Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(87)
Author: Kim Harrison

And, happy, he rose up, scanning his garden, assessing in an instant what had happened and darting down to make things right.

It was what he did. It was what he always did. And it was what he would always do.

Million-Dollar Baby

I like to tell people that I wrote Pale Demon to answer the question about whether anything was possible between Rachel and Trent, but when I got done with it, I found a new question had popped up. What happened between Trent and Jenks when they went off on their elf quest? It seemed the readers wanted to know as well, so here’s the answer, the fallout from which has peppered the last few Hollows novels.

ONE

Vertigo threatened, not at the sensation of disconnection spilling down through his core, but from the abrupt feel of stone under his soft-soled shoes after the nothingness of line travel. Tightening his gut muscles, Trent caught his balance as the organized chaos of the King Street train station materialized around him as if, well . . . like magic, not the well-balanced act of scientific shifting of realities that it was. Calling it magic was convenient.

The twangy echo of announced departures mixed with a myriad of conversations and one child demanding that he wanted his book no-o-o-ow! Even at five thirty in the morning, it was busy. And somewhat . . . smelly, he thought, shivering at the final ribbons of power sliding off him to vanish like water into sand, or in this case, creation energy slipping through the molecule-thin cracks in the colorful mosaic now under him. The station had the distinctive tang of old mold growing on marble as a faint backdrop. Seattle never seemed to dry out. He didn’t know how Ellasbeth tolerated it. Perhaps her nose was stuck so far up in the air that she didn’t notice.

"Hey, you moss wipe! We haven’t said good-bye yet!" A high voice shrilled inches from his ear. Wincing, Trent glanced past the pixy’s fitfully moving wings to the attractive shadow of five-foot-eight inches of bothersome redhead vanishing from his elbow. Rachel Morgan was gone-never having fully materialized. Just as well. Her surreptitious ogling made him self-conscious. Then again, she’d never seen him in skintight spandex before.

"Seems she has pressing business elsewhere." Smiling faintly, Trent looked down at the elaborate compass rose the demon Algaliarept had dropped them on, then squinted up to the marvelously tooled ceiling. He would sooner suffer great loss than owe a demon a favor, but since Rachel was paying for the jump, he’d take it: eight hundred miles between San Francisco to Seattle in a blink of an eye. Technically speaking, owing Rachel a favor was the same thing as owing a demon, not that she truly understood that-yet.

Head coming down in a flash of guilt, Trent moved off the compass rose and into the flow of people. Rachel would never understand there was only one way to save her life and keep her out of the ever-after. But what did it matter, really? She didn’t have to like him. He didn’t like the decisions he made, either.

"I’m becoming my father," he whispered, an unexpected flash of anger coloring his thoughts. Just how much was he going to be asked to sacrifice for his people? His morals? His integrity? Even so, he was ready to give it, and watching Ellasbeth selfishly walk away from her responsibility had more than angered him. It wasn’t her selfishness that kept him awake at night, though-it was his undeniable envy of her cowardly decision to walk. He did not like the person he needed to be to pull his people back from the brink of extinction.

The faint hum of Jenks’s wings faded as the pixy came to an unfelt landing on his shoulder. Rachel’s business partner and backup was on loan to him for the duration. "Dude, look at those ceilings," the pixy said, then snickered. "Hey, I, ah, get the whole thief outfit thing you were going for, but you’d be more inconspicuous in a suit. I’ll be right back. The Withons would be more stupid than a winter-born pixy to not have a man here. I’ll ferret him out."

Trent took a breath to tell him not to bother, but the pixy was gone, his dragonfly-like wings glinting in the faint light coming in the high round windows. "A man in a suit is exactly who they’re looking for," he muttered. Pace stiff, he angled to a billboard advertising the latest computer system where his black tights and shirt would be less conspicuous. The specially tailored guise was perfect. In the right setting, he would look like a cyclist, a diver, or a thief, though what he was after was worth far more than a bauble or money.

His eye twitched, and Trent rubbed his chin. There was a high probability that thieving from the Withons’ family estate would cost him his life, but his people wouldn’t listen to him if he didn’t. Trent’s eyes closed in a long, soul-searching blink. If he survived, his species would survive-but he might damn his soul in the process. Perhaps it would be better to die.

High above him, the clock tower chimed the half hour. It had begun. Trent stifled a pang of angst, scanning the station as he walked. Reaching the wall, he leaned back against the billboard. His stomach began to knot. Before him, people in suits with briefcases and families in jeans with pull-behind suitcases crisscrossed in tired distraction. Attendants with little hats instead of winged pins directed people, and they seemed to smile more than their airplane counterparts. Jenks was right. He didn’t fit in. Where the hell was his contact? His window was small, his timetable tight. The stress of hitting the mark on a short-note was not unfamiliar, but this was the first time his life depended upon it.

But then a slim man in tight-fitting racing spandex came in the King Street entrance, a biking helmet under one arm, a package under the other-right on time. Exhaling, Trent pushed off from the billboard, taking a longer, circular route that would keep him out of the main floor space. True, he was wearing black tights while surrounded by suits and casual clothes, but in a moment, no one would see him at all.

He heard Jenks before he saw him. "We got trouble," the pixy said, hovering backward as Trent continued to walk. "Sniper on the balcony. Don’t look up!" he shouted when Trent’s head shifted. "He spotted you already. You keep going on this line, and he’ll have a good shot in about twenty paces. I told you you were a sore thumb."

"Thank you." The words came out of his mouth with a terse quickness, and he made a quick right through an open archway and into the men’s room. Tall ceilings and inlaid floors did little to disguise the room’s purpose even if the doors on the stalls were mahogany. The attendant with his jar of breath mints, cologne, and wolfsbane never looked up as Trent washed his hands as he thought. Most of his thief tools were in the package with the man in the bike suit.

Looking up, he was startled by the sight of Jenks sitting on his shoulder. If I have a pixy, I should use him. "My contact is in the bike suit at the west entrance," he said, his lips barely moving as his eyes met Jenks’s through the mirror.