A Perfect Blood

Page 17

 

  Chapter Seventeen

  A high-pitched child's wail cut through the thick walls as if they were paper, sliding between my sleep and reason and pricking me awake. A soft adult admonishment quickly followed, soothing the desperate demand into a pitiful whining that dulled to the inaudible. I smiled. Kids were great, but I was really glad not to have any right now.

  My eyes opened, and I looked up at the high arched ceiling, bright with the sun leaking past the curtains. The ceiling was painted with a hunting scene, like you might find in a museum, with dogs and horses - and one running fox. Somehow it managed not to look overdone. The opulent surroundings helped.

  In less than a day I'd gone from sleeping on a grimy floor to Egyptian cotton, silk pj's, and enough pillows to drown in. Thank God there'd been a shower in between. Not to mention a trip downstairs to Trent's surgery suite to get the bullet yanked out of my thigh. I'd be there still, but after they patched me up and made sure my kidneys were working, I had taken out the IV and demanded a real bed or I was going to call Ivy to pick me up that instant.

  It felt good to be alive, clean, rested . . . and sleeping in Ellasbeth's old room. Na, na. Na, na. Na-a-a-a, na. It had been redecorated in soft, earthy colors, and I could see Ceri's hand everywhere from the lace draped over the top of the huge mirror to the elegant French provincial furnishings. The bathroom, though, looked the same as the night Ellasbeth had walked in on me while I'd been innocently soaking in her tub. She'd probably been pregnant with Lucy at the time, now that I think about it.

  Ray, Ceri and Quen's child, was only five months old. Lucy was eight months, and from the sound of it, had learned how to communicate without words. She was a smart little kid, the product of East Coast and West Coast elves, the attempt at forging a union between the two that I helped break not just once, but twice, first by halting their marriage, and then by helping Trent steal Lucy from Ellasbeth in an arranged agreement to avoid a legal battle for the child. Lucy was his now, lock, stock, and barrel. Trent had made me her godmother - her demon godmother.

  I stretched with a happy sigh, grunting in surprise when my leg twinged. Oh, yeah.

  Ceri had apologized profusely, but all the magic she knew that could help was demonic and therefore wouldn't stick. Trent hadn't even offered, probably still stinging over my less-than-enthusiastic response to being beaned by his pain charm - which had stuck. Wild magic had weird side effects in the best of situations, and he was a dabbler, even if he had laid me out. Ceri wouldn't practice the ancient, unpredictable, elven magic. She was a smart woman.

  My thoughts drifted from seeing Trent as a dangerous shadow crouched in that tree to the kiss we'd shared last summer. It hadn't been unpleasant by any stretch of the imagination, but to think that it would go any further was stupid. I trusted Trent with my life, not my heart.

  A shadow by the curtain moved, and I sat up. "Winona!" I said, quashing my first initial panic at finding a horned, tailed, demonic creature smiling at me.

  "Sorry," she said, her lisp almost gone. "I didn't mean to wake you. You feel okay?"

  The pillows behind me were too soft to give any support, and I carefully propped myself up against the headboard. Seeing Winona in a long, dark red skirt and shawl threw me. "Pretty much. I should be up now anyway. Ivy and Wayde are probably banging on Trent's gate. "

  I looked for a clock before remembering Ceri had taken it out of the room, telling me to sleep myself out. Scooting to the edge of the bed took some doing, and I threw back the covers and lifted the hem of my borrowed pj's to see a big ugly bruise spreading out from under the bandage on my leg. It could have been a lot worse - should have been from that distance. I was going to have an interesting scar at the very least.

  "My leg hurts, but I'm okay," I said, and she trip-trapped over to me, the sound muted when she found the rug. I let my legs hang over the side for a moment, my bladder warring with my need to slow down and gauge my fatigue. There was a pain amulet around my neck, and it was working well despite the throbbing in my leg. Small favors.

  Slowly, with Winona ready to help, I stood. Everything seemed to shift as my feet took my weight, settle a little lower, a little more uncomfortable. I exhaled, then shuffled my way to the bathroom, Winona holding tight to my arm.

