Ever After (The Hollows #11)(43)
Author: Kim Harrison

He shook his head, looking down at the bag of cakes. "No, it was worth giving them something positive to take away."

"Thanks."

He nodded sharply to Bis, and without another word, he headed down the hall, his thoughts already far away. Jenks hovered in my line of sight, hands on his hips and frowning. He gestured that I should escort him to the door, and I squinted, crossing my arms over my chest. "He shouldn’t be alone," the pixy grumped, darting out after his fading footsteps.

I leaned forward as he left, the new quiet seeping in. "Maybe, but he shouldn’t be with me, either," I whispered.

Even alone as he was, Trent didn’t need me at all.

Chapter Ten

I’ll be sure Belle gets it," I said, smiling at the wingless fairy standing on the wrought-iron garden table, her long white braid almost to her waist and her pale, angular features in a tight knot. Still the mistrustful, scary-looking fairy waited until I put the little packet of stitching into my shoulder bag beside her on the table. Jenks sighed, and she hissed at him, making me shiver.

Sure, she was only six inches high, but she looked like a tiny, silver-cloaked grim reaper with her raggedy clothes made from spider silk, her long fangs used to crack the shells of the insects she ate, and the bow and toxic arrows she carried to shoot me or Jenks if we did anything she didn’t like. Her butterfly-like wings were gone, burned off when she and her clan had tried to kill me and Jenks last summer, and their lack made her far more mobile even if she was stuck on the ground.

Mostly, I thought as she shot a corded arrow into the canopy and climbed the string into the surrounding greenery, taking the packet of cloth that Belle had asked me to bring to her. It had that stitching that Matalina’s daughters had taught her, the one that gave beautifully around the wings. True, the fairies in Trent’s gardens were wingless, but their children wouldn’t be. It was odd, seeing the first steps of understanding between two longtime enemy races. Jenks had come a long way.

Knowing we were being watched by a handful of lethal assassins, I leaned back into my chair and tried to look relaxed instead of uptight. Trent’s glassed-in garden felt stuffy; the propped-open door leading to the exterior gardens let in very little air. Outside, the early afternoon sun shone thinly on the largely empty spring gardens, but it was here that Trent had brought me for tea-which I thought totally weird. I’d thought that "tea" had been an excuse, something he could tell people instead of the ugly reality that he wanted me to come out so he could show me some illegal black-magic books-and maybe that’s all it was. But tea and cookies were on the table, and I was hungry . . . Besides, Ellasbeth had arrived late, and I had bowed out of going to meet her. Ellasbeth had thought I was a hooker the night we had met. Arresting Trent at their wedding probably hadn’t helped.

The cord Belle’s sister had climbed snaked upward out of sight, and Jenks sniffed, nervously adjusting his garden sword on his hip.

"I thought you were beyond that," I said, fingering my cup of cooling tea. It smelled like Earl Grey, but I could take a few sips to be social. Jenks’s comment that Trent shouldn’t be alone drifted through me.

Jenks edged to the silver tray, his steps hesitant and his unmoving wings catching the light. "I don’t know her," he said as he glanced up into the potted fig trees.

"Well, knock it off," I grumbled. "You’re making me nervous."

"I don’t know any of them," he said again. "It’s not like I trust her with my kids."

But he trusted Belle with them, I thought. Small steps could make large journeys, if admittedly very slow ones. Fidgeting, I lolled my head back to look at the plate-glass ceiling as I waited for Trent to return. Ellasbeth was an idiot. How long did it take to drive half a mile and get settled? There were three chairs here.

"I still think you should let the ever-after collapse," Jenks said, his knees up almost to his ears as he sat on the rim of the silver tray, then got up when he realized his pants weren’t as good of an insulator as he had first thought.

Frowning, I stood to look at the orchid jammed into the crook of two branches. Jenks followed me, and the brush rustled as the fairies shifted to keep him in their sights. "Earth magic will work for a while before it fades," he said, demanding my attention as he hovered between me and the orchid. "A year at least. You could take down a reality-based Ku’Sox before that. Ivy and I would help."

A spike of fear slid through me, quickly shoved down deep. I’d survived Ku’Sox by the skin of my teeth-every single time. But as I counted the new blossoms yet to open on the orchid, the thought of the end of magic rang through me with a new clarity. This was why Nick was helping the psychotic demon. An end or reduction to magic would put humans back in the driver’s seat. I couldn’t believe that Ku’Sox didn’t have a way to keep magic alive with the ever-after gone, doling it out to the highest bidder. Or maybe Dali was right and this was simply a way to get me dead and the rest of the demons kowtowing to him.

I sat back down in Trent’s chair so I could watch Jenks now fussing over the orchid and the path. "I might not be able to hear you if magic fails," I said as I took one of the gingersnaps I had brought over for Ray. "Ever think about that?"

Jenks’s eyes widened. "Tink loves a duck!" he exclaimed, his wings clattering as he carefully untwisted a stem.

The cookie snapped between my teeth. "Might be a good thing," I said, chewing.

Wing clatter dropping in pitch, Jenks slowly dusted the plant. It was nerves: he gardened, I ate. "I didn’t think about that," he said.

"This isn’t only about the demons," I said, making a face when I washed the cookie down with a swallow of that awful tea. It was tepid, and it sucked dishwater. "Having no magic would piss off the vampires, the Weres, and the witches. We’d all survive, but can you imagine? Everyone would be at a disadvantage. Everyone except the humans."

Jenks darted back to the table. "Yeah? There was magic before the ever-after."

I took another one of Trent’s fancy cookies that smelled like almonds. "The ley lines in the Arizona desert are dead. The demons killed them when they made the ever-after."

Jenks looked into the canopy when someone hissed. Hearing it, he hunkered down, trying to look meek in a butch sort of way. I snapped through my cookie, recalling how the dead lines in the Arizona desert had been unusually close together, overlapping like pickup sticks. Maybe they’d been forced together in order to make a hole in reality, ergo making the ever-after. There was something here. I just didn’t have the time to think about it.