The sun turned me red even as I shivered in the chill of the coming night. “What is that?” I asked, looking at the demon, but what I really wanted to know was how there was living grass.
As distractible as a child, Newt turned, beaming. “It’s a calibration curse,” she said in delight, oblivious to the anger of the surface demon beating upon it. I could almost see clothes, so distinct was he in the low sun.
“It doesn’t look like the curse I know,” I said.
“That’s because it’s calibrating space and time, not balance and skills.”
“Space and time?” I breathed as she began chanting. Immediately the demon dropped his sword and fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Neither Al nor Newt seemed to care. “Al,” I almost hissed. “What is she doing?”
Frowning, Al put a fist to his hip. “She’s moving a bubble of time into the past. The surface demon is caught up in it intentionally, as a marker.”
That explained the green grass, but how far back had she needed to go to find it? “You can do that?”
“She can.” Al pointed with the lantern, the flame pale in the remaining sun. “By comparing the rate of adjusted time to a known span, we can see if anything is out of balance.”
I shuddered when the sun touched the rim of the earth and bled all over it. Newt thought something was wrong, too. “You do this a lot, right? Like a monthly siren test?”
“No,” she said, and the surface demon behind the barrier scrabbled at the edge, his motions becoming erratic. “It hurts.”
“I’ll say,” I whispered.
Newt gave me a sharp look. “Not the demon,” she said sourly. “Me. Pay attention. You might have to do this someday. Each surface demon comes into existence at a specific, known time. This one has a particularly long life: watch now. We’re close.”
With no warning, the surface demon vanished, the grass under him springing up as if he’d never been there. Newt set the butt of her staff on the ground, clearly pleased. Beside me, Al fussed with his pocket watch, making a show of opening it. Not knowing why, I looked at it, glancing up to see Newt had a watch locket on a black chain around her neck.
“Ready?” she said, and Al nodded.
I had no idea what to expect, but as Newt pointed at the bubble and indicated “go,” the demon reappeared. I watched in a horrified awe as he flung himself against the barrier, clearly in pain as the green grass grew sparse about him and the sword that had glittered so beautifully tarnished and became dented. With a sudden shock, I recognized it as the one the gargoyle had dropped when he’d come to find out who’d damaged my ley line.
His aura failing, the surface demon fell and a layer of black ash covered him. A bright light crisped the remaining vegetation to ash. Dead-looking sprigs appeared, and then the twisted figure with the tattered aura vanished.
“Mark!” Newt said, and Al nodded sharply, holding his watch out to Newt as the demon hiked her loose-fitting clothes up and came closer. “Perfect,” she said, and Al closed his watch with a snap. “Time and space are moving concurrently, i.e., not shrinking,” she said, seemingly perfectly sane. “Your line isn’t impacting the ever-after, but it feels odd at times.”
Scared, I spun to Al. “I told you. I told you something was wrong!”
Newt sniffed as Al frowned at me to shut up. “He didn’t believe you?” she said, staff planted firmly before her as the setting sun cast her shadow over both of us. “You should listen to her, Gally. If you had listened to me, we might have survived.”
Al shifted to get out of her shadow, screwing his eyes up at the last of the light. “We’re not dead yet, Newt, love.”
Newt’s expression became sour. “Oh, so we are,” she said, her gaze dropping to her foot nudging a rock deeper into the grit. “I suppose . . .”
Frustrated, I slumped. “Newt, what’s wrong with my line?”
“Nothing is wrong with your line!” Al bellowed.
“He’s right,” she said, and his bluster died in a huff. “There’s nothing wrong with it, but everyone else’s is fine.”
Okay. I rubbed my forehead. Newt wasn’t known for her clarity of decisions, but she was a font of knowledge if you could understand. The concern was in how she might react to whatever she might suddenly remember.
I jumped when Al grabbed my arm and rocked us back a step. “Yes, yes. Everything fine,” he said jovially. “Rachel, ready to go?”
My gaze was fixed on that ring where the grass had been. “That’s what the ever-after used to look like,” I said, stumbling when Al gave me a yank.
Newt turned to look at it. “As I said, it hurts.” Her gaze was empty when she turned back. “Why are you here?”
I gave in to Al’s tugging when Newt suddenly seemed to have forgotten the last ten minutes. “Ah, Rachel wanted me to check under her bed for monsters,” he said, but I’d found the crazier Newt was, the more information you got, even if it was like teasing a tiger.
“I was checking that my line was okay,” I said, stumbling when Al smacked my shoulder.
Newt smiled and linked her arm in my free one, making me feel as if we were on the yellow brick road. “You’ve noticed it too?” she said, having forgotten we’d had this conversation.
“Noticed what?” I asked as Al became visibly nervous.
“Thunder on the horizon,” she said, and Al’s pace bobbled.
“So sorry, Newt!” he said cheerfully as he pulled me away from her. “We have to go.”
I tapped my line and gave Al a jolt. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, but his grip loosened enough for me to pull away. “A simple charm blew up in my face today,” I said hurriedly. “And another one that I had nothing to do with trapped me for three hours. Al says they were overstimulated, but there’s a pattern to them, and they’re coming from my line.”
Newt was staring at the setting sun, just a sliver left. “Thunder like elephants,” she whispered. “Have you seen an elephant, Rachel?”
Al’s fingers gripped my shoulder, but he didn’t yank me back. “We need to go. Now,” he whispered. “Before she decides you’re one of her sisters and kills you.”
I stiffened. “Only in the zoo.”
Newt turned back to me, her eyes black as the sun slipped away. From the slump of broken castle, a rock fell. “We exist in a zoo,” she said, chilling me. “You know that, yes? I hope our funding doesn’t run out. I’d give anything for a better enclosure, one that at least hides the bars.” Her focus blurred, then sharpened on me. “Rachel, would you like me to do a calibration on you? See how long your soul has been aware?”
Blanching, I remembered the demon behind the barrier, twisting in pain as he lived his entire existence backward and forward in ten seconds flat.
“No!” Al said, and this time, I did nothing as he jerked me away. “Newt, we must go. Spells to weave, curses to twist. A student’s work is never done!”
There was alarm under his cheerful words, but Newt gestured as if she didn’t care, turning to look at the red smear where the sun had once been. “Study hard, Rachel,” she said, her staff hitting the earth to pinch the rocks and make them skip. “Come again soon. I’m having a party next week when the purple grass flowers. It’s beautiful then, when the wave hits them and sends them all crashing into one another.”
Al pulled me back another step, and I walked backward, watching Newt sketch out another circle. “How much power does it take to do that?” I asked, pitying her.