Al snapped the bag shut and lifted it easily. “Not break exactly, but when they modified it to force the surface demons to reality, they created a loophole.” He spun to his fire and took the iron, rapping the ash from it. “I’m leaving now. You can have the tapestry. I never liked that thing anyway.”

My heart thudded. “Al, wait!” I called out, but with a tweak on my awareness, he vanished in a curl of black-tainted ever-after.

Bis shifted his wings, and the room abruptly seemed a lot colder. I turned to Trent at his soft scuffing of feet. He had sat down, sinking into Al’s simple three-legged stool, elbow on the table and head in his hand as his thumb ran over a tiny scratch in the surface. I’d seen Al like that more than once. The hatred between the elves and the demons went far deeper than I’d thought. “Trent? What happened?”

He looked up, a hint of the fear of the unknown in the back of his gaze. “It must have taken the dewar working in concert with a good portion of the enclave,” he said, and then his focus sharpened on me. “That’s what you felt in your mom’s spelling room. The unbinding spell recognized you as a demon, and when it couldn’t find the curse keeping you in the ever-after, it just kept trying to take something, anything. The demons figured out what was going on, and now they’re free.”

My lips parted. Free? As in reality?

Suddenly I got it—the entire mess. Landon had made a huge error. He’d freed the surface demons to get rid of the undead, but once they walked into the sun—which I was sure they would—it’d be the demons who’d replace them as the rule makers and breakers, not the elves.

Grimacing, I reached for Mr. Fish. I didn’t think Al was coming back. “We should go,” I said, bending to pick up my bag. There was nothing here. Everything that had meant anything had been taken, held in that little carpetbag.

“Cincinnati?” Bis spread his wings in anticipation. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”

Trent edged from the softly mewling tapestry. “It doesn’t matter now.”

No, it didn’t matter. And I was not going to help Landon save the world. He’d made his choice, and it wasn’t my responsibility.

But as I felt Bis’s aura slip around us, I had a bad feeling I was going to have to anyway.

Chapter 15

Chapter 15