Ever After th-11

by Kim Harrison

  I smacked the brochure down before Trent. “A museum show of elven artifacts? You arranged this?”

  Jenks buzzed into the hall to settle another argument, and Trent ducked his head to look charmingly embarrassed. “Six months ago. As a show of solidarity and pride in our heritage. I’ve been slowly convincing the people I know that we need a public expression of our history, and it’s gratifying what they have kept. Most of the magic artifacts are defunct, but it is an amazing collection nevertheless. Cincinnati will have the show for three months, and then it will be touring for the next three years while I build a new wing.”

  Standing at the counter, I opened the brochure. Colorful pictures and descriptions of ancient artifacts met me. Suddenly it looked like a shopping catalog.

  Trent leaned closer, close enough that I could smell cinnamon and wine under his aftershave. “Tell me what you think will work the best, and I can have it loaned to you for a few days.”

  My eyes came up to find him deadly serious. “They will just give it to you? They might not get it back.”

  He nodded. “But if it does, it will be working. They’ll risk it.”

  The microwave dinged, and needing a moment, I went to get it, eyeing the restricted library books in passing. Trent might be able to do that, yes. “You probably know better than I what these things can potentially do,” I said as the scent of warm milk and chocolate hit me. My stomach rumbled when I reached for the two perfectly steaming mugs.

  “Ah, I know what their owners say they’re supposed to do,” he said, and I hurriedly moved the hot mugs to the counter, shaking the heat from my burned and sensitive fingers. Seeing it, Trent seemed to go still. “You’re burned?”

  I hid my hand behind my back. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing, fairy farts!” Jenks said, and I scowled at him. “She burned it trying to get through Ku’Sox’s circle.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, but Trent was reaching for me. I stiffened, but he already had my wrist in his grip. “It’s fine,” I protested again, yanking away.

  “Jeez, Rache. He’s not going to bite you,” Jenks griped, and Trent sourly held out his hand, head cocked and challenge screaming from his confident posture.

  I wasn’t going to show him, but as Jenks had said, he wasn’t going to bite me. Feeling funny, I extended my hand. My demon scar was obvious, and I flushed when his eyes lingered briefly upon it before bringing my hand closer to him. I cringed a bit as his breath met my raw skin and he frowned. “It will be fine tomorrow,” I said, and I exhaled in relief when he let go. “Here, drink your chocolate.”

  I pushed his mug to him, and he took it. His missing fingers showed; then he hid them again. Silent, we both took a drink, thinking our separate thoughts. I held the hot chocolate to my face, breathing it in before I tasted it, debating telling him that Quen had asked me to accompany him to the show. It seemed almost petty now.

  “What the artifacts actually do is in the books. Somewhere,” Trent said, and I met his eyes over my mug. Hot chocolate, sweet, rich, bitter, and warm, slipped down, warming me almost as much as Trent’s sly smile. He was sticking me with the research, but I didn’t care. For the first time since losing Bis, I thought we might be able to do this.

  Nodding, Trent abruptly put his mug down and reached for his coat. “Just so. I’ll leave the choosing to you then,” he said as he gracefully put his coat on. “I need to get back. Thank you for the hot chocolate.”

  “You suck at research, too, huh?” Jenks said, perched on his mug and hazing the surface with his dust.

  “Painfully horrible,” Trent said, shrugging his coat over his shoulders and grabbing his hat and briefcase. His motion stopped, and he smiled faintly. “Let me know what piece you want.”

  “I will,” I said, then started when Trent turned on a quick heel and headed for the hall. “Hey, what about your doughnuts?”

  “You can have them,” he said, already halfway to the sanctuary. “I’m not hungry.”

  At a loss, I glanced at Jenks, and he shrugged. Jolted into motion, I followed Trent, having to wave the pixy dust from Jenks’s excited kids out of my way. “Trent, wait,” I said, finally catching up with him at the door. “Thank you,” I said, breathless when I almost ran into him when he turned at the old twin doors. “I think we can do this now.”

  Standing there in the dim glow of the light over the pool table, he hesitated. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  Hands in his pockets, Trent looked totally unlike himself. “What would you have done with Dr. Farin?”

