by Kim Harrison
It was an interesting story, but I wasn’t buying it. I stared at him. “Quen is outside in the car?”
“Yes . . .” he said warily.
I pushed myself into motion. “I’ll be right back.”
“Rachel, wait.”
My breath caught as Trent snatched my elbow when I passed him, his light touch stopping me dead in my tracks. I stared at his fingers wrapped around my arm, and he let go.
“Okay, the ring I made specifically for you after you left today,” he said, and my heart thumped. “But I really am working on modernizing my spell library, and you might as well get some use out of the results. Your church was on the way to my meeting tonight, and . . .” His words cut off as I eyed him. “You should see the closet I’ve got. Boxes of charms that will never be used—”
“He’s at the curb, right?” I asked, pointing into the dark hall.
Trent’s head drooped, and I hesitated as the guys up front hammered at something. He knew I wasn’t going out there, but maybe just the threat of it would get him to tell me more. Sure enough, he ran a hand over his hair, leaving it mussed, and shifting his weight to one foot, looking almost angry when he finally met my eyes. “Can I have some of that coffee?” he asked shortly, and I stifled a smile.
“Sure.” Feeling confident and sassy though I had no right to, I turned my back on him and went to make a fresh pot, running the taps slowly so I could hear him better.
“My father was a businessman,” Trent said, and I turned the taps off. “A good one.”
I turned, reaching for the cloth Wayde had left out, wiping the bottom of the pot dry. “So are you.”
Trent grimaced. “So I hear. Did you hear how my mother died? Not the official story, but what really happened?”
My smile faded. “No.”
He was silent. I recognized his distant expression as he tried to figure out how much to say, and I got the coffee out of the fridge. The bag was cold in my fingers, and the grounds smelled wonderful as I opened it up: bitter as burnt amber, and rich as the sunrise.
“I have tons of memories of her pressed and beautiful, as only mothers can be to their children,” he said, inches away and miles distant. “Her hair arranged and smelling like perfume, diamonds glittering in the night-light.” He smiled, but not at me. “She was the perfect politician’s wife at official functions, but I remember her best from when she’d look in on me while I was sleeping, checking on me when she got back from wherever she’d been. I don’t think she ever knew I woke up. It’s funny how things stick with you the best when you’re half awake.”
Not meeting his eyes, I measured out the coffee. My mother had never worn diamonds when she tucked me in.
“The days I didn’t see her leave, she always came back smelling like oil, metal, and sweat. Like a sword, Rachel,” he said, and my breath caught at his earnest expression. “That’s how I remember her best. Until the day she . . . never came back at all. Quen won’t tell me, but I think she was with your father the night she died.”
My God, no wonder he had hated me. “I’m sorry. That had to be hard.”
A shoulder lifted and fell. “No harder than you holding your father’s hand while he breathed his last, I’m sure. My dad was business, my mother . . . She was a lot of things.”
I stayed where I was with the center counter between us, feeling ill. His mother and my dad? Then my dad and his father? All dead, all gone. Leaving us to . . . what?
“I was asked to become my father when he died,” he said, dividing the charms into three piles. “I was expected to be him. I’m good at it.”
“It’s not what you want to be,” I whispered with sudden insight, remembering bits of conversation here and there, his quick conversion from businessman to child thief on our three days out West.
He never looked up, arranging the spells he’d made for me, wild magic woven with the power of the moon and sun, shadow and light both. “I’m good at it,” he said again, as if convincing himself.
But I knew that wasn’t what he wanted to be, and I remembered the cap and ribbon he kept stuffed in a pocket, probably in his suit even now. I recognized in his silence the pain of wanting something and being told that it’s not for you—that you should be something else that was easier, not so hard to become. “You were pretty good when we went after that elven sample in the ever-after.”
Trent put his hands on the counter, still at last. “You called me a businessman. You were right. I should have sent Quen to get the sample.” His expression became empty. “Quen wouldn’t have gotten caught.”
“I was mad,” I said. “It was the worst insult I could think of. Jenks says you weren’t a slouch when you, ah, reacquired Lucy.”
