"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 musical 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 down 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.