Twenty-Two

Chocolate-chip-scented air rolled out, shifting my hair as I opened the oven door. They’d been frozen dough fifteen minutes ago, thawed by a charm Ceri had taught me and baked as a quick bribe to distract Al while I explained why he should think about his bank account before his pride.

This is so dumb, I thought as I set the pan on the counter and rummaged in the drawer for the spatula. I was going to end up in an ever-after jail cell for uncommon stupidity. If Al didn’t go for it, I’d be spending the next precious twenty-four hours trying to explain to a bunch of demons why I was hosting bits and pieces of the goddess of the species who had enslaved them, warred upon them, imprisoned them in an alternate reality, and then cursed them so their children would be stunted shadows of themselves.

Maybe they had a point, I mused as I looked up, forcing a smile as Jenks darted in, a horsehair in one hand, his crying daughter in the other.

“Rache, tell her that horse is going to eat her,” he said, frustrated sparkles sifting from him when he let go of her and darted into the utensil rack where he kept the wing tape. “I swear, I should just let the stupid animal snap your wing clear off.”

“Tulpa did that?” I said, and he pulled the girl down to stand on the counter where his dust pooled with hers in a beautiful kaleidoscope of silver, gold, and green.

“No, she snagged it when she darted away from him. Hold still. Hold still!” he exclaimed as his daughter awkwardly looked behind herself and held her wing so her dad could fix it. A tiny cut leaked silver dust, mirroring the twin tracks of tears spilling down her face. “Tink’s little pink rosebuds,” he grumbled as he finished and rubbed the sticky stuff from his hands. “Was it worth it?”

Beaming through the tears, she nodded, taking to the air and snitching the horsehair from the counter in passing. In half a second, even the sound of her wings was gone.

“Darn kids grew up so fast,” he whispered, and I felt a flash of guilt for including him in my madness.

“Ah, Bis and Ivy will probably be enough help tonight,” I said, and he spun.

“Bull,” he said, taking a crumb from the counter. “Al doesn’t scare me.”

“He scares me,” I admitted, and Jenks nodded, silent as he nibbled the pixy-size cookie crumb. “I mean it,” I said, pushing a warm cookie off the spatula. “You and Ivy both. This might be too much for Al to stomach.”

“All the more reason to come,” he said, looking toward the street and rising up at the revving of a distant engine and a tinny horn. “Face it, Rachel. You’re stuck with us.” A second horn joined it, and then more engine, closer this time.

“Kids,” I said, hoping that was all it was. “Isn’t there enough going on without getting into an accident?”

“Ah, that’s Trent’s car,” Jenks said, and I jerked upright, the cookie I’d just taken a bite from forgotten. “I mean, that’s his horn.”

“Trent?” A sliver of adrenaline sparked through me, pricking the interest of the nearest mystics, their attention diverting from the minute pigment shades in the paint to my rising flush. “How did he get into the Hollows? We’re under lockdown.”

A car door slammed, and Jenks rose higher. “You got me. That’s him, though.”

“Rachel? Rachel!” came echoing from the street. “I have to talk to you!”

Oh. My. God. He came to stop me, I thought, and the mystics hummed at my alarm, confused that it was not based on possible injury, but . . . embarrassment? Trent knew this was a bad idea. Hell, I knew it was a bad idea. But if he tried to stop me, I’d have to admit it, and then I’d have to do it anyway because, as he implied, there really wasn’t another option.

“Crap on toast,” Jenks said as a thunderous booming echoed in the sanctuary as Trent hammered on the door, and I winced. “I’ll let him in before the neighbors call the cops. Not that they’d come,” he finished as he flew off, his dust a bright sparkle.

Trent is here, I thought, my grip on the spatula almost white knuckled. This was my life, my decision. What he wanted didn’t matter. That fact was very clear. Full of a misplaced anger, I dropped the spatula and snatched up the hot pad.

