"Pale Demon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Kim)

Two

Trent rose to his feet, stupidly staring at the tree and the foaming yellow mass of magic.

“Get down!” I shouted as I yanked him off balance. He started to fall, and still sitting, I pulled him toward me, bracing myself and levering his weight over me and to the patio on my far side. He hit the hard pavers with a gasp, eyes wide and hair askew. I was already reaching a quick thought out to the ley line in the backyard. Power flowed in, familiar but painful in my rush, and before Trent had tossed the hair from his eyes, the word rhombus whispered through my mind. In an instant, I relived the five-minute process to make a protection circle.

The semi-invisible barrier sprang up around us, me at its center as in all undrawn circles. Trent sat up, his head even with my shoulder. “Stay down!” I hissed, and we both jerked as two more splats hit my circle, their magic making little dimples of color on my black-and-gold aura. Beyond it, the pixies were moving in the graveyard, and I cursed my stupidity. I’d told Jenks to keep his kids centralized, effectively shutting down our first line of defense.

“Jenks!” I shouted as I stood, my circle inches from the top of my head, and reached for my robe, jamming my arms into the sleeves.

Jenks was gone, but his gold-dust trail still glittered, showing that he had flown straight up, getting the sitch. A shrill pixy chirp drew my attention to the front gate. My eyes met the would-be assassin’s, and the attacker ducked.

“There!” I shouted, and more pixies arrowed toward the attacker.

Frowning, I fumed as I tied my robe. “Get in the church,” I all but growled at Trent. “Put yourself in a circle.”

“Rachel.”

I turned, angry as I took in his tightly pressed lips and angry green eyes as he managed to be ticked that I’d pulled him to safety even as the attacker fled. “They were aiming at you, not me!” I said. “Get in the church!”

Not waiting to see if he did as I’d told him, I ran for the gate, gasping as I broke my circle and took the energy into myself. My bare feet were almost silent on the slate path, and my jaw clenched. My splat gun would have been handy right about now, but Al had melted it two months ago and no one would sell me a replacement.

Heart pounding, I shoved on the worn, rough wood of the gate, adrenaline sending it crashing into the bushes.

“Ms. Morgan, look out!” shrilled a pixy, and I jerked back at the puff of air.

“Crap!” I exclaimed as I fell against the fence and the gate smacked back into the door frame. Looking the way I’d come, I saw there was a new splat on the ground between me and the empty lounge chair. Miracle of miracles—Trent had actually listened to me and gone inside. The slightly itchy feeling in the back of my mind might have been him setting a circle. Or it might have been the assassin setting up a trap.

A dark-haired pixy landed on the fence, his hands in fists as they rested on his hips. “He’s running now, Ms. Morgan,” Jumoke said, and I gave him a quick, grateful smile.

I smacked the gate open again and ran through it, Jumoke flying just over my head. A passel of pixies trailed behind, shouting encouragement. The man who’d shot at me was indeed running, and a wicked grin spread across my face.

He was fast. I was faster, and I raced after his slim, dark form as he headed for the street. My fingertips grazed the man’s shirt as we reached the sidewalk, and heart pounding, I fell on him. He had time for one yelp of surprise, and I clenched my eyes against the coming cement.

We hit with a jar that knocked my breath away, and I scrambled for a new grip, sunglasses falling off. “You tap a line…and you won’t…wake up…until next week!” I panted when I caught my breath. Oh God. My elbow was vibrating all the way up to my skull, but he’d taken most of the impact. Scrambling, I put my knee in the small of his back and twisted his arm around his own neck, ready to snap his wrist if he moved. The pixies were everywhere, talking so fast I couldn’t understand them, but I caught the words “intruder” and “Papa.” Just where was Jenks, anyway?

The man wasn’t moving, and after some vigorous “encouragement” he let go of his splat gun and the pixies worked as a team to drag it out of his reach. It looked like mine, right down to the cherry red color. And the blue splat balls? They were almost my trademark.

“You trying to frame me for assaulting Trent?” I exclaimed, and he only grunted. “What you got in your splat balls, Jack? Maybe we should find out together? Real personal like?”

Breathing hard, the man tried to look at me, the anger obvious in his green eyes. Green eyes, blond hair, lanky build, tan: Was he an elf? An elven assassin? Not a very good one, though. And where the hell was Jenks?

