Pale Demon

“You,” I said to Trent, gripping my bag tightly, “are anything but aboveboard with me. You ask me to trust you, but even now you’re not telling me everything. You must think I filled a prescription for stupid pills if you think I’m going to get you out to the West Coast in two days for ‘personal business.’ God, Trent, you told the coven I was a demon!” I could bear to say it now that Ivy, Jenks, and Quen weren’t in the car, but my face still burned.

I pulled on the handle, but nothing happened. Damn it, the thing had child locks.

“I need your help,” Trent said as I leaned over the front seat and unlocked the doors from the passenger panel. I flopped back in the seat and reached for my handle, shocked when Trent touched my arm. “I need your help,” he said again, letting go. “Please.”

Oh crap. He’d said please. Gut clenching, I covered my arm where he’d touched me. His eyes were pinched, and I wondered if I was really seeing that whisper of desperate need in the back of his eyes, or if this was all a trick to get me to do what he wanted. “Why?” I asked, letting go of my arm. It felt like he was touching me still.

At the question, the tight press of his lips eased. Outside the car, Quen, Jenks, and Ivy were talking in a small huddle, but the drama was inside the car. Trent wasn’t faking. He needed me—and he wouldn’t tell me why.

Exhaling, I closed my eyes in a long blink. Crap, I was a sucker for helpless males, especially when they looked as good as Trent. A quiver rose through me, and I felt my resolve start to fall apart. He was powerful, he was suave, and he needed my help. He’d asked for it.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! I suddenly realized that no matter how much I complained and argued, I was going to do exactly what Trent wanted. Again. And it irritated me that he was right. If the coven was going to take a shot at me en route, they would think twice if Trent was with me. I didn’t trust Trent, but I trusted the coven even less.

“I desperately need to get to the West Coast before Sunday night,” he said, and my eyes opened. “It’s a private matter. This is the most important thing in my life. Please help me.”

The faint scent from his boots of stables was winding its way into me now that the car wasn’t moving and the air was still. His clothes, the sun in his hair, everything combined to remind me of a summer afternoon when I was twelve and he had found me crying in the stables at summer camp, thinking I’d alienated my best friend. The thrill I’d felt, the power he’d given me when we took a fence together on his horse twined through me. Then a mere two months ago when we had pounded over his fields under the moonlight, believing the lie that the scream we had heard was a fox and not the man who had tried to kill me. Remembering it all, I quivered, feeling myself pulled to him. Shit. Maybe I was a demon.

I spoke to my knees. “If I get you to the West Coast by Sunday, you have to promise to help me at the coven meeting. I need them to reinstate my citizenship that you pushed them into revoking and guarantee that everyone stops gunning for me.” Heart pounding, I looked up. “If I can’t beat this, I’m permanently in the ever-after.” I was going to regret this. I knew it.

“I didn’t know that,” he said, looking like he was realigning his thinking.

He went to say something more, but Jenks had dropped down through the open roof to hover between us. “You ready to go, Rache?” he asked, looking far too bright and eager.

“Yes,” I said, tired as I gathered my bag to myself again. “We need to talk. I’m going to get Trent to the coast. I’m going to need your help, and don’t try to stop me.”

The pixy put his hands on his hips and grinned at me. “I know.”

My lips parted, and I stared at him. I know? He’d said, I know? “Who are you, and how did you kill my partner?” I said, and Jenks spilled a silver dust.

“Cookie farts is right,” he said. “Neither of you will make it out there without the other. And me, to help.”

A huge sigh came from Trent instead of the expected bad temper at the slur. His eyes were closed, and when they opened, there was hope—it made him look more powerful yet. “We can leave within the hour,” he said, opening the door. “They won’t be expecting that.”

I wondered if he meant they as in the Withons or they as in the coven.

Trent was gone, his door thumping shut. Jenks shot out of the roof. Scrambling, I worked the door and got out, blinking as I emerged in the sun. “They won’t be expecting it because it’s a stupid idea,” I said, seeing Trent beside Ivy and Quen. “I need to go home and pack again,” I said, striding to the trunk of my mom’s car. “Jenks needs to find a babysitter.”

Ivy shifted my garment bag to show two suitcases, my old blue one and the other I’d seen in the trunk of Trent’s car. It had to be Trent’s. What was my old suitcase doing here? And Trent’s? That was Trent’s, wasn’t it?

“You’ve got your dress,” Ivy said as I stared. “And everything you packed for the airplane is in your blue bag.”

“Wha-what was in my checked luggage?” I stammered.

Ivy gave me one of her few full smiles. “Magazines,” she said matter-of-factly. “They weren’t going to let you get on that plane,” she said coaxingly when my brow furrowed, “so sue me for thinking ahead. I just moved everything you packed to a different bag. I thought we’d hit the train station next, but this is better.”