His eyes darted to mine, then away, but I saw the pride and love for his daughter. “I had fun with that. Jenks is quite the operative.”
I gazed at the charms between us, wondering how long he had worked on them. Fun. He had called it fun. The Withons would have killed him had they caught him. That had been the agreement. He’d been confident enough of his success that it had been fun.
“I’ll leave these with you, then,” he said, his voice low, almost a monotone. “Throw them out if you don’t want them. It’s all the same to me. The ones with the blue pins temporarily paralyze your opponents, the ones with the gold pins temporarily blind them. Maintain eye contact when you pull the pin so the charm acts on who you want.” Trent looked at his watch. “Sorry about the coffee. I have to go. Maybe next time.”
He was leaving, and for some reason I couldn’t fathom, I didn’t want him to. I hadn’t known he relaxed by rescuing elven charm recipes. Or that he was stuck in a life he didn’t want. “Trent, about this morning.”
He hesitated, now eyeing his phone. “Don’t worry about it. The carpet has been replaced and most of the fish survived.”
“No,” I said, coming around the corner of the counter. “I didn’t mean that . . .” Trent looked up, waiting, and I swallowed hard. “I didn’t really thank you. For helping with Al.”
“You’re welcome.” He hesitated, his eyes going to my empty wrist, tossing his hair from his eyes. “Is that all?”
“No.” He snapped his phone closed and tucked it back in an inner pocket of his jacket, and I fidgeted, remembering his face when he’d opened up to me, just that little bit. “Ah, I’m sorry you can’t be what you want . . . to be.”
His professional mask back in place, he put his hands behind his back. “I never said that.”
“I know.” The silence stretched until it became awkward. “Thank you for the charms.”
Finally he smiled, but it was faint and it faded fast. Even so, I exhaled as if it meant something. “You’re welcome,” he said, tugging his jacket sleeves down. “Good luck finding HAPA. My guess is they’re downtown somewhere.”
Downtown? They couldn’t be downtown. We’d find them in an hour if they were downtown, and they knew it.
But he was leaving, and I just stood there, feeling inadequate. Trent glanced at my hands, then gave me a sharp nod. “I’ll see myself out,” he said as he turned away. “Good choice on the fabric color for the table. Red is tacky.”
Red is tacky echoed in my mind as I slumped back against the counter as his steps grew faint. He made a comment to the Weres working on the table, and then he was gone.
“You are pathetic, Rache,” Jenks said, and my eyes darted to the top of the rack and I saw him standing there, hands on his hips and frowning at me, his wings a silver blur. “Rachel and Trent, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. No wait, it was a hospital room, and he had his hands on your ass and you had your tongue down his throat. I can see why you might be confused.”
“Grow up, Jenks. He’s helping me to help himself. You watch. In three months, he’s going to be knocking on my door with some problem that only I can solve, and I’m going to do it because I owe him. He’s a businessman. Period. I am a commodity he has been working toward for two years.”
Damn
it, why had I fallen for that poor-me crap? Ticked, I went to the demon texts, piling them up in my arms before going behind the counter and shelving them.
“Yeah, okay.” Clearly not believing me, Jenks landed next to Trent’s charms and kicked one, sending it rocking. “Except for one thing.”
I came up from shelving my books, catching the charm he had kicked as it rocked off the counter. The tingle of wild magic pricked, and I shivered, remembering it flowing through me and the charms he’d been making for the last year or so. Wild magic. “What,” I said flatly.
“This,” he said, kicking at the ring, and I took it up, turning it in my fingers to study it. It really was pretty, made of three individual metallic bands, interwoven to make one solid piece—sort of like a puzzle ring but able to hold together off a finger. “He didn’t tell you what it does,” Jenks said, rising up as his kids started screaming from the front room, arguing over the chalk again. The Weres began laughing, and I didn’t think it was because they were almost done.
I’d noticed that myself, and I set it down in mistrust. “So? He was in a hurry.”