The sound of running feet pulled my head up. There was a second man, and I could do nothing. Damn it, he was getting away!

“Are you after Trent or me?” I shouted at the guy under me and, furious, I thunked his forehead into the cement.

The man’s eyes showed his pain. “Why do you even care?”

Huh?

There was a squeal of ultrasonic sound, and Jenks’s kids dropped back to make room for their dad. “Two of them!” Jenks exclaimed, dropping silver sparkles and a zip strip from my charm cupboard to hit the man’s back. “Trent’s in the kitchen. You want me to get her?”

Her? I slipped the zip strip around the man’s wrist and ratcheted it tight, immediately feeling better. “Jack” didn’t move as his maybe-contact with a ley line was severed, telling me he hadn’t been prepared to use one to begin with, but better safe than sorry. I was spared the decision of what to do by the sound of Ivy’s cycle at the far end of the street. Jenks darted away with a second zip strip, leaving his kids to sweetly tell me what I ought to do to the man under me. He moved when the subject of wasps entered the conversation, and I yanked on his arm.

Ivy’s bike slowed as Jenks’s dust glittered over her, then she gunned it, roaring past me and aiming for the woman fleeing over the lawns. Ivy was a tad more protective of me than Jenks, and with a silent fury she ran the woman down, using her foot like a jousting pole. Wincing, I watched the woman take a mouthful of grass as she slid to a front-face halt. Jenks’s children left me, and the woman slowly sat up, her hands in fists over her head as they surrounded her, bright sparkling spots of potential death in the sunshine.

“Kids!” Jenks’s voice was shrill. “We’ve talked about this! Lunkers are a no-kill species! How come you never listen to me like you listened to your mom!”

It looked like it might be over. “Get up,” I said, breathing hard as I eased up on my grip.

The man spun under me, foot and fist lashing out. Jerking up and away, I stood, grabbing for his foot. It smacked into me with a bone-jarring thump, but I caught it. Determined green eyes met mine, and when I went to snap his ankle, he sideswiped me with the other foot.

I gasped and went with it, trying to keep my presence of mind as I fell on the concrete walk, trying to turn it into something graceful. There was a sickening crunch under me. My glasses. Damn it! I’d let go, though, and when I again found my feet, he had stood and was coming at me with a knife.

“Rachel, quit playing with him,” Ivy said loudly, her cycle idling back to us, the zip-stripped woman meekly walking before her with an escort of exuberant pixies holding swords.

“He’s got a knife!” I exclaimed, teeth clenched as I did an X block, then dove under his arm to make him twist his own knife into his side. And there I stopped, breathing hard as I pressed the blade, still in his grip, into him, but not yet breaking the skin. He didn’t move, knowing it was right over his kidney. Jeez Louise, the curtains of the house across the street were moving. We had to take this inside before someone called Inderland Security. The last thing I needed was the I.S. out here.

“You’ve lost, Jack!” I shouted as I pinched his wrist until he let go of the knife, then wrenched his arm up and pressed him into the nearby light pole. “We got Jill,” I said as he grunted, “and no way are you getting that bucket of water in my garden. If you don’t relax, I’m going to bust your crown! We clear?”

The guy nodded, but I didn’t ease up. Spitting my hair out of my mouth, I realized that Ivy had parked her cycle and was coming up the walk with the woman. The female assassin’s hands were in fists, high over her head. Jenks’s kids were working together to shift the knife to the sidelines. Slowly I started to smile. We’d gotten them. Hot damn!

“Hi, Ivy,” I said as she scuffed her booted feet to a halt. “Get the errands done?”

The slightly Asian-looking woman quirked her lips at my robe, smiling as she held up her pharmacy bag. The unmistakable shadow of a second splat gun and several knives showed through the thin plastic. Her lips were closed to hide her small, sharp canines, but her mood was good.

“You want to take this inside or bag them up and leave them here for big-trash pickup?” she asked, her black eyes going to the deceptively empty street. Her pupils were fully dilated despite the bright sun, evidence that she was working to maintain control of her instincts. Being in the sun would help; so would the wind now carrying away the scent of sweat and fear.

