The Outlaw Demon Wails (12 page)

Trent glanced at Quen, who was still staring in disbelief. “I'll keep that in mind,” Trent muttered.

I headed for the door, my pace faltering when Quen said, “Rachel, please reconsider?”

My good mood crashed, and I stopped two feet from the door with my head bowed. Quen was asking, but I knew he was asking for Trent. I thought of Ceri and the happiness a healthy child would bring her, the healing that could come of it. “Trent, I can't. The risk—”

“What would you risk for your child to be healthy?” Trent interrupted, and I turned around, surprised at the question. “What would any parents do?”

Tension pulled me stiff, and hearing the accusation of cowardice in his voice, I hated him more than I ever had before. I'd never thought about children much until I met Kisten, and then it had always been with a melancholy sadness that they wouldn't have his beautiful eyes. But if I had a child? And that child was suffering as I had in my past? Yeah. I'd risk it all.

Trent seemed to see it in my eyes and a hint of victory quirked his lips. But then I thought of Al. I'd been his familiar once. Sort of. And it was
hell on earth. That was assuming he wouldn't outright kill me. I wouldn't chance it. I was going to think with my head this time and not be goaded into a stupid decision by Trent pushing my buttons—and I wasn't going to feel guilty about it either.

A shiver lifted through me and was gone. Lifting my chin, I stared until the disgust I directed at him made his eye twitch. “No,” I said, my voice shaking. “
I won't.
I go in the ever-after, and Al will pick me up three seconds after I tap a line. After that, I'm dead. It's that simple. You can save your own damn species.”

“We don't need Morgan's help,” Trent said, his voice tight. But I noticed he'd waited until I refused before he said it. Ceri wasn't the only stubborn elf, and I wondered if Trent's new desire to prove his worth came from his trying to impress her.

“This isn't my problem,” I muttered, hiking my shoulder bag up. “I have to go.”

Feeling ugly, I opened the door and walked out, bumping Jon in his gut with my elbow when he didn't get out of my way quick enough. I had never cared about Trent's grand plan to save the elves before, but this wasn't sitting well with me.

I consoled myself that Ceri's child would survive whether they had a thousand-year-old sample from her or a two-thousand-year-old sample from the ever-after. The only difference was the amount of tinkering that they would have to do to the child.

My mouth twisted into a grimace as I remembered my three summers spent at Trent's father's Make-A-Wish camp for dying children. It would be stupid to believe that all the children there were on the roster to save. They were a living camouflage for the few that had the money to pay for a Kalamack cure. And I would give anything to have escaped the pain of making friends with children who were going to die.

The chatter of the people up front changed when they caught sight of me, and I waved so they'd leave me alone. I stormed to the door, not caring if Jon thought his boss had gotten the best of me. I didn't stop or slow down until my feet reached the sidewalk.

Street noise hit me, and the sun. Slowing, I remembered where I was
and did an about-face. My car was the other way. I didn't look up as I passed the front window, hiding my eyes as I dug my phone out of my bag. Bothered, I hit the return-last-call number to tell Marshal I had a friend emergency and I'd let him know if I couldn't make Fountain Square by three.

I had to talk to Ceri.

I cut a sharp left into the carport, taking it fast because of my lingering anger at Trent. Habit alone kept the paint unscratched. I loved my car, and though I was jamming the gearshift like an Indy 500 driver, I wasn't going to do anything to hurt my mobile icon of independence. Especially after finally getting my license back and the dent I didn't remember putting in the car repaired. Fortunately the church was in a quiet residential area, and only the sixty-year-old oaks lining the street saw my ugly temper.

I hit the brakes sharply, and my head swung forward and back. A perverse sense of satisfaction filled me. The grille was four inches from the wall. Perfect.

Grabbing my bag from the backseat, I got out and slammed the door. It was edging two. Ceri was probably still asleep, seeing as elves kept the same sleeping habits as pixies when they could, but I had to talk to her.