  "Thank you for pounding Eloy last night," I said. "I can't believe you set the basement on fire with just one charm. "

  Her ugly face smiled fiercely. "I would never have made it without you. Thank you. "

  I touched the bedpost in passing for support, but my pace was becoming more sure already. "I think you would have managed it," I said, then glanced at my charmed silver as it thunked from my elbow to my hand. "I bet I missed breakfast. What time is it anyway?"

  "Almost noon. "

  "Good. " I put a hand on the wall beside the closed bathroom door. "I promised Ivy I'd call by one. " I had talked to her shortly after the yanking-of-the-IV incident. She wasn't happy about my sleeping over until I told her I wanted to talk to Trent about getting this bracelet off. Wayde wasn't happy, either. He thought he'd let me down. I needed to talk to him, too.

  Seeing me standing on my own power, Winona opened the bathroom door for me. I hobbled in, a twinge of nausea rising at the pain leaking through the amulet, but I turned and made a solid front when she tried to come in with me. "I've got this," I said, and she snorted, giving me a look that I'd expect from a third-grade teacher, decidedly odd on her demonic face.

  "Just thump the floor hard when you hit it, and I'll come in," she said, and I heard her sigh when I shut the door.

  I leaned back against the closed door and simply breathed for a moment. I was so damn tired. "Here we go again," I said as I pushed myself into motion. If I couldn't get dressed by myself, Trent might insist I stay. Ivy would cart me out of here anyway, but I didn't want to push the new truce Trent and I seemed to have. Weird.

  I didn't need another shower, but my brands of detangler and toothpaste were waiting for me on the counter along with a complexion charm. Trent would remember them from our cross-country excursion, but it still threw me. My clothes from yesterday were laid out, cleaned and pressed. The bullet hole in my leather pants had been mended so well I couldn't see the patch unless I ran my hand over it, but there was no way I'd be able to wear them - not with my leg swollen like it was. Beside them was a robe and a pair of black sweats. The robe wasn't happening, but the sweats I could manage, and I sat on the dressing couch and carefully put myself back together as if I was getting dressed for battle, somehow managing even the socks.

  Finally I stood before the mirror, my pulse a little fast, my body a little dehydrated, and I tried to smile. Immediately my lips turned down and my shoulders slumped. Today was going to be long and hard. Wayde was never going to let me live it down that I got hurt. But I was alive. I had survived. I was going to take the damned bracelet off, and I was scared to death. "There must be an easier way to grow up," I said with a breathy exhalation as I turned to the door.

  Winona wasn't there when I came out, but I gratefully took the single crutch propped up against the wall by the door, hobbling to the main room. The door was open, and Jenks was talking to Ceri. Lucy, too, was noisy, and I hesitated at the threshold, taking in the changes that I'd missed on my way up here, doped up on whatever magic pill Trent had had me on.

  The room was bright with light being piped in from who knew where and emerging from big skylights. The small open kitchen was to my right, the suite's common room to my left. A wide stairway leading from Trent's private quarters to his more public house was beyond that. The huge window/video screen showed the woods, gray and bare for the coming winter. The common room itself had a lot less bachelor and a lot more kid, toys and books scattered everywhere. The big wide-screen TV was still there, but the leather couch in the sunken area had been exchanged for something lower to the floor, the top of the back almost even with the floor in the upper level.

/>   Ceri glanced at me from where she was sitting on the floor in front of the low couch with her two girls, only one of whom was truly hers. The petite, fair-haired woman smiled, then looked back at Winona, as if chatting with a malformed woman who looked like a monster was a common event. But for the ex-demon familiar, it might be.

  Jenks was on her shoulder, a wash of golden sunbeam dust heavy on her white dress. He'd seen me, too, but he was having too much fun teasing Lucy to move. I swear, if the little girl got her chubby hands on him and ripped his wings off, he deserved it.

