One Week Later...

"Again."

Inwardly I groaned, but I didn't want to get cuffed for voicing the complaint. Al was short on pity and patience these days. I simply braced myself, raising my aching arms into a ready position. Al corrected my posture with several impatient taps of his staff, eyes hard and distant. We'd been drilling for over two hours, and even my improved body, newly cursed to give me the same demonic speed and strength they all possessed, had its physical limits. And it still bruised just as readily. At this point I had no strength left for blocking the blows, and Al was wiping the floor with me. I suspected the lesson had ended twenty minutes ago, and now he was just taking out leftover aggression on me, but I didn't dare ask.

Demon martial arts incorporated movement, magic, and basic instinct. I tried to let myself relax, but every time I let Therese take over, Al could tell, and the consequences were disastrous. We were trying to reintegrate the two halves of my personality- or at least, that's what Al said. Therese was happy enough- eager, even- to learn how to beat on people. But the Evie side of me was a pacifist, and only wanted to duck and cover when Al finally stopped circling and lunged at me.

Al left me in a throbbing heap on the floor. He dropped his staff, letting it thunk me on the head, and hissed in impatient disgust. "Heal yourself," he said, indicating that the lesson was over. "You have an hour for your stirring before we work on spindling."

I stood and gave him the formal bow that he required for these exercises, the gesture still unfamiliar and awkward. He didn't bother to return it. "Yes, Barexda," I replied tonelessly, reaching within and triggering one of the precious healing curses that I'd brewed up the day before. Enlightened one. A term for a master, from a pupil. Better than addressing Al as "professor" or "master," I supposed, but every time I spoke it, I heard Ash's own term of endearment in my head. Berexadtha.

Beloved.

Even if Ash had only been using it sarcastically, well...it still hurt to hear it. Hurt to use it. Hurt to remember. I supposed that was the point. Al had seen my soul, learned it through and through, and this was just another little hurt he could inflict on me "for my own good." Like the new silver wristbands I wore that bound me to Al's demesnes. I couldn't leave his rooms without Al at my side, unless summoned. This was the typical master-student arrangement, or so I was informed by both Al and Newt. Personally I thought they were just afraid to lose yet another demon again so soon. Hope was under similar house arrest. I was denied even a mirror of my own—though the only calls I could expect now would be from demons eager to bribe me for fancy memories, so I didn't care much. Al had made it clear that I wasn't going to be building tulpas for fun and profit any time soon.

After Al left, I flashed into the workroom, to stir the curses for my community service potions. It didn't seem fair that they were holding me to it, but being Al's student was no different in the eyes of the court than being Ash's. Part of me was grateful that Al took the training so seriously. Al was using every trick he knew to get me up to speed, and had left me hardly any time for basic things like eating, sleeping...or feeling. Every moment spent fighting or cursing or stirring was a moment I didn't have to think about how my life had altered since that fatal dawn a week before.

He'd been too late. Al had dispassionately described how the sun and the ley lines had rasped and shredded my demon's soul between them, until he'd come apart entirely. The agony he must have felt as his immortal soul was obliterated—

I blinked tears from my eyes and gathered what I'd need. I pushed down the upwelling of emotion without examining it too closely. I knew there was grief in there, but I couldn't let myself begin to plumb its intricacies and depths just yet. I set each component down onto Al's slate table with mechanical preciseness, pausing only when I picked up the largest spell pot. A brief memory- Al tossing a crumpled piece of paper into it, of Rachel's exasperated protest, and the incongruously pleasant evening that had followed…

That undid me. It was bad enough losing Ash, as tangled and confusing as my feelings for him were. But to lose Rachel three days later, to the same demon? Worse, in the same manner, torn apart by the implacable, vicious energies of a ley line?

