“You’re in the way.” Hands on my shoulders, he pushed me closer to the pool table. Peeved, I watched Jenks happily dust a sparkling silver path, skating a bare inch off the floor as he laid down a glow that I could tell would last a good five minutes. Plenty of time to save or damn a species—and my friends.

“Al,” I prompted, and he turned fast enough to make his coattails spin—if he’d been wearing his usual green crushed velvet instead of his forties suit.

“I never agreed to this,” he said, his distant gaze making it clear he was talking about the original vampire curse. “I maintained that it was unsporting to curse those who had no original intent, but Celfnnah was sustained by bitterness.”

Celfnnah. My eyes widened as I remembered. Al had a ring with her name on it. He had loved her. He had loved her so much that he couldn’t deny her revenge—her dark bile poisoning a thousand lives, a thousand lifetimes.

“If we’re to survive a return to this world we’ve been exiled from, we need to end this. We need to let the pain go and heal, no matter where the source comes from,” he whispered, but his heartache was not for me, but for her.

“Al, I’m sorry ...”

“And the cost to perform this curse of binding will be exorbitant,” he added, gaze going everywhere but to me. “It will keep even Newt in new socks. I swear, that woman can put holes in her socks in one afternoon.”

“Al ...”

“It’s a simple curse,” he said, ignoring that I’d seen his guilt and aching need to move on, to be accepted. “Most of it was prepped when you made the curse to bind the soul in the bottle. You’re simply moving it to a new container. Walk the spiral with Nina’s soul. It will draw it from the bottle as you go, and when you get to the end, you peel it off you and bind it to Ivy.”

Peel it off me? I didn’t like the sound of that. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it?”

“Because Ivy is not my friend,” Al said, his hands heavy on me as he moved me to stand right before the beginning of the spiral.

“I’ll do it,” Trent said suddenly.

“Because you, Rachel, are covered in elf shit,” Al amended, dramatically wiping his hand on his suit, “and you’re the only one they are listening to. Walk the spiral. I’ll catch you when you fall.”