I heard the dry clatter of pixy wings when my feet hit the walk, and I swung my hair out of the way for whomever it was. My money was on Jenks; it was his habit to stay awake with the few kids on sentry duty, sleeping odd hours when everyone else was up.

“Rache,” Jenks said in greeting, his swooping dart to land on my
shoulder shifting at the last moment when he saw my sour expression. Hovering, he flew backward in front of me. I hated it when he did that. “Ivy called you, huh?” he said, his attitude one of affronted righteousness. “It's in the eaves in the front. I can't wake the damn thing up. You need to use a spell or something.”

My eyebrows rose.
It's in the eaves?
“What's in the eaves?”

“A gargoyle,” Jenks said angrily, and my alarm vanished. “A clumsy-ass, pimply-faced, big-footed gargoyle.”

“Really?” I said as I stopped right there and peered up at the steeple, not seeing the gargoyle. “How long has it been here?”

“How the hell should I know!” he shouted, and I realized that was where his anger was coming from. Someone had slipped through his lines, and he didn't like it. Jenks saw my smile, and he put his hands on his hips as he hovered backward. “What's so funny?”

“Nothing.” I pushed myself into motion, making a left on the sidewalk to go to Keasley's instead of the church. Jenks's wings hummed when I took the unexpected direction, and he hastened to catch up. “We'll talk to him or her tonight, okay?” I said, wanting to get Ivy's take before we made any sweeping decisions. “If it's young, it's probably just looking for somewhere to hang.”

“They don't hang, they lurk,” he muttered, wings clattering aggressively. “Something's wrong with it, or it would be with its kin. They don't move, Rachel, unless they did something really bad.”

“Maybe he's a rebel like you, Jenks,” I said, and the pixy made a tiny huffing sound.

“Where are we going?” he asked shortly as he turned to look at the church behind us.

Immediately my bad mood returned. “To talk to Ceri. I ran into Trent trying on costumes.”

“What does that have to do with Ceri?” Jenks interrupted, as protective of the small but self-assured woman as I was.

Toes edging the drop off of the curb, I pulled myself to a stop so I could watch his expression. “He got her pregnant.”

“Pregnant!”

The shrill shout was punctuated by a flash of dust I could see even in the strong afternoon light. “It gets better,” I said, stepping into the empty street and heading for the tired, sixty-plus-year-old house Ceri and Keasley shared. “He wants me to go into the ever-after to get a sample so their child will be born without any effects of the curse. Tried to guilt me into it.”
And it almost worked.

“Pregnant?” Jenks repeated, his angular face showing his shock. “I gotta smell her.”

The scraping of my boots on the pavement faltered. “You can smell it when someone's pregnant?” I said, somewhat appalled.

Jenks shrugged. “Sometimes. I don't know about elves.” He darted to the sidewalk, then back to me. “Can you walk a little faster? I'd like to get there before the sun sets and that thing in the eaves wakes up.”

My gaze went three houses down to find Keasley outside enjoying the fall weather, raking leaves. Great, he'd seen me tear into here like a bunny on fire. “Jenks,” I said suddenly. “I'm going to do the talking. Not you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said, and I fixed my gaze on him with a threatening sharpness.

“I mean it. Ceri might not have told him yet.”

The hum of his wings dropped in pitch, though he didn't lose a millimeter of height. “Okay,” he said hesitantly.

My boots hit the sidewalk and the dappled pattern of sun that made it through the colored leaves still clinging to the dark branches.
Keasley is Leon Bairn?
I thought as I looked him over. Leon was the only other person besides me to quit the I.S. and survive, though he'd apparently had to fake his death to do it. I was guessing that Trent knew it because he had helped. He would have been about fifteen then, but just coming into his parents' legacy and eager to show his stuff.

I glanced at Jenks, remembering how mad the pixy had been when I hid from him that Trent was an elf. If Keasley was Leon, then he was a runner. And Jenks wouldn't violate that trust for anything.

“Jenks, can you keep a secret?” I said, slowing when Keasley saw us and stopped his work to lean on his rake. The old man suffered from
arthritis so badly that he seldom had the stamina for yard work, despite the pain charms Ceri made for him.