“Inside,” I panted. I was out of breath, but Ivy wasn’t. She was six feet of lean, athletic living vampire, dressed in blue jeans, boots, and a tight black T-shirt. It would take more than running down a fleeing assassin on her bike to make her break into a sweat.

“You going to be good, Jack?” I asked the man pressed against the light pole, and when he nodded, I let up. He grimaced as Ivy patted him down, adding another knife and more blue splat pellets in a clear, crush-proof plastic vial to her bag. I held my hand out for the splat balls and I refilled his hopper, fast enough to make Jack’s eyes widen in appreciation.

Clicking the magazine away, I hefted the splat gun, thinking it felt good in my hand. “This is my house,” I said as I indicated the church. “If you do something I don’t like, you’re going to get whatever’s in the hopper, and the law will be on my side. Clear?”

They didn’t nod, but they didn’t spout threats, either.

“Move,” I said, and with an obedience that told me the potions were nasty, the two of them started up the cement stairs and toward the double wooden doors. Slowly I began to relax.

Ivy looked at the gun, her brow furrowed. “It looks like yours,” she said.

“You noticed that, too?” Eying the attackers, I pulled one side of the door open. Jenks’s kids entered the church first—three of them carrying my broken sunglasses—then the bad guys, then us. “Are you okay?” I asked Ivy.

She smiled to show her fangs, small until she died and became a true undead, and I stifled a shiver. Ivy was great at maintaining a grip on her instincts, but fight, flight, or food brought out the worst in her, and this was all three. “Not a problem,” she said as the dark foyer took us. One of these days, we were going to invest in a new light fixture, but the sanctuary beyond it was a bright wash of light, the sun coming in the tall stained-glass windows to make colored patterns on the new set of living room furniture, my unused desk, Ivy’s exercise mats, and Kisten’s burned pool table. I still hadn’t had it refelted. My bare feet squeaked over the old oak, and I shoved Jack toward the small hallway at the back of the sanctuary.

“Trent is here already?” Ivy asked, clearly having smelled him. “He’s still alive, right?”

I nodded, wiping the grit from the sidewalk off my feet. Good Lord, I had tagged an assassin in my bare feet and a bikini. If this showed up on the Internet, I was going to be peeved. “Last I knew, he was. I told him to go into the kitchen and wait.” Assassins usually traveled in threes, but these were elven. I didn’t know their traditions.

“He’s in there,” Jenks said derisively as he dropped down to us. “I don’t think they’re real assassins. They didn’t know any ley-line magic.”

“You don’t need magic to be deadly, Jenks. You of all people should know that.”

Jenks snorted. “I don’t think they know any. They stink like elves, but they’ve got so much human in them, they might not have any magic.”

I shrugged, guessing as much by the almost indifference Jenks’s kids had shown the two attackers. The man in front of us glanced back as we entered the dark hallway, and I smiled mockingly. “All the way to the end,” I directed as we passed the his and her bathrooms and twin bedrooms and headed to the huge, industrial-size kitchen. I cleared my throat in warning as Jack and Jill whispered between themselves, and they shut up.

The pixies were singing about blood and daisies as we entered the sunlit kitchen to find Trent safe within a circle of his own making between the cluttered center counter and the sink, full of dirty spell pots. The bright, cheerful gold of his circle was free of any demon smut, making me uncomfortable. He’d just been under my aura and had seen the mess I’d made of it. Demon smut. Ugly. Black. Permanent—mostly.

The kitchen was hands down my favorite room in the entire church, with its expansive stainless-steel countertops, fluorescent lighting, and center island counter with my spelling equipment hanging above it and in the open cabinets below it. There were two stoves, so I didn’t have to stir spells and cook on the same surface. My mom’s new fridge took up a wall. Bis, perched atop it, was asleep next to the skull-shaped cookie jar. The little gargoyle had probably been trying to stay awake after sunup and misjudged. He’d be down until sunset no matter how noisy we were, and it was getting noisy. Pixies were flitting in and out through the one small window over the sink. Ivy’s computer was set up on the big farm-kitchen table against the inside wall, but the space felt like mine. That Trent had been in here alone sort of bothered me.

