A Perfect Blood (30 page)

“It’s okay, Winona,” Jenks said, darting to hover over Trent as he walked forward, his hands in the air, but Winona kept going back, deeper into the woods and away from the lights of the fire trucks.

“HAPA is still out here,” Trent said, his expression unseen as the fire trucks flashed behind him now. “I can take you somewhere safe, but you have to trust me. I’m sorry about the spell. I saw you and . . . I overreacted. Please. Don’t run. I can’t help if you don’t let me.”

No, he couldn’t. It was something I was learning at long last. I hoped it wasn’t too late.

Trent’s voice had lost its edge, falling into the more familiar coaxing businessman I knew. Winona wasn’t buying it, and Jenks hovered over her shoulder. Winona shook her head, her tears hitting me, and Trent made a noise of frustration. “Some help here, Rachel?”

I tried to take a deep breath, my lungs on fire. “Idiot . . .” I wheezed. “You shouldn’t be throwing spells like that unless you know what you’re doing!”

“You want me to leave?” he said, and Jenks’s wings clattered in frustration.

“Can you guys save this for after we get in the car?” he said, and I tried to focus on his glittering sparkles. I was so glad to see him, I could just cry. No, wait, I was already doing that.

“Winona, please,” I whispered as my eyes shut. “I know this guy. You can trust him.” My eyes opened, and I looked at Winona, seeing her need to believe that there might be a way out of this. “He can help us both,” I slurred, then clenched as a new wave of pain hit. Oh God, the spell wasn’t dissipating fast enough. I was going to go into shock.

“You’re Trent Kalamack?” she warbled, and Trent nodded. She shifted from foot to foot, but I think it was Jenks still hovering over him that did it, and I sighed when Trent put his hands on me and the pain lessened. I sagged in relief, and Winona stiffened.

“It’s okay!” Jenks yelled before she ran off with me. “He just broke the pain charm.”

“I still hurt,” I said, my eyes opening. I smelled cinnamon and wine, and Trent’s finger turned my face to his. He was smiling, a hint of guilt and embarrassment behind it, and I tried to smile back. “What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be taking over a corporation or something?”

“Ah, sorry about that,” he said, worry pinching his brow. “Better now?”

Sorry? He was sorry?

“She’s been shot,” Jenks said, and I felt a new wash of warmth as he dusted my leg again.

“I see that,” he said, his gaze going up the hill to the fire trucks. “I would’ve found you sooner, but everyone was focused on a trailer park, and it wasn’t until Quen left that I had the chance to do a finding spell.” He grimaced as he took me from Winona and the soothing scent of cinnamon and wine flowed over me anew. His hand with the missing fingers pinched, the pressure needed to hold me channeled into fewer fingers. “Maybe next time, they’ll listen to me.”

“Happens to me all the time,” I said, eyes closing as he started walking and my head thumped into his chest. Things were getting fuzzy again, and I felt like I was being rocked as he walked, Jenks shining ahead of us.

“I’ve a car a quarter mile up the road,” Trent said, concern edging his voice. “I’ll have you in a tub of water in half an hour.” He glanced at Winona. “Both of you.”

A tub of water sounded like heaven. “You’d better be nice to Winona,” I said. “Or I’m going to kick your ass. Understand?”

“More than you know.”

I was cold, and my head slumping into him, I breathed him in, giving myself up to whatever came next. I was going to be okay, and that was enough for now. Trent had been looking for me? How nice was that?

But my next thought woke me back up.
He thought he was my Sa’han? What the hell did that mean?

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.