by Kim Harrison
“Watch it. Jenks is in there!” I reached for my splat gun, firing three times in quick succession, missing as Landon danced about to evade Jenks’s sword.
“I’m not going to hit Jenks,” Trent said, and then Landon howled, hand over his neck as he fell back and sprayed wildly at the pixy.
“Jenks!” I shouted. “Get out of the way so we can down Landon!”
And then I gasped, heart tumbling into my throat as Landon swung a pan at him, hitting Jenks to send him flying across the room. “No!” I lunged to beat the cat when Jenks fell and slid to an unmoving halt under the table. I’d never reach him in time.
“Rhombus,” I breathed, praying the cat wasn’t already too close to be walled out. I threw myself forward, eyes on Jenks as I hit the floor and slid under the table. My fingers stretched for him, and then I jerked, hands spasming when a thunderous wave of sound slammed into me. I stiffened as the line sang, pouring through and out of me as if I were a sieve. My circle dropped as if it had never existed. Jenks . . . He was just before me, and my breath exploded from me in relief as I pulled him close, scared out of my mind. Trent had done something—something so big I hadn’t been able to maintain my circle.
But Jenks was safe, and as I sat under the table cradling him, I could have cried. He was breathing, his wing bent and slipping dust. Alive, I thought, and then I looked up.
Landon wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. The kettle screamed a harsh demand, forgotten. The head of the dewar was an unnerving five feet away at one end of the table, a wary, ugly look on his face as he dabbed at his bleeding ears. Trent was at the other end, magic dripping from his fingers to hiss against the tile. Ozone hung in the air, and the scent of burned cinnamon. Landon had tried to down me as I had gone for Jenks, and Trent had blocked it.
“That was a mistake,” I said, hating Landon as I scooted out from under the table.
“We’re trying to save your life!” Trent exclaimed, and then he spun, throwing his magic at the three men storming in instead, their mundane weapons pointed as they shouted.
“Trent, no!” I gasped as I felt Trent’s pull on the line. It was too much. He was angry, and it was too much. I cowered, Jenks held close, as Trent’s magic flowed through us, tainted with his anger as it struck the guards to no effect.
“Fool witch,” Landon said, and then I yelped as he yanked me to him by my hair.
“Ow! Let go!” I exclaimed, but if I hit him with raw line energy, it would fry Jenks, too. And so I clutched the pixy closer and let Landon jerk me closer. His grip shifted, and I froze when his other hand wrapped around my chest to hold a knife to my neck. It was a ceremonial blade, so clean and shiny that I knew it had seen blood and bone before.
“Trent!” Landon shouted, startling at the boom of sound and the splinter of stone. Trent had thrown another spell. He was taking Landon’s apartment apart. An outer wall cracked, and dust sifted from the ceiling, choking. “Everyone stop, or I slit the demon whore’s throat!”
Trent spun, fear cascading over his face and shocking him still. His eyes went to Jenks in my cupped hands. If I dropped him to save myself, either the cat would get him or Landon would step on him. Seeing me helpless, Trent fisted his hands and put them in the air.
Immediately the three men tackled Trent. There was a muffled thump and grunt, and then they yanked him up again. His hair was disheveled and his lip was bleeding, but it was the new silver strap on his wrist that took the fight out of him. Trent stumbled, going down when they shoved him to kneel before Landon.
“That’s a curious curse,” Landon said, jerking my attention back from Trent. “On your neck?” he added, and I twitched when he flicked the knife tip against a painted line. “You both have them. Are they for the baku? Who taught it to you?”
I was silent. On the other side of the room, Trent tried to rise, only to be shoved back down.
“Was it Officer Glenn?” Landon said, breath hot on my ear. “It looks demon. The Order doesn’t know demon magic. Yet,” he added threateningly.
“Go to hell,” I snarled, and his grip on me tightened.
“You’re amusingly easy to manipulate,” Landon said, stinking of burned cinnamon and spoiled wine. “You’d be surprised how long you might live if you’d stop caring.”
