The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(15)
Author: Kim Harrison

Nina had crashed right in Ivy’s room. She was in there still, the guilt that I’d found out her secret making her noticeably passive and pliant. It pissed me off that she’d been lying to Ivy all this time, but I think Ivy had known it, her belief that she didn’t deserve anything good or lasting keeping her mouth shut and her eyes blind. I hoped that Bis and Jenks were doing better, the two of them having returned to the church to try to get the squatters out.

My breath came in with a harsh sound, and I listened to the voices echoing down from the third floor where Trent had his living quarters. I’d always wondered what took up Trent’s second floor. Now I knew. Two well-outfitted hospital suites were tucked between the ground floor and the third story, but the surgery itself was downstairs, closer to his labs.

Hand trembling, I sipped the coffee. It had no taste. I’d just been in to check on Ivy. She’d been sleeping: clean and sanitized between ivory sheets. The angry red suture lines and orange antiseptic stains had been hidden behind a cotton nightgown, but I’d seen them before I’d lost it and cried from relief. Now I just felt numb.

And yet something sparked in me at the sound of Trent’s footsteps on the unseen stairway, and I sat up straighter when Jonathan’s voice twined melodiously with Trent’s. I didn’t like Jonathan, but I’d be willing to bet Trent’s number two adviser had a singing voice that could make angels weep.

I managed a smile as the two of them came around a corner. Trent looked as confident as always with his hands in his pockets like a GQ model, his smile faltering as he took in my tired misery. His hair was free of the ever-after dust, and he was smooth shaven. I’d taken the time to shower, but I felt scruffy in a pair of jeans and clean sweater I’d left over here a few weeks ago. Jonathan wrinkling his nose at me in disapproval didn’t help, and I checked to make sure all my hair was back in a scrunchy, the frizzy red tamed with a band of elastic instead of a charm.

A lot had changed since the allegations of drug running and illegal genetic research had been levied against Trent. It had been ages since I’d seen him in a full suit and coat; his business meetings had dropped to almost zero and the research campus had been closed. On the plus side, he was more relaxed, more apt to crack a dry joke, more often smelling like ozone or his stables than the boardroom. He was doing more on his own, needing me less and less for security.

My focus blurred, and I looked into the depths of my coffee as I imagined what it would be like to go to the mall with Trent, catch a bad movie and dinner. Maybe I should ask.

The one-sided conversation between Trent and Jonathan was clearly coming to an end, and their forward progress halted. Trent gestured elegantly as he made his point, and I stood, leaning heavily against the wall as I waited. I knew he got lonely, even with Quen and the girls keeping him occupied. Falling out of high society had been good for him and his family, if you ignored the increased number of death threats and his loss of income. Trains still ran, though, and farms still grew food. He wasn’t destitute. Yet. Ellasbeth was still working on that in her effort to gain control of the girls, and through them, Trent.

Not going to happen, I vowed, but after having witnessed the four of them on a good day, the girls playing happily and both Trent and Ellasbeth as loving, though not united, parents, a questioning guilt slid through me. Quen, too, seemed to regard Trent’s and my relationship as a phase tied to Trent’s newest preoccupation with furthering his magical studies. It was irksome, but every time Trent spoke of Ellasbeth and the girls, it left me wondering why I was delaying the inevitable.

“Thank you, Jon,” Trent finally said, touching the tall, almost gaunt man on the shoulder as he gave him a grateful smile. “That makes my day a hundred times easier.”

Contenting himself with a short nod and a dry look at me, Jonathan turned and went back the way they’d come. I knew the girls loved the man, but I liked him just as much as he liked me. Which was to say not at all.

“Is Jonathan going gray?” I asked as Trent closed the few steps remaining between us.

“I haven’t noticed. But that might be why he’s cutting it so short lately.” Trent stopped before me, worry creasing his features. “You could have slept upstairs. You did sleep, yes?”

“A few hours.” I fell into step beside him when he gestured for us to continue down the hall past Ivy’s door. “I’m not a spare room kind of girl.”

“It wouldn’t have been the spare room you would have been in,” he said, matching our steps and giving me a sideways hug. “Life is too short for bad coffee,” he said, taking my cup out of my hand and setting it on a table in the hall. “How’s Ivy?”

“Okay, thanks to you,” I said, not wanting to talk about it. My arm went around him and my head fell onto his shoulder. Trent eased us to a halt and I pulled him to me, resting my head against his chest. The light scent of his aftershave was a bare hint, just enough, and my jaw finally began to relax. I could hear the sound of his waterfall downstairs, past the great room, and my eyes closed.

The relief that he came to help me in the ever-after had almost hurt, even if he’d risked his life and an already failing reputation. There hadn’t been a wisp of regret in him, and I shoved the coming heartache down because even though he meshed with my life perfectly, I did not mesh with his.

Trent had been moving toward bringing his people back from the brink of extinction his entire life. The path had been laid out. He’d willingly sacrificed for it—and he would again. The ugly truth was, I couldn’t help him accomplish what he needed to do, I could only hinder it. That was why Jonathan disliked me and Quen disapproved even as he agreed that this was the happiest Trent had ever been despite his dwindling fortune and the lawsuits piling up like cordwood. Trent was all about duty—and I was dragging him down.

“You okay?” he asked, and I tilted my head and turned the hug into a brief kiss.

“Yes.” I dropped my head again, needing to feel him next to me if only for this space of time. “I don’t like leaving her in that ugly white bed.”

“It’s going to be okay.” His voice rumbled up through me.

I didn’t want to move. Ever. “I don’t know what I would have done if she had—”

I couldn’t even say it, and my eyes warmed as the tears spilled over.

His grip strengthened, and I blinked up at him, feeling like a wimp. “But she didn’t,” he said firmly, understanding in his eyes. “You did good. You got her out of immediate danger, and more important, gave her a place to meet her future with dignity and peace. If she had died, she would’ve done so with the person she loved most in the world with her. No one can ask for more than that, even kings.”