Jenks’s kids were flitting everywhere, too excited to perch in one place, and they were starting to give me a headache. Trent, too, looked like he was hurting. “Look, Ivy! Elf under glass!” Jenks said, and I sighed, even as a small twinge on my awareness went through me and Trent dropped his circle.

Like one entity, Jenks’s kids swarmed Trent. He stiffened, but did little other than grimace when Jrixibell asked if she could make a dandelion necklace for him. Yeah, Jack and Jill might be elves, but they weren’t full-blooded like Trent. The pixies were almost ignoring them.

“Jenks…,” I prompted, my own head splitting from their noise as I glanced at Bis. How the cat-size, gray-skinned kid could sleep through this was a wonder, but he was, his leathery wings lying close to his back, his black-fringed ears drooping, and his lionlike tail wrapped around his clawed feet in slumber.

Jenks clattered his wings for their attention. “Okay, you lot!” he shouted. “Jumoke, Jack, Jixy, Jhan can stay if you’re quiet! The rest of you, hit the garden. Evens take cleanup. Odds on perimeter. Not a butterfly crosses the lines without someone knowing! And watch the splat-ball marks. Stay back until we have a chance to get out there with salt water. And no dropping moths into the puddles to see what the charms do! Clear?”

In a chorus of affirmation and disappointment, they dispersed, the eldest children Jenks had asked to remain retreating to the overhead rack. I exhaled in relief, and realizing that I was standing like Jenks with my bare feet spaced wide and my hands on my hips, I dropped my arms.

“Sit,” I said to the would-be assassins, pointing at the floor beside the fridge, and they gingerly lowered themselves. With a languorous stretch, Ivy shoved the magazines off her chair with a booted foot. They hit the floor with a thump and slid into a long pile against the wall. Deceptively calm and relaxed, she drifted back to the doorway, standing to look aggressive as she took her hair out of its ponytail and let the strands fall where they might. Unless the assassins went through the window, they were stuck.

A breath of self-preservation made me toss a roll of paper towels to the woman. Not only was her chin bleeding, but the man’s forehead was scraped where I’d thunked him into the sidewalk. Ivy would appreciate it, if nothing else. The harsh ripping of the paper sounded loud, and folding up a sheet, Jill dabbed at her jaw and passed the roll to Jack.

“Move, and I’ll be on you like a demon,” Ivy said. “Do, please.”

Jack and Jill looked at each other. Together they shook their heads. I kept one eye on them as I unloaded Ivy’s bag next to my broken sunglasses, setting the two splat guns and five knives on the counter, looking right at home among my magnetic chalk and scrying mirror. The knives had an elaborate, intricately raised design on the handles to help with the grip. I didn’t like that one of the guns looked like mine. I wondered what was in them. That first shot had been aimed at Trent, making me wonder about his story of Quen not letting him leave Cincinnati without me. He could’ve gotten himself on someone’s hit list, but these guys weren’t good enough to be taken seriously. And why would elves want me dead? No, I was betting they were here for Trent.

“Did they tell you who sent them?” Trent prompted, and I tightened my robe again.

“Not yet.” Turning to them, I smiled. “Who wants to go first?”

No one said anything. Big surprise. I flicked a glance at Trent. It was a no-win situation. If I was tough, he’d think I was a thug. If I was too nice, I’d be a pushover. Why I even cared what he thought was beyond me.

Jenks dropped down to the man. “Who sent you?” he barked, sword angled at the man’s eye.

Jack remained silent, and Jenks’s wings began slipping an eerie black dust. In a whisper of sound, Jenks darted close and then away. The intruding elf yelped, his hand smacking his head where Jenks had been. I frowned when I saw the wad of hair in Jenks’s grip. I didn’t like this. Jenks was usually easygoing, more inclined to plant seeds in the ground than people, but his land had been violated, and that brought out the worst in him.

“Ease up, Jenks,” Ivy said as she came forward to touch Jill’s face. “You need more finesse with the big ones.” She made a little trill of sound as the woman drew back in fear, and I sighed as Ivy started to vamp out.

Think, Rachel, I mused silently. Don’t just react, think. “Guys,” I said, conscious of Trent watching. “We need to find out what’s going on without leaving any traces.”

“I won’t leave a mark,” Ivy whispered, and Jill paled. “Not where you can find one.”