“Maybe,” the pixy said, knowing his own limits. I gave him a sharp look, and he grimaced. “Yeah, I'll keep your lame-ass secret. What is it? Trent wears a man-bra?”

A smile quirked my lips before I grew serious. “Keasley is Leon Bairn.”

“Holy crap!” Jenks said, a burst of light glowing against the bottom of the leaves. “I take the afternoon off, and you find out Ceri's pregnant and sharing a roof with a dead legend!”

I grinned at him. “Trent was chatty today.”

“No fairy-ass kidding.” His wings went silver in thought. “So why did Trent tell you?”

I shrugged, running my finger against the thump-bump of the chain-link fence surrounding Keasley's yard as I walked. “I don't know. To prove he knew something I didn't? Did Jih tell you that she's shacked up with a pixy buck?”

“What!”

His wings stopped and my palm darted out with a flash of adrenaline, but he caught himself before he could drop into my palm. Jenks hovered, his face a mask of parental horror. “Trent?” he squeaked. “Trent told you?” And when I nodded, he turned his gaze to the front gardens of the house, just starting to show the grace of a pixy presence even in the fall. “Sweet mother of Tink,” he said. “I have to talk to my daughter.”

Without waiting for my reply, he darted away, only to jerk to an abrupt halt at the fence. Slipping several inches in height, he yanked a pixy-size red bandanna from a pocket and tied it about his ankle. It was a pixy's version of a white flag: a promise of good intention and no poaching. He'd never worn it before when visiting his daughter, and the acknowledgment of her new husband had to be bittersweet. His wings a dismal blue, he zipped over the house to the backyard where Jih had been concentrating her efforts on building a garden.

Smiling faintly, I raised a hand to Keasley's hail, opened the gate, and entered the yard.

“Hi, Keasley,” I called, looking him over with a new interest born of
knowing his history. The old black man stood in the middle of his yard, his cheap sneakers almost hidden by leaves. His jeans were faded by work, not distressing stones in the wash, and his red-and-black plaid shirt looked a size too big, probably gotten at discount somewhere.

His wrinkles gave his face texture that made his expressions easy to read. The tinge of yellow in his brown eyes had me worried, but he was healthy apart from old age and arthritis. I could tell that he'd once been tall; now, though, I could look him eye to eye. Age was beating hard upon his body, but it had yet to touch his mind. He was the neighborhood wise old man and the only one who could give me advice without triggering my resentment.

But it was his hands that I liked the most. You could see how he had lived his entire life in them: dark, spare, knobby with stiffness, but not afraid of work, able to stir spells, stitch vampire bites, and hold pixy children. He had done all three in my sight, and I trusted him. Even if he was pretending to be something he wasn't. Didn't we all?

“Good afternoon, Rachel,” he called, his sharp gaze coming back from the roofline and Jenks's disappearing trail of pixy dust. “You look like a piece of autumn in that sweater.”

I glanced down at the black-and-red pattern, never having thought about it before. “Thanks. You look good out here raking. Your knees doing okay?”

The old man patted the worn spots, squinting in the sun. “They've been better, but they've been a lot worse, too. Ceri's been in the kitchen a lot lately, trying things out.”

I slowed, my feet still on the cracked walk to the front porch. Grass had encroached upon it until it was only eight inches wide. “I suppose,” I said softly, “chasing bad guys all your life can really damage a person. If they aren't careful.”

He didn't move, going still as he stared at me.

“I, uh, talked to someone today,” I said, wanting to hear it from him. “He said—”

“Who?” he rasped, and my face lost its expression. He was frightened. Terrified, almost.

“Trent,” I said, pulse quickening as I came forward. “Trent Kalamack. He acted like he's known for a long time.” My shoulders tensed, and the dog barking nearby made me nervous.

Exhaling long and slow, Keasley replaced his fear with a relief so deep I could just about feel it. “He has,” he said, a shaky hand going over his tight, graying curls. “I have to sit down.” He turned to his house. It needed new shingles and paint in the worst way. “Do you want to sit for a moment?”