  My smile faded. “Your geneticist? The one you killed?”

  He nodded, opening the door to let a chill spring night breeze eddy about my ankles. “Now that you know everything, what hung in the balance, what was at stake—how would you have stopped him from going to the press and bringing about the end of everything that you’d spent your life trying to save? Life imprisonment such as a demon demands? Bribe him with even greater wealth, knowing you’d forever be his slave? Or would you end it cleanly, kill one greedy man to save thousands, maybe millions, from suffering?”

  My mouth was dry, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. “I don’t know,” I finally said, and he nodded, deep in thought.

  “That’s a fair answer,” he said lightly. “I’d wondered if you’d given any thought to the decisions I make and the possible reasons why.”

  I stared at him, thoughts racing through me. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what to think anymore.

  His expression blanked, and my sadness began to creep back. I knew where his thoughts had gone. “I’m sorry about Bis,” he said. “I know it hurts.”

  And yet I managed to smile. He did know. He knew the guilt, the panic, and the strength it took to focus that energy on finding a way out. “Thank you,” I said, refusing to cry in front of him again. He smelled like rain and leather over the scent of his aftershave, and my throat tightened and my vision threatened to swim again. “I’m sorry about Ceri and Lucy. I don’t know how you can keep moving forward.”

  His eyes rose from my burned hand, and he unexpectedly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, shocking me. “You were the one who taught me any chance is viable. If I didn’t believe that, I would be a total wreck. I know how it hurts. Forgive me for my choices, maybe?”

  Was he going to try to kiss me? I didn’t know how I felt about that anymore. “I did that a long time ago.”

  Eyes holding an unreadable emotion, he hesitated, his attention running over my snarly hair. “Down, I think,” he whispered, and making a sharp nod, he turned away.

  I backed up, shoulder knocking the door frame as I misjudged and stumbled inside. Embarrassed, I shut the door before he found the sidewalk, but I watched him get into his car from one of the sanctuary’s windows, his form blurry and wavy. Jenks’s wings were a familiar brush of sound as he landed on my shoulder, and together we watched Trent’s car lights flicker to life.

  “What did he mean by that?” I said, feeling alone even as I could still smell him in my church.

  Jenks’s wings shifted fitfully. “I don’t know.”

  Trent drove away, and I tried to look at Jenks on my shoulder, failing. “You called him,” I accused. “You asked him to come over.”

  Red dust pooled down my front. “He was coming in to Cincy to talk to his lawyer,” the pixy hedged. “I called him, yeah. I thought he might be able to help. It worked, didn’t it? You’re thinking again, right?”

  I turned back to the window, staring out at the night-emptied street. “Uh-huh.”

  “With Ivy gone, you needed someone to ground you, Rache, and I’m not big enough to slap you.”

  I thought back to my frantic, useless state. He was right. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Feel better?”

  I put my burned hand on the window, the cool blood-red glass soothing my fingertips. Slowly I nodded. Trent had grounded me. How about that?

  “The hot
chocolate and doughnuts were his idea, though,” Jenks said, then darted off to tend his children.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The faint ringing of the phone vibrated against the inside of my skull, and though I tried to incorporate the sound into my dreams of tiny purple hallways and black doors the size of acorns, it pushed itself into my conscious thought, shoving me awake.

  The phone is ringing.

  Eyes open, I stared at my clock glowing a steady 7:47. “Are you kidding me?” I whispered, and I rolled over on my stomach and put the pillow over my head. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours and wasn’t planning on getting up until noon.

  I’d gone to bed late, not sleeping well with my dreams of shrinking rooms and being crushed in that singularity that Al had been trapped in making my sleep restless. That the sun was up seemed an insult, the bright rays making it past my curtain. Jenks would get the phone. It wouldn’t be for me, anyway. No one hired a demon, and not at seven freaking forty-seven in the morning.

  I sighed in relief as the phone finally quit. Then it started again. I groaned, wishing it would go away.

  “Ra-a-a-ache!” Jenks’s voice scraped along every nerve I had, and I propped myself up on my elbows.