“Knock it off or I’m going to come in there and turn your wings backward!” Jenks shouted down the dark hall, then came back, grinning. “So I’ve seen my boys do that a hundred times with the neighboring pixy girls. Give her their favorite seed and be too flustered to tell her what it was.” He rose up again, the screams from the front becoming louder. “I gotta take care of this. ’Scuse me.”
He darted out, leaving me blinking as I stared at the ring, among the rest of the charms. A cold feeling was trickling through me. Jenks was wrong. Trent had simply forgotten.
Right?
Chapter Twenty-two
The pool cue slid between my fingers in a steady motion that Kisten had taught me. Squinting in the sun, I pulled back, staring at the one ball perched at the top of a very tight rack. I’d watched Wayde set them up, and he knew what he was doing, jamming everything to the front of the rack before carefully lifting up and away. A tight rack was crucial for a good break. With that you didn’t need a lot of power, just a wee bit of accuracy.
Sending the cue stick forward, I hit the ball, sending it into the others with a satisfying crack. Pixies squealed and scattered, making a rainbow of dust over the sunlit table as I slowly straightened, my smile satisfied but a bit melancholy. The balls rolled and bounced, but none went in. I stepped to the side, my fingertips trailing across the smooth varnish of the bumper. It was cold and hard, not like Kisten’s skin—but I still felt like he was here somehow. Sort of.
“Nice break.” Wayde’s eyebrows were high, his estimation of me rising by the looks of it. Smiling my thanks, I extended the cue to him. It was the only decent one we had, but now that the table was again usable, we might invest in a stick or two.
“Jenks, get your kids off the table,” I said as I dropped back about four feet to give Wayde some mental as well as physical space. “They’re getting their dust all over it.”
Jenks’s wings hummed at a higher pitch, and the three or four pixy bucks watching rose up into the lights. “You never worried about their dust before,” Jenks said, darting over to snag his daughter before she got in the way of Wayde’s shot.
His motions quick and sharp, Wayde took aim at the two ball. With a short tap, the ball plunked in, and the cue ball rolled backward a good two feet. I exhaled, recognizing his skill. It wasn’t hard to make a ball back up, but to get it to stop right where you wanted it to line it up for the next shot wasn’t easy.
“You want to play the winner?” I called out to Ivy, lounging on a chair with her back to the wall as she pretended to read a magazine and watch us without being obvious about it. She’d put herself right in the sun, which told me she’d had a rough morning. She sat in the sun only when she was frustrated.
“No.”
She didn’t look up, but the pages of her magazine crackled as she turned them. Ivy was casual this afternoon: jeans and a baggy sweater, her hair down and her phone on the table. Though she looked comfortable, there was a quickness to her motions and a slight widening of her pupils that told of a rising excitement. It could have been from her morning with Nina, but it had been almost twenty-four hours since my curses had hit the street, and I was betting it was that. The sun was streaming into the westernmost windows, but it would be dark in a few hours. We could bring in a bunch of bad-behaving humans in the dark, but I’d much rather do this before the dead people came out to play. Especially Felix. I was starting not to like him. His lack of ability was starting to impact Ivy, and I didn’t like it.
From behind me, I heard another ball thunk into a pocket. Spinning, I looked quickly at the table, seeing the nine ball gone and Wayde lining up a bank shot with the five. “You’re good,” I said as I sat on the back of the couch and waited my turn.
“I think he’s been sandbagging the last month, Rache,” Jenks said as he sifted a gold sunbeam right onto the cue ball.
Wayde stood from where he’d been bending over the felt, stoically waiting for the ball to stop glowing. “The table was crap,” he said, eyes meeting mine from under his shaggy bangs. “Pool is a game of absolutes. You can’t play well on a crappy table.” With a smooth, unhurried motion, he pulled back and sank the five. “And it was a crappy table.”
I couldn’t argue with him, but I had just gotten used to having to compensate for that dip by the far pocket. Sighing, I got up from the back of the couch and went to press my forehead to the cold stained glass, seeing the blurry world through a rose tint. He might clear the table before it was my turn. It made for a lousy evening of play, but I was too antsy to play anyway. The longer it took for my amulets to find HAPA, the more likely they were going to mutilate another innocent. My fingers twitched. Was I a demon, or was I a demon?
