permanent. I mean, you look okay,” I said instead.
“It repairs in time,” he said, his expression becoming as empty as mine was worried. “Your only hope is that it destroys the soul of its host and gains a body before achieving its host’s goal. But again, depending upon whose body it has, things might be worse.”
I reached for my phone, the need to call Ivy and Jenks becoming intense. Or Trent maybe. Someone was hosting this thing, sending it out to destroy people’s lives. We could find him or her. Knock some sense into them. I doubted that Al being attacked was an accident. He was the world’s best-known demon. It was a great angle. Kill Al and do it in a way that instilled a fear of demons.
“I know I lost the bet and have no right, but you said you would tell me,” Hodin said as I reached for the bag of no-doze amulets and pulled one out, cellophane crackling. “How did you survive Gally when he realized you could hear the Goddess’s mystics? Didn’t he try to kill you?”
Surprise pulled my head up from my bag, where I’d been looking for a finger stick. Al insisted I hadn’t really heard them in my thoughts. That I’d been insane. Newt certainly had been. “Several times, yes.” The sharp jab of the tiny blade was a jolt, and I massaged three drops out onto the redwood disk. It soaked in, and my shoulders eased at the rich scent of redwood blossoming.
Then I flushed when I realized Hodin was watching me as if I was churning butter when the store was two blocks away. “You bested him?” he said in disbelief.
I will find who’s hosting it, Al, I thought as I draped the invoked amulet over my neck and hid it behind my shirt. “Best Al? Not hardly. He finally gave up.” How long could a person go without sleep before going crazy? A week? “I just kept blocking his attacks and talking to him until he grew tired of it. Annoyed instead of angry, I guess. Maybe he really didn’t want to kill me.”
“Mmmm,” he said, the long sound holding more emotion than I was comfortable with. “If you shift your soul’s expression, the baku wouldn’t be able to find you.”
“You mean my aura? Sure. Okay,” I said sarcastically, wondering why he was trying to be helpful, except that perhaps he was tired of being alone or that he thought he might be able to poach me from Al as a student. Or maybe we had simply connected over the stupid things we had survived doing. “Newt was the only one who knew how, and she’s the Goddess. No way.”
“I’m not talking about contacting the Goddess,” he said loftily. “Who do you think taught Newt? If you want, your gargoyle can tell me what your aura originally looked like, and I can shift your soul to express it again. He could teach you how to jump the lines then. In return, you and your gargoyle will continue to keep your mouths shut about me.” He frowned as he looked at the passing cars. “A demon moving through space inside a combustion wagon. That is appalling.”
Bis, I thought, elated. And then my breath caught. “Al.” I turned to face Hodin, stifling the urge to take him by the shoulder and shake him. “You can change Al’s soul expression.”
Hodin jerked, his eyes sheened with a sudden anger. “No,” he almost barked, and I scooted closer until he eyed me and I inched back.
“Why not?” I said, breathless. “If you can shift mine, you can shift his. He’s in seclusion!” I said, pointing at nothing. “Fighting for his life. Change it.”
“I. Will. Not!” Hodin exclaimed, drawing the attention of a passing pedestrian, and I pulled away even more, watching the haze of line energy dancing over his long black waves. “I am dead to Gally. Do you hear? I was dead to him before that elven whore put me in a bottle and left me to be buried under a city of rubble. I will not do so much as tap a line to save that mother pus bucket’s soul.” He sat back against the bench, his expression tight and his focus on the past.
But his anger wasn’t at me, and that gave me strength. “You will,” I demanded.
“I will not,” Hodin muttered even as he twisted a ring off his finger and handed it to me. “They’re all dead to me.