Ever After (The Hollows #11)(66)
Author: Kim Harrison

"I will," I said, then started when Trent turned on a quick heel and headed for the hall. "Hey, what about your doughnuts?"

"You can have them," he said, already halfway to the sanctuary. "I’m not hungry."

At a loss, I glanced at Jenks, and he shrugged. Jolted into motion, I followed Trent, having to wave the pixy dust from Jenks’s excited kids out of my way. "Trent, wait," I said, finally catching up with him at the door. "Thank you," I said, breathless when I almost ran into him when he turned at the old twin doors. "I think we can do this now."

Standing there in the dim glow of the light over the pool table, he hesitated. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

Hands in his pockets, Trent looked totally unlike himself. "What would you have done with Dr. Farin?"

My smile faded. "Your geneticist? The one you killed?"

He nodded, opening the door to let a chill spring night breeze eddy about my ankles. "Now that you know everything, what hung in the balance, what was at stake-how would you have stopped him from going to the press and bringing about the end of everything that you’d spent your life trying to save? Life imprisonment such as a demon demands? Bribe him with even greater wealth, knowing you’d forever be his slave? Or would you end it cleanly, kill one greedy man to save thousands, maybe millions, from suffering?"

My mouth was dry, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. "I don’t know," I finally said, and he nodded, deep in thought.

"That’s a fair answer," he said lightly. "I’d wondered if you’d given any thought to the decisions I make and the possible reasons why."

I stared at him, thoughts racing through me. I didn’t . . . I didn’t know what to think anymore.

His expression blanked, and my sadness began to creep back. I knew where his thoughts had gone. "I’m sorry about Bis," he said. "I know it hurts."

And yet I managed to smile. He did know. He knew the guilt, the panic, and the strength it took to focus that energy on finding a way out. "Thank you," I said, refusing to cry in front of him again. He smelled like rain and leather over the scent of his aftershave, and my throat tightened and my vision threatened to swim again. "I’m sorry about Ceri and Lucy. I don’t know how you can keep moving forward."

His eyes rose from my burned hand, and he unexpectedly tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, shocking me. "You were the one who taught me any chance is viable. If I didn’t believe that, I would be a total wreck. I know how it hurts. Forgive me for my choices, maybe?"

Was he going to try to kiss me? I didn’t know how I felt about that anymore. "I did that a long time ago."

Eyes holding an unreadable emotion, he hesitated, his attention running over my snarly hair. "Down, I think," he whispered, and making a sharp nod, he turned away.

I backed up, shoulder knocking the door frame as I misjudged and stumbled inside. Embarrassed, I shut the door before he found the sidewalk, but I watched him get into his car from one of the sanctuary’s windows, his form blurry and wavy. Jenks’s wings were a familiar brush of sound as he landed on my shoulder, and together we watched Trent’s car lights flicker to life.

"What did he mean by that?" I said, feeling alone even as I could still smell him in my church.

Jenks’s wings shifted fitfully. "I don’t know."

Trent drove away, and I tried to look at Jenks on my shoulder, failing. "You called him," I accused. "You asked him to come over."

Red dust pooled down my front. "He was coming in to Cincy to talk to his lawyer," the pixy hedged. "I called him, yeah. I thought he might be able to help. It worked, didn’t it? You’re thinking again, right?"

I turned back to the window, staring out at the night-emptied street. "Uh-huh."

"With Ivy gone, you needed someone to ground you, Rache, and I’m not big enough to slap you."

I thought back to my frantic, useless state. He was right. "Sorry."

"Don’t worry about it. Feel better?"

I put my burned hand on the window, the cool blood-red glass soothing my fingertips. Slowly I nodded. Trent had grounded me. How about that?

"The hot chocolate and doughnuts were his idea, though," Jenks said, then darted off to tend his children.

Chapter Fifteen

The faint ringing of the phone vibrated against the inside of my skull, and though I tried to incorporate the sound into my dreams of tiny purple hallways and black doors the size of acorns, it pushed itself into my conscious thought, shoving me awake.

The phone is ringing.

Eyes open, I stared at my clock glowing a steady 7:47. "Are you kidding me?" I whispered, and I rolled over on my stomach and put the pillow over my head. I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours and wasn’t planning on getting up until noon.

I’d gone to bed late, not sleeping well with my dreams of shrinking rooms and being crushed in that singularity that Al had been trapped in making my sleep restless. That the sun was up seemed an insult, the bright rays making it past my curtain. Jenks would get the phone. It wouldn’t be for me, anyway. No one hired a demon, and not at seven freaking forty-seven in the morning.

I sighed in relief as the phone finally quit. Then it started again. I groaned, wishing it would go away.

"Ra-a-a-ache!" Jenks’s voice scraped along every nerve I had, and I propped myself up on my elbows.

"What!" I shouted, all the way awake now.

"My kids found Wayde’s glue. I’m unsticking Rex’s whiskers. Will you get that?"

"Are you serious?" I exclaimed.

"You want to hold the cat instead?"

I threw my pillow to the floor. Grumbling, I swung my feet down, jerking them back from the cold. "It’s not even eight yet," I muttered, trying and failing to get my hair to lie flat as I looked in my dresser mirror. No, I didn’t want to hold a hysterical cat who had had her whiskers glued together. God! I’d be happy when Ivy got home.

I reached for my blue terrycloth robe and jammed my arms in the sleeves. I couldn’t find the slipper the pixies had been playing with yesterday, and staggering down the hall with a scuff-pad, scuff-pad, I tied my robe shut, ready to ream out the magazine salesman who was likely trying to work his way around our answering machine. Everyone important had my cell-phone number. If it was an emergency, they’d call me there.

I squinted in the brighter light in the kitchen, feeling ill from the lack of sleep. Trent’s stack of books sat waiting. There wasn’t a single pixy anywhere, and I wondered if Jenks had finally gotten them all out in the garden. It was spookily quiet.