Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            Al sat up with a grunt. “They are what?” he said, and Trent turned our way.

            “Lee would be exempt,” David continued. “He’s not in the demon collective, but you are. If it works, you’ll be stuck here, and everything you worked for will slowly and painfully decay, and I say painfully because no one in their right mind wants Finnis and Lee in charge. And that’s assuming no one has found out your summoning name, in which case, you are in Alcatraz.”

            My chest hurt, and I stared at Al, scared when his expression stiffened.

            “Okay,” David said, knees spread as he took in the fire’s heat. “I get that it’s a challenge to avoid incarceration or death when the coven is out to get you. You have a definite home base. You’re easy to track on social media. It doesn’t help that you haven’t been up-front with the coven. Unfortunately, with Finnis involved, the I.S. is more than willing to bring you in.”

            “I’ve already fought one I.S. death threat and won,” I said. Trent was coming back to the fire, and I shifted on my stone to give him a place to sit down.

            “That’s what I’m saying.” David smacked a hand on his knee. “You got this. But not if you’re camped out in the ever-after eating s’mores and drinking coffee made over an open fire.” His gaze went appreciatively into his cup. “As good as it is. That’s why Quen pushed me through a ley line so I could ask you, one city power to another. What are you going to do?”

            Guilt, anxiety, and a little thread of panic iced through me as I looked from David to Trent, and then finally Al. The question in David’s eye remained, but he knew I wasn’t going to sit here and feel sorry for myself for very long, because he was right. Everything was still there. It was in hiding. As it should have been from the beginning.

            Slowly I nodded, and Al’s furrowed brow smoothed.

            “I need to talk to Dali,” the demon said as he stood. “May I borrow your horse?”

            “If he will accept you,” Trent said dryly, and the horse nickered, ears going flat when Al boldly strode across the field toward him.

            “Al?” I called as the demon stopped four feet from the horse, the aging gray’s lip now lifted in threat.

            “The coven can’t be allowed to exile us from reality again,” Al said as he took a step forward, shifting sharply to the left to avoid a thrown hoof. “Rachel’s efforts to get that curse removed nearly bankrupted me the first time.” Moving like fire, Al snagged Tulpa’s bridle, dragging it off the horse as Tulpa lunged to bite him. Shocked, the horse waggled his head. “I’ll be with Dali. If you need me, call him.”

            In an enviable smooth move, Al grabbed a handful of mane and swung himself atop Tulpa, bareback and no bridle. The horse made one stifled whinny, his alarmed prance quickly dissolving into an even, in-place trot. Even his ears lifted.

            “I didn’t know you could ride,” I said, thinking he looked really good there. Almost as good as an elf.

            “Ride?” Al patted the horse, now standing still and blowing. “I invented dressage. Well, the fighting horse, actually. Dressage is all that’s left.” He hesitated, something new passing through him as he sat atop a horse. “Kalamack, the ever-after is lacking. When you have time, I’d like to talk to you about introducing a semi-wild herd.”

            “Ah, sure,” Trent said, clearly stunned that Al was atop his familiar. And then Al shifted his leg and the horse wheeled around to canter slowly into the woods.

            “Huh,” I said, surprised, but I really shouldn’t have been.

            “Rachel?” David asked. “I’m going to fix what I can. What is your decision?”

            The I.S. truly wasn’t the problem, or Finnis, or even the coven. It was Lee. If I took his power, it would all fall back to me. I couldn’t best a city, but I could best a man. “Can you get a message to Ivy for me?” I asked, and David stood and extended a hand to help me up, his smile wide in anticipation.

            “I can do one better. Find some boots. I know where she is.”





CHAPTER


            27

            “They usually go down around now and sleep for six hours,” Trent was saying to Al. The demon was holding both girls, a flicker of annoyance on him as we had drawn him out of Dalliance and his conference with Dali to babysit. The demon eatery was currently that vampire strip bar, and the modern, unkempt building with its cracked parking lot and paint-peeling fence was surreal at the bottom of an earthen bowl with Tulpa cropping the tall grass surrounding it.