“Rache.” Jenks bobbed erratically beside my ear. “He said he could help Bis.”
Oh, God. My bluster fell to nothing. Almost panicked, I sent my eyes first to Hodin, who was now smiling in a confident, not-nice way, then to Al, standing with a stoic, awful stillness. I needed them both, and neither would give. I couldn’t make a choice, and I hated that they couldn’t find a way to live with their differences so I wouldn’t have to live without both of them.
“Nothing can help him,” Al said. His tone was rock-hard, but there was pain in his eyes, pain that I might choose Hodin over him, pain that I might already have.
Jenks rose up to Bis, then down, his dust crackling in the magic-charged air. They’d been best friends. Were best friends.
“He is bound to the baku,” Al continued when Hodin opened his mouth to say something. “It eats demons. You will not be allowed to free it, Hodin. For any reason.”
“You never change,” Hodin said bitterly. “Your thoughts always in a box. That’s why you’ll never be anything other than what you are now, Gally. A pathetic—”
“Stop!” I said as the air crackled and Al’s hands clenched. “Al, we can at least hear what he has to say.”
I had said we. I wanted it to be we. Us. Don’t make me choose. . . .
“Elven whore,” Al spat, finger pointed at Hodin. “You think to save him with elven magic. You will die at the hands of the Goddess, and you will deserve it!”
Jenks’s wings rasped as he sat on the shelf beside Bis and stared down at all of us. “I don’t care if I have to piss on a peach pit if it will help Bis.”
Hodin looked at Al’s overdone, Victorian finery, his lips curled in disdain. “Says the rebel living in the woods on acorns. You have no concept of the power held by elven magic. How do you think they enslaved us for thousands of years? We let them do it, willfully ignoring what lay at our fingertips. Don’t condemn me for working within the system to find a way out of it.”
“You didn’t work within a system,” Al barked. “You sold your body for food and a silk robe!”
“Nice,” Jenks said, feet dangling from Bis’s shelf.
“As if starving in the mountains did you any good!” Hodin shouted. “I was trying to find a way to bring them to heel!”
I looked up at Jenks, who shrugged. At least they were talking.
“Al,” I interrupted, and they both jumped as if having forgotten I was there. “It was elven magic that captured the baku. That is a fact. Maybe elven magic can help Bis. That doesn’t mean I have to do it. Maybe Trent could. Can you live with that? I just want him back.”
Slowly Al nodded, but his jaw was clenched and I didn’t like Hodin’s smug look.
“I will not tell you my idea with Gally here,” Hodin said petulantly, and Jenks clattered his wings in impatience.
“Get over yourselves.” Tired of them, I went to fix my books. The gap where my new ones had been hurt. “Al is my teacher. I run everything past him.” Usually.
“If he’s your teacher, what am I?” Hodin asked, clearly trying to make trouble.
“You are a plaything,” Al said. “A man whore.”
“He is not a plaything!” I said, voice rising. “Will you stop bickering long enough to hear Hodin’s idea? Can you separate Bis’s soul from the baku or not!”
Hodin seemed to fall back in on himself, eyes flicking from Al to me. “No,” he finally admitted, and Al gestured as if he’d known it all along. “But I’m fairly confident I know how to affix a new soul to him.”
His last words hung in the air. I looked up to Bis, and Jenks dropped down, his small features furrowed in worry. “Would it still be Bis?” I asked for both of us, not sure.
Gaze flicking to Al and back, Hodin pressed his lips. “I don’t know. But he wouldn’t be comatose. And with that, he’d be able to teach you how to jump a line.” He hesitated, one hand nervously spinning a ring on his other hand. “I think,” he added.
Al made a rude noise. “That is the worst idea I’ve heard in an eon.”
“Because it involves elven magic?” Hodin snapped, and the two faced off again.
“No, because it won’t give the desired effect.” Al eyed his fingernails, hidden within his gloves. “It’s Bis’s soul that has bonded to Rachel. Not Bis’s body. Not Bis’s mind. His soul. If you drop another in him like a row of candy in a PEZ dispenser, you will get nothing but a confused, bewildered gargoyle who doesn’t know why he’s living with a demon in a church filled with refugees from a vampire war that she is refusing to fight.”
“I’m not fighting a war with Constance over Cincinnati,” I said quickly, and Al tugged the lace in his sleeves down.
“No, you aren’t,” he said, his impatience obvious. “And that’s the problem. Joke curses?” he said derisively, his gaze going to Hodin as if it was his fault. “If you desire to remain my student, don’t ever talk to him again.”
Hodin stiffened. “The lily wasn’t my idea,” he said, but Al had vanished. There were three books where he had stood, and relief spilled into me as I lurched to get them before Hodin could so much as see the titles. “The lily wasn’t my idea,” Hodin said again, softer this time.
But I was proud of what I’d done with the lily, and Al’s words hurt even as I hugged the books he’d left to me. It had been my own magic: a mix of demon and good old-fashioned witch spells. Even Dali had been impressed.
“Hodin, will you please leave?” I said, the books to my chest as if they were a plea Al couldn’t mouth.
Hodin was gone when I looked up, and I sank down on the boxes, still holding the books. Maybe they were a promise. A promise that Al would be there even when others told him not to, even when his own soul and hurt said for him to walk away.
“Hey, uh, I should probably check on those fairies,” Jenks said as he hovered before me. “Baribas told his kin to leave them alone, but accidents happen.”
“Sure, go,” I said, head down. “Tell David I’ll be down in a few minutes.” I needed a moment. Hell, I needed a couple. Hodin had an idea to help Bis. It would alienate Al, maybe for good, but Bis . . . If it went right, he would be back. If it went wrong . . . well, he’d at least be alive. He could start over without me.
But Al . . . I thought, miserable. He trusted me, even now he trusted me, and to betray that? I couldn’t do it.
“Rache?” I looked up to see Jenks hanging before me as if not knowing what to do with his hands. “Never mind,” he finally said, and then he was gone, Rex trailing along down the steps behind him.