than a rainbow. Not only had it worked, but it had worked well. “Hodin, are there too many mystics?” I said as I thought I felt the Goddess laugh.
“No,” he said, and I began to breathe again. Something had shifted. I heard it in his voice. He’s worried. About me?
“Rache, how come those last two are black?”
I looked at the spread, brow furrowing when concern pinched Hodin’s eyes. The last two flames weren’t missing, but they weren’t there, either.
“Maybe it’s outside my vision,” I said, and Jenks shook his head, slipping from me to hover beside Hodin. “You?” I asked Hodin, and he shook his head as well.
“They’re burning black,” he said, chilling me. “It’s not smut. It’s baku damage. How many times have you been attacked?”
“Two,” I lied, and Jenks rasped his wings. “Okay, three,” I added. Sure, this was exactly what I had been hoping the curse would do, but seeing the damage reflected in my soul’s expression, a thread of dread wound about my heart and tightened. “But I’m not sleeping anymore, so it doesn’t matter. I’m not going into seclusion. Hodin, help me here. I can’t hide in a hole and wait to fall asleep and kill the person I love.”
Hodin was silent, and slowly I sank down to sit across from him, the bells on the scrumptious robe he had given me jingling. I wasn’t begging for his help, exactly. But if he left, I’d be on my own. That was when I usually did something stupid in my efforts to not fail.
Hodin’s lip twitched. Silk robe rustling, he stood to look at the pool table. “We need to set them all up at once. My workbench at home isn’t big enough. But that is.”
Relief filled me, but Jenks rose up on a column of angry red dust. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Cool your draft, Home Slice. We already said no.”
“I’ll smooth it over with Ivy,” I said as I stood and followed Hodin across the sanctuary, the tiny bells on my sash jingling.
“It’s old slate.” Hodin ran his hand across the pristine felt. “From an even older lake. Laid down before I was even born. Do you know how rare that is?”
“Which is why you’re not going to twist any curses on it.” Jenks touched his sword hilt as he hovered before Hodin, and the demon lifted his hand from the felt and turned to me.
“We need to compare them all at once,” Hodin said. “I’ll fix it once we’re done.”
“I need this, Jenks,” I said, but what I was thinking was that a pool table was a small price to pay for demons to consider bringing the Goddess into their magic. Not to mention maybe keeping me from killing Trent.
“Oh, Tink loves a duck. Ivy’s going to kill me,” Jenks moaned, darting back when Hodin said a word of Latin and the table was engulfed in a shimmering bubble. When it cleared, the bumpers were gone and a gray table with six holes at the corners and on the long sides remained.
“I don’t understand your reticence,” Hodin said as he sketched six pentagons down one side with an incredible precision. “There’re better uses for such large measures of slate than gaming on.”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” I said as I inched closer. “My dad taught me algebra at our local pool hall.” My arms crept up around my middle. Sure, I’d twisted the curse twice with no mystics showing, but this was six, all at once.
Hodin finished and straightened. “You’ll have to introduce me to it someday.”
“Deal.” I went back to the couch for the vials of blood, silent as I set them up in a row on the denuded pool table.
“You should anoint the candles to minimize contamination from my aura,” I said, shifting to make room when Hodin came forward. “Here,” I added, setting a handful of unused styluses down. “You can probably invoke them all at once.”
“Me?” Hodin’s reach faltered. “I’m not contacting the Goddess. You do it.”
Jenks’s wings fluttered against my neck to send a shiver through me. “You want Rachel to do it?” he protested. “And risk she attract the Goddess’s little helpers? What a whiny sack of spider snot.”
“I’ll do it. They can’t see me,” I said as I strengthened my hold on the ley line. “Ta na shay,” I said as I took the first candle he handed me. “Ta na shay, obscurum per obscuris.”
My heart pounded as I paused the curse midtwist while Hodin