trim on Ceri’s ball gown was rough under my fingers, and I yanked her to me until I was sure we were both on holy ground.
“Damn you all to hell!” Algaliarept shouted from the edge of the cement, furious.
I got up, shaking. My breath caught, and I stared at the frustrated demon.
“Ceri!” the demon demanded, and the scent of burnt amber rose when it set its foot across the unseen barrier and jerked it back. “Push her at me! Or I’ll blacken your soul so badly that your precious god won’t let you in no matter how you beg it!”
Ceri moaned, clutching my leg as she huddled, hiding her face, trying to overcome a thousand years of conditioning. My face grew tight from anger. This would have been me. This still could be me. “I won’t let it hurt you anymore,” I said, one hand dropping to touch her shoulder. “If I can stop it from hurting you, I will.”
Her grip on me shook, and I thought she seemed like a beaten child.
“You’re my familiar!” the demon shouted, spittle flying from it. “Rachel, come here!”
I shook my head, colder than the snow warranted. “No,” I said simply. “I’m not going into the ever-after. You can’t make me.”
Algaliarept choked in disbelief. “You will!” it thundered, and Ceri clutched my leg tighter. “I own you! You’re my bloody familiar. I gave you my aura. Your will is mine!”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, shaking inside. It was working. God save me, it was working. My eyes warmed, and I realized I was almost crying from relief. It couldn’t take me. I might be its familiar, but it didn’t have my soul. I could say no.
“You’re my familiar!” it raged, and Ceri and I both cried out as it tried to cross into holy ground and yanked itself back again.
“I’m your familiar!” I yelled back, frightened. “And I say no! I said I’d be your familiar and I am, but I’m not going into the ever-after with you, and you can’t make me!”
Algaliarept’s goat-slitted eyes narrowed. It stepped back, and I stiffened as its anger chilled. “You agreed to be my familiar,” it said softly, smoke curling up from its shiny, buckled boots as they edged the circle of blasphemed ground. “Come here now, or I’ll call our agreement breached and your soul will be mine by default.”
Double jeopardy. I knew it would come to this. “I’ve got your stinking aura all over me,” I said as Ceri quivered. “I’m your familiar. If you think there’s been a breach in contract, then you get someone out here to judge what happened before the sun comes up. And take one of these damned demon marks off me!” I demanded, holding my wrist out.
My arm shook, and Algaliarept made an ugly noise, deep in its throat. The long exhalation set my insides to quiver, and Ceri ventured to peek at the demon. “I can’t use you as a familiar if you’re on the wrong side of the lines,” it said, clearly thinking aloud. “The binding isn’t strong enough—”
“That’s not my problem,” I interrupted, legs shaking.
“No,” Algaliarept agreed. It laced its white-gloved hands behind its back, its gaze dropping to Ceri. The deep fury in its eyes scared the crap out of me. “But I’m making it your problem. You stole my familiar and left me with nothing. You tricked me into letting you slip payment for a service. If I can’t drag you in, I’ll find a way to use you through the lines. And I will never let you die. Ask her. Ask her of her never-ending hell. It’s waiting for you, Rachel. And I’m not a patient demon. You can’t hide on holy ground forever.”
“Go away,” I said, my voice trembling. “I called you here. Now I’m telling you to leave. Take one of these marks off me and leave. Now.” I had summoned it, and therefore it was susceptible to the rules of summoning—even if I was its familiar.
It exhaled slowly, and I thought the ground moved. Its eyes went black. Black. Black, black, then blacker still. Oh, shit.
“I’ll find the way to make a strong enough bond with you through the lines,” it intoned. “And I’ll pull you through, soul intact. You walk this side of the lines on borrowed time.”
“I’ve been a dead witch walking before,” I said. “And my name is Rachel Mariana Morgan. Use it. And take one of these marks off of me or you forfeit everything.”
I’m going to get away with it. I outsmarted a demon. The knowledge was heady, but I was too frightened for it to mean much.
Algaliarept gave me a chilling look. Its gaze dropped to Ceri, then it vanished.
I cried out as my wrist flamed, but I welcomed the pain, hunched as I held my demon-marked wrist with my other hand. It hurt—it hurt as if the dogs of hell were chewing on it—but when my blurred vision cleared, there was one scared line crossing the welted circle, not two.
Panting through the last of the pain, I slumped, my entire body collapsing in on itself. I pulled my head up and took a clean breath, trying to unknot my stomach. It couldn’t use me if we were on opposite sides of the ley lines. I was still myself, though I was coated with Algaliarept’s aura. Slowly my second sight faded and the red smear of the ley line vanished. Algaliarept’s aura was getting easier to bear, slipping almost into an unnoticed sensation now that the demon was gone.
Ceri let go of me. Reminded of her, I bent to offer her a hand up. She looked at it in wonder, watching herself as she put a thin pale hand in mine. Still at my feet, she kissed the top of it in a formal gesture of thanks.
“No, don’t,” I said, turning my hand to grip hers and pull her upright and out of the snow.
Ceri’s eyes filled and spilled over as she silently wept for her freedom, the well-dressed, abused woman beautiful in her tearful, silent joy. I put my arm around her, giving her what comfort I could. Ceri hunched over and shook all the harder.
Leaving everything where it was and the candles to go out on their own, I stumbled to the church. My gaze was fixed to the snow, and as Ceri and I made two trails of footprints over the one leading out here, I wondered what on earth I was going to do with her.
We were halfway to the church before I realized Ceri was walking barefoot in the snow. “Ceri,” I said, appalled. “Where are your shoes?”
The crying woman made a rough hiccup. Wiping her eyes, she glanced down. A red blur of ever-after swirled about her toes, and a pair of burnt embroidered slippers appeared on her tiny feet. Surprise cascaded over her delicate features, clear in the porch light.
“They’re burned,” I said as she shook them off. Bits of char stuck to her, looking like black sores. “Maybe Big Al is having a tantrum and burning your things.”
Ceri silently nodded, a hint of a smile quirking her blueing lips at the insulting nickname I used so I wouldn’t say the demon’s name before those who didn’t already know it.
I pushed us back into motion. “Well, I’ve got a pair of slippers you can wear. And how about some coffee? I’m frozen through.” Coffee? We just escaped a demon, and I’m offering her coffee?
She said nothing, her eyes going to the wooden porch that led to the living quarters at the back of the church. Her eyes traveled to the sanctuary behind it and the steeple with its belfry. “Priest?” she whispered, her voice matching the iced-over garden, crystalline and pure. “No,” I said as I tried not to slip on the steps. “I just live here. It’s not a real church anymore.” Ceri blinked, and I added, “It’s kinda hard to explain. Come on in.”
I opened the back door, going in first since Ceri dropped her head and wouldn’t. The warmth of the living room was like a blessed wave on my cold cheeks. Ceri stopped dead in the threshold when a handful of pixy girls flew shrieking from the mantel above the empty fireplace, fleeing the cold.