  Winona sat on the floor next to Ceri, looking both embarrassed and grateful - as if she was ready to cry - and I wondered if Ceri was on the floor because Winona couldn't manage the couch easily. I think their easy acceptance meant a huge amount to the traumatized woman. The girls weren't afraid of her, and Lucy sat up by herself and babbled, determined to keep up. Ray, still too young to sit unaided, was cradled in Ceri's arms, watching with big, wide green eyes.

  The two girls were being raised as sisters though they shared not a single drop of blood. Lucy had the fair hair and complexion of Trent and Ellasbeth, but Ray had Quen's darker hair, completely overpowering Ceri's light wisps. Ray's complexion, too, was darker, in sharp contrast to her older sister. But both of them had tiny, pointy ears, the first elves to keep their ears undocked in almost two thousand years. I thought they looked sweet.

  I smiled, and at my sniff, Ceri tickled Lucy's chin, saying, "Your aunt Rachel is awake. "

  "Aunt Rachel?" Jenks said dryly, and Winona raised a single eyebrow.

  "You'd rather she be the demon godmother?" Ceri said, and Winona's smile faded.

  "I like Aunt Rachel," I said as I leaned heavily on the crutch and hobbled for the steps down into the sunken living room.

  Lucy, busy with her one-sided conversation, kept babbling, patting at the bright squares in the book before her, but I would swear that Ray's green eyes searched the room until they found me, the little girl kicking at her blanket until Ceri tucked it back.

  "Hello, my little ladies," I said as I hobbled down the shallow steps and just about collapsed into the soft leather. I didn't care that I wouldn't be able to find my feet again easily. Ceri lifted Ray and set her in my arms. I breathed deep of the clean scent of baby, and the worries of the world dropped away - if just for a moment - as I held the promise of good things. No wonder nothing seemed to bother Trent anymore.

  "Hi, Ray," I said softly, and the somewhat spare little girl blinked solemnly at me, her hand slowly reaching out to grab my nose. It took all her concentration, and my eyes watered when she found it, her tiny nails pinching. She smiled and let go, and snap my broomstick if she didn't look at her sister and smile as if she'd won.

  Upon seeing her sister being held by someone new, Lucy got a determined look on her face, rocking back and forth until she fell forward. It was what she wanted, but she still cried, pushing Ceri's hands away when the woman lifted her up and away from her determined crawl in my direction.

  "I swear," Ceri said, corralling the fussy baby who refused to be distracted. "Lucy is a love, but she wants all the attention. "

  "They keeping you busy?" I said, and Ceri smiled blissfully.

  "Like a fairy's ass trapped in a bee's nest," Jenks smart-mouthed, and I frowned at him. Lucy, too, was grimacing, her small, angular face pinched as she chafed at her mother's restraint. Though not able to walk or talk, she seemed to have far more going on upstairs for an eight-month-old than she should. Elves apparently had a short childhood. Not like witches, who seemed to take forever to grow up, according to Jenks.

  "I like their ears," I said, resisting the urge to touch Ray's, tapping her on her nose instead, and the little girl squealed as if I'd done exactly what she wanted me to do.

  Worry entered Ceri's loving gaze. "I do, too, but children can be cruel. "

  I made a small noise when Winona sighed. "Tell me about it," I whispered.

  Jenks hummed his wings at the soft footsteps on the stairway leading up from Trent's great room, and I wasn't surprised when Trent rose into view. I shifted nervously, glancing at my bracelet. I wanted it off, but wasn't sure how to handle the demon aftermath. I was not going to let myself be taken to the ever-after, and I didn't know how I - or Trent - would be able to prevent it. The thought that Trent might lose more than his fingers trying to make good on his promise to help me was intolerable. Not that I'd worry about him as much as Ceri and the girls would.

  It didn't help that Trent wasn't meeting my gaze. The man looked good in a casual suit, without a tie, and socks instead of dress shoes. His wispy blond hair was a perfect match to Lucy's, as were his green eyes. His tan was fading. I didn't think he got out into his stables as much as he used to. He gave me and Winona a quick nod as he came in, but he had clearly heard the ear comment and wasn't happy.

