by Kim Harrison
“I accept the cost,” I whispered, blinking fast as I felt the curse spread through me with the sensation of burning warmth, tingling through my skin and recoiling at the edges of my aura. It was done. I would never forget again.
Maybe that’s why Newt went crazy, I thought as I severed my connection to the line with abrupt haste. Someone had felt me tapping into the collective and had come to investigate.
The soft scuff of shoes in the hallway was like sandpaper over my awareness, and I shut the book, my fingers trembling. Nothing had changed, but I felt different. I’d used curses before, but it had always been with too much soul searching. Now . . . I just used them.
It was Wayde, and I didn’t look up as I dropped down to shelve the demon book in with my regular cookbooks. I didn’t know if I was going to tell Ivy or Jenks about this. More choices. More guilt.
Wayde had halted in the threshold, and I rose when he cleared his throat. He had been in a snit all afternoon up in the belfry, and I wasn’t going to feed his pity party. Yes, I’d gotten snatched, but it hadn’t been his fault. It had been mine. Sure enough, he looked irate, his stance stiff. “Done sulking?” I said as I went back to the table and the rest of my demon library.
“It would’ve been different if I’d been with you,” he said, still in the doorway.
“Absolutely.” I couldn’t make an antimemory charm for Trent, but I had promised to get him his fingers back. I was on a roll, baby. “You might have stopped them completely.” I looked up, seeing his surprise. “Did Ivy tell you that their security guy was across the street with a sniper rifle, ready to take out his own people if he couldn’t kill everyone holding them?”
Wayde silently rubbed his beard. There were reasons he hadn’t been on the scene, and that was just one of them. Uncrossing his arms, he straightened to his full height. “The finding charms are gone?”
“Mmm-hmm.” I didn’t see the need to tell him they’d been curses, and I pulled the top book onto my lap and started turning pages. A standard transformation curse ought to do it, as it would return Trent to a pristine state, fingers and all. The question was, turn him into what? A fox, maybe?
Clearly uncomfortable, Wayde picked up a dirty bowl. My head snapped up, and he shrugged. “I’m hungry. Mind if I clean up while you read?”
He’s learning, I thought, smiling. Mixing food with spell prep was a bad idea. “Thanks,” I said as I shifted pages in earnest. “I’d really appreciate that.”
“Cool.” His eyes roved over the kitchen, and I could almost see him prioritizing. He really was a smart man, good with his hands and figuring things out. Feeling guilty, he wanted to do something for me, and my expression became weary as he set the largest bowl by the sink.
“My sister was a royal bitch if the bus’s kitchen was ever left dirty,” he said, and I flashed him another smile before he caught me thinking about him.
Propping an elbow on the table, I dropped my head in my hand. His sister was Ripley, Takata’s drummer. I’d found that out just last month. “That must have been a fun way to grow up,” I said. “On a bus. Every day being somewhere different. All that creativity around you.”
I looked up as the bowls clanked at the sink. “The band?” he said, his back to me as the taps started. “No, not really. It was a bitch in its own special way.”
“How could it have been that bad?” I said, trying to imagine it, then blinking as he bent to get the soap from under the sink. Damn, he looked good in tight jeans.
Coming up, he squirted too much soap into the pan and smacked the bottle closed. “People get careless when they lack stability,” he said as he set the bowls in the sink to fill. “If you’re somewhere new every day, you feel no accountability. You don’t care who you hurt. You do what you want and damn the rest because you won’t be there for the fallout.”
My focus blurred as I thought of the demons. They never moved but had the same attitude. Maybe they were fleeing their past?
“Too many drugs, too much meaningless sex.” Wayde leaned against the sink as the bubbles became mounds. “The demands of the music sort of suck everything out of a person unless he or she is tapped into something bigger.” His eyes touched on mine, and he smiled. “Like your dad. He’s like the ass end of a black hole, spewing the universe’s guts to the world.”
I couldn’t help my chuckle. “Still,” I said, not believing that it could be all bad. “You got to see things. Be a part of something that touches people. The music alone . . .”
