Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(90)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Lucy?" Jenks said, not breathing hard at all as he caught up. "You named her Lucy? The elven golden child is named Lucy?"

Trent squinted at the pixy, the wind pulling Jenks’s dust away almost as fast as it fell from his wings. "It’s a family name," he said coolly. Ellasbeth’s family name. He would’ve named her something grander. Lucinda, Lucianna, or Lucile, perhaps. What am I going to do with a baby?

Again the pixy laughed, and Trent made a quick right turn, Jenks’s chiming voice going faint as he missed it. "Oh. My. God!" Jenks said as he caught up, landing on the bar between the handles and folding his wings to avoid wind damage. "Rachel is going to crap her panties when she finds out you’re a daddy! Trent, you dog!"

They were getting close to the waterfront, the traffic easing slightly in the largely tourist area. The bike hummed up through him, and he turned sharply to avoid a cobbled street. Jenks wasn’t laughing nearly as much as he thought he would. "You can understand why I didn’t tell her," he muttered, and Jenks lost his mirth.

"No, not really." One hand holding his wings tight to his body, Jenks turned to look behind him at their forward progress. "Rachel makes enough mistakes in one week to fill a twenty-yard dump truck."

"Lucy wasn’t a mistake," Trent said hotly.

They were among the darker shade of large buildings, and Trent watched Jenks shiver. "Sorry, sorry," he said, holding up a hand in protest. "You don’t give Rachel enough credit. She won’t think twice about it." He hesitated, looking up at the towers. "Once it sinks in. You really have a kid? For realsies?"

There was an unexpected relief at Jenks’s reaction, and it bothered him. What did he care what a pixy thought-even if that pixy had Rachel’s ear?

Distracted, he adjusted the rearview mirror attached to the handlebars, and Jenks cleared his throat. "No one is following you," he said, taking to the air as they paused at a stop sign for five eager tourists to cross. "Why do you think I’ve been sitting with my back to the wind?"

"Thank you." Trent pushed himself back into motion, and Jenks landed next to his ear. The streets were all downhill, and Trent was starting to see other cyclists with logos and colorful patterns on their tights. His pulse hammered, responding to his tension, not the road.

"But you gotta tell me what the plan is," Jenks prompted. "I get the black-jumpsuit-biker thing. It was a good idea. Beaning the next guy through the bathroom doorway wasn’t. What are you going to do? Pose as a delivery guy? I bet I could find a better way in."

Trent nodded to an unknown biker across the street in colorful racing spandex. He was at least five inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than Trent. "I’ve got a way," he said cagily.

"What the hell is it!" Jenks almost exploded, and Trent winced as his words seemed to go right through his head. "God, Trent, I’m trying to help you, and you act as if I’m looking to screw you over. How about a little trust!"

He trusted people. He trusted quite a few, and quite a few had "screwed him over" as Jenks put it. The difference was that when people betrayed him, sometimes other people died. And then other people thought it was his fault. He was tired of it. Everything he had was at risk for the next four hours. Quen said he was not his father, but he was doing the same damning things. How can a child love a murderer? The Goddess help him, they had to come out of the closet if only so he could stop killing people.

Frustrated, Trent pulled into a tiny alley. Jenks darted from his shoulder as the bike pivoted in a tight circle to face the opening. His eyes came up to find Jenks waiting, hands on his hips, a frown on his face . . . and hope in his eyes as he hovered. It was the last that did it, and Trent took a deep breath. It was almost harder to trust Rachel’s partners than it was to trust her.

"Well?" Jenks prompted as three bikers whizzed by the mouth of the alley.

Propping the bike against a wall, Trent removed the saddlebag, setting the box with his equipment aside before throwing the empty bag into a Dumpster. "There’s a bike race at Pike Place Market," Trent said, and Jenks waved a hand in a tiny circle as if to say get on with it. "The course runs to within half a mile of the Withons’ front door, a quarter mile off from a secondary entrance that will be lightly guarded, if at all."

Wings humming, Jenks watched Trent tear open the box and stuff its contents in his belt pack. There wasn’t much: a short utility knife, two hundred yards of thin prototype cord with a fastener clip, harness, baby sling, collapsed float, tire repair kit, wad of explosive gum and fuse wire, a pen flashlight, lighter, and a handful of elven sleep charms. Earth magic wasn’t reliable this close to the ocean, but bringing the charms had seemed prudent even if it took several to work.

"They’ll be watching the race," Jenks said, hovering with his feet inches over the emptying box, and Trent nodded.

"I expect the Withons will have a few men in it, as do I." A flash of easily repressed anxiety passed through him as he looked at his wad of money, then the unexpected two-way radio. Grimacing, he threw the money away. Now it fit. "A quarter mile off the course there’s a secondary entrance to the Withons’ house-an escape tunnel used by monks. The Withon estate is a converted monastery on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean."

Jenks’s dust shifted from gold to red. "No shit!"

Trent smiled, shocked at how much it lightened his mood. Maybe this was how Rachel survived being someone she didn’t want to be. "No shit. I think Mr. Withon has delusions of being the Count of Monte Cristo. They know about the tunnel, but it will likely have the lightest guard and is the best way in. It starts in a cliff and ends in the main kitchen.

Jenks nodded in thought, his dragonfly-like wings dusting heavily. "That gets us in. How do we get out with a three-month-old? They make a lot of noise, you know. And you can’t stuff them in your coat and run, though that’s probably what Rachel would do."

Again smiling, Trent flicked a look past the mouth of the alley to a rider skimming past, looking as sleek and athletic as one of his thoroughbreds, one hand on the handlebars and halfway turned to look behind him. "I need a west-facing window," he said. A west-facing window within a narrow parameter of time, but no need to tell Jenks that. Either he would make it, or he wouldn’t.

Snorting, Jenks landed on the handlebars, turning sideways to look at himself in the tiny rearview mirror and shift his sword. "I didn’t know elves had wings. You gonna fly out?"

Silent, Trent tossed the empty box into the trash and got on the bike. "I’m more worried about finding the nursery without . . . alerting anyone," he said, catching himself before voicing his real fear. He wasn’t afraid to kill-he was afraid that it was becoming too easy. "They know I’m coming. There will be guards." Frowning, he pushed the bike into motion, and he rolled smoothly back into the street. What if they had a decoy?