  "We are not mutilating their ears," Trent said, his voice holding the weight of a past argument as he came directly down into the pit by stepping on the couch cushions instead of using the stairs. The move shocked me - I'd never seen him do anything so casual before - and my chin dropped when he sat cross-legged right there on the floor beside Ceri and took Ray from me as if I might dock her ears right then and there.

  The missing fingers of his right hand were obvious, and I was embarrassed that he'd lost them while saving me. Ray left me with a wiggle and a baby complaint, the absence of her weight giving me more of a feeling of loss than I would've expected. From nowhere the memory of our kiss, and then the feel of Trent's arms around me last night, layered itself over my thoughts. He was still a bachelor despite the two babies he shared his upstairs rooms with, but clearly he and Ceri were finding common ground. I didn't have any romantic feelings for Trent, but I'd hated him for a long time, and that kiss . . . even if it had been to invoke a spell that saved my life, had been very nice. I was still chalking my enthusiasm-of-the-moment up to having been trapped with him in a car for three days. Not to mention having seen him in a towel and shower-wet skin. I was only human, after all. Well, not really, but the thought was there.

  Damn it, I was mentally babbling.

  Grimacing, I forced away the memory of what Trent's hair felt like in my fingers and the feel of his lips on mine, pretty sure I knew why he was avoiding my eyes as well. Lucy babbled loudly until he leaned over to tousle her hair, whereupon she kicked her legs and squirmed until Ceri distracted her with that book of bright squares again. Ray snuggled deeper into Trent's lap, content when he whispered something elvish.

  Seeing them together like this was a picture of domesticity and peace I knew I'd never have, and I squashed the rising jealousy. If anyone deserved this, it was Ceri.

  "You're looking better," Trent said, his free hand taking the book Lucy was waving and gentling it before her, his long fingers moving the pages as if it were a song.

  "Thank you for that," I said, and Jenks buzzed his wings in agreement. "For taking the bullet out and not making me go to the hospital, for coming out with Jenks to find me. "

  "Yeah," the pixy said, now sitting on Winona's shoulder. "The FIB and the I. S. couldn't find their ass in a windstorm. "

  Winona started, and I glanced at the little girls. Who knew what they were taking in?

  Oblivious, Jenks waxed eloquently, "The dumbasses had all their people looking in the wrong places. Glenn was pissed. He wanted to expand the search, and the director wouldn't let him. That's when I called Trent and found out he had a better way to find you, if the fairy farts would listen to him. It was a good thing I went with him, seeing that he almost killed you. "

  "Jenks . . . " I pleaded, and when he looked at me, I tossed my head to Lucy, listening in rapt attention to the new vocabulary.

  "Oh, sorry," he said, his wings flashing a bright red.

  Trent turned a page in the book, and Lucy patted a black horse prancing on a green field until Trent murmured a word I didn't understand, his voice more mu
sical than before. My shoulders slumped, remembering his voice rising and falling in the car on the way here, soothing and concerned as he talked with Winona, but laced with guilt for having hit me with his worst.

  His eyes rising to mine, Trent's expression became hard. "How much did they get?"

  Blinking, I stared. How much what? Then I figured it out, and my gut tightened. He meant how much of my demon-curse-invoking blood did they get.

  The silence stretched, and with a small sigh, Ceri handed Lucy to Winona, rising as she said, "I'll make some tea. Winona, can you help me settle the girls down for their naps? Jenks, I'd like a word with you concerning your vocabulary around my daughters. "

  Jenks let slip a burst of embarrassed red dust, then meekly followed Ceri into the kitchen as Winona stood with Lucy, looking like a demonic teacher/nursemaid as she literally trotted into one of the four rooms that opened up onto the main common room, taking the stairs out of the lowered living room pit with practiced ease. Lucy was still waving that book, babbling as she craned her neck to see Trent, her tiny features starting to twist up into dismay.

  Frustration warred with anger, and I tried to keep my expression pleasant as Ray sat cradled in Trent's lap, silently, and perhaps smugly, watching Lucy being carted out. "They're sweet kids," I said, then shifted my eyes to Trent. "You've already had them on a horse, right?"