Wayde turned the water off. Taking a dishcloth, he wrung it out and started wiping down the center counter. “Takata was cool,” Wayde said as he pushed everything to the floor instead of into his hand. “He treated me like a little brother. Watched out for me. Everyone knew my sister would jam her drumsticks up their, uh, noses if they messed with me. But the music?” Wayde lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Not really. The shine . . . It’s fake, you know?” He dropped back to lean against the counter as if it bothered him. “By the time it’s been corralled by mixers and synthesizers, packaged into plastic, it’s dead. The magic that Takata gave it is mostly gone, even when he’s riding the high of a thousand people. His best gigs were always when he was so stoned he forgot there was an audience and just spilled his soul out to the gods as he looked for an answer and happened to take the rest of us along.”
Wayde turned away, his back to me as he dunked the rag in the mounds of bubbles. “But mostly it’s just a job,” he said to the evening-darkened window. “A hard job that left him emotionally and physically drained after every performance.”
“I wonder why he didn’t quit,” I said, thinking of the years between my dad’s death and finding out just recently that Takata was my birth father. Having a second parental figure might have been nice. But then, remembering Takata’s orange jumpsuits, I questioned my own logic.
Wayde was back at the counter, wiping it down a second time. “The money was a sure thing. Sometimes, the crowd would bring the soul back, make it alive. For a minute or two, the universe made sense. A year of hell is worth three minutes in heaven. Or so they say.”
He smiled deviously at me from under his reddish-blond eyebrows and turned away. Rolling up his sleeves, he plunged his hands into the suds and started to clean up my mess. I was silent, the book on my lap forgotten as I thought about what he’d said. My mind started to wander, straying back to him. He looked good there with his hair all over and that sexy butt of his. His sleeves were up to show some of the tattoos I normally didn’t get to see.
Stop it, Rachel, I thought, and I put my eyes back on the book in my lap. “So, ah, why did you leave?” I asked. “Tired of spending a year in hell for three minutes in heaven?”
Wayde was digging in the drawers for a dry dish towel, pulling out a gold one that was torn but really soaked up the water. “Takata asked me to,” he said as he began to dry the largest bowl. “He said his daughter needed someone to yank her back from the edge of the stage before she fell off.”
I frowned, wondering if Trent would mind being the size of a fairy for a day. He could talk to the newest tenants in his garden. “Gee, thanks,” I said sourly.
“Well, what about you?” Wayde leaned over to set the bowl between us on the counter. “Growing up to be a bad-ass runner must have had its perks.”
“Right,” I said dryly as I rubbed my forehead. “I was in and out of hospitals until I was almost eighteen, or didn’t Takata tell you that? Home-schooled most of the time, but with enough public school to know what it’s like to get beat up.”
Wayde winced, the cloth slowing on the next bowl. “Growing up sucks.”
I reached for one of Ivy’s sticky notes and started making a list. Ceri knew this curse. She would help make sure I got it right. Me trying out curses on myself was one thing. On Trent, it was completely different. “I would’ve given a lot to be somewhere new every day where no one knew who I was, that my dad was dead and my mom nuts.”
“That bad, huh?�
�
Suddenly I wished I hadn’t said so much. “Not really,” I said, trying to back out of my mini pity party. “I’m a drama queen tonight. Ford, the FIB’s psych, would say my childhood gave me trust issues, but hiding from my mom that I was getting beaten up and fighting off boys with sticky hands gave me a better perspective of what’s really important. I wouldn’t change it.” Much. I hadn’t talked to Ford in ages, and I wondered how he was getting on with Holly. I suddenly realized that a bunch of my friends needed babysitters and vowed to start screening my calls. All I needed was someone else’s kid on my hip as I took down a surprise assassin.
Wayde set a third pot inside the stack and dropped down to put them exactly where they belonged on the bottom shelf. “And what is important, Rachel Morgan?” he asked, and I looked at him through the open shelves.
“Friends you can trust.” I tapped the pencil against the book. “Maybe Ford was right.”
Wayde silently dropped the cloth and returned to the suds to wash the smaller stuff.
