But I wasn’t a Were. I could understand the lure since I had run with as wolf, fought as a wolf, and existed for a short time with the wind bringing me messages. But I wasn’t a wolf. I was a witch, and the lure wasn’t enough for me to break my circle and take it as mine forever, destroying me in the process.
“Negare,” I whispered, shocked when the word came from me. I had meant to say no. I had meant to say no! But it had come out of me in Latin. Damn it, what was happening to me?
Pulse pounding and feeling out of control, I saw the white candle go out. I stiffened as I felt everything in me being poured into the cheap carved bit of bone. I clutched at myself, holding myself together as the demon curse left me, taking with it the ache and lure. The extinguished white candle of protection kept me intact, holding me so that only the curse left, and absolutely nothing more or less went with it.
The black candle went out, and I jerked. Not breathing, I watched the three circles, knowing the transfer was complete and the curse almost set anew. I could feel the energy in the totem, swirling, looking for a lessening of my will so it could pour out and be free. I fixed my eyes on the gold candle, praying.
It went out as the gray candle lit, and I slumped in relief. It was done.
Eyes closing, I reached for the back of the chair. I had done it. For better or worse, I was the first demon magic practitioner this side of the ley lines. Well, there was Ceri, but she couldn’t invoke them.
Fingers shaking, I smeared the salt circle to break it. My aura touched it, and the line energy flowed out of the circle and into me. I let go of the line, and my head bowed. I had all of three seconds before reality balanced itself, reaching out to bitch-slap me a good one.
I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t gasp. Stumbling backward, I reached for the wall, hitting the cupboards and sliding to the floor when I didn’t find it fast enough. Panic jerked through me. I knew this was going to happen—had been expecting it. I would survive.
I couldn’t breathe, and I hung my head and pretended it was all right as the black soaked in, coating me in another layer, molding to my sense of self and changing it. My demon marks throbbed, and I scrunched my eyes shut and listened to my pulse thunder. I accept this, I thought, and the band about my chest loosened. I took a gasping breath that sounded like a sob.
Tears were leaking out, and I realized someone had a hold on my shoulder as I sat with my back against the cupboards. “Jenks?” I burbled. I felt a moment of despair as I decided it didn’t hurt as much this time. I was becoming used to it. Damn it, I didn’t want this to become easy. It should hurt. It should scare me so badly that I never wanted to do it again.
“You okay?” he said, and I nodded, not looking up from his knees so he crunched before me. He had nice knees. “Are you sure?” he asked again, and I shook my head no.
His breath came and went, and I didn’t move, trying to realign my thinking. I was a demon curse practitioner. I was a dealer in the black arts. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want this.
I brought my head up. Relief tricked through me as I saw only concern, not disgust, in his worried face. I pulled my knees to my chest and held them, breathing slowly. His hand was still on my shoulder, and I wiped my eyes. “Thanks,” I said, gathering myself to get up. “I think I’m all right now. It hit me hard is all.”
His green eyes were narrowed in concern. “The imbalance?”
I stared at him, then decided he must have been listening the night Ceri explained it to me. “Yeah.”
He stood and extended a hand to help me rise. “I never felt anything when I got big.”
My heart clenched, and I pulled my hand from his warm one after I found my feet. “Maybe you’ll get hit with it when I untwist the curse and you get small again,” I lied.
Jenks’s lips were tight with anger. “You hurt like that when you turned into a wolf too. I told you I’d take the black for becoming big. It’s mine.”
“I don’t know how to give it to you,” I said, depressed. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t.”
“Rachel, that’s not fair,” he said, his voice rising.
“Just shut up and say thank you,” I said, remembering him saying the same thing to me when he agreed to become big so nasty-wasty vampires wouldn’t bite me.
“Thank you,” he said, knowing exactly what I was saying. We helped each other out. Keeping track of who was saving whom’s ass was a waste of time.
Depressed, I shuffled to the table, thinking the circles and extinguished candles—all but the gray one—looked like something you’d see on a teenage witch’s dresser. Pulse slowing, I plucked the extinguished candles from where they sat, rolling them up in their white, black, and gold tissue paper before snapping a rubber band around them and dropping them in my bag. That little box with the magnetic chalk would have been a nice place to keep them.
