Maybe . . . The Goddess was here with all her mystics. I’d need them to reopen the lines. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed the demons. I needed Al.

With a savage howl, the Goddess turned her attention back to me, and I jerked as great chunks of my memory went numb, connections to it sliced cleanly by the Goddess. “Al . . . ,” I groaned, hand outstretched, then clenched into myself as the Goddess laughed, her head thrown back as her mystics beat at me, burning me from the inside out.

“I will not become!” she howled, eyes glowing. “You cannot stop me!”

“You can’t help her!” Al thundered, shoving Trent behind him.

“Then you do something!” Trent raged. “Or have you learned nothing?”

“Fine!” Al shouted, and I gaped, unbelieving, as Al picked Trent up and threw him right at the Goddess.

The Goddess shrieked. A burst of light blinded me as Trent struck her, and then I screamed as the cold of death touched me.

“No! No!” I exclaimed, frantically trying to push away, but it was Al, and I took a grateful sob of air in as he pulled me from the floor and into his arms. He’d reached me. Bis was with him, and a tiny part of me marveled at the glowing glints of gold in his eyes. He was growing up.

“Stay down,” Al muttered. “She’ll just knock us over again. Trent is fine. Beneath her notice. You, though . . .”

“You both die!” the Goddess shrilled, and I jerked, head spinning. Shit, she was headed right for us, her pace leaving flaming steps of rubber behind her as her shoes burned away.

“Hang on. This might be tricky,” Al warned. “I’m not used to this elf slime.”

I made a gasping hiccup as his masculine energy dipped into me, using me like a living ley line. “Hurry up!” I shouted as a brighter glow blossomed between her hands and her eyes seemed to shoot fire. “Al!” Holy crap, she was going to freaking kill us!

“Someone do something!” Bis exclaimed, wings opening in alarm.

“Rhombus!” Al exclaimed, using my word to make a circle, and the world went dark. Panicked, I wiggled. “Al!”

“Don’t move, or you’re going to break it!” Bis shrilled, and I froze.

I took a breath, then another. We were in a circle. I saw it now. I hadn’t gone blind. It was Al’s smut, coating the molecule-thin barrier. “Trent . . .” Oh God, Al had thrown him at her.

“He’s fine,” Al said, and all three of us jumped as the Goddess hammered atop the bubble. I could see her now, looking wraithlike as she burned the body she was in, holding it together by sheer willpower. Al’s smut acted like sunglasses, and I spotted Nina huddled under Ivy’s baby grand, protecting Ivy with her body. Trent didn’t look much better, dazed as he sat against one of the piano’s legs with Jenks on his shoulder. They were all forgotten as the Goddess focused on me. I prayed that Trent would stay where he was. He looked okay.

My mystics were gathering inside the bubble. I could feel them freely passing in and out, making Al wiggle and squirm even as Bis basked in their warmth. “Al,” I whispered, feeling a possible hope. I probably wasn’t going to make it out of this circle alive—not with the Goddess standing and waiting to pummel me—but if she was here, and the mystics were here . . . I might as well try. “Al, we can reopen the lines.”

“Are you moonstruck!” he bellowed, then winced as the Goddess blew a hole in the ceiling in frustration. Thick beams bounced and rolled, and Nina pulled Ivy deeper under the piano as Trent and Jenks danced back out of the way. “Rachel, we’re going to be lucky to get out of this with our lives! The Goddess knows my aura signature now, too.”

“Like you really think we’re going to make it out of here alive?” I protested.

“And whose fault is that!”

“Help me up,” I said, wiggling to get out of his arms. “I want to see if we can give as well as take.”

“Rachel, we’re trapped!” Al exclaimed. And then someone’s foot hit the edge of the bubble, and it fell.

Light burst over us. I gasped as the Goddess howled in victory, then cowered as a blast of white-hot intent washed over us . . . and fell away. Al grunted in surprise, and I looked up.

Astonishment wreathed the Goddess, looking wrong on her glowing face as shock evolved into understanding. “You cloak yourself in your disharmony,” she whispered, the body she was in staggering back a step.

“Disharmony?” I echoed, looking at Bis, his feet clamped onto Al’s shoulder. There could be no disharmony without lines.

