the time. It caught the ring that Hodin had given me, and the dull silver engraved band came with it, hitting the floor with a thump and rolling into the sun to glisten like an unsaid promise. Frowning, I picked it up, turning it to study the glyphs. It looked Celtic, the symbols intertwined with one another until it was hard to decide where one started and another left off. Pretty, I thought, wondering why Hodin had been so adamant that he wouldn’t help Al. It had sounded personal.
Souls, I mused as I rolled the band between my thumb and index finger. Hodin claimed he could shift a soul’s expression. It would change my neutral aura expression permanently, not simply for an instant the way all demons modified their auras to travel the ley lines. Other than ley line travel, there was very little concerning souls in either the demon or elf texts.
Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way, I thought, one eye squinted shut as I raised the ring to look through it to the covered pool. Auras, souls, souls, auras . . . My eyes closed and I gripped the ring in my fist as my eyes began to twitch despite that wake-up spell.
“Rachel?” Trent called distantly, and my eyes flashed open. “Sandwiches are ready.”
Crap on toast, I almost fell asleep. What good is a wake-up spell if it doesn’t keep you awake? “That coffee smells great,” I said as I put my no-doze amulet back on, then Hodin’s ring—just for safekeeping. A frown creased my brow, and I looked at it there, glinting dully on my finger. It fit. As if it had sized itself.
“I think so, too.” Exhaling in pleasure, Trent set a well-loaded tray on the coffee table.
I sat up out of the comfort trap the couch had become. “Wow. You didn’t just make all this,” I said as I took in the array of cheese, crackers, fruit, and, yes, finger sandwiches. There was an insulated carafe of coffee, too, and that was where Trent started, pouring out two mugs of richly scented brew and handing me one.
“Maggie prepped most of it,” he admitted. “I only put it together while the coffee perked.”
The mug warmed my hands, and again my eyes closed, this time in bliss as I took a sip. “Perfect,” I said as it eased into me, working with the no-doze charm to bring me fully awake.
The mug clicked as I set it on the table, and I leaned forward to fill a small plate. Trent was already doing the same, and we were silent for a moment. Vertigo came and went when the no-doze amulet swung forward and back into me, and I tucked it more firmly behind my shirt. “You make the best coffee,” I said, and he smiled, his eyes especially green in the reflected light.
“Flatterer.” Seeming happy with the world, Trent eased down beside me with his plate, and we both looked at the pile of books. “Find anything?”
“Nothing that the demons couldn’t have tried themselves in the past.” I sighed as I took a bite of sandwich. Weast was being a dick for not sharing information. The I.S. was being a coward for ignoring what was going on, and Hodin was an ass for not setting whatever grudge he had aside and helping Al. I am dead to him, echoed in my mind. The way he’d said it implied more than the belief he’d died long ago, as if Al had turned his back on him as he had once turned it on me. I knew how that felt—when someone you needed abandoned you because of something you had to do to survive. Stop it, Rachel. Hodin is not a kindred spirit. He’s a dangerous unknown.
“How do you hold something made of energy?” I said as I reached for my coffee again, and Trent scrambled to catch his plate when his balance shifted with my motion.
“Perhaps a circle that’s held by a ley line, not a practitioner?” he suggested. “Or trap it in the line itself?”
I stifled a shudder as I recalled being stuck at the bottom of a ley line, my very soul being scoured away by time itself until I got Al free of it. I had saved him as much as he had saved me. Perhaps that was why he overlooked his anger and . . . listened. “I’ve never heard of a stand-alone circle,” I said, and Trent frowned when I put my