  Trent smiled, turning from successful drug lord and city power to proud father. "More than once. " Standing, he handed Ray to Winona as the woman came back out.

  From the nursery, a loud complaint was gaining strength. Ceri was "chatting" with Jenks in the kitchen, the pixy sitting miserably on the coffeepot, a gray dust sifting from his drooped wings, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable facing Trent, a world of questions between us. There hadn't been much time when I'd come in between getting cleaned up and put back together.

  "How did you find me?" I said as Trent simultaneously asked again, "How much did they get?"

  I winced, and Trent sat down across from me, insisting, "Me first. "

  Pushing back into the cushions, I glanced into the nursery as Winona sang to distract the girls. Everyone I cared about was in danger because I'd let a power-hungry human hate group get my blood. I'd learned the catch-22 of being a demon too late. "Too much," I said, then met Trent's eyes in time to see his flash of worry. "They had ten cc's last night. There's a faction in HAPA that wants to use magic to eradicate us. As soon as they find that enzyme that suppresses the Rosewood enzyme, they're going to synthesize it and . . . " Words failed me, and I looked down. Trent knew what they would do - the same thing the elves had tried to do to the demons only to end up on the verge of extinction themselves.

  "They know how to store it, too," I said softly. "It's going to last a good four days. "

  "I thought they might," Trent said, his beautiful voice going soft. "I have something I want to show you downstairs. "

  "Now?" I blurted out, and Ceri broke off from her harangue in the kitchen long enough to clear her throat in rebuke.

  Trent shifted, the fabric of his shirt making a soft hush of sound as he smiled at her, accepting, tolerant, and in acknowledgment that she was right and he was being rude by taking me downstairs before I'd even had a cup of coffee. I couldn't help but wonder what kind of relationship theirs was evolving into. Ceri loved Quen, but she let the press believe she was Trent's lover because it was the political thing to do. Trent clearly loved both girls as if they were his own, but I was willing to bet Quen had a lot of say in Ray's upbringing.

  Ceri had been raised with the idea that you could love one man and be politically attached to another, so a formal marriage between Trent and Ceri might be in the future, but I knew she'd never share his bed. Regardless, they clearly functioned with a great deal of parental unity. It was weird, but it worked, and this show of dry humor at his own expense was a good sign that they were getting along on something other than a professional level.

  "After you've eaten, of course," Trent said, almost rolling his eyes at Ceri. "Your turn. "

  My turn. I had a handful of questions, but what came out of my mouth was "The machines I've seen aren't cheap. The research into placing their sites isn't easy to come by, either, seeing that they're located to passively hide them from magic. Spells and charms aren't going to find them easily anymore, but we might be able to track their backer down using the money trail. Get them from that angle. "

  "Yeah, cut off the money supply to the Tink-blasted lunkers, and HAPA will dry up like a fairy's fling-flan," Jenks said from the kitchen, and Ceri succinctly told him to shut his mouth, her eyes flashing with parental outrage as she prepared the tea.

  I watched Trent's tells as he leaned back into the couch, his eyes distant in thought. You couldn't have four perfect places to hide from the I. S. and the FIB where you could plug your illegal genetic machines in without a lot of hush money. At least I knew Trent wasn't behind it.

  "I agree," he finally said, crossing his knees, which told me he didn't like where his thoughts had gone. "It's more than disturbing that they got into the lower levels and lifted two of my machines. " His focus sharpened on me. "It's someone with a lot of money, very good intel, or both. Very few people even know they existed, much less where they were. "

  Jenks settled on the coffee table as Ceri made her graceful way down into the seating area, a small tray in her hands. There were cookies along with the expected steaming pot and three delicate teacups, and my stomach rumbled. "Trenton, you interviewed the techs who worked the machines. I can't believe it was any of them," Ceri said.