“They might be a test from the coven,” I said, and Ivy’s finger, tracing the woman’s jawline, curled under and she straightened in disappointment.

“We can’t simply let them go,” Ivy said. “Even if it wasn’t much of an attack.”

I winced. “Maybe we should call the I.S.?”

Jenks snorted, and from the overhead rack came a peal of high-pitched laughter. Yeah, bad idea.

“Mind if I hurry this along? I have an idea.”

It had been Trent, and, as one, we all turned to look at him.

“You have an idea?” Jenks said sarcastically, hovering before him in his best Peter Pan pose, his hands on his hips and his red bandanna tucked into his waistband. “The day you have a good idea will be the day I eat fairy toe jam.”

“He said it was an idea. He never said it was a good one,” I scoffed. But my lips parted at the sudden prickling of magic. Like a blanket rubbing the wrong way, wild, elven magic scraped across my aura, both an irritant and an enticement, pulling at my pores as if trying to draw my soul from my body.

“Hey!” I shouted, knowing it was Trent. Elves were the only species that dared to use wild magic. Even demons shunned the art. It had a horrible unpredictability along with the horrible power. It couldn’t be the two elves on the floor. They had zip strips on. “Trent, no!” I did not have a clue as to what he was doing, and with a satisfied glint in his eyes, he clapped his hands.

“Volo te hoc facere!” he exclaimed, the sound pinging through me, making me both cower and jump as the force I felt him drawing from the line abruptly fell to nothing.

I will you to do this? I thought, clutching my robe around me. An enthrallment spell?

But I think it was, and I stood at the table and stared at Trent, aghast. The rims of his ears were red, and his jaw was clenched in determination. “That was a black spell,” I whispered, stepping forward and out of Ivy’s reach. “That was a black spell!” I yelled, and he retreated to the table, his eyes falling from Jack and Jill. They were motionless, almost slack-jawed, eyes unfocused and hands limp, unable to do anything apart from the most basic things to survive unless told. “You enthralled them, didn’t you!” I exclaimed, and he bowed his head. When it came back up, his eyes met mine with a fervent gleam, unrepentant.

“What did he do to them?” Ivy said, sidling up next to me. Jenks wasn’t happy either, buzzing over them as they blinked vacantly.

“He enthralled them,” I said, sure of it when Trent’s lips pursed. “And it’s black.” Damn it, I hadn’t known he could do something that sophisticated. It changed everything.

“Black?” Jenks yelped, darting up in a wash of yellow dust.

“Go ahead, ask them who sent them,” Trent said, standing stiffly as he gestured to them. “I know who did, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Not in time, anyway. Go on. It doesn’t last long.”

Well, that was one bit of good news. “And then what?” I said harshly. “Do you know how illegal those are? This is my kitchen, and I’m the one who’s going to be blamed for this. Or is that your idea?” I said with a sneer, and Ivy caught my arm, thinking I was going to cross the room and smack him.

“You need to hurry up,” he said, tossing his hair back in a rare show of nervousness. “I have this under control. I’ll hit them with another charm so they don’t remember.”

I shoved Ivy’s hand from me, shaking as I stood there. “Is that your plan? Make them forget? God, Trent. This is, like, six times illegal!”

Trent tugged his sleeves down as if unbothered, but his eyes were squinting. “True, but no one gets hurt this way. And I’d think you’d be the last person worrying about what’s legal. You’ve got thirty seconds. Tick tock, Rachel.”

As I stood there fuming, Jack started to blink. Ivy took my arm again, this time in encouragement, but I couldn’t do it. It was wrong!

“Oh for Tink’s little red shoes,” Jenks said suddenly, and he darted down to hover before the man. “Who paid you to attack Rachel?” he barked, his hand on his sword hilt.

“No one,” Jack said, and I turned to Trent, my brow furrowed.

Jenks’s dust turned green. “You mean you don’t know, or you weren’t paid for it?”

Trent shifted his weight to his other foot. “They weren’t attacking Rachel, they were attacking me. Try again.”

Giving me an apologetic shrug, Ivy slipped past me and crouched before Jill, lifting her chin to force her to look at her. “Who told you to attack Trent?” she asked calmly, and I crossed my arms over my chest. I wanted to know, but I’d rather scare it out of them than use black magic.

