Yeah. Fumbling, I reached to find the top of the table, and I pulled myself up.
His goat-slitted eyes narrowed and he turned to Pierce. "You're supposed to watch her."
"I am!" Pierce said, his own anger showing. "In all my born days, I've not seen a woman more prone to trouble, and your almighty refusal to settle your hash is making things plumb impossible. Give Rachel her name or I'll tell Newt I can't do this."
"Yeah," I said as I wove on my feet, trying to focus.
Al was silent, his jaw clenched as Pierce arched his eyebrows in challenge. "Come along, let's go," the demon abruptly said. "Pierce, stay here. I'll send her back before sunup."
Blinking, I stared at him. "Go? Go where?"
Al looked back to Ivy, Lee, and Pierce and sniffed. "I'm not going to twist curses in front of an audience." Al grimaced, looking pissed.
I suddenly realized that Pierce had done it. Al was going to live up to our deal. It had taken me being dragged around, drugged, and headed for a lobotomy, but I was going to get my name back. Teeth gritted in a weird smile, I looked at Ivy. It was going to be a good day.
"Hey!" I exclaimed, stumbling when Al pulled me to him and a puff of burnt amber rose. "Why can't we do it here?" I asked, but with a gasp, I found the air crushed from my lungs. We were gone.
Chapter Eighteen
My lungs rebounded, and I felt myself slip; then I jerked upright even before flesh had reformed to separate Al from me again. Pulse hammering, I staggered when Al let me go, narrowly avoiding a fall to the slick black stone engraved with that same pattern of intertwined icy-white-edged circles that the coven had. Wincing, I tucked my fading pain amulet back under my shirt. I leaned to snatch Pierce's hat off the floor, and my hip protested. It was probably black and blue by now.
Al had his back to me as he poked about in one of the tall cupboards, the old glass in the wooden frames making his face a blur. "Make up the fire if you're cold," he said, tossing a palm-size bag at me.
I scrambled to catch it, knowing he'd smack me if it touched the floor. The bag was squishy, probably holding coarse salt. Feeling achy, I crossed the room to set the black silk bag on the corner of the slate table standing between the smaller hearth fire cheerfully glowing and the huge - but dark - circular fire pit in the middle of the room. With a sigh, I dropped Pierce's hat on the bench surrounding the central fire. The drugs were wearing off, and, arms around myself, I weighed the trouble of starting a fire in the main pit with simply being cold for the time it would take to do the curse. My God, he was finally going to do it.
A soft glow blossomed in the six fixed globes when Al pulled a book from an unlocked cabinet to check on something, barely illuminating the slate table before the smaller hearth. There were two chairs at it, one at either end - the first with padded cushions and arms, the second a simple stool. It had shocked the hell out of me the first time I'd tried to sit on the stool and found myself smacked halfway across the room. I was supposed to use Ceri's comfortable chair, apparently.
My thoughts drifted back to my own kitchen and I sighed, not for missing the gleaming counters and bright lights, but for the people I'd left behind. "You know I can't start a fire to save my life," I complained as I gingerly picked out some thin sticks from the basket of kindling. It wasn't that cold, but if I was trying to light a fire, he'd stop throwing spelling equipment at me. "Don't you have some Logs-o-Fire or something?"
Al didn't even look up from his collection of knives in a locked case. "Then we'll be cold until you learn. Try not to use all the kindling. It's expensive." Seeing me stirring the ash at the center of the pit for signs of life, he crossed the room to set that ugly ceremonial knife with the writhing woman on it beside the bag.
"Can't you just turn up the heat?" I complained. His receiving room looked like a mansion, the mundane kitchen where Pierce slept was modern, and I'd never seen Al's bedroom,