Pierce appeared on the screaming face on the floor, looking thin and drawn. Al's recaptured familiar now had a set of the new and improved (and as yet still Pierce-proof) silver cuffs as well. He said little these days, having lost a lot of his spark. What aggression Al didn't take out on me, he took out on Pierce in far more degrading and painful ways. The witch still had a crumpled, battered nobility to his stance, and I marveled at the steel core in this man that had let him survive not only centuries of purgatory, but losing the woman he'd loved.

He didn't have to say anything. Neither of us was able to talk about Rachel's death yet. He just knelt beside me and wrapped an arm about my shoulders with silent sympathy. After several endless minutes he rose and began to help prepare the ingredients for my curses. Watching him reduced to the role of a slave again, doing work that I was meant to do, galvanized me enough to pull myself together. I gently nudged him aside once I was able to continue.

The silence stretched thin and lonely. "You don't blame yourself, do you?" I startled myself and Pierce by voicing the thought unintentionally. Al certainly blamed Pierce, but I couldn't. Not after seeing how incredibly powerful Ku'Sox was.

"Aye." Pierce remained focused on his task, sketching various figures on a parchment in preparation for twisting a complex set of curses for Al. He was listening, but he was also obviously distracted by more than his sketching. "T'was my own wounded pride bid me run off when she needed me most." He didn't elaborate further, though his fingers were restless against the tabletop. I got the impression again that more had happened that he couldn't yet speak about- had he and Rachel perhaps had another fight? Had Rachel ever told him about her night with Al? Had he said things he now regretted?

"She loved you," I said. "I wish I knew if—" Grief gripped my throat and strangled my voice. I'd never know now what Ash had really felt for me. I only knew that I'd never allow another demon to get so close again. I might have said "man," but that assumed that any other species would be willing to get close to me. In reality, I was a shunned witch. In the Ever After, I was a prize to be won and owned. Never again.

He stopped sketching, eyes fixed on something far more distant than his figures. "I know it," Pierce said, leaving my second statement unanswered. Avoiding my eyes, he rose and began to gather the materials for his spell. Everything about him spoke of guilt, and as much as it hurt me to see him blaming himself, I wasn't going to change his mind. "Mistress, you've never—"

"Pierce, please, I beg you to stop calling me that. It's bad enough to see you stuck being a slave to Al again. Don't get me in on the act, too."

Pierce gave me a tired look through the bangs of his disheveled hair, smiling crookedly. He really did have a certain roguish charm, though it would be years before it might begin to crack its way into the layers of ice around my wounded heart. He gave me a little bow of acquiescence. "You've never once inquired what I was about when I lit off on my own hook."

It took me a moment to piece through the slang. "No. You haven't told Al, so I didn't ask. He'd find out through me. I don't want to get you in trouble."

Pierce nodded, as if I'd confirmed an unwelcome suspicion. His blue eyes pinched with sorrow and perhaps something more subtle, as he appeared to really see me through his own grief for the first time. Shoulders slumped as if I'd just added yet another burden to his load, he said, "You look peaked."

"Not sleeping much. Al says I don't need it anymore, but…my brain is so exhausted." I managed to cut myself while dicing and stuck the sullen, throbbing fingertip into my mouth. It wasn't worth wasting a whole-body healing curse on, as Al might have done. I only had two left until I brewed more. And I didn't know how to confine the effects to where they needed. "I feel like…how does that quote go? Too little butter spread over too much bread?"

"The runt's never read Tolkein," Al said, startling both of us. "Too bad, he could do with a little more culture."

"I opine Rachel appreciated a diamond in the rough over a polished blowhard," Pierce said quietly, not looking up.

Al straightened, eyes glittering with more than anger. "That's not what she said," he said sullenly.

My eyes met Pierce's. Al wasn't up to his usual standards of hurtful banter today. Pierce's eyes were narrowed in something like satisfaction at scoring a hit, which I found equally irritating. Not to mention, taunting Al these days was rather more apt to provoke a disproportionately painful response. But I'd never understood why Pierce put up with Al in the first place- and it had been somewhat voluntary, up until the new silver had rendered us both powerless. Was he trying to get killed off, now that the woman he'd signed on to protect was dead?