“Walter Withon,” they said together, and a knot tightened in my gut.

“This was a warning,” Trent said with a sigh, his shoulder easing to make him look somewhat embarrassed. No, guarded.

“Ellasbeth’s dad?” I dropped back a step, my anger fizzling. Crap on toast. Ellasbeth was the woman Trent had been going to marry—until I’d arrested Trent at his own wedding. It was something Trent thanked me for later in a weird bit of honesty when we thought we were both going to die. Yeah, the Withons had the means for a hit, and they might be a little mad. But enough to take potshots at him?

“Now will you help me?” Trent said, and I took a breath, snapping myself out of my funk. Seeing my eyes on his, Trent smiled wickedly, hands moving in a ley-line charm.

“Trent, wait…,” I said.

But it was too late, and I could do nothing when I felt the line he was connected to give a lurch and he whispered, “Memoria cadere.”

Again, I jerked back, setting up a protection circle around myself since I didn’t know what the man was capable of anymore. Seeing its creation, Ivy flung herself almost under the table, and Jenks darted to the ceiling. I stood tall, heart pounding as a wash of my gold-tinted aura lapped over the circle with all the subtleties of a shadowy pearlescence. Bis, on the fridge, stirred, his bright red eye cracking open to find me before it slid shut again with a little sigh.

“Damn it, Trent!” I exclaimed, furious as the assassins sat, wide-eyed, and stared at me, bewildered but clearly no longer enthralled. “What in hell are you doing?”

“You’re kidding,” he said in disbelief. “You weren’t going to ask them anything, worried it might be ille-e-e-e-gal.”

He drawled it, mocking me, and I squinted at him, fear of the Withons mixing with the worry of what the assassins could have told us before but now couldn’t. “You did that on purpose!” I shouted.

His head bowed slightly, and his lips quirked as he eyed me, looking both mischievous and polished. “I told you I was going to.”

Anger grew in me, but I stayed where I was beside the table, sullen. It couldn’t be undone. Not easily, anyway. “Dr. Anders teach you that?” I muttered. Memory charms weren’t black; they were simply illegal as all hell. It didn’t make me feel any better, though.

On the floor, the woman felt her chin, shocked when her fingertips came back wet with blood. “Um. Whoa,” she said, looking tense but harmless. “I guess that explains why I have no idea who you people are or how I got here.”

Her companion nudged her to be quiet, clearly not remembering anything, either, but knowing enough to keep his mouth shut. Bad. This was so bad. Two illegal charms, and if Trent got to the West Coast, he’d probably try to pin them on me if I didn’t become his indentured servant. Damn it back to the Turn! I wasn’t going to play this game!

Jenks dropped from where he’d been checking on his kids. His hand was on the butt of his sword, and he looked ready to give Trent a lobotomy. “I had more to ask them, even if she didn’t.”

“You wanted to know who sent them. Now you do. It was wearing off,” Trent insisted, but I could see a hint of unease in him. “Our only other option was to kill them.”

“Our?” I barked sarcastically. “There is no ‘our.’ This is your doing, not mine.” I spun as Jill started to get up, her alarm obvious. “Park it, Jill!” I said, but it wasn’t until Ivy cleared her throat that both of them checked their upward motion and slid back down.

“My name isn’t Jill…” the woman started.

“It is today. So sit down and shut up until I tell you that you can leave. Got it?”

“Shit,” the man said sourly as he thumped his head back against the fridge and eyed me in mistrust. “I don’t know who was supposed to pay us. Do you?” Jill shook her head. She looked too confused for it to be an act. “Awww, man!” the guy added. “I don’t even know where I left my stuff. This sucks.”

“See?” Trent said confidently, but that worry wrinkle above his eyes was still there. “It worked. Now we can let them go and be on our way with their employers still thinking we are here.” He smiled, and I hated him. “They won’t be expected to check in for twenty-four hours. We could be long gone by sunset.”

Jenks’s wings hummed, and Ivy’s face lost its expression. “Sunset?” she said, and I grimaced. She wasn’t going to like this, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t helping Trent. Not after this. He had stood in my kitchen and performed two illegal charms, one of them black. Ceri was rubbing off on him and not in a good way.