“You’d be surprised how much you sound like a demon,” I said as I held Jenks tighter, worried that he hadn’t woken up yet. But Landon had a point. I’d been caught by my need to protect Jenks. Trent had been caught by his need to keep me safe. Perhaps we’d get more done if we didn’t try to work together, I thought, despair rising up through me.
“We came to help,” I said, panicking when Landon tugged at a hand to force them apart. “Let go!”
“Strap her!” he demanded as he shoved me at two of his security, and I almost fell, my need to keep my hands about Jenks making me awkward. At least that knife wasn’t at my throat, and I did nothing, almost paralyzed as they fixed a band of charmed silver around my wrist and every last erg of power drained away. Trent’s eyes were full of frustrated, helpless anger. But I wasn’t helpless. I’d survived without magic before.
“The baku will take you,” I promised, staying passive when the man searching Trent turned to me and took my phone and borrowed ID. “The Order will turn you into a zombie to contain it. Don’t be stupid, Landon.”
“Says the demon with no magic,” Landon mocked as he upended my bag over the glass table. My stuff spilled out, the bottle hitting with a crack and rolling until another of his security men set it upright among my spare sleepy-time pellets, magnetic chalk, and boat keys. “A baby bottle? Is this a joke?” Landon said, brow furrowed as he set it down with a hard click.
“It’s your salvation,” I said, watching his security set our phones and borrowed IDs with the rest.
“You have to sleep sometime.” Landon sniffed. “It has to kill you to get what it wants, and I won’t let it back into me until it does. Nice that we want the same thing. And then, when Trent is dead and the baku still in you, I will call the Order myself.” IDs in hand, he paced closer, halting out of my easy reach when his security stiffened. “Your soul is ready to fall. You will be its prison,” he said. “Not me.”
Maybe, but I had firsthand knowledge that the baku would rather have Landon. Either way, Trent’s life was in the mix. Silent, I watched Landon give the IDs to his security team and tell them to find Dan and Wendy—and fire them.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said, and memory sparked of me telling Lee the same thing on a windswept ruin in the ever-after. Landon wasn’t going to listen, either. Come on, Jenks. Wake up!
“You think?” Landon sat against the glass table, ankles confidently crossed. “You’re a bigger danger to the Order than me. They want you in their cell. If you’re hosting the baku, even the FIB won’t lift a finger to protest. Demon assassin.”
And at that, uncertainty filled me. I looked at Trent, and Landon began to smirk.
“I’m curious,” Landon said. “Tell me, Trent. When the baku takes her, will you let her kill you because you love her? Or will you kill her to save your life? It might be kinder than letting her live out her existence as a zombie.”
My expression blanked.
“Put them somewhere quiet,” Landon directed. “They look tired. They need to rest.”
“Landon,” I tried one last time, but Trent was silent as they yanked him up and we were shoved to the door.
“The pixy, your grace?” one of them said, and fear pulled me to a stop.
Landon’s eyebrows rose as he saw me with my hands to my middle, frozen. “Put it in the garden, where it belongs,” he said flatly.
“What? No!” I backed up, jerking when two men descended upon me to pull my hands apart. “No!” I protested, starting to fight. “He’ll die. It’s too cold. It’s murder!”
But they held me still at a curt gestur
e so Landon could edge closer. “This is happening,” he said as he gripped my fingers, fighting to pull them apart. “It’s not against the law to kill a pixy.”
“You bastard,” I whispered, then gasped as he bent my fingers backward, almost breaking them. I fought to be free, kicking and thrashing until someone punched me in the gut and I bent double, gasping for air. Trent was watching, jaw tight and stiff in frustrated anger. “Landon,” I rasped, eyes watering as they pried at my hands. “If you kill him, there’s nothing on earth or the ever-after that will stop me from coming after you. Nothing!”
But it was their three to my one, and I screamed in frustration, thrashing wildly as they forced my hands apart. “Jenks!” I shouted in agony as he tumbled to the floor. But then he rose up, wings a harsh clatter as he darted erratically into the air to evade the reaching hands, slowly gaining height as they swung and jumped for him until he made it to the chandelier.
