Slowly he let go, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, not ashamed for my tears. I could have loved him, but he demanded too much.

“I’m not going to change,” I said, meaning several things at once.

Chin high, he let go and stepped back. “Elves are more evil than demons. They warp you to suit their needs and make you think it was your idea. You will always be in my heart, Rachel Morgan. Go, before my foul jailer comes back.”

“Pierce.”

He turned away and gestured. “Go.”

I vanished, seeing him standing in a spot of sunlight that never moved, alone and apart, but wanting more.

I am not becoming Trent’s tool, I thought as I misted back into existence at the fountain and the trite sound of synthesizers and cheerful lyrics beat on me. I was making my own decisions, not Trent’s. Pierce was seeing the world through ancient glasses.

But as I pushed past the few meandering demons in search of the coffeehouse, I couldn’t dispel a faint whisper of warning.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Cool and carrying the hint of rain, the night wind pushed against me, sporadically sending my hair to tickle my neck. It brought to me the smell of early lilac and the sound of spring frogs and running water. Far in the distance was the sound of interstate traffic, barely a whisper. Behind me, Loveland Castle loomed dark, empty, and forbidding. Trent’s snazzy black sports car sat parked in the dirt lot. My car was still at his gatehouse. The light from the camp lantern on the retaining wall behind me barely made it to the surrounding forest stretching around us—just far enough to make the place feel creepy.

Edgy, I shifted my feet into the gravelly scree of the lower garden path as I stood in the glow of the lantern, my hands on my hips and Bis on the crumbling retaining wall behind me. Four feet tall, it almost put him eye to eye with me. Together we looked across the tall grass at the damaged ley line stretching across the lower, long-fallow garden and waited for Jenks and Trent to return.

The ley line looked ugly with my second sight, worse in the lamp’s glow than it had in the sun, with violet-purple streamers coming from the line to soak up the energy leaking through. But for all its nasty appearance, I was sure the line itself was fine apart from the original leak. Ku’Sox had moved all the minuscule imbalances from the other lines, concentrating them in mine to make an event horizon. It was an event, all right. The last one the demons would ever see.