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you little shoemaker,” I said, trying to figure out what to do with these two. “Especially after that little stunt. Not in a plane, not in a car, not on a train…you’ve gone too far.” I blinked. What the hell?

“Ah, Rachel?” Ivy touched me, and I jumped. “What’s this about Trent needing your help. Help for what?”

Jenks hummed his wings for her attention, smirking at Trent as he said, “Trent wants Rachel’s help. Quen won’t do it. Trent says it’s because Quen won’t leave Ceri, but I think the little cookie maker plans to speak out against Rachel at the, uh, big meeting to get her under his thumb again, and Quen refuses to be a part of it. Trent won’t have anything on her after she nullifies his familiar mark, so he has to move fast.”

Jenks smiled at Trent, and Trent sighed. “It’s not like that at all,” he said, but his confidence was wearing thin.

Ivy glanced quickly at me before turning back to Jenks. “Not going to happen.”

Shrugging, Jenks landed on the center counter where he could watch everyone. “Or Trent’s telling the truth, and he’s afraid of the weenie assassins here.”

Jack scowled, and Jill made a little huff of sound, but I was glad Jenks hadn’t dropped any names. They’d forgotten who had sent them and didn’t need any reminders.

Trent frowned, one hand behind his back as he turned to me. Shoulders stiff, he asked, “Will you do it?”

I could not believe this, and I pointed at the two assassins sitting in front of my fridge. “No!” I said firmly. “I’m not helping you. Especially now.”

Trent shifted, his confident poise lost when his hand slipped from behind his back. “They tried to kill me,” he said, his brow furrowed as he glared at them. “You saw them!”

“Yeah?” I spouted off. “They weren’t very good at it!”

Jenks was laughing, but I was mad and ready to throw Trent out. Throw them all out. Standing by the table, I dropped my forehead into my hands and rubbed at my temples. From the floor Jack sighed. “My old lady is going to be pissed. Her, I remember.”

I pulled my head up. “Get out,” I said bluntly. “Get up and get out. Both of you.”

For a moment, Jack and Jill stared at me, but when Jenks clattered his wings threateningly, they slowly got to their feet. Okay, I knew who’d sent them, and it only solidified in my mind that I wasn’t leaving Cincinnati on Trent’s private jet. He was still lying to me. Son of a bastard.

“I don’t feel so good,” the woman said as she held her stomach and limped forward.

Jenks laughed bitterly. “That’s because we beat you up. You cried like a baby.”

The two people shuffled toward the door, feeling body parts as they began to complain. Jill looked at the weapons on the counter, but when I shook my head, they filed out under a pixy escort. Ivy seemed surprised that I was simply letting them go, but I had to be on a plane tomorrow at eight. I didn’t have time for an extended smackdown.

“Jenks, you’d better tell your kids to leave them alone unless they come back,” I murmured, and he flew up on a column of silver dust.

“Yeah-h-h-h-h,” he drawled, his focus vacant as he imagined it. “I’ll be right back.”

He was gone in an instant, and from the front of the church, I could hear him shrill something, and then the door opening and closing. I turned to look at my kitchen, defiled by elven black magic. It wouldn’t leave a visible mark, but it left me uneasy just the same. Al might be able to smell it.

“You, too, Trent,” I said, listlessly picking up the roll of paper towels and trying to wipe the pixy footprints off the stainless steel. Trent’s curse lay assembled on the counter, but he could just suck my toes and die for all I cared.

“I’m not leaving until you untwist the curse,” he said stiffly. “It’s all there. Do it now.”

I hesitated in my motions to clean the counter. Ivy cleared her throat, and I felt more than saw her take up a stance. Still not looking up, I continued to clean the counter, picking up the scrying mirror and setting it down. Then the magnetic chalk, the five candles, the stick of redwood. He could go to hell. “Good-bye, Trent,” I muttered, my head starting to hurt.

“Excuse me?”

His voice was harsh, and I balled up the paper towel, standing with my fists on the counter so I wouldn’t jump over it and strangle him. “I don’t trust you,” I said softly, my knuckles going white from the pressure. “If I take that curse off now, you won’t want me for anything and will speak out against me at the coven’s meeting. You’re going to have to wait. I’ll do it after, not a moment sooner.”