“Jenks, thank God,” I said in relief, and he gave me a shaky thumbs-up, safely out of their reach as he held his head and sifted a sickly green dust. He looked awful, but he was alive.
“Get them out of here. And someone get me a net!” Landon shouted.
And then I was pulled into the hall, fighting the guards every step of the way.
CHAPTER
32
The floor of the dewar’s wine cellar was cobbles. Cold cobbles. And they were hard, too, as I sat with my back to the thick oak walls and held my knees to my chest. The air smelled like the pasta and red sauce that they had given us to eat. That had been hours ago, and we only had the stubble on Trent’s face to guess at what time it was. After sundown, by the looks of it.
Worry for Jenks gnawed me like a cur chewing a marrowless bone. He was hurt and alone with an entire building of elves after him. And here I was, stuck in a hole with a band of charmed silver around my wrist. Al would have laughed his hat off, then smacked me with it for being uncommonly stupid. He’d be right.
But even Al wouldn’t have been concerned about Jenks, and I frowned as I stared up at the light bulb hanging over the freestanding racks of fermented bottled sunshine. I had nothing. They’d even taken Hodin’s ring in a second, more careful search before shoving us in and locking the door.
“Arrrrrah!” Trent exclaimed, arms straining as he pulled a wine rack taller than himself from the wall. The old wood frame structure groaned and leaned, finally falling until it hit one of the freestanding racks and stopped. The bottles on it, though, did not, and I looked up when several thousand dollars of trademarked Golden Wedding champagne hit the cobbled floor and burst in a wash of sound and rising scent of alcohol.
“You’ve never been trapped in a hole before, have you,” I said, and, expression cross, Trent reached to angle the bulb to the newly exposed wall to inspect it for a way out.
“Not until I met you,” he muttered, and I snorted, remembering.
“Well, I have. Lots of times,” I said. “Once by you as a mink,” I said idly. “Once in your woods. HAPA. That was a bad one. The demons, Alcatraz . . . The door will open. I promise.”
But will it open in time? I wondered, worried. Trent had already searched the floor and ceiling to no avail. There were no windows. There were no doors other than the one we’d been shoved through. The only light was from the bulb in Trent’s hand, and we probably wouldn’t even have that except that the switch was in here.
Trent let the light go. Light flashed and swung until he caught it again, holding it in his long fingers until he eased his grip from it. He turned to me, his mood bad, and I looked away. The strap of charmed silver was too tight, and I worked a finger between it and me, wondering if breaking my hand was a good alternative. I wasn’t sure how they thought I was going to kill Trent. I had no magic with this thing on. But maybe Landon was right that Trent would do nothing to stop me, and a broken bottle was as good as a knife. Son of a bastard.
“There are all kinds of cages,” Trent said as he picked his way through the slosh to a still-standing rack. The cold sound of dust on glass scraped through the silence as he pulled a bottle, and then a crack when he snapped the top off by tapping it on the rack. Glass tinkled down, followed by the soft hiss of bubbles. “Mine always seem to have champagne in them.”
I said nothing as he carefully lowered himself to sit beside me. But I did take the bottle when he offered it, spinning it to find the least jagged lip before I took a gulp.
Tart and strong, the alcohol burned my throat, and I downed the rare Cincinnati vintage as if it were water. The bubbles burned, and I closed my eyes before they teared. At least it was champagne. No sulfites meant no headache. “Ah, Rachel?” Trent cautioned, and I came up for air and handed it back.
More restrained, Trent took a slug as well. “Mmmm,” he said in appreciation, angling the bottle to look for the date before sighing and setting it aside. “Needs a few more years.”
The silence grew heavy with only our breathing to mar it. I could feel Trent’s warmth even though he wasn’t touching me, but my anger and fear wouldn’t let go. Jenks was leaking dust and not flying well. If they caught him, they’d put him in the garden to die because Landon had told them to. Never mind that he was a person. My friend.
“He’s more resilient than you think,” Trent said, focus distant on the slowly seeping champagne.
