A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(94)
Author: Kim Harrison

I reached out, but Trent was faster, snatching it before I could. "She’s not signing anything until my people look at it."

I was going to fall down if we didn’t finish this soon. My feet were soggy, hidden by the dry grass, and I reached for the pen stuck in Trent’s pocket, making him blink in surprise. "Why?" I said, taking the paper from him as Al smiled. "If it’s not what I agreed to, I will burn Al’s gonads off the first chance I get. Turn around. I need to use your back for a second."

"Ah, hold on a tick," Al said, snapping his fingers again and catching the new paper drifting down. "How silly of me. This is the one. Here."

I crumpled the first and dropped it. Al burst it into a quick flame that vanished before it could reach the dry grass, ashes melting into the gritty wind. "Mmm-hmm," I said, satisfied, as I slapped the paper on Trent’s back and signed my name. Al would need it to get at my funds, and apparently there was a lot there if he wanted physical proof of our agreement.

The demon was smiling as Trent stood and I handed the signed paper across him. Al was standing a bare three feet away, his mood almost jovial as he took the paper and it vanished in a wash of black sparkles. "Thank you, Rachel," he said, carefully reaching for my hand as Trent stiffened. "Welcome back, my itchy witch."

I couldn’t help my smile, feeling a wash of energy flowing from him to me as he kissed the top of my hand in an overdone show of flair. Trent was glowering, clearly unhappy, as he stood within yanking distance while Al flirted. I was ready to cry in relief. I was back, alive, with the line in me and on good terms with my teacher. Somehow we had done it.

"Bye, Al," I said as he eyed me from over his glasses.

"If I ever see you in sweats again, I swear by Bartholomew’s balls I will flay you." Al dropped my hand. His smile faded as he looked at Trent, and then he was gone, the grass he had displaced whispering back into place.

I took a deep breath, exhaling the gritty wind and feeling my feet go cold. I’d done it. No, we’d done it.

"Signing an unread contract with a demon wasn’t very smart," Trent said, and I dropped my second sight. The hum of the line fell to nothing in me as I dropped it, too, but I could feel it just within my reach, easing my headache away with the heartbeat of creation.

Reality superimposed itself over the red-sheened ever-after. My hair settled, and I looked at the ruin of Trent’s office. Smiling, I walked over to the desk to see how much of that coffee was left. "Oh, I beg to differ," I said smugly, dropping my crutch on the rolling chair in passing.

He looked mad, but I was in a great mood even if I had one hell of a night facing me.

"My office is trashed," he grumped as he squished across his damp carpet and took the coffee that I was holding out to him. "Why are you smiling? My fish are dead."

"Because Al and I are okay," I said, taking a sip from my cup and musing silently over the rim of it. "And that’s important to me. But I’m sorry about the fish."

"You think that was okay?"

I sat back against Trent’s desk, trying to look sexy in sweats. "Yup. Al fixed my leg." I smacked it to prove my point, and it made a dull thwack of sound. "He could have taken me any time he wanted, but he listened." I’d known it from the start but Trent wouldn’t have believed me. "I told you not to do anything. That show you put on for him told him one thing, and one thing only."

Trent looked up, his eyes running from my dangling foot, up my curves, and finally to my face. "What’s that?"

I smiled, taking a sip. "You’re willing to risk death to help me."

Trent’s eye twitched as he thought it over, realizing what he must have looked like to the demon. "Your hair is a tangled mess."

"Is it?" I couldn’t stop smiling, my relief buoying me up. "You have ever-after dust all over your face." I slid from his desk, feeling frumpy in my black sweats but bursting with success. "Right here," I said as I set the coffee down on the low table beside him, leaning over him and brushing my thumb under his eye.

Trent jerked, his hand reaching up to grip my wrist.

"What are you doing?" he said, and I hesitated, not knowing.

We both turned as muttering voices grew loud outside the door, and the snick of a key sounded.

"Sa’han!" Quen said as he pushed open the door, stopping dead in his tracks as his feet squished into the soggy carpet and he saw the broken video screen and the busted fish tank. Behind him was David. Both men were looking at us, and Trent let go of my wrist. Slowly I straightened, confused. What was I doing?

"Ah, thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you," I said as I dropped back, my feet damp and my enthusiasm fading.

What in hell was I doing, indeed?

Chapter Twenty

The foyer was dark, seeing that it still had no lights or windows, and I smiled blandly at David as I almost pushed him out the door, my band of defunct silver making a dull bump in my pocket. He’d been reluctant to leave since bringing me back from Trent’s, and though having a self-assured, handsome man in the church was always a pleasure, I was just about at my wit’s end trying to get my curses made with him hanging around sneaking glances at my recipes. I kept telling him everything was okay, but he knew it wasn’t, even if a zing of excitement ran through me every time I reached for a ley line and found it waiting for me.

I’d known that breaking Trent’s charm wasn’t the magic pill that would make everything better, and indeed, now that the excitement had worn off, I found myself dealing with a moody vampire who was worried about keeping Nina out of jail, and Wayde sulking in his room because I’d gotten snagged a hundred feet from him. At least Jenks had forgiven me for having broken Trent’s charm without him. And I still didn’t know why I had touched Trent so . . . familiarly.

But what was bothering me the most was the demon texts open on my kitchen counter, making me wonder what I might have to do to keep my promise to myself. Was it okay to use a demon curse to catch a person committing a horrendous crime? What if the curse looked benign? Was using "dead-man’s-toe" morally okay if the man’s relatives had knowingly sold him for parts? Was it okay if they hadn’t, but using it would keep a sick wacko organization from making more tragedies such as Winona? I didn’t know, and I was too tired to figure it out. No wonder Trent always looked stressed under his facade of cool. Finding effective curses that didn’t violate my moral code was getting harder, but I wasn’t going to succumb to fast, easy, cheap, morally wrong magic. I was a demon, but I was not demonic.