I thought about Ceri, then Marshal. Then there was the gargoyle Jenks was going on about, too. “Sure.”

Keasley made his slow way to the sagging porch steps, propping the rake against the rail before easing himself down in stages with a heavy sigh. A basket of cherry tomatoes decorated the railing to be given out for trick-or-treat, and two pumpkins waited to be carved. I gingerly sat beside him, my knees even with my chest. “Are you okay?” I asked hesitantly when he didn't say anything.

He looked at me askance. “You know how to get an old man's heart going, Rachel. Do Ivy and Jenks know?”

“Jenks,” I said, guilt pinching my brow, and he raised a hand to tell me it was all right.

“I trust he will keep his mouth shut,” he said. “Trent gave me the means to stage my death. Actually, all he gave me was the DNA-doctored tissue to smear over my front porch, but he knew.”

Gave him tissue? There's a nice thought.
“Then you really are—” My words cut off when his twisted hand landed warningly on my knee. In the street, five sparrows fought over a moth they had found, and I listened to them squabble, hearing in his silence his request that I not even say it. “It's been over a decade,” I finally protested.

His eyes tracked the birds as one gained the moth and the rest chased the bird across the street. “It doesn't matter,” he said. “Like a murder charge, the file stays open.”

I followed his gaze to the church Ivy and I shared. “That's why you moved in across from the church, isn't it?” I asked, remembering the day. Keasley had saved my life by removing a delayed combustion charm
someone had slipped me on the bus. “You figured if I could survive the I.S.'s death contract, you might find a way, too?”

He smiled to show his yellowing teeth, and he pulled his hand from my knee. “Yes, ma'am. I did. But after seeing how you did it?” Keasley shook his head. “I'm too old to fight dragons. I'll stay Keasley, if you don't mind.”

I thought about that, cold despite the sun on us. Becoming anonymous was just something I couldn't do. “You moved in the same day I did, didn't you? You really don't know when Ivy rented the church.”

“No.” His eyes were on the steeple, the top hidden behind the trees. “But I watched her patterns close that first week, and I'm guessing she'd been there for at least three months.”

My head was going up and down. I was learning a lot today. None of it comfortable. “You're a good liar,” I said, and Keasley laughed.

“Used to be.”

Liar
, I thought, and then my mind drifted to Trent. “Uh, is Ceri up? I have to talk to her.”

Keasley shifted to look at me. In his tired eyes was a deep relief. I had learned his secret and freed him of the necessity to lie to me. But what I think he was the most grateful for was that I didn't think any less of him for it.

“I think she's asleep,” he said, smiling to tell me he was glad I was still his friend. “She's been tired lately.”

I'll bet.
Giving him a smile, I stood and tugged my jeans straight. I'd long assumed that Ivy had moved in before me, having only pretended to move in the same day to ease my suspicions. Now that I knew the truth, I might confront Ivy about it. Maybe. It didn't necessarily matter—I understood her reasons, and that was enough. Sometimes, just let sleeping vamps lie.

I extended a hand to help Keasley rise. “Will you tell Ceri I came over?” I asked as I held his arm until I knew he had his balance.

The porch creaked behind us, and I whipped my head around. Ceri was standing behind the closed screen door, in a sweaterdress that made her look like a young wife from the sixties. A jumble of emotions hit me as
I took in her somber, guilty stance. She didn't look pregnant. She looked worried.

“Did Jenks wake you?” I said in greeting, not knowing what else to say.

She shook her head no with her arms crossed over her middle. Her long, translucent hair was done up in a complex braid that needed at least two pixies to manage it. Even through the screen I could see her cheeks were pale, her green eyes wide, and her narrow chin raised defiantly. Though delicate and petite, her mind was resilient and strong, tempered by a thousand years of serving as a demon's familiar. Elves didn't live any longer than witches, but her life had paused the moment Al took her. My guess was she'd been in her midthirties. She was barefoot, as usual, and her purple dress had black and gold accents. They were the colors that Al made her wear, though admittedly, this wasn't a ball gown.