A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(132)
Author: Kim Harrison

His eyes narrowed, and he sighed, looking up into the vegetation. I followed his eyes and saw a camera blinking. "Really!" I insisted, scooting to the back of my chair. "He’s been like this lately. Popping into my kitchen like it’s his closet and he’s looking for his slippers. I think the other demons are giving him a hard time, and he’s using me as an excuse to leave. He keeps taking my spelling equipment and whipped cream."

Trent reached for an insanely thin phone from the inside of his suit’s jacket, flipping it open and beginning to tap fast with his thumbs, like an adolescent girl. "If there’s a demon wandering around, Quen should know," he muttered.

"Sorry." It was the third time I’d said it, and my gaze lingered on his mutilated hand.

"It happens around you," he added sourly, eyes on his tiny keyboard.

"You’re taking it rather well."

Trent snapped his phone closed and tucked it away, his remaining fingers curling, hiding the fact that some were missing. "If he so much as touches my girls, I will hold you responsible."

I stiffened. Taking my bag from my lap, I set it on the slate floor, leaned back in the chair, and crossed my legs to look more confident. "Al is not my responsibility," I said lightly, even as I felt a new tension begin to take hold. If he touched Ray or Lucy . . .

Pulling the other chair out, Trent sat, angled away from me but not enough to be rude. "He’s here because of you. Take responsibility."

I frowned, pulling my thoughts back from the curse I’d found to put maggots into food stocks. "Can we wait to see how bad he is before we start burning me in effigy?" I said sourly, and he cracked a smile.

Relief spilled into me, and he shifted to put the flat of an arm on the table as he looked into his garden, his mind clearly on other things as we waited. "Have you seen any more evidence of HAPA?" he asked, and I uncrossed my legs, surprised.

"Yes and no." I forced my teeth to unclench. "Glenn is quitting the FIB."

Trent’s eyes flicked to mine and held. "Really?"

I nodded. "As far as anyone knows, you took me out for coffee so I could blow off steam. I think Ivy and Jenks suspect something, since no one seems to care that Dr. Cordova is gone and I’m not hell-bent on finding HAPA, but Ivy tells me Glenn is quitting the FIB, packing up Daryl, and moving to Flagstaff where the air is cleaner." Ivy was pissed, to say the least, which made living with her difficult. Well, more difficult than usual.

"I think the-men-who-don’t-belong asked him to work with them," I whispered, and Trent’s foot stopped moving. I looked up to find him watching me with an I-told-you-so expression, and I picked at the stone table. "It’s either that, or he figured out that Dr. Cordova was a member of HAPA and he wanted out."

"Felix won’t return my calls." Trent was reaching for his phone again. "Damn," he swore softly when he changed his mind and left it where it was. "I don’t like the closed hearings they’re conducting with the three HAPA members they have, either. It smacks of the old days."

It was one of the few times I’d ever heard him swear, and it made me smile even if the news wasn’t good. "Does Ceri know what we did on our coffee date yet?" I asked, and he jerked his attention to me.

"God no." He shifted uncomfortably. "I think she suspects something, though. We’ve had cherry pie for dessert five nights in a row."

His voice drawled, and my smile deepened. We both settled back, content to wait as events shifted around us. I kind of liked having secrets with Trent, and I glanced sidelong at him in the growing darkness as snow started to fall, a soft hush on the glass ceiling. His profile was clean and young, his smile at our last words fading into a slight frown at some private thought.

He had turned Dr. Cordova into a monster, and I didn’t care. What made it so different from what Chris had done? Was it because his justice was an eye for an eye, brutal but satisfying in a horrible way? Was it because Cordova wanted to wipe out Inderland, and he was protecting it? Or maybe that I knew he’d never do anything like that to me?

Someday, you’ll thank me for that skill echoed in my mind. Don’t change because I’m a bastard quickly followed it, and I dropped my eyes, confused.

"There she is," Trent said softly, his gaze on the path as he stood. I still didn’t see anything, but a second later, I heard Ceri’s voice. Another moment, and she made a turn on the path and was there. She had both Lucy and Ray, the smaller baby, over her shoulder, looking back at Al. I stiffened and rose to my feet, even if the demon was following at an obvious ten-foot distance. He was making funny faces and turning his hair different colors to entertain the little dark-haired girl, and I didn’t like it.

"Ceri! What are you doing?" Trent exclaimed, almost panicking as he strode forward to take Ray from Ceri’s shoulder. The little girl fussed, clearly wanting to watch the funny man with the nose drooping down to his chin, waving like an elephant’s trunk.

"Relax, Trenton." Ceri shifted Lucy out of the way and gave Trent a chaste kiss on the cheek before she came to me. "The girls need to see what a demon is. They’re safe. Al wouldn’t dream of abducting them. I’d follow him into the ever-after and turn evidence on him for every shady deal he has made in the last thousand years."

Smiling at me, she touched me on the shoulder, and I stood to give her and Lucy a hug, still not sure about having the girls so close to Al. "Isn’t that right, Aunt Rachel?" Ceri said wryly as I drew back.

"Aunt Ra-a-achel?" Al drawled.

I ignored him, busy arranging Lucy’s fair hair to show off her pointed ears. "Not to mention that I will be very unhappy if he does."

Al made a rude sound, and Ray gazed at him, quiet now that she could see him. "Happy, happy," Al said sourly as he rocked to a halt when Trent pointed where he should stand, ten feet back from the table. "How did my life spiral down to making one person happy?"

Watching Al suspiciously, Trent pulled out a chair for Ceri, and she sat. "It happens when you become a parent," she said, arranging herself with small motions of grace. Her eyes went to Ray, resting in Trent’s arms, the baby fixated on Al. "Stop trying to charm her."

"But she is such a darling!" he cooed. "I think I shall take you anyway. Such beautiful hair you have."

My face went cold, and my head jerked up.

Ceri’s eyes narrowed, her aura almost flashing into the visible spectrum as she tapped a line hard enough to make my teeth ache. "Al. Leave. Now."

I tensed, but Al wasn’t moving, instead pouting like a forgotten uncle as Lucy and Ray kicked and fussed. "I didn’t mean now," he protested. "I’m not going to raise the child. I’m having enough trouble with Rachel." Smiling at Lucy, he whispered, and with a sparkling explosion of lights, two dozen tiny horses with butterfly wings burst into existence. Both Lucy and Ray squealed in delight, Lucy almost squirming off Ceri’s lap to chase them.