I exhaled, breath shaking. “I never should have agreed to this,” I said. “I knew it was too cold for him if things got out of hand.” I looked up when Trent put an arm around me and tugged me sideways into him. “And when have my runs never gotten out of hand?”
“He’ll be okay,” he said, the scent of green things rising as he pulled me even closer. “He’s probably tormenting Landon as we speak. And with him free, we have a good chance of escaping.”
“True,” I said ruefully. When you got right down to it, Jenks was doing better than us. He wasn’t stuck in a hole, bound by charmed silver. And then I realized that Landon was probably going to end up a zombie. I wasn’t sure if I cared to lift a finger to stop it.
We both jumped at the knock on the door. Trent’s arms fell away, and I sat up. They knocked? I thought. That’s weird.
The door pushed open until it hit the fallen wine rack. A masculine voice murmured in surprise, and Trent stood when a muscular arm wrangled its way in and shoved the rack up until it hit the wall with a heavy thump and a tinkle of glass.
The door opened farther to show a large blond man in security black standing on the threshold. He silently eyed the broken bottles until a small man in office attire pushed past him. Clearly nervous, he touched his fair hair to make sure the fine strands were lying flat.
My gaze went to Trent, and my eyebrows rose in understanding. Trent might have been wearing an ill-fitting suit. He might have been dirty and trapped in a hole. But under that thickening stubble, he had the cool, angry bearing of a wronged prince, and I loved him for it.
“What do you want?” I said, not bothering to get up.
The man edged farther around his security with an oddly starstruck look. “My name is Benny,” he said, and I squinted at him, not hearing that West Coast accent most everyone else in the building had. “Up until two months ago, I was the dewar’s single Cincinnati representative.”
Trent put a hand on his waist, the other snapping his fingers to help trigger a memory. “I know you. We met at . . . ah. Halloween, wasn’t it? At my charity ball. You were a Vulcan.”
My suspicion deepened as Benny flushed, almost fanboying.
“That was me,” he said, touching an ear. It was cropped as the ears of all the elves of his generation were, but being a Vulcan had given him the excuse to don a proper pair of ears for the day.
“What do you want?” I asked again, and Benny’s eyes shot to mine, dark in the chancy light of the single bulb. His smile vanished.
“Not everyone is happy with Landon’s obsession
with the baku.” Benny glanced at his security as if he was sympathetic to his stand. “Your associate told me that Landon taught you the spell to pull a soul from a body and put it into another.”
Associate? My head jerked up. He had to mean Jenks. They’d caught him?
“Jenks?” I said, scrambling up. “If you so much as bend a wing—” My motion toward Benny jerked to a halt when that big man moved, blocking me. Trent shifted to stand beside me, and together we sized up the hard-faced man. He was the tallest, most broad-shouldered elf I’d ever seen—and he had to be an elf with that wispy blond hair and those green eyes.
Two against one in a small space. His chancy magic against our fists and feet. I settled back to listen.
“He’s fine.” Benny’s smile looked ill. “Zack said he was not to be harmed.”
My lips parted, and Trent grunted, clearly stunned as well. “That wily little . . .”
“Elf,” I finished for him, new possibilities opening up.
“Zack’s been spying on me?” Trent said, his worried expression making me wonder if he was regretting having shown him his mother’s spelling hut. “You sent him to spy on me?”
“No.” Benny clasped his hands in distress. “He ran away after being moved to Cincinnati. With Landon compromised, he’s the head of the dewar.” He winced. “Such as it is presently.”
“Then you’re . . . letting us go?” I said, remembered the large building we’d wound our way through to get to the wine cellar. It seemed pretty substantial to me for a faction that had, until a year ago, been meeting in coffee shops and at baseball games.
“That depends on you,” Benny said, and my hope faltered in sudden suspicion.
“Landon hasn’t given Zack any of the dewar secrets, has he,” Trent murmured.
“Not the ones known only to the high priest,” Benny admitted. “Landon is compromised, but he’s holding the dewar’s wisdom hostage. We don’t dare oppose him.”
My shoulders slumped and I eased back. Zack was not in charge. “Yet you’re down here talking to us. What do you want?” I asked for the third time.