“I want these guys, Wayde,” I said into the silence, thinking about Chris dancing in delight as Winona withered in agony and turned into a monstrosity. “I want them to know they can’t do what they did to Winona with impunity.” My hands gripped the demon texts, and I forced them to open. The pages were beginning to glow. Responding to my anger, perhaps, even though I was not tapping a line right now? Damn, I’d missed the weird stuff like this. Everything was connected. I’d forgotten how that felt.
“You’ll get them,” Wayde said, his back to me and the metal stuff clanking.
“I’m not so sure.” Something always seemed to break their way. HAPA was like mint. You could rip it up, and six months later, it was back, healthier than ever. Mint smelled better, though, and you could make juleps out of it. I don’t know what I could make out of HAPA. Compost, maybe.
“You want these rinsed in saltwater?” he asked as he held up my spoons.
“Yes, but not until you get the suds off them,” I said, looking at the dripping bubbles.
Wayde silently ran the tap, letting the spoons sit on the drying cloth for a moment as he washed the mortar and pestle, actually taking a scrub pad to them. “At least I can tap a line again,” I said, rubbing my leg and circling in to where there should be a bullet scar but wasn’t. “Trent doesn’t think he did anything, but he did.”
Why am I telling him this? I asked myself, but I couldn’t talk to Ivy or Jenks. They would jump to the wrong conclusion. Fidgeting, I looked past Wayde to the dark night, wanting nothing more than to be out in it.
“I trust him,” I said, thinking Ford would be proud of me. “He let me handle Al my way.” I chuckled, remembering Trent’s ball of magic ricocheting into his fish tank. “Mostly.”
“Sex changes people more than wars,” Wayde said as he dried his hands, then dunked the spoons in the saltwater.
I blinked. “Where does sex come into this?”
His back to me, Wayde pulled himself to his full height, hesitating, as if to collect his thoughts. From the front of the church, the big farm bell we used as a doorbell gonged.
“Jenks!” I shouted, still wondering where Wayde had been headed with his thoughts. “You want to get that?”
There was a brief silence, and then Jenks exclaimed, “It’s Trent! What the hell does he want?”
My eyes widened, and I froze, Wayde grunting as he turned around with a handful of dripping spoons. Trent? Here? Why?
Chapter Twenty-one
The doorbell gonged again, the big farm bell echoing through the church like, well, a church bell. I looked down at my jeans and white T-shirt, glad I wasn’t still sporting the sweatpants I’d come home in. My clothes were probably a far cry from what he had on, but this was my church, damn it. I shouldn’t have to dress up.
“What’s he doing here?” I muttered as I shut the demon book and tucked my shirt in.
Jenks hovered up and down, a bright silver dust lighting the hallway. “You want me to let him in or go out and swear at him?”
Distracted, I bunched my hair up into a ponytail, then let it go. “Yes. Let him in, I mean,” I said, and he darted off. “At least the kitchen is clean.” I flashed Wayde a smile. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I appreciate that.”
The Were ducked his head, a hand raised. “No worries. Ah, I’ll be across the hall. Unless you want me with you?”
Jenks had worked the series of pulleys and weights we had so he could open the front door, and I heard Trent’s voice mixing with that of the Weres up front. Jenks was yelling at his kids, and it was noisy. “No, no thanks,” I said, answering Wayde. My thoughts went back to having touched Trent this morning, and I winced. Why on earth was that more embarrassing than when we had kissed?
Wayde scuffed his way to the back living room, hesitating when Trent appeared at the archway, Jenks on his shoulder and a black craft bag in his hand. He was in a suit, but it was more casual than usual, and his shoes looked comfortable and not shiny.
“Rachel, if you have a moment?” Trent said as he halted before Wayde and me. “I can’t stay. I’ve got a meeting downtown in fifteen minutes, but I wanted to give you these since I was in the area.”
The memory of Trent, calm and collected in a black thief suit, flashed before me, and then the sight of him angry and belligerent, his shirt off as he stood at the back of my mom’s car and changed. Jenks snickered at the silence, and Wayde came forward, his hand extended to fill the obvious gap. “Mr. Kalamack. You probably don’t remember me. I’m Wayde Benson.”