While Jenks pretended interest in his sea monkeys, I put my knotted hair on a saucer and set the burning gray candle to it. The ring of hair flared up, curled in on itself, and died. Feeling safer, I blew the candle out, then maneuvered around Jenks to wash the ash down the sink. I wanted all evidence of this gone as fast as possible.
“Sorry for waking you up,” I said. Reaching for the salt, I rubbed the blood symbol off the table with a paste of it.
Jenks straightened from where he’d been leaning over his pets. His eyes were worried. “Did you know you look really scary when you do ley line magic?”
A sliver of fear took me. “How?” I asked, conscious of my two demon marks, weighing heavily on my wrist and the underside of my foot.
Dropping his eyes, Jenks shrugged. “You look tired, older. Like you’ve done it so many times that you don’t care anymore. It’s almost as if you have a second aura, and when you do ley line magic, it becomes dominant.”
My lips curved down and I went to wash my fingers. “A second aura?” That sounded absolutely fabulous. Maybe it was because I was my own familiar?
He nodded. “Pixies are sensitive to auras. You really damaged yours with that last curse.” Jenks took a breath. “I hate Nick. You’re hurting yourself to help him, and he doesn’t even care. He sold you out. Rache, if he ever hurts you again—”“Jenks, I…” I fumbled. I put a hand on his shoulder, and this time he didn’t flinch. “If I’m going to be able to walk away from this, I have to do it. This is for me, not him.”
Jenks pulled back, looking over the empty room. “Yeah, I know.”
I felt odd as he went to the table and looked at the remnants of the demon curse. “That’s the real one?” he said, not touching it.
Pushing myself into motion, I picked up the totem. It felt heavier, though I knew it was an illusion. “Matalina is going to love it,” I said, handing it to him. “Thanks for letting me borrow it. I don’t need it anymore.”
Jenks’s eyes widened as it settled into his grip. “You want me to hold the real one?”
“He’s going to try to steal it,” I said, thinking I’d been stupid to trust Nick in the first place. “If you have it, he’ll get the wrong one.”
Depressed, I hefted the old statue. It felt dead inside, like a chunk of plastic. “I’ll keep this one with me along with the wolf statue,” I said, dropping the statue into my bag.
The front door opened, spilling light over the unmade beds. Jenks turned smoothly to the door, but I jumped when Nick came in, dirty and smelling of grease. Jax was on his shoulders, immediately abandoning him to see how his new pets were doing.
My hand slid across the table, brushing the salt circle into my hand and dropping it into the sink. I wondered how bad it smelled of extinguished candle, burned hair, and burnt amber.
There was a thump from the back bedroom, and Ivy came out in her bathrobe, hair in disarray, and hunched like a bridge troll. Snarling at Nick about the noise, and with a hand over her face, she limped past Jenks and me to vanish into the bathroom. Immediately the shower went on. The clean scent of oranges slipped under the door with the steam. I didn’t want to know what she’d done last night to be limping today. I didn’t.
Guilt-strewn and weary, I sat at the table. Jax found the ounce-sized container of sea monkey food, and Jenks stopped him, explaining he couldn’t feed them since they hadn’t hatched yet. Jax belligerently pointed out two bouncers, naming them Jin and Jen. The small pixy started to glow, which attracted the brine shrimp, and Jax had a fit of delight when they bounced closer. I couldn’t help but smile. It was still on me when I turned, finding Nick awkwardly waiting for me. My smile faded, and he clenched his jaw.
“The truck is set, Ray-ray,” he said with a false cheerfulness. “It will look like a defect when the air bag doesn’t work.” He winced. “I, uh, couldn’t let a truck run into me—even if I knew I was going to wake up alive.”
“Trust is the difference between you and us Inderlanders,” Jenks said loudly, popping the lid to the sea monkey food. Jax grabbed a handful the size of a pinhead and dropped it in with encouraging words, enticing Jin and Jen to the surface with a bright glow. This was a hell of a lot safer pet for a pixy than the kitten, and I wondered if that was why Jenks had bought them.