  “What!” I shouted, all the way awake now.

  “My kids found Wayde’s glue. I’m unsticking Rex’s whiskers. Will you get that?”

  “Are you serious?” I exclaimed.

  “You want to hold the cat instead?”

  I threw my pillow to the floor. Grumbling, I swung my feet down, jerking them back from the cold. “It’s not even eight yet,” I muttered, trying and failing to get my hair to lie flat as I looked in my dresser mirror. No, I didn’t want to hold a hysterical cat who had had her whiskers glued together. God! I’d be happy when Ivy got home.

  I reached for my blue terrycloth robe and jammed my arms in the sleeves. I couldn’t find the slipper the pixies had been playing with yesterday, and staggering down the hall with a scuff-pad, scuff-pad, I tied my robe shut, ready to ream out the magazine salesman who was likely trying to work his way around our answering machine. Everyone important had my cell-phone number. If it was an emergency, they’d call me there.

  I squinted in the brighter light in the kitchen, feeling ill from the lack of sleep. Trent’s stack of books sat waiting. There wasn’t a single pixy anywhere, and I wondered if Jenks had finally gotten them all out in the garden. It was spookily quiet.

  “I’m coming!” I griped as the phone kept ringing, and ticked, I reached for the receiver. My heart seemed to catch when I saw the caller ID. It was Trent.

  I picked up the phone, not knowing what was going on anymore. “Trent?” I said as I hesitantly put the receiver to my ear, not sure if I should be worried or mad. “What by God’s little green apples are you doing calling me at seven forty-seven in the morning?”

  There was a short silence, and then a familiar feminine voice said, “Sorry, wrong number.”

  I took a fast breath. “Ellasbeth?” I exclaimed, pushing the receiver tighter against my ear. “Is that you?”

  Again there was silence. I could hear Ray crying in the background, and my spine stiffened. “Ellasbeth,” I said softly, a hand to my forehead as I turned away from the bright kitchen window. “Trent and I have not slept together. Ever. I think you and he make a great couple. Can I please go back to sleep now?” This was ridiculous. Leave it to Ellasbeth to go poking around the first chance she got.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” the woman said, the thread of fear in her voice waking me up faster than slamming a double grande. “You’re the first number on Trenton’s emergency list.”

  Ray was still crying. “Where’s Trent?” She didn’t say anything, and I hunched over the phone as Jenks came in, a worried gold dust slipping from him. “Look you . . . elf woman,” I said, not wanting her to hang up on me. “I know you don’t like me, but so help your trickster goddess, if you don’t tell me why you’re calling Trent’s emergency numbers, I’m going to crawl through this telephone line and strangle you.”

  Jenks landed on the rim of my vat of saltwater, his expression becoming concerned when Ellasbeth took a frustrated breath. “He’s gone! I think he went into the ever-after to get Lucy.”

  My grip on the phone tightened, and Jenks’s wings hummed to life. Trent went off on his own? He dropped a perfectly good plan in my lap and went off and left me here? Son of a bastard!

  Jenks darted out, and I stalked across the kitchen, waiting for Ellasbeth to take a breath, but she was well practiced, getting in three sentences belittling Trent before I could attempt even a word. “Ellasbeth, can I talk to Quen, please?” I asked, seething. He was gone. The smart-ass elf was going to get himself killed.

  “I’m alone up here!” Ellasbeth shouted. “This baby won’t stop screaming, and there’s no one here to help me!”

  Belle came in with Jenks, the fairy concerned as Jenks dropped down and smacked Rex’s paw aside as he filled her in.

  “Ellasbeth, stop having hysterics,” I said as I met Jenks’s eyes. “Where is Quen, and how long has Trent been gone?”

  Finally she stopped. “I don’t know. Quen is in the basement trying to open the vault.”

  Fear, thick and cloying, slithered out from the hopeful promises I’d been telling myself. “How long has Trent been gone?”

  “I told you I don’t know!” she shouted, and Ray cried all the louder, frustrated and forgotten in her crib by the sound of it. “The only thing I could get out of Quen was that Trenton used the vault door to get to the ever-after, but before he left, he set the machine to overload and it burned out the fuse. It’s going to be days until we can get a new one. The last time I saw Trent was when he went to work this morning. That was about five.”