Trent glanced at me warily, his hand going out to the Were. “Mr. Benson. Of course. Last year’s Halloween concert. Good to see you again. Rachel tells me you’re keeping her out of trouble lately. Sorry about that spell.”
I shook myself out of my funk as Jenks landed on my shoulder, laughing at me.
“When she lets me,” Wayde said, seeing that I still hadn’t said anything. “Thank you for getting Rachel’s ass out of a sling yesterday.”
Trent thought for a moment, gaze distant. “The observatory? It was a lucky guess.”
“Lucky guess,” Jenks scoffed from my shoulder. “Piss on my daisies, he had three spells going when I broke into his spell hut and caught him trying to—”
“Can I talk to you for a moment?” Trent interrupted, his twitching eye belying his cool exterior, the bag in his hand crackling in his grip. “I promise it won’t take long.”
Wayde dropped back a step. “If you’ll excuse me, I was going to talk to Jenks and Bis about how we’re going to arrange security now that HAPA might make a go for Rachel.”
“Say what?” Jenks blurted out. “You think those moss wipes are coming back?”
“I wish,” I muttered. “I’ve got some serious hurt with their name on it.”
Trent stifled a sigh, and Wayde shifted to his back foot. “It was nice talking with you, Mr. Kalamack.”
“Likewise.”
Catching Jenks’s eye, the Were nodded to the back living room, and the two of them headed for the porch and the dusky evening. Jenks’s complaining was cut off when the screen door slammed, and I turned my back on Trent. “Do you want some coffee?” I asked over my shoulder as I headed into the kitchen, but what I really wanted was to know what was in the bag.
“No thanks. I can’t stay.”
It was the second time he’d said it, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. His steps were soft behind me, and I turned to see him looking around the brightly lit kitchen, giving me a bland smile when he brought his attention down from the top of the fridge where Bis usually lurked when he wasn’t on the steeple.
I need to do something with my hands, I thought, forcing my arms down from around my middle. “Well, I want some coffee,” I said as I reached for the coffeepot. “I, ah, haven’t had time to wash the sweats yet. Do you need them back right away?”
Oh my God, what am I doing? He doesn’t care about a pair of sweats!
“No need.” Tren
t looked from the demon text on the table and set the black craft bag on the center counter between us. “I made something . . . if you want it.”
I turned from the darkening garden, the clean coffeepot in my hands. “Really?” I looked at the bag. I didn’t think it had a Statue of Liberty made out of macaroni in it.
Head down, he carefully upended the bag and a dozen or so ley-line charms slid out. “I made them for helping to confine Al, but since you wouldn’t let me use them on him, you might want them for HAPA.” The rims of his ears were red, and I squinted, trying to read his tells. He looked up, and I forced my expression to become neutral. “Spelling has become sort of a hobby of mine. Something to take my mind off business. I’ve no use for them now,” he said, folding the bag up and dropping it on the counter.
I set down the coffeepot and leaned over the charms, my head inches from his. “Curses?”
“No.”
I touched one, noticing that he hadn’t said what they were. A tiny pricking in my thumb sparked through me, and I dropped it, hearing it ping metallically on the counter. Wild magic.
“Trent,” I said, suddenly feeling uneasy. “You’re not my familiar. Did Al talk to you? Did he put you up to this?”
Grimacing, Trent rocked back a step from the counter. “No, but he’s right. You’re a demon, but you don’t have the stored spells they do. You need these more than I do.” He looked at the charms, his expression becoming almost irate. “I’ve been going through my mother’s library the last couple of years, trying things out just to see if they work. Modifying them if necessary. Things change in five hundred years. Sometimes it’s not the flour that weaves the spell properly, but the flakes of calcite in the stone used to grind it. Ceri—” He frowned, then finished. “Ceri thinks it’s a waste of time, but it’s important to me to regain what we can of our heritage. If you don’t take them, I’m just going to throw them in a drawer.”