A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(80)
Author: Kim Harrison

The missing fingers of his right hand were obvious, and I was embarrassed that he’d lost them while saving me. Ray left me with a wiggle and a baby complaint, the absence of her weight giving me more of a feeling of loss than I would’ve expected. From nowhere the memory of our kiss, and then the feel of Trent’s arms around me last night, layered itself over my thoughts. He was still a bachelor despite the two babies he shared his upstairs rooms with, but clearly he and Ceri were finding common ground. I didn’t have any romantic feelings for Trent, but I’d hated him for a long time, and that kiss . . . even if it had been to invoke a spell that saved my life, had been very nice. I was still chalking my enthusiasm-of-the-moment up to having been trapped with him in a car for three days. Not to mention having seen him in a towel and shower-wet skin. I was only human, after all. Well, not really, but the thought was there.

Damn it, I was mentally babbling.

Grimacing, I forced away the memory of what Trent’s hair felt like in my fingers and the feel of his lips on mine, pretty sure I knew why he was avoiding my eyes as well. Lucy babbled loudly until he leaned over to tousle her hair, whereupon she kicked her legs and squirmed until Ceri distracted her with that book of bright squares again. Ray snuggled deeper into Trent’s lap, content when he whispered something elvish.

Seeing them together like this was a picture of domesticity and peace I knew I’d never have, and I squashed the rising jealousy. If anyone deserved this, it was Ceri.

"You’re looking better," Trent said, his free hand taking the book Lucy was waving and gentling it before her, his long fingers moving the pages as if it were a song.

"Thank you for that," I said, and Jenks buzzed his wings in agreement. "For taking the bullet out and not making me go to the hospital, for coming out with Jenks to find me."

"Yeah," the pixy said, now sitting on Winona’s shoulder. "The FIB and the I.S. couldn’t find their ass in a windstorm."

Winona started, and I glanced at the little girls. Who knew what they were taking in?

Oblivious, Jenks waxed eloquently, "The dumbasses had all their people looking in the wrong places. Glenn was pissed. He wanted to expand the search, and the director wouldn’t let him. That’s when I called Trent and found out he had a better way to find you, if the fairy farts would listen to him. It was a good thing I went with him, seeing that he almost killed you."

"Jenks . . ." I pleaded, and when he looked at me, I tossed my head to Lucy, listening in rapt attention to the new vocabulary.

"Oh, sorry," he said, his wings flashing a bright red.

Trent turned a page in the book, and Lucy patted a black horse prancing on a green field until Trent murmured a word I didn’t understand, his voice more musical than before. My shoulders slumped, remembering his voice rising and falling in the car on the way here, soothing and concerned as he talked with Winona, but laced with guilt for having hit me with his worst.

His eyes rising to mine, Trent’s expression became hard. "How much did they get?"

Blinking, I stared. How much what? Then I figured it out, and my gut tightened. He meant how much of my demon-curse-invoking blood did they get.

The silence stretched, and with a small sigh, Ceri handed Lucy to Winona, rising as she said, "I’ll make some tea. Winona, can you help me settle the girls down for their naps? Jenks, I’d like a word with you concerning your vocabulary around my daughters."

Jenks let slip a burst of embarrassed red dust, then meekly followed Ceri into the kitchen as Winona stood with Lucy, looking like a demonic teacher/nursemaid as she literally trotted into one of the four rooms that opened up onto the main common room, taking the stairs out of the lowered living room pit with practiced ease. Lucy was still waving that book, babbling as she craned her neck to see Trent, her tiny features starting to twist up into dismay.

Frustration warred with anger, and I tried to keep my expression pleasant as Ray sat cradled in Trent’s lap, silently, and perhaps smugly, watching Lucy being carted out. "They’re sweet kids," I said, then shifted my eyes to Trent. "You’ve already had them on a horse, right?"

Trent smiled, turning from successful drug lord and city power to proud father. "More than once." Standing, he handed Ray to Winona as the woman came back out.

From the nursery, a loud complaint was gaining strength. Ceri was "chatting" with Jenks in the kitchen, the pixy sitting miserably on the coffeepot, a gray dust sifting from his drooped wings, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable facing Trent, a world of questions between us. There hadn’t been much time when I’d come in between getting cleaned up and put back together.

"How did you find me?" I said as Trent simultaneously asked again, "How much did they get?"

I winced, and Trent sat down across from me, insisting, "Me first."

Pushing back into the cushions, I glanced into the nursery as Winona sang to distract the girls. Everyone I cared about was in danger because I’d let a power-hungry human hate group get my blood. I’d learned the catch-22 of being a demon too late. "Too much," I said, then met Trent’s eyes in time to see his flash of worry. "They had ten cc’s last night. There’s a faction in HAPA that wants to use magic to eradicate us. As soon as they find that enzyme that suppresses the Rosewood enzyme, they’re going to synthesize it and . . ." Words failed me, and I looked down. Trent knew what they would do – the same thing the elves had tried to do to the demons only to end up on the verge of extinction themselves.

"They know how to store it, too," I said softly. "It’s going to last a good four days."

"I thought they might," Trent said, his beautiful voice going soft. "I have something I want to show you downstairs."

"Now?" I blurted out, and Ceri broke off from her harangue in the kitchen long enough to clear her throat in rebuke.

Trent shifted, the fabric of his shirt making a soft hush of sound as he smiled at her, accepting, tolerant, and in acknowledgment that she was right and he was being rude by taking me downstairs before I’d even had a cup of coffee. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of relationship theirs was evolving into. Ceri loved Quen, but she let the press believe she was Trent’s lover because it was the political thing to do. Trent clearly loved both girls as if they were his own, but I was willing to bet Quen had a lot of say in Ray’s upbringing.

Ceri had been raised with the idea that you could love one man and be politically attached to another, so a formal marriage between Trent and Ceri might be in the future, but I knew she’d never share his bed. Regardless, they clearly functioned with a great deal of parental unity. It was weird, but it worked, and this show of dry humor at his own expense was a good sign that they were getting along on something other than a professional level.