From the street came a faint “Is that our car?”

Trent grimaced when his car alarm began beeping, and he looked ready to murder someone as he fished a key fob out of his pocket and pointed it at the street. The alarm cut off, and he turned back to me. “That wasn’t the deal,” he said. “Take the mark off. Now.”

“Neither was your coming over here trailing assassins,” I said, letting go of the balled-up paper towel. Behind him, Ivy went to her stash of chocolate on the counter, opening a box and leaning against the counter. She was behind Trent, between him and the door, and he shifted to keep us both in his sight.

“Rachel,” he warned, looking pissed.

“I’ll do it,” I said flippantly. “But you’re going to wait until I’m safe. You don’t like it?” I said, voice rising. “Then kill me. Right now. Go on!” I shouted. “Do it! Here I am!” I flung my arms wide to make a bigger target. “But if you do, you’ll never get the mark off you! You slimy little thug!”

Jenks buzzed in with worried wing chatter, seeing me screaming at Trent and Trent looking like he’d swallowed a bug. The pixy exchanged a look with Ivy, who was now leaning idly against the counter, completely unworried as she ate a chocolate-covered orange slice. Her apparent indifference seemed to make Trent only more pissed.

Trent took a breath and held it. Saying nothing, he turned to the door, his stance stiff. Jenks snickered, and the man spun back around, even with Ivy there. His face was white with anger, and his eyes almost seemed to glow. “You are the most…unprofessional, irritating, frustrating person I have ever had to deal with,” he said, and I shrugged. “I don’t need your help. I’ll get to California without you.”

“Like I care,” I said, and he turned on his heel and strode from the kitchen.

“Good riddance,” I said, then, in a wash of self-preservation, I followed him to the hallway, leaning out into it as I shouted after him, “Go on! Leave! I’ll get that mark of yours taken care of, but not until I get my freedom! You son-of-a-bitch elf!”

He never slowed, his dark silhouette flashing into a blinding whiteness when he found the sanctuary. More light poured in when he opened the church’s door. It boomed shut behind him, and I pulled myself back into the kitchen.

Ivy was still slumped at the counter. Her eyes were hooded, and she looked…rather sexy from the anger Trent and I had been giving off. Grimacing, I stalked across the kitchen to the window, shoving it high to let in the breeze. Birdsong drifted in, and my hair tickled my neck. From the fridge, Bis sighed, his wings shifting as he settled back to sleep. I hadn’t realized I’d woken him up. Peeved, I stared out at the bright afternoon, seeing the dark spot of the spell on a tree. I’d have to take care of that before the pixies got into it, even with Jenks’s admonishment.

Beside me, Ivy casually took another piece of chocolate, succinctly biting through it with a snap of chocolate and sugar crystals. Jenks hummed closer, landing next to the brandy snifter on the windowsill. It was turned upside down to keep his cat, Rex, from eating the chrysalis Al had given me last New Year’s Eve. Jenks’s wings were unmoving and his expression worried as he looked at me, not the garden.

“What?” I said as I edged toward Ivy, leaning close to take a chocolate and then retreating. I looked down, seeing the dirt and grass clippings on my feet. My robe had come undone, and I tightened it back up. So much for getting a tan.

Ivy licked her lips and stood upright. “Do you think calling his bluff was the smartest thing to do?”

I exhaled, shaking as I leaned against the center counter. “No,” I admitted sourly. “No, it wasn’t, but I’m not going to give him what he wants until I know he’s not going to give me to the coven.” I bit into the chocolate, feeling the sudden give and the crunch of crystallized orange on my tongue. From the front of the church, Trent’s car engine was racing harshly.

“It’s the first smart thing she’s done,” Jenks said, making the short flight to the chocolate and using his sword to cut off a slice the size of his hand.

“Maybe, but something isn’t right,” Ivy said, clearly not convinced, and I followed her gaze as she took in the assembled ingredients for Trent’s curse, next to the assassins’ splat guns and knives and my broken sunglasses. An unsettled feeling tightened around my chest, and I fidgeted. I was glad I’d said what I had, and I wasn’t going to “escort” Trent to the West Coast, but if truth be told, I agreed with Ivy. Something wasn’t right, and I didn’t think it was over yet.