Grimacing, I opened the oven for the last tray of cookies. My brow furrowed at Trent’s voice in the sanctuary, and I intentionally turned my back on him as he stomped down the hall.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had mystics still in you!” Trent shouted. Shocked that he’d raised his voice, I spun, a tray of cookies in my hand. He was still in the clothes he’d been in earlier, his dress slacks wrinkled and the top two buttons undone from his shirt to show a wisp of hair. His sleeves were rolled to different heights and it made him look disarming, even as he glared at me, tips of his ears red.

“You want to say it a little louder, maybe?” I said as I dropped the tray clattering onto the counter. “I don’t think they heard you two streets over.”

He came in, disheveled and upset. A pen poked from his shirt pocket, and I raised my spatula threateningly when he reached out as if to give me a shake. Mystics hummed, the nearest gathering into me, and sensing it, perhaps, he paused. His eyes dropped to the cookies, then rose to Jenks perched on the curtains over the sink.

“You haven’t gone yet . . .” he started, and I shook my head, lips pressed into a line as I wedged a cookie off the tray.

“Not yet,” I said, wrangling it to the cooling rack. “Ivy is settling up with Nina this afternoon, and I’m waiting until sunset so Jenks and Bis can come with us.” Angry that I had to risk them all for something that they had nothing to do with, I used too much force, and a cookie went sailing off the tray and onto the floor. Frustrated, I threw the spatula down. “Why are you here?”

“You can’t go to the ever-after with pieces of the Goddess in you! I know I said it was the only way, but we can think of something else. What if Newt saw you?”

The worry lines at the corners of his eyes pushed the anger from me, and my first biting response died. “We don’t have time for anything else,” I said, feeling numb. “Besides, if I can keep this between Al and me, it will be okay. He won’t turn me in. He’d lose everything.” But a smidgen of fear lingered. I’d seen Al’s hatred of the elves. His emotion was not one filtered through generations but raw. The pain was his own, not a passed-down story.

And yet he had loved Ceri . . .

“It will be fine,” I said as I picked up the cookie and threw it away. “And it’s not any of your concern.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, and I leaned over the counter to him.

“Yes. It. Is.” I took a slow breath, ticked even though I knew he’d made the right decision. We both had. “Mr. Kalamack.”

Shoes scuffing, he sat down with an almost imperceptible sigh. He was facing sideways to me, and I could hear pixies playing in the garden. If it wasn’t for the sirens and faint scent of burning building from across the river, it might almost be a normal day. Slowly the memory of making cookies with Trent surfaced. Tension easing, I resumed moving the cookies to the cooling rack. The memory hadn’t been real in the sense that we’d actually done it—seeing as I’d been trapped in my mind and he had been trying to free me—but he remembered it too, so perhaps it was real after all. The kiss afterward sure had been.

“Your aura is white,” he said, still not looking at me. “How many?” His head turned, and my breath caught. “I can still ask that, can’t I?”

I nudged a cookie to be exactly even with the rest. “It varies. If I tap a line, too many to breathe. Right now, not a lot. Just a few voices. They recognize you from the computer. Congratulations, you’ve been granted the title of trusted singular. I suggest you refrain from wearing hats.”

“Ah . . .” His confusion was sudden and wary, and I managed a wry smile.

“They recognize you as an individual. They weren’t sure from seeing you through the computer. They’ve been ranging about a lot, which makes it easier.” Ranging about, then coming back with confused friends, bombarding me with images, thoughts, and questions about things happening miles away. It was lofty, godlike to know what was going on everywhere. I’m going crazy, and I think I like it.

Jenks’s wings hummed, and he flew from the curtain rod to the cooling cookies. “If you’re not going to fight, I’m going to go rescue your horse from my kids,” he said, and then with a cheerful dust I didn’t understand, he darted out into the garden.

Trent watched him go, looking frustrated as he turned his attention to the spelling pots over the counter. “I vowed I’d never tell you anything you wanted to do was a bad idea,” he said, his low voice pulling at me. “But this isn’t worth the risk. Rachel, look at me!”

I set the spatula down and faced him, cookies and a thousand words unsaid between us. “Why are you here?” I asked softly.

