ivy stood at the center. Her hopeful expression almost hurt. She trusted me to do this right. Nina’s soul was in my hand, like a promise to be fulfilled.

“Plan C, eh? Bind the soul and run like hell,” I said, and Trent tried to smile, failing. Jenks was on his shoulder, and the pixy gave me a thumbs-up. This was for Ivy, for everything she’d suffered, everything she’d told herself she wasn’t deserving of. For her, I would risk it all.

And then I stepped forward, placing my foot on the glowing line.

My breath came with a slow intake, seeming to pull with it the memory of drums echoing against a sky faulted by uncountable stars. A slow lassitude spilled into me as I exhaled, pulling a ponderous beat from the spiral to replace the breath within me. I recognized it, accepted it as mine, drew it in to become one with it so I could bend it to my will. Wild magic.

The bottle grew ice cold in my hand, numbing as Nina’s soul coalesced from creation energy. Far, far older than the Goddess, it emerged, pushed by the waves of sound from the drums into a form that had no shape, a thought that came from no idea man had ever witnessed.

I paced forward as the cold crept up my arms, painingmy elbows as I finished one spiral and began another. Within me, the first hints of a low chant echoed against the drums. They twined together, making a new sound to beat upon the soul seeping into me, forcing it into a pattern and shape that it once knew. It was a sound that hadn’t been heard for a thousand years. Tears pricked as I realized how much both species had lost in their war. Wild magic.

I struggled to keep my breathing even when a cold wash came spilling down my sides. The bottle was empty, and it fell from my numb hands as I gave myself up to the drums, knowing it was the only thing that kept Nina’s soul bound to the earth—and the soul rebelled, breathing the cold of death into me. My world was a glowing spiral, but as my will began to falter, threads long left fallow began to glow within my own soul, urging me to pick them up and begin anew. But to do so would be my end.

Dizzy, I began the third spiral. Ivy waited, eyes pinched and hand held out, reaching. I pushed one foot before the other, the heat-stealing soul seeping deeper, making my steps a flagging hesitancy. The seeping cold reached my soul, icing the edges, making me forget until it was only the memory of drums and the whispers of ancient elders that moved me forward. Ivy waited. Ivy waited for me. Ivy believed in me, pinned her life to me, not knowing that it would come to this . . . as I brought peace to her. If I could just move one more step. Wild magic.

“Help me,” I whispered as Nina’s soul sent cold daggers of teeth into me to tear and rend, and Ivy reached, pulling me to her.

Fire exploded in me at her touch and I gasped. Head jerking back, I sagged in Ivy’s arms, the drums thundering and the chant winding high through us, through our minds as the soul slipped from me and filled Ivy. We fell to the floor as Nina’s soul abandoned me for more delicious prey, prey that wanted to be taken.

“No! Stay back!” I heard Al shout, and a small scuffle. “The curse isn’t sealed. Touch them now, and the soul will slip from them both and be gone forever.”

“Ivy!” I called as the world rushed back and I was sitting at the center of a pixy-dust spiral, Ivy cold in my arms. I hadn’t exploded into flame; it had been the sudden absence of Nina’s soul. It was in Ivy, and it was struggling to take Ivy’s soul with it.

“Seal it, Rachel,” Al demanded. “Now, before it escapes!”

Wild magic whispered through my mind, and with a desperate need to believe happy endings existed among the pain, I gave up and opened myself to the thousand eyes. Wild magic was mine.

“Ta na shay!” I shouted as the drums thundered, energy clean and deep coursing into me with the sound of folding wings. “Ta na shay!” See me!

My eyes opened wide and for an instant I saw everything from everywhere. My heart made a pained beat, and I choked. “Ta na shay. Cooms da ney,” I wept, and I watched with eyes not mine—eyes not of any world—as Nina’s soul eased to slumber, dropping the threads that would pull Ivy and Nina both from this world to whatever lay beyond. My throat closed from the sheer beauty, and I forgot to breathe. I thought I’d done it.

“Ivy?” I whispered, and her eyes opened. Their solid blackness shifted, becoming purple as she blinked and wings covered her soul. I could hear the sound of feathers, and my skin tingled with remembered pain.

Panicked, I turned to Al and Trent, but it was Bis whose gaze caught mine. He was awake, his red eyes whirling as his wings opened in fear.

“She found you,” he rasped, and both Trent and Al spun to him.

“You’re awake!” Trent called in shock before he looked back at me. “Did it work?”

“Ah, guys?” Jenks squeaked in distress as he hovered, spilling a hot dust. “I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think I’m going to explode here!”

Trent’s expression flashed to fear. He looked at his hands, hazed with gold as his aura resonated from the building energy. His eyes met mine, panicked.

“Mother pus bucket . . . ,” Al whispered, and then he lunged at me. “Rachel!”

But it was too late, and I cowered as a flash of brilliant light lit the church, burning with an icy intensity. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see! Falling back, I squinted, picking out a darker shadow standing in the middle of the church, swarmed by glowing mystics.

“You!” a voice exclaimed, the hatred echoing in my head as if she’d spoken in my mind. “Your singular thoughts will be ended!”

It was the Goddess. She’d found me. “No, wait!” I cried, one hand propped up on the cold wooden floor as I slid between her and Ivy—and then I screamed as a white-hot knife of anger dove in my thoughts, driving to my core to rip out my soul.

“I will not become!” the figure shouted as I writhed, struggling to escape. “I will not be ended!”

But I couldn’t even breathe without taking in her mystics—and I floundered, burning from the inside out. Ivy. Ivy was beside me—unconscious.

“Rachel!” Trent cried, and then I heard a sodden thump.

Fear galvanized me, and I pulled my head up. Trent was picking himself up off the floor beside my desk, a spot of cool darkness in the fiery glow. Mystics were everywhere. I got a breath in, then another as my mystics coated me in a protective haze, buffering me and Ivy both. But it wasn’t Ivy the Goddess wanted to destroy.

Struggling to sit up, I blinked, trying to find the Goddess in the glow. Mystics coated her so heavily that the body she was in was slowly charring, sending the rank smell of burnt amber to coat my lungs.

“There will not even be a memory of you!” she howled, and I screamed as she flung out a flaming hand. A stream of living magic hit me and I fell, sliding across the smooth oak floor and hitting the wall. My head felt as if it was going to explode from her hatred as the Goddess’s strength wiggled deeper.

“Oh God, stop!” I pleaded, shaking as I collapsed. But I was only a singular thought that held many—not many thoughts making one, and she had me outnumbered. The mystics in me were trying, but it was all they could do to keep my lungs clear and my mind my own.

“You can’t help her!” Al shouted, and I pulled my head up, shaking as I saw the demon holding Trent back. Jenks and Bis were with him, both frightened. Nina had broken her bonds and was creeping to Ivy with the singular intent of not being noticed. As frightening as she looked, I knew Ivy would be safer with Nina than with me. It had always been so.

“She needs help, you coward!” Trent said, and Al yelped, letting him go.

Trent lunged for me, yanked back as the Goddess shot a bolt of living energy at him, exploding the floor in a shower of splinters—right where Trent would have been.

He fell back, face pale. I managed a clean breath at the brief respite. For all her strength, she couldn’t think of more than one thing at a time. I met Al’s eyes, knowing this was the end. At least the demons would survive, I thought, and then I blinked. The demons . . .