“Exactly the way I remembered it,” he said sourly, and he dropped my hand. “Go. Let me know when you’re in reality standing outside the line. As I said, they function much as a scrying mirror.”

He turned away, waiting, and I hesitated. He was staring out at the broken landscape of the ever-after, thinking of someone. I could feel it in his thoughts, the longing for something he’d lost so long ago that he’d forgotten even that he missed it.

My feet scuffed, and he tensed. Spinning the ring on my finger, I stepped into the line, being careful to stay clear of the purple center. Immediately the harsh discord renewed my headache, but almost before I recognized it, the pain seemed to halve. Al had taken some of it.

“Sorry,” I said, and he spun, coattails furling and heartache carefully hidden.

“That’s what the rings do,” he said, urging me away with his gloved hands. “It’s not anything I wasn’t expecting. Go.”

Nodding, I took a breath and moved myself into reality. Again I breathed the fresh air, relishing the warmth of the yellow sun and the soft hush of the wind in the trees. It was no wonder demons were bad-tempered. They lived in a virtual hell.

Remembering Al, I toned down my thoughts of relief.

Good, they work, he thought, and I squirmed as his masculine, domineering presence solidified in mine. I wasn’t sure if they would between realities.

“Good Lord, can you ease up?” I asked, feeling as if he was breathing down my neck, and I felt him chuckle.

Uncomfortable?

I looked over the fallow, weed-choked garden, seeing the outlines of a man’s dream of a perfect spot of truth. “A little, yes,” I said, then sighed in relief when the spun-adrenaline feeling he was instilling in me seemed to fade. He was everything masculine, and having it so close was unnerving. “Thanks,” I said, backing out of the line and looking at it with my second sight. I could see Al watching me like a foppish ghost from a romance novel. “So, how do I fix it?”

I changed my mind. You watch. I’ll investigate. I’m going to follow the purple line inward, see if there’s an aura signature on it. Maybe I can plug it. It’s clearly a manufactured flaw, and as such, it will have a beginning and an end with which to unravel it.

I smiled. “And with proof, they will go after Ku’Sox!”

I’d rather fix it, he thought at me wryly. If we can’t do that, we will all still die. That is, everyone but you and Ku’Sox.

My attention came up from where I’d been scuffing the grass. “Then you think he has a way around that curse?”

He nodded, and my heart pounded. “But you said not to step into the purple line.”

That was before the rings.