  Five in the morning—not long after leaving me. Son of a bitch! What was he doing going to confront Ku’Sox by himself? Alone? Damn it all to the Turn and back. I should have made him thumb promise. He was going to get himself killed. But then the thought occurred to me that maybe that had been his plan. He’d said he’d been at his lawyer’s office.

  Shit.

  My eyes came up. Jenks was pale, waiting to see what I would do. “Ellasbeth, hold on a second,” I said, interrupting her latest harangue.

  “Don’t you tell me to hold on, you little witch!”

  I covered the receiver. “I think Trent went to confront Ku’Sox alone.”

  Jenks’s face darkened. “The idiot!” he shrilled. “He promised me he wouldn’t!”

  “Yeah, he sort of let me think that, too,” I said as I looked past him to the kitchen trying to decide the best way to deal with this. As a freed familiar, Trent had some immunity from Ku’Sox, but not if he attacked him. He’d only been there a couple of hours. Maybe he hadn’t done anything yet.

  My gaze dropped to my hand and the pinkie ring, twin to Trent’s. The one time I’d used it, Trent had been pulled to me. The question was, had he been wearing it the last time I saw him? Ellasbeth had been razzing him about it, and I knew he was trying to appease her, make it work.

  My heart pounded, and I put the phone back to my ear. Ellasbeth was still going on, clueless that I hadn’t been listening. “Ellasbeth. Ellasbeth!” I shouted. “Shut up and listen to me!”

  “How dare you—”

  “I want you to take Ray,” I said, my tone caustic. “I want you to pick her up out of that crib and I want you to give her a bath. I want you to bake cookies with her. I want you to read her a book. I don’t care what you do, but you are not going to let her sit in her crib and cry. You got me?”

  “You want me to read her a book?” Ellasbeth said in disbelief. “My fiancé is battling a demon, and you want me to read a child a book?”

  My face burned. “You are going to read her a book,” I said, my words slow so I wouldn’t yell at her. “If I find out you put her in her crib to cry, I’m going to be pissed. Understand? When Quen comes up for air, tell him that I’m trying to yank Trent’s
ass out of the ever-after before he goes and does something stupid. Can you do that for me?”

  Finally there was silence. “Ellasbeth?” I took a slow breath, trying to find a state of calm. “I’m not Trent’s emergency contact because I look good in leather.”

  The click from the line being disconnected was loud. Lips twisting, I hit the button to end the call and set the phone back in the cradle.

  “Well?” Jenks asked.

  I tightened the tie of my robe. “Just a guess, but I think Trent got tired of waiting for results and went to talk to Ku’Sox.”

  I pushed off the counter, and Jenks took to the air. “Ah, Rache?”

  “I’m just getting dressed, okay?” I said as I stomped down the hallway to my room, Jenks following me. “I can’t fight the bad guys wearing a robe.” I shut my room’s door in Jenks’s face, and the pixy simply darted under the crack in the door. His wings clattered in nervousness as I threw open my closet and started grabbing things. First Ceri and Lucy, then Bis. Now Trent. Thank God Ivy was on her way home. I needed her help. Damn it, I am tired of this!

  “Rache?” Jenks said, coming to rest on a bedpost as I tugged on a pair of jeans, my nightgown riding up.

  My heart was pounding. It was almost eight. He’d only been there a couple of hours. Maybe it wasn’t too late. “Turn your back, or I’ll ask Belle where you sleep.”

  Wings shifting tone, the pixy spun away. “Rache, I can’t be in the ever-after after sunup.”

  His voice was scared, and shocked, I slowed as I pulled my nightgown over my head, snagging my hair. “I’m not going into the ever-after,” I said, then covered myself when he almost turned back around.

  “You’re not?”

  The cotton shirt rubbed my nose as I yanked it over my head. I couldn’t help a faint smile at the amazement in his voice. “You think I’m crazy?” I said as I stuffed the shirt behind my jeans, then dropped to my knees to find my boots under my bed. “Ku’Sox is psychotic.”