Dali thought for a moment, then reappeared in a vivid purple, gold, and red robe, complete with a flat, cylinder-like hat. It was Newt from top to bottom, and I nodded my approval. The fabric was overwhelmingly exquisite, but the cut of the robe and pantaloons brought it back down to casual, and the hat softened the look even more. It was cut roomy for his bulk, and gave him a decided air of individuality and wealth.
“That’s perfect,” I said, and he grimaced as if not happy he had wanted my opinion at all. “Ready to go?” But he didn’t move when I took several steps, and I scuffed to a halt, unsure.
“I’m early because I saw the need to talk to you,” Dali said. “I assumed an hour would be enough time to access and fix whatever you might have done to yourself. Providing you survived.” He looked me up and down. “It seems you have.”
Mmmm. Uneased, I sipped the coffee he’d brought me, hip cocked as I stood before the ruined pool table and tried to hide my worry. I mean, it was Dali. “I can handle a parking lot of vampires at noon,” I said, eyes widening as he moved to sit in the one chair that found the little bit of sun that made it in here. He’s sitting down? Concerned, I edged closer. I didn’t think he was here about the vampires. “Ah . . . do you want a coffee or something?”
“God no,” he blurted, then resettled himself to stare at me. “You were in the collective yesterday,” he intoned, red eyes glinting in the sun, and a chill dropped down my spine.
“Yeah?” I said, my tone anything but certain. My thoughts went to Hodin in my backyard, and I steeled my expression. Damn it back to the Turn. How had he found out?
Dali leaned forward over his knees, his eyes never leaving mine. “You accessed a very old charm. One Newt made. We don’t use the curses Newt made. Ever.”
“No one told me that,” I said. “Is that why there wasn’t any smut payment?”
His lips parted. My question hung in the air, the silence growing as if I’d completely derailed his train of thought. Then his focus cleared. “What did you shift forward in time? And how is it you are still . . . alive?”
Oh . . . boy . . .
“Alive!” Jenks shrilled, and I jumped when he dropped down, his silver dust making a living, temporary sunbeam over me. “Rache, you didn’t say anything about it being dangerous.”
“Because it wasn’t,” I cajoled, and Jenks spun in the air to Dali. The demon was shaking his head, and Jenks became more distressed.
“Al’s pride will be your death,” Dali said, and my anger flickered.
“I’m not talking to him,” I snapped. “Not until he and Hodin can be in the same room without either of them trying to kill the other.”
Dali made a harsh guffaw. “Then you need a new mentor. Preferably before you kill yourself with antiquated, unsafe curses. I say again, what did you try to move through time? Someday it may be possible to use Newt’s curse successfully. But not in a half-conceived, ill-defensed . . . back lot of a spelling lab.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, and Jenks rose higher, his wings a harsh hum and his hands on his hips.
“Try, hell. She did it,” he said, and Dali’s goat-slitted eyes darted to my smug shrug.
“You want to see it?” I said, and Dali blinked once. Slowly.
“It’s alive?”
I stood, feeling sassy. Knock it down a peg, Rachel. This is when things get jerked out from under you. “It’s outside,” I said as I set my coffee down and slung my bag over my shoulder. I’d have to go out the back if I wanted to leave the front door locked. “It’s in my sorry-assed, ill-defensed back lot of a spelling lab. We have time for a quick look before we go.”
“It was half-conceived,” Jenks whispered as he hovered by my ear, and I flushed.
“Show me.” Dali pushed too close behind me in the narrow hall, and I backed up fast.
“Watch your step,” I said as I opened the door, my embarrassment growing as I lurched down the fifty-five-gallon drum and then the makeshift stairs. God help me, he’s right, I thought as my shoes squished in the muddy earth that had once been under my kitchen. My backyard was so far from the perfection that Dali probably had. Maybe I should give it up and move in with Trent. He at least had a decent spelling area and garden paths that didn’t ruin your shoes.
Arms over my middle, I doggedly paced through the backyard, stepped over the low wall and into the graveyard.
“Ah, Rachel?” Jenks prompted, and I turned.
Dali had stopped. Expression blank, he was spinning in a slow circle, taking in my garden in all its broken, half-burned, dilapidated glory. I warmed, suddenly feeling like a kindergartner showing my rich uncle my big-girl desk and handprint turkey. “Your flora conservatory is considerable,” Dali said, and I hesitated, seeing his silence in a new way.
“Ah, thanks.” I waited as he made his careful way through the damp garden. The plants were bending away from him, and the faint, almost ultrasonic chatter of the pixies rose high. “It’s over here,” I said, needing two hands to lift the heavy glass cloche off the lily.
“Oh, Tink’s contractual hell!” Jenks exclaimed, fumbling for his bandana as he darted away. “It’s worse than last night. Cover it up, Rache. He can see it through the glass.”
But Dali had bent close, and, unlike the weeds and grasses that bowed away from his passage, the lily . . . leaned toward him. “A plant,” he said, his red eyes watering at the smell. “You moved a plant forward in time?”
“Two seasons,” I said, and Dali retreated, staring at it as he wiped his tearing eyes.
“It’s extremely fragrant,” he said instead of the obvious question as to why I’d done it. “Most living things die under the stress of shifting even a week.”
I inched closer, more nervous, not less. “Making the scent obnoxious was the point. I used a supplemental nursery growth charm to boost the smell and make the plant stronger. Maybe that’s why it survived.”
“Perhaps.” Dali leaned closer again, his breath held. “What part does the key play?”
Explaining things to the ever-after’s most powerful demon was a new sensation, and I set the cloche down before I dropped it. “It sends the spell-enhanced scent into Piscary’s.”
“Ah.” Dali lifted the glass cloche and covered the lily. “Sympathetic magic. How quaint. It has nothing to do with the time shift.”
“Dali, no one told me not to access that curse,” I began, but he raised a hand, cutting me off.
“This glass covering is beyond you,” he accused, and I flicked a glance at Jenks.