  He nodded, even as he frowned. "Again, I agree. " His eyes met mine, a hint of worry in them. "My concern is that it was someone my father once helped with a pesky case of diabetes. "

  I sighed, leaning back and rubbing the edges of my wound to see how close I could get. It could be anyone. Anyone rich, that is. Back to square one.

  "I'll go through my Christmas card list," Trent said, his tone soft in thought.

  We were silent, Jenks's wings still. "Where are my manners?" Ceri said suddenly, the cookie plate scraping the table as she extended it to me. "Rachel, you must be starving. That IV you were on last night won't do a thing for your appetite. Please. Take a cookie. "

  The world is falling apart, and Ceri wants me to eat a cookie? "I'm fine," I said as I accepted the cup of tea she handed me - I was desperate for caffeine in any form - but when my stomach rumbled, I took a cookie, then another, then finally a third when she refused to offer them to Trent until I did.

  Trent shook his head when Ceri offered him a cup of tea, and I started when he stood in a quick motion. "Could you excuse me a moment?"

  Ceri frowned up at him. "Honestly, Trenton. Can't you stop working for even an hour?"

  The polished man stopped short and beamed a genuine smile at her. "This is what I am," he said, inclining his head and making her twist her lips in acknowledgment. "Quen needs to know what's going on or HAPA will be right back in here stealing the newer replacements I had installed last week. That's what thieves do. Take the old, then return for the new. "

  "Ah, tell Quen that they probably have a doppelganger curse," I said, then hid my chagrin behind my cup of tea. It was too hot to sip, but that way I wouldn't have to look at him. The hem of his slacks was shifting in agitation, and when I glanced up, he wiped the ire from his face.

  "I'll be back in five minutes," he said as he stepped over the twin shallow stairs and started for the stairway to the ground floor. "Eat your cookies. I want to show you something. "

  Crap, I hadn't had the chance to ask him about taking off the bracelet, and I stiffened.

  Misunderstanding my tension, Jenks rose, his wings humming. "Trent? You want to run by me what you're going to show Rache?" he said, and when I gave him a tiny finger motion to go, he buzzed over to the man. Trent jumped, startled, then accepted his presence.

  "Quen!" Trent shouted as he jogged dow
n the stairs, and Jenks darted to the main floor ahead of him. From the nursery, a fussing complaint rose, and the trip-trap of Winona's feet as she shut the nursery door but for a crack.

  Concerned, I looked at Ceri. "What am I going to be looking at?"

  Ceri snapped a cookie in two between her teeth. "I've no idea," she said around a sigh. "Probably the room that the equipment was taken from. "

  She looked so happily frazzled, so much a person and so little a dead-inside demon familiar, that I felt a warm glow. Not all my screwed-up choices ended up bad. "So how's life?" I said, and her entire face seemed to light up.

  "I am so happy it should be illegal," she said as she touched my hand, then drew away. "The children alone," she sighed at the closed dayroom door. "I never thought any of this, any life at all, would be mine. I wake up every morning and pinch myself. "

  Pleased, I set my tea down and bit into a cookie. It had that lemon flavor that I knew was hiding the distinct tang of Brimstone. I took a breath to protest, then glumly shoved the rest in my mouth and chewed. I didn't like using the Inderland drug, illegal since the Turn, but seeing that Trent manufactured it, purified it to remove the stuff that the people on the street bought it for, and left only the metabolism boosters that the vamps wanted, I'd probably be okay. I might set the FIB's Brimstone dogs into canine throes of delight, though.

  "That night I saw you with Al," Ceri was saying, her expression misty with memory, "when he was going to make you his familiar? I thought I was going to die and you were going to take my place. You looked so stupid, but you really did know what you were doing. "

  I cleared my throat and swallowed, reaching for the tea to wash it down. Yeah, caffeine on top of Brimstone was a great idea. "It was luck," I said, uncomfortable. The tea had a pleasant smoothness, and I leaned back and ran a finger under the bracelet, wanting it off. It was funny how things had turned out, but Ceri was giving me more credit than I deserved.