“You’re coated in the cost of perverting my will!” the Goddess said, her expression shifting to a hot anger, and Al began to chuckle. “It will not save you. I will burn it away, and you both will die!”

“Yeah? How much you got, bitch?” Al said boldly, standing up and dragging me with him. “I have a lot of smut.”

“It’s the smut!” Bis said, red eyes wide. “Rachel, it’s smut. She can’t get through it.”

Grimacing, the Goddess cried out, her wails becoming fierce as her fire raced over me and died. Al and I shared an aura—his smut insulated me. His smut?

“Get the rest,” I demanded, hope a bright goad. “Bis, go get the rest. We can do this!”

“Got it,” Bis said, launching himself out the hole the Goddess had made, pinwheeling to avoid her haphazard strikes.

“Al, don’t let her burn me,” I said, going still at a memory. Peter had once asked me to not let him burn. But I wasn’t committing suicide. There was a chance here. Wasn’t there?

“What?” Al said, looking from the Goddess for a brief second before throwing out a hand and blocking her desperate attack. “Rachel?”

“I’m going to need all the mystics she has,” I said, pulse quickening. “I’m going to let her in. See how many I can convert.”

Yes . . . the mystics in me hummed, eager to make a becoming.

“No!” Al shouted, horrified as he understood. “Rachel, it will kill you!”

But there was no other way, and with a deep breath, I dropped the gates to my mind.

She wasn’t expecting it, and I felt the Goddess stumble as I flooded her with myself, setting seeds of my thoughts within her even as I swung out again.

You will be ended! I will not become! echoed in me, and I sent more mystics, knowing they’d be crushed but needing to distract her from the growing cancer I’d set festering within.

I will not become. I will not! she screamed, and I turned my thoughts to where the lines used to hum in my mind like great gates. If I could flood them with energy, just one, the way would be open and I could pull on the flow of energy to open the rest.

Bis, I called, finding his presence riding the chaos, his mind dipping and swooping freely in mine. Where are they?

They won’t come! he thought, his mood chancy as he rose up on the sudden swipe of emotion from the Goddess.

And in my doubt, the Goddess found a small hole in my defenses. I will not become, I will not! the Goddess thought. The other could not make me become, and I will see you gone!

She attacked with savagery, and I writhed in soundless pain as great chunks of myself were dissolved, taken in and swamped by the Goddess. She was eating me alive and I groaned, grasping at anything as memories slipped away, diminishing me.

You will be nothing! she howled, the sound of wings beating at me as she rolled me into nothing. I will remain! I am all. They are mine. All of them!

Fire licked my soul where she tore great chunks of me away. Ice dove deep to fracture what was left and let more fire in. I panicked, feeling myself eaten away, smaller and smaller as I cowered, trying to protect what was left. There was no attack. She had everything. She had it all. I was a fool’s thought, a failure, and she coated me in acid, eating me alive.

“Get off her, you self-absorbed bitch!”

I screamed, the sound real as it echoed in my church. The clean breath of nothing cascaded over me, astringent and biting. I was stripped bare, and I huddled in Al’s arms as the Goddess shouted and fumbled. Her mind had been ripped from mine and was now fighting great swaths of organized thought that had been strengthened beyond reason by insanity.

I blinked, realizing I was actually seeing two figures in my church, swaying back and forth, locked in a glittering sheath of white that rose through the broken roof to the stars.

“Newt?” I whispered, and Al’s arms around me tightened.

“She was the only one who wasn’t afraid,” Bis said, his leathery tail wrapping about me as he sat on Al’s shoulder.

“I know you!” the Goddess exclaimed, her bitterness harsh as a broken knife. “You’re slow with disharmony. Your smut will bring you down, and I will feast on your thoughts and make them mine again!”

There was a burst of light, and with a gasping groan, Newt fell backward, staring up at the Goddess from the floor. Panting, she wiped the blood from her mouth. “You’re right,” she said, her eyes taking on a dangerous glint. “Rachel, hold this for me.”

Hold what? I thought, then stiffened when the weight of her five thousand years of imbalance and smut fell on me. I floundered, struggling to keep my heart beating. It was everything and everywhere. Dizzy, I couldn’t get enough air as Bis took flight in one panicked swoop. Newt had dumped her smut on me, and I could hardly think.

