Ever After (The Hollows #11)(51)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Relax, Jenks." I took Trent’s hand and turned it palm up so I could gently pry his fingers open. "You’re not going." My eyes met Trent’s, and I took the rings. "You either."

Trent’s expression cascaded through about six different emotions, all finally vanishing under a cold calm. "I am a part of this," he warned me.

"Obviously," I said as I backed up out of his easy reach. He was still wearing the matching pinkie ring, and something in me felt like it was a victory. "I’ll get the rings working, not you. I know you. You’ll get over there, and you’ll do something noble and throw everything off plan."

"I will not!"

"You will!" I affirmed. "Besides, if I’m over there slumming in the mall looking for Pierce, everyone will think I’m taking care of Al. If you’re there, it will be noticed."

Looking as if he were eating slugs, Trent dropped his head, making his bangs fall into his eyes. He knew I was right, and it was killing him.

"Those are my rings and my door," Trent said, his head coming up and holding his hand out. "I’m going."

Chin high, I refused to back up-but my hand was in a tight fist, hiding them. I had a fleeting memory of having done something like this before involving a key and the counselor’s locked office. "It’s my old boyfriend, so you stay. I’ll get the rings working, and then we can go out to the line and see what we can do. Deal?"

"Ah, Sa’han?" Quen interrupted.

At the we, Trent’s entire mien shifted from frustration to sour acceptance. Backing off, he licked his thumb and held it out, a challenging slant to his expression. My heart pounded. "Deal," he said, and I licked my thumb and we pressed them together.

Quen hunched into himself in disgust. Jenks was on his shoulder shedding a weird purple dust, but I was ecstatic. "You won’t follow me," I insisted, and Trent looked up from under his bangs again, making my heart stop with his half smile.

"I just thumb promised, didn’t I?"

Yes, he had thumb promised, and that he wouldn’t dare break. Or I’d throw him down the camp well and leave him there for three days.

Chapter Twelve

The last time I’d been in the room outside of Trent’s vault, I’d been stealing that elven threesome statue Jenks was so enamored of to gain Trent’s undivided attention. The outer chamber hadn’t changed, the air still flat and unmoving, the floors and walls bare with no furniture. I stared at the blank wall, Jenks on my shoulder and Trent beside me. Quen was down the hall turning on Trent’s magnetic imaging device. It would shift the ley line running through Trent’s compound down into the earth. More proof that the ley lines functioned as magnets on some level.

Once the line was out of its natural course, I could enter the ever-after not through the surface, which not only sucked dishwater but had no direct access to the demon realm, but right into their underground mall. From there I could buy a jump to Newt’s rooms. If she was there, we’d have a chat and I’d borrow Pierce for a few hours. If she wasn’t, then I’d save myself a few bucks and talk to Pierce with her none the wiser. I was hoping for the latter.

"There it goes," Trent said softly, staring at the wall as if it were a big-screen TV, and feeling a sudden hiccup in my balance, I unfocused my attention and brought my second sight up. Sure enough, the red smear of a ley line now ran through the room at chest height, right before and through the blank wall. It would be an easy matter to step into it, will myself across, and be safe underground. Trent’s father, Kal, had used the ley line as a way to have a temporary door to a doorless vault, accessible when the magnetic resonator was on, and completely impossible to enter when the machine was switched off. It had been off for almost a year now, since Nick and I had burgled the vault behind the wall. I agreed with Trent that having a vault full of precious artifacts where any demon could see them using his second sight was a bad idea, but then again, Trent’s dad might have been using the room for another reason.

Nervous, I wiped my hands on my pants and turned to Trent, startled at his aura. It wavered over him like a gold sheet, like he was on fire. The slash of red through it hadn’t grown, but there was a new hint of black to it that I thought might be the first visible signs of smut. The room with the resonator was fairly close. We had a few minutes until Quen rejoined us.

"Is an hour enough?" Trent asked, calm as ever as he looked at his watch, but I could see by a flicker of darker gold aura that he was nervous. I wasn’t leaving until Quen was here to keep him from following me.

"You want to make it two?" I countered, not sure how long this might take.

Jenks flew from my shoulder, his rainbowlike aura trailing him. "How about five minutes?" he said tightly, and I pleaded with my eyes for him not to make a stink. It was daylight, and pixies couldn’t stay in the ever-after when the sun was up, same as demons couldn’t stay in reality.

"I’ll have a better chance of success if I go alone," I said, then craned my neck to look through the low ceiling at the banners and dappled light patterns that the demons decorated their mall with. It was early yet, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic, just a few harried familiars and disgruntled demons who’d been pressed into service to clear a debt. I thought I could hear ’80s music being piped in, echoing against the flat places. It was weird standing so far underground and feeling as if you were outside, but the demons had had thousands of years to build their pretend.

Trent eyed me askance-making me wonder if he was checking out my aura for smut-then fixed his gaze firmly ahead to the shop sign visible through the wall, THE COFFEE VAULT. Someone had a sense of humor.

"We can turn the magnet on at fifteen-minute intervals," Trent said; then we both turned at a scuff at the door.

"Sa’han," Quen protested, out of breath but clearly having heard him. "The risk . . ."

Trent’s pleasant expression never changed. "We can turn the magnet on at fifteen-minute intervals," he said again, and Quen nodded reluctantly. Satisfied, Trent turned to the humming ley line.

The sour whine to the ley lines throughout Cincinnati was getting worse. Seeming to hear it as well, Jenks hovered before the line, hands on his hips and glaring at an oblivious man behind the coffeehouse windows. There was no reason for the familiar to be using his second sight, and unless he did, we would be invisible.

I stepped forward, dipping a hand through the line and deciding it felt okay even if it sounded bad, the flow even and smooth. Perhaps Trent’s dad had had a deeper relationship with demonkind than Trent wanted to admit. Being able to step through a ley line and into the demon mall and coffee shop was a little too convenient-even if it was going to save both our asses.