it, I thought as I pricked my finger to smear more blood on the wick as I pinched it. “Ta na shay,” I said softly as I parted my fingers and let a tiny ribbon of line energy flow to ignite the candle. A flickering golden flame mirroring my aura emerged. I sat back, eyes on Jenks, and he gave me a thumbs-up.
“It’s humming like a two-year-old’s wings, Rache,” he said. “Sweet and pure.”
I exhaled, feeling my breath shake. “Here we go.” It was going to work. I could feel it. The hard part would be living with having mixed demon and elf magic. Sorry, Al. Deal with it.
“Ta na shay, obscurum per obscuris. Wee-keh Wehr-sah, ta na shay,” I said, my words fast but assertive. Strengthening my hold on the ley line, I snapped my fingers.
Gasping, I jumped at the sudden burst of line energy. On the table, the pentagon unfolded, shifted, and the ghostly points of an undrawn ten-pointed star misted into existence. At each point, a candle that never existed flickered, each with a distinctive auratic shade.
“It worked!” I shouted, then jumped, catching back a shriek at the crash of the door.
“I gave no permission to continue,” Hodin all but barked as he strode in. “I felt a line drop.”
“Since when do I need your permission?” I said, but he was right. He was spotting me.
Knowing it as well, Hodin took a breath to yell at me. And then he stared, eyes on the table. Lips parted, he closed the distance between us, narrowly missing the hole in the floor.
“Um,” I murmured, my thoughts on mystics as I searched Jenks’s smiling face.
“You’re good. He knows his stuff,” the pixy said, jerking a thumb back at Hodin.
“You got it to work.” Hodin rocked to a halt, shocked. “What did you do?”
But I’d used elven magic, and he wasn’t going to like it.
“Of course she got it to work.” Proud as if he’d done it himself, Jenks alighted on my shoulder, hand near his sword, struggling to not slip off the dusted silk.
“You don’t want to know,” I muttered. Something, though, wasn’t right with the last two candles. The flames looked like they weren’t even there. I leaned to look closer, but my attention jerked up and away when Hodin reached for my hand, eyeing the pricked tip and bloodied thumb.
“You lighted it with your blood,” he said, letting go. “We tried that already. What else did you do?” But when I was silent, Hodin’s expression went ugly, probably thinking I was going to keep it from him.
“She asked for the Goddess’s attention, Home Slice,” Jenks said proudly. “Duh.”
Horrified, Hodin stepped back, his eyes widening as he searched my outlines. “Did . . . ?”
“Jenks says the mystics aren’t swarming,” I blurted, unable to pull myself out of my embarrassed hunch. “He watched me the whole time. It worked. Your fix worked. She didn’t recognize me.” Worked. It was a funny way to describe mutilating my ability to jump the lines.
Hodin looked at what I’d done, eyebrows rising when he noticed the last two odd-flamed candles, and then his expression emptied. “Close it. Shut it down. We are demons, not elves,” he demanded, and Jenks’s wings clattered.
“She got it to work, moss wipe,” he said as he darted from my shoulder, and his dust made the unreal candles sputter and flare. “What the firefly ass is your problem?”
My face was cold. “There’s nothing wrong with the Goddess. She used to be Newt, for crying out loud.”
“Close it!” he demanded again, posture stiff. “Or I will.”
Fine. My chin lifted. I wouldn’t feel guilty about this. “Ta na shay, ut omnes unum sint,” I said belligerently, and with a tweak on my thoughts, all the candles but the original vanished.
Hodin blew my All candle out, then used his sleeve to wipe the glyph away.
“Chicken,” I said, but my lips parted when he took the chalk and snapped it in two. “Hey! Knock it off.” I stood, and he grabbed my arm, looking as if his thoughts were so full he couldn’t decide where to start. “What are you going to do?” I said as I pulled away. “Tell Dali on me?”
“You used elf magic,” Hodin sputtered.
“So?” I backed up an angry, frustrated step. “The Goddess is in charge of demon and elf magic whether you like it or not. And by the looks of it, she’s tired of letting the demons wallow in their pity party. She’s not siding with any