“Newt!” Al shouted, and I cried out as the sudden vertigo became me hitting the floor. The shock struck through me, and I blearily looked through the hissing glare and darting mystics. Al was gone, really gone! I couldn’t tell who was winning. Newt and the Goddess looked the same, blurring together, becoming one.

But no one was looking at me. Suddenly I realized this was my chance. I could hardly string two thoughts together, but if I could reopen the lines . . .

Think bigger! Newt’s thought echoed in my brain as she saw my intent. The lines are dead. The ever-after is dying. Use what’s left to make a new one! Use the smut and make a new one! How do you think we did it the first time?

A new ever-after? I thought, feeling Bis’s thoughts join mine. From the ashes of the old?

Snarling, Newt fell upon the Goddess, eating through her thoughts even as the Goddess spun about and did the same. They were locked in a spiral like yin and yang, snake eating snake, the balance of becoming held in check as the worlds collided. Flat on my ass, I watched, stunned as the Goddess fought with hatred, and Newt balanced it with a savage confidence, then whipped her thoughts in a dizzying spiral to send the Goddess quailing back until her fear shot spikes of doubt into Newt. Newt patted them out with a dizzying memory of stars and acorns.

No wonder Newt was insane.

“Rachel?”

It was Bis, and I touched his feet as he landed on my shoulder. I could hardly move under Newt’s smut, but my mystics gathered, cleaving to me, hazing my thoughts and expanding my reach. As they fought, I took in the forgotten, the wounded, bolstering them with my energy until the mystics hummed with life and brimmed with need.

Find me a thin spot in the balance of mass, I told them, opening myself. Newt’s smut was more certain than any protection circle. Find me a thin spot in time, I demanded again, and the sound of feathers filled my awareness.

Everything that had been or would be touched every other spot, existed in every time, lay dormant in every being. You just had to know where to look. And I had a thousand eyes today.

Mystics gleefully burrowed through time and space, the sound of their wings piling upon one another until a thin spot in the weft and weave began to fray. I focused on it, made it my all, funneled everything down to that point, that instant, weighing it more heavily than anything else—and with a sudden pop, a wind of thought blew through the spaces between me, sucking nothing into more nothing. I gasped as I felt it widen, expand . . .

And then it vanished and the mystics flooded back to me with images my brain couldn’t comprehend.

It hadn’t happened.

A boom of sound rocked me, and I pulled myself back to reality. Al and Trent stood before the writhing column of what had to be Newt and the Goddess. Power echoed between the walls, straining the glass and bowing out the wood. My skin tingled, and Bis’s grip pinched when a flash of light exploded and Newt tumbled out onto the hard floor.

“It won’t hold!” I shouted, and she turned to me, the Goddess occupied for a moment with Al and Trent. Neither of them needed a line to do their magic. The entire church was glowing with the cast-off power.

“Balance it,” Newt said, staggering upright and fixing her hat. “You need to balance it. If you get enough mass on the other side, it will stay open.”

“With what!” I shouted, but she’d flung herself at the Goddess with a joyous howl.

A sudden pop of high pitch burst the windows. Trent and Al were knocked down and I cowered, Bis’s wings shielding me. The very air was glowing, and I inched back until I hit the wall. Balance it with what? I thought, palms stinging as they found the broken floor. I could hardly think with all this smut.

The smut! I realized suddenly. Smut was intent to pay back an imbalance in reality created by magic. It was a counterweight to reality. It was . . . balance. Newt had given me balance.

“Bis, be ready,” I said, and his grip on me tightened.

“For what?”

“I don’t know!” I cried, focusing my attention entirely on one day, one beautiful thought that had held me. I was. I existed, and I would not be ended so easily!

And the weft and weave parted.

Go! I exclaimed to the mystics, and they went, flooding into the tiny hole I’d made in reality. Newt’s smut pushed me forward, and I gasped as I felt Bis’s thoughts snag mine. His wings beat and he held me firm in this reality as black imbalance pulled over and around me like a shirt over my head, leaving me disheveled and clean. For an instant I watched the new reality quaver, heart in my throat.