When Pierce didn't respond further to his bait, Al shoved him away from the table and glanced over my own curse-work critically. He found fault with everything, but they were only minor imperfections that wouldn't harm this particular curse. I had to hear about them anyway. I didn't reply, beyond another, "Yes, Berexda," which for some reason made his face sour with irritation. Maybe he thought that having the only sane demon woman left chained in his kitchen stirring curses like a common familiar would be more fun. Maybe I was supposed to be fighting him, as Rachel would have. Frankly, I didn't see the point, and I wanted to learn what he was teaching me. It was the only solace and distraction I had left.

"We'll have to get you a new yazatach. As soon as your spindling has reached full efficiency, we'll begin the higher-level exercises."

Startled, I looked up. Al was glancing over the figures Pierce had been working on, scribbling some out and grunting with begrudging approval at the others. "So soon?"

"You haven't been fighting it. It goes quickly if you don't resist it."

I waited for him to add how he would be disappointed that the torture sessions were over, or at least elaborate on his innuendo, but he didn't. Keeping my voice steady required most of my concentration, but my hands still shook as I gently added the rest of the essential oils to the mix. I managed to catch the last superfluous drop before it fell in and ruined my efforts. Peachy. Now I'd smell like thyme oil for the rest of the day. Ick. "Did you have anyone in mind?"

Al grunted and rolled his eyes at me. "Well, Newt is right out- she's too wrapped up in her own little tiruncula at the moment. I don't trust anyone else to do it properly." He shoved the notes aside and turned his attention to what I was doing again.

"You?" My heat began to race at the thought. Form such an intimate bond with another demon so soon? I could handle Al assaulting my mind on a regular basis. Giving him my aura, too? My stomach churned at the thought. "You told me once you sure as hell didn't want-"

"Yes, well, that was when I believed my services would be required for another." I peered at him under my lashes as I began the tedious task of dividing the curses between six dozen little vials. I was grateful I didn't have to cut open a vein to quicken all of them. Fortunately for my finite blood supply, they were intended to be personalized by the demons who would invoke them. Al was playing with a discarded flower stalk, stripping off the leaves with distracted efficiency.

The news that the torturous spindling sessions were nearly at an end was heartening. Of course, there were probably plenty of other ways Al would enjoy torturing me, possibly worse than burning and shaping additional pathways in my mind. Having him constantly in my head, for example, might qualify. I wasn't so far gone that I completely didn't care. Just mostly.

I began to cap the headless army of little curse-vials, and was startled to find that Al was helping, instead of ordering Pierce to do it. Perhaps Al also found solace from dark thoughts in activity. After all, his training schedule left him little time for much eating, sleeping, or feeling of his own. He'd been off his game since Rachel's death, too, and right now….well, if I hadn't just seen Pierce, I might not have made the connection, but Al's actions and distraction bespoke his own guilty conscience. I wondered if he blamed himself for her loss as well.

Either that, or there's something huge they aren't telling you, Therese whispered. I dismissed the thought as paranoia. Or rather, as both paranoid and irrelevant. Of course there were things Pierce and Al weren't telling me. Nobody told me anything.

I thought briefly about commenting, but a sneeze jerked my frame. I managed to prevent a spill only through my new demon-enhanced quick reflexes, which were still startling to witness coming from my own body. "I'm being summoned."

"Who?" he demanded.

"Has to be Adrian. Coven member. He's the only other one who knows my name."

Al grunted, then peered into empty space, judging the time. He couldn't stop me from being summoned, and now that Ku'Sox was confined to the Ever After, reality was relatively safe. "It's daytime. I'll give you half an hour." He continued capping the vials absently, then gave me a nasty little grin. "Bring him back with you, and I'll give you the week off," he added.

I made a humorless huff of laughter at the thought. "Yeah. Sure, Al. Beraxda," I amended, when he growled warningly at me. I closed my eyes and let the warmth of the line take me.