The crack of the balls broke the stillness, and I turned around when there was no accompanying thwap of a ball hitting the bottom of a pocket. “Nice of you to get your balls off the table so I have some room to play,” I said as I took the offered cue. Wayde smiled at the innuendo, Jenks snorted, and Ivy gave me a one-raised-eyebrow look. I shrugged, refusing to acknowledge the sexual banter that just seemed to flow out of my mouth when I got a cue stick in my hand. I knew it was from Kisten, and it sort of hurt.
Wayde, though, took it in stride, looking cocky as he dropped back a few steps to watch. Nervous, I lined up an easy angle shot to a far corner pocket with the ten. I always had trouble with the ten ball. I didn’t know why. Sure enough, I hit it wrong, and the ball bounced off the tip of the pocket and rolled to the rail. “The Turn take it,” I swore softly, frowning as I held the stick out. I was going to get in three shots this game, max.
Wayde ignored the stick, instead moving both the ten and the cue ball back to their original places. “Try it again,” he said as the light over the table glistened like gold in his stubbly beard when he pulled back and smiled. “And angle it a little more.”
My eyes narrowed at the show of chivalry. “I don’t need your pity handicap,” I said, and Jenks flew to Ivy, his wings clattering loudly.
“This isn’t pity,” Wayde said as Ivy rattled a page to cover Jenks’s badly whispered comment. “You’re a good shot. You just need to slow down, pay attention.”
My hand closed around the cue ball, and I set it down hard where it had come to rest earlier. “Your turn.”
“Hey! Watch the slate!” Ivy exclaimed, and the slant to my shoulders shifted.
“Sorry,” I said, then turned to tell Wayde to take the stick before I jammed it somewhere, but my jaw dropped when I realized he had moved the cue ball again. “I said, it’s your turn!”
“Line it up.” Wayde’s eyes were on the table, not me. “Exhale on the down stroke.”
“Yeah, stroke it, baby!” Jenks said, his hips gyrating as he hovered over Ivy.
“Oh my God,” I muttered, but then, because I really should have made that shot, I tugged down my T-shirt and bent over the table. I exhal
ed, sending all the tension out of me, my thoughts about Kisten, my anger at HAPA, my worry over Winona—my new doubt that Trent was simply trying to get me to work for him . . . With a smooth motion, I hit the ball. It hummed over the felt as if pulling my aura with it, barely tapping the ten, shifting the momentum to it and sending it into the pocket with a satisfying little thump.
Pleasure sifted through me as I straightened and smiled while I handed the cue stick to him. “Nice, but it’s your turn,” he said, even as he took it.
“Nah, you gave me that one,” I said, appreciating the gesture. “Your go.”
Wayde nodded. Moving gracefully around the table, he lined up a shot that should have been easy—until he muffed it, sending the cue ball bouncing around to miss everything and come to a halt inches from where it had started.
Jenks whistled, impressed. I was, too, even if my smile had gone a little dry. He’d done it intentionally, but what could I do? Cry foul and not play anymore? “That was tighter than Tink’s . . . ah, he’s good,” Jenks said to Ivy, then darted up to rescue the chalk from where his kids had snatched it again.
I held my hand up, and the chalk dropped into it. He is good, I thought as I chalked my cue. Maybe a little too good. Feeling centered, I lined up the thirteen and easily tapped it in.
Wayde’s teeth showed and he ran a hand over his beard. “Anyone want some chips?” he asked as he headed for the kitchen, mistakenly thinking I would sink a few more before it was his turn again. Yeah, that was likely.
Ivy winced when Jenks’s kids began a high-pitched, shrilling demand. I knew they were speaking English, but it was so fast I couldn’t keep up. Wayde, too, looked pained, and in a noisy cloud of blue-faced pixies, they vanished into the hallway, Jenks trailing along behind. There was a crash from the hanging rack, and Wayde yelled that nothing broke.