“You can’t let the demons see you with mystics in you. Even Al,” he said, and fear spiked through me. “You don’t understand the depth of hatred they have for us. Especially now that there’re a dozen Rosewood survivors growing up healthy. The demons know they exist. They’re simply ignoring them until their neural nets are mature enough to play with.”

“I said, why are you here?” I asked again, breath catching when he got to his feet.

“Rachel, your aura is white with mystics,” he said, and I didn’t pull away when he took my elbow. “They’re not fools. They’ll know. They will remember. They hate the Goddess.”

“Then maybe they know how to contain her,” I said, lifting my elbow away. “Getting help from the demons is the best option we’ve got. So it’s the harder choice—why change anything now?”

Exhaling, Trent leaned closer, and the scent of cinnamon and wine crashed over me. “I want you to slow down,” he said. “We can figure this out. Going to Al is not the only option; it’s the easiest for everyone but you.” A hint of fear settled into his strained expression. “I can’t do easy anymore. It’s too hard on my soul.”

There was danger in his words, and I turned to set the empty pans in the sink. “You’re getting married,” I said, back to him. “You lost your say in what I do.” Lips pressed, I turned around. “Why are you even here?”

“I came to talk some sense into you,” he said. “And I’m not leaving until I know you’re not going to do this.”

My head hurt, and I looked down, thinking my feet were too long to be pretty. “What you want doesn’t matter.” I brought my gaze up, shocked to see how he looked in my kitchen, pleading at me to listen to him. “Trent, you worked hard to become responsible for the elves, and that goes both ways. You belong to them. You belong to Lucy, and Ray, and Ellasbeth. You belong to flipping Cincinnati and every elf east of the Mississippi. I work for you when I need the money, and I’m not doing it anymore. You made a choice. It was a good one and I support it, but you can’t have it both ways. So go away and let me do my job!”

He stepped forward, forcing me back. “You’re right. I made a decision. It was the wrong one.”

Shit. I felt my face go white. Mystics clustered in me, looking for the source of my fear, amazed to find it again in emotion, not physical hurt. More gathered, fascinated and making me dizzy.

“When I heard you were taken by the Goddess, I tried,” Trent said, noting his mismatched sleeves and rolling one up. “I did what I was supposed to do. I stayed where it was safe. I fulfilled my responsibilities by sending that finding charm to Edden. I told myself that he could find you, that you’d be okay. And you were. I did the right thing, what was acceptable and needed—and it worked. But it almost killed me.”

He came close, and I backed up until I hit the counter. Watching me, he took my hand in his, bringing it up between us. I looked at it with mine, seeing the masculine strength in his long, graceful fingers. “I’m not going to work for you ever again,” I whispered, wanting his fingers skating across my skin. “Don’t ask.”

Trent’s eyes fixed on mine. “I told Ellasbeth to leave this morning.”

My breath caught, and I held it, feeling dizzy. “What?”

His smile was faint and tremulous—unsure and confident all at the same time. “Right after you hung up on me. You were right that I had no voice in what you did if I married her, and I didn’t like it. I told Quen to pack her things if she didn’t. I told her to be out by tomorrow. I told her that she would have the girls three months in the summer, and that’s it, and if she contests it, she will never see them again. I’m not going to marry her. Ever. I don’t love her, and I never will.”

His hand on me was trembling. My God. For once in his life, he was setting aside what was expected of him and following . . . his heart. “You can’t do that,” I whispered, scared. “Everyone expects . . .”

“I already did.” His jaw clenched. “I don’t want easy anymore. It’s worthless and the shine doesn’t last. But you already knew that.”

This wasn’t happening. I mean, I’d seen the signs, I’d seen them, and we had agreed . . . “Why are you doing this?” I said, a flash of anger coloring my words. This was unfair! We had agreed! Why was he dangling this in front of me when he knew it wasn’t a real possibility? “You know who I am!”

His expression became serious, and his hand almost slipped from mine. “I’ve had a long time to think about it.”