Ever After (The Hollows #11)(68)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Rache?" Jenks said, coming to rest on a bedpost as I tugged on a pair of jeans, my nightgown riding up.

My heart was pounding. It was almost eight. He’d only been there a couple of hours. Maybe it wasn’t too late. "Turn your back, or I’ll ask Belle where you sleep."

Wings shifting tone, the pixy spun away. "Rache, I can’t be in the ever-after after sunup."

His voice was scared, and shocked, I slowed as I pulled my nightgown over my head, snagging my hair. "I’m not going into the ever-after," I said, then covered myself when he almost turned back around.

"You’re not?"

The cotton shirt rubbed my nose as I yanked it over my head. I couldn’t help a faint smile at the amazement in his voice. "You think I’m crazy?" I said as I stuffed the shirt behind my jeans, then dropped to my knees to find my boots under my bed. "Ku’Sox is psychotic."

"Then what are you doing?" Jenks flew down to light the underside of my bed. Stretching, I snagged my boots and dragged them out. "You want me to call Felix? Bring the I.S. in on this?"

I sat on the floor of my room and tugged my boots on over my bare feet. "No I.S.," I said as I got the second boot on and looked at Jenks, my stomach empty and hurting. "But I am going to snatch that idiot out of the ever-after. If I’m lucky, he’ll be with Lucy and Ceri, and we’ll have them both." Maybe that is his plan.

The pixy’s wings took on a bright silver hue. "Thank Tink’s little pink-ah, rosebuds," he said in relief as I stood and reached for my door handle. "I thought you were going after Ku’Sox."

"Not this time."

My boots clunked on the hard wooden floor. I was not stupid, but I was angry. Trent had gone off without me. Right after we had a plan all worked out. Maybe the books were to distract me.

"She’s not running off!" Jenks said brightly as he zipped into the kitchen ahead of me, and Belle turned from the kitchen window, her expression shocked.

"She’s-s-s-s not?" she said, and I made a face at both of them.

"Good God, you think I’m stupid?" I said, then frowned when neither of them said a word. "Why should I go to the ever-after when all I want is Trent?" I said, holding up my hand so the light caught my pinkie ring.

"Hot piss on a toadstool!" Jenks exclaimed, and Belle waved at his orange sparkles in annoyance. "I forgot about that. You think it will work?"

My feet felt funny in my boots without socks between me and the leather, and I tapped a toe on the center counter’s footplate. "Can’t hurt to try." If it didn’t work, I might try Newt. My gaze became distant as I remembered being bloody and beaten under Cincy’s streets and using the ring to jump me out and finding it jumped the other person in. It hadn’t been exactly what I had wanted, but that’s the way wild elf magic worked.

It had better work again, I thought as I looked down at it, my knees feeling funny as I recalled the words to invoke the charm. Ta na shay. I needed to find out what that meant.

I took a breath. Grown-up decisions, I thought, thinking that Ivy would be proud of me. "One seriously angry elf, coming up!" I said, tapping the line out back and spinning the ring on my finger. "Ta na shay!"

But then my breath came in with a gasp as the ley line in the back reached out and yanked me into it.

"No!" I shouted, the last thing I saw before the line took me completely being Belle’s and Jenks’s shocked expressions as I vanished from my kitchen.

Chapter Sixteen

Wild elven magic coursed through my mind, electricity tasting of wine and music sparkling to my fingertips. The usual welcoming hum was a screeching din, and my stomach gave a heave when a wave of dizziness hit me, evidence of an unbalanced line. I was in a freaking ley line! Bring Trent to me! I wailed, promising the goddess that Trent didn’t believe in everything and anything.

He needs you more than you need him tinkled through me, alien and wild, and I was shoved out of the line.

Arms flailing, I skidded on a white tiled floor. It shimmered under a cold electric light, and my nose wrinkled at the bitter bite of brimstone mixed with the acidic stench of burnt amber. I stood from my crouch, turning from the bank of electronic equipment and lab benches lining both the three sides and a short peninsula of the room to look behind me toward the muffled sound of crying babies. A glass wall stretched from waist height to the ceiling, showing what looked like a hospital nursery, complete with rolling bassinets and young women in uniforms tending them. There was no door. The women looked okay, and I wondered if they knew where they were or if they were borrowed familiars.

"Trent?" I whispered, glad that Ku’Sox hadn’t felt me arrive. He had to be here somewhere. Stupid rings. I hated wild magic. It wasn’t that there were no rules. I just didn’t understand them.

My heart pounded when the familiar sound of a pen hitting the floor and a chair rolling joined the humming of machinery and Trent rolled backward out from behind the peninsula of shoulder-high machines. Shocked, he stared at me.

He was haggard, wearing a lab coat over his expensive slacks and linen pinstripe shirt as if it was a uniform. His usual tie was absent. Red-rimmed and haunted, his eyes blinked numbly at me. His hair was mussed, and his posture as he sat in that chair gave the impression of his insides caving in. He looked as if he’d been gone a year, not four hours. "What are you doing here?" he rasped, the music entirely gone from his voice. "Are you crazy?"

He needs you more than you need him echoed in my memory. "Maybe." I held up my hand with the pinkie ring on it. "I’m trying to get your ass back to reality. I thought we had some sort of understanding." Understanding. That wasn’t like an agreement-which had definite expectations. Understanding was more nebulous, more dangerous. What was I doing, trusting Trent with an understanding?

His expression cleared somewhat, and Trent frowned. "I’m not leaving." He stood, so fast that his chair rolled backward. Lab coat furling, he scooped up his dropped pen, proving he could do businessman, playboy, and lab rat equally well. "You need to leave," he said as he jotted something into a lab book. "Go. Now. Before Ku’Sox finds you."

Go? Now? I wasn’t a dog, but seeing as I had no easy way of leaving other than Jenks summoning me back, I crossed my arms and stared at him. Ku’Sox wouldn’t know I was here unless he walked in the door or I tapped a line. My eyes went over the assembled machinery, all humming and clicking. Obviously he and Ku’Sox had come to some understanding. Damn it, I thought we had a plan. Must be the cost analysis had finally tipped the scales.