The Witch with No Name(177)

“Don’t be stupid.” Newt leaned across the space between us to yank my crutch from me and throw it at Dali. Trent reached to catch it before it hit his fish tank, but Dali was faster, and he glared at Newt as she settled back, pleased with herself for keeping me on the couch and getting Dali’s attention all at once. “Dali, you know as well as I that Rachel’s line went down first. The Goddess hates her. Rachel can do magic because the tiniest mote of mystics are looking to her, swarming her and creating a field she can tap into.” Newt’s eyes rose as she looked speculatively at me. “Filling her chi with wild magic . . .”

I sat back down, pinned to my chair by Dali’s fierce look.

“That is a lie!” Dali insisted, and Newt looked to the ceiling in false idleness.

“Or any she cared to share it with,” Newt finished. “She’s like a little ley line hot spot.”

“Enough!” Dali shouted. Trent inched in between me and the incensed demon, and Newt bobbed her foot like a twelve-year-old, delighted to rub the demon’s nose in something that would get me into trouble and distract Dali from realizing she’d once practiced elven magic, too.

“It’s the mystics, you decrepit old demon,” she said saucily. “The lines are dead, and the ever-after has until sunrise before the tides shift and it’s sucked out of existence, taking everything with it.”

Jenks . . . , I thought, looking at the door but helpless to walk to it. He couldn’t survive long without magic. Bis either. And the vampires. Their souls would have nowhere to go when they died their first death. Something was going to snap.

“You freed the familiars, yes?” Trent asked, and Dali’s expression went sour. “Your slaves? You’re abandoning them?” Trent exclaimed, outraged. “Your contract says you’ll keep them alive. You can’t just forget that because it’s difficult.”

“Difficult?” Dali snapped.

“And the undead souls,” I said aloud, thoughts on Ivy. She’d kill herself twice to keep her soul and consciousness together, even if she believed that would send her soul straight to hell.

Dali leaned forward over Trent’s desk, a thick finger pointing at me. “Failure to uphold any contract here isn’t my fault. I held to the undead curse as well as can be expected.” Lip curled back to show his teeth, he glared at Trent. “You and your species are to blame for the vampires’ soul destruction, not me.”

Soul destruction? I wondered, then pounced on that because it seemed to distress Dali the most. “You promised the first undead that his soul would be waiting, didn’t you? That promise falls to all who followed him. And now you can’t fulfill it.”

“This is not my fault!” Dali shouted, and the fish behind him dashed into hiding.

“You oversaw the curse,” Newt said sourly.

“This is intolerable,” Trent said, beginning to pace. “An entire population of living, breathing people trapped in the ever-after to die?”

Dali laughed, the bitter sound chilling. “Funny. That’s what you had intended for us.”

Trent spun, his anger slipping from his iron-clad control. “It was your idea first.”

Al tugged his suit coat straight. “Because you made slaves of us and warped our children so far from us they were as imbeciles.”

“Hey!” I exclaimed, not wanting to be counted as an idiot from birth. No, I could prove that all on my own.

“Boys and girls,” Newt soothed, her pleasant expression faltering when she noticed a bruise in the shape of a handprint on her arm. “We, ah, have all suffered, and though we clearly cannot forget, can we at least strive to forgive each other such that we can . . . survive?”

Trent turned his back on us, frustrated. “There’s nothing to move forward to,” he said as he looked at his hands to estimate their shaking. “No magic to move forward with. They didn’t listen to me, and now we all suffer.”

My stomach hurt, but my ribs hurt more, and all I wanted to do was lie down and not move. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If there was anything that could be done . . .”

“There is, love.”

Dali’s head snapped up at Newt’s soft croon. The demon’s hard, unforgiving expression pulsed through me with a surge of adrenaline.

“Newt,” Al growled as he stood before Trent’s seldom-used wet bar, his shoulders hunched and tense. “Shut the hell up.”

Trent came forward a step. “There aren’t enough mystics looking to her,” he said, but Dali’s vehemence as he thumped a meaty fist on the table brought him up short.