  Ceri saw me looking at my charmed silver and, with her usual bluntness, said, "You should get rid of that. I'd be able to fix your leg if you did. And you could help Winona, too. "

  Feeling guilty for having been so selfishly clueless for the last five months, I jammed another cookie in my mouth. So many good things would come from taking off the bracelet. So many good things, and just one bad. "I know. That's why I'm still here," I said around my full mouth, nervously wiping the crumbs from the corner of my mouth as Ceri's eyes widened.

  "It's about time," she said, sitting oh so straight and proper, as if she hadn't just thanked me for saving her life. "Does Trenton know? He's been fussing in his spelling hut for the last two days. "

  I shrugged. "I was supposed to come over and talk to him about it yesterday. After spending it in HAPA's cage instead, I think he knows I want it off. " Oh God. How was I going to keep Al from blowing away every single safeguard Trent could come up with and just . . . taking me? He was a five-thousand-year-old demon, and I was not going to delude myself into thinking that Trent had anything that could prevent Al from doing exactly what he wanted.

  Unaware of my panic, she patted my hand as Winona slipped from the nursery and went to the kitchen to wash a bottle. "Rachel, I'm proud of you. "

  Again, I couldn't meet her eyes. Again, she was giving me more credit than I deserved.

  Sensing my embarrassment and not understanding it, Ceri let go of my hand. Trent was coming up the long stairs, talking to someone by phone, and I hunched into the cushions, hating this. I wanted the bracelet off, but it was looking harder all the time.

  Pace almost . . . bouncy, Trent took the last of the stairs and stood behind and over Ceri. He'd found a pair of shoes somewhere, and I disparagingly looked at my socks. "Ready, Rachel? I'd like your opinion on the lab that was broken into. " His eyes flicked past us to the closed nursery door before coming back to us, his smile fading as he noticed Ceri's tension.

  I was such a coward. "You want me to look at a crime scene? That's a switch," I said as I laboriously got to my feet. Ceri rose as well, helping me to the stairs before handing me back my crutch. She was still trying to figure out what was bothering me, and Trent's mistrust grew.

  "How's that pain amulet holding up?" he asked as he tried to take my elbow and I jerked away, almost falling. He knew the amulet was fine. He was fishing for what was wrong, and I didn't want to talk about it.

  "It's good," I said. "I'm fine. "

  "You are not fine. " Ceri took my arm, pinching it painfully to keep me from pulling away from her. "And don't you let her walk the entire way," she admonished Trent.

  "I'm not going to pick her up and carry her screaming to the basement," Trent said. "It's a workday. Besides, she has a crutch. "

  "Crutch or no, she's hurt!" Ceri protested.

  "I mean," Trent said intently, "she can hit me with it if I do something she doesn't like. "

  Winona snickered from the kitchen, a weird sort of snuffling chuckle. I turned to her, and she had her hand over her mouth in mortification.

  Exhaling heavily, I hobbled to the top of the long stairway alone and felt myself pale. Crap, it was a long way, and vertigo threatened. "Thanks," I whispered when Trent slipped a hand under my elbow, and we took our first step down, my feet silent in my new socks. I was reminded of the night I'd been his security and he'd taken me to a casino boat, me wearing one of Ellasbeth's slinkier dresses. We'd always looked good together, though clearly apart even when standing next to each other. That I was in a nasty pair of sweats and he was in a casual suit didn't dispel the feeling of alone-apartness I again felt. Always alone. Both of us.

  "I'm glad the amulet is working," he said, stiff and closed even as he helped me, the scent of sour wine a hint between us. "At least you can't be cursed. "

  His voice carried a hint of mistrust, and my jaw tightened. "I'll tell you when we get to the elevator," I said, and his grip eased on my elbow.

  "I have something I want to tell you, too, before we meet Quen and Jenks. We don't have a lot of time. Tell me now. "

  That's why Jenks was gone. "I want the bracelet off, but there are some complications. "

  "I told you I'd help," he said, and I took another slow step down, the crutch hurting my armpit. I must have winced, because Trent's grip on my elbow shifted.

  "Good, because I'm really going to need it," I whispered, leaning on him even harder.