Not believing this was happening, I looked at everyone in turn, feeling like I’d been manipulated. “What about Jenks and his kids?” I asked.

“I called Jih,” Jenks said as he landed on the raised trunk, his wings going red in the reflected heat. “Bis is going to watch them at night, and Jih is going to watch them during the day. Her husband wasn’t going for it until I agreed that Jih could bring home whatever she wanted from the graveyard.” His wings hummed and he took flight, warm again. “Ivy’s going to bring me my good sword and some toothbrushes.”

“You’re coming?” I asked Ivy, not seeing her suitcase in the trunk.

She shrugged. “I’m going to close up the church and fly out to join you. You can get to St. Louis by nightfall. I already have my ticket.”

Oh God. The one she’d bought today? Feeling used, I dropped back, eying them in disbelief. “This morning was all for show?” I said bitterly.

From beside me, Trent shifted his feet. “Is this why you suggested I dress casually?” he asked Quen. “You knew I wasn’t coming back?”

Jenks hummed, close, darting off when I waved him away before he could land on my shoulder. “We had to be sure Ivy could fly,” the pixy said. “Now we know she can. We’re taking your mom’s car.”

The pixy looked too satisfied to live, but I wasn’t happy.

“No, we’re taking mine,” Trent said suddenly, and I realized he hadn’t known about this, either. It made me feel a little better. Especially when Quen cleared his throat and fell into a modified parade rest.

“No, Sa’han, you’re taking Ms. Morgan’s car.”

I turned to Ivy and Jenks, both of them smiling in the sun as if it was all just a joke. Me and Trent in a car to St. Louis? The tabloids would love it. “You had this all worked out, huh?”

“Not all of it until just now,” Ivy said. “But both Quen and I like to be prepared.”

From my other side, Trent muttered, “Can I talk to you, Quen? Privately?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jenks said brightly when Quen inclined his head to excuse himself. “Go complain. It isn’t going to change anything.”

Gravel crunched under Trent’s boots as the two elves went to have an argument that I was sure Trent was going to lose. Uneasy, I squinted in the sun as I faced Ivy. “You agree with this?”

Ivy nodded, and Jenks darted away to eavesdrop on Trent and Quen. “I think this is the safest way to get you there,” Ivy said, and my focus sharpened on her. “The coven won’t take a shot at you with Trent in the car, and the Withons’ assassins aren’t that much of a threat. It’s the best of a bad situation. And if he is lying and he double-crosses you, I’ll kill him for you.”

From anyone else, it would have been an idle threat, and I smiled, feeling loved.

“Take this for me,” Ivy said, handing me her laptop in the briefcase. “If for some reason I can’t get on the plane, I’ll bike out and join you. With luck, I’ll see you in a few hours.”

I took the briefcase as the heavy door of my mom’s car slammed. Nervous, I gave her a hug. Jenks flew up, dusting us as he got included in there somewhere. “Be nice,” Ivy whispered as she let go, and I shivered at the feeling of her words on my neck.

Flustered, I backed up, holding the briefcase before me like a fig leaf. Quen was coming toward us, and I shifted to make room for him. Trent was in the front seat, passenger side. Huh. He was in for a surprise if he thought he was going to ride the entire way.

Worry made the creases in the older man’s face deeper. Gripping my hand, Quen’s expression smoothed out somewhat. “Thank you, Rachel,” he said as he let go. “Don’t let him do anything too stupid.”

“If he does,” Jenks said loudly, “we’ll just leave him at a restaurant or something.”

I didn’t bother to hide my smile, but I shook my head to reassure Trent’s security officer. I had more class than that. I think.

Quen hesitated as Ivy made motions to get back into Trent’s car, then he said quickly, “Thank you from me. Ceri and me both …”

My smile grew wider, and for the first time, I started to feel good about this. “You’re welcome,” I said, knowing Quen couldn’t leave Ceri. It was his child she was having, not Trent’s. The woman could take on demons and win, but to have Quen beside her as she brought their child into the world would mean more to her than anything else.

“Bring him home safely so I don’t have to mess you up,” Quen added as he turned away, and my worry flowed back. I was responsible for Trent. I was responsible for keeping him alive on this magic carpet ride. Remind me again of why I said yes?

But Quen had gotten into the sleek black car with Ivy, and I did nothing as it looped forward and around, and left. The sound of the popping of gravel under tires gave way to crickets. A hot summer breeze rose, making my hair tickle my neck. My gaze went to the pale blue sky, then shifted to the cameras on the light poles.

I took a slow breath, and it was as if I could see the entire world spreading out unseen before me, making me small as I realized how far we had to go.

“How many miles is it?” I whispered to Jenks, and the sound of his wings melted into the morning, sounding right.

“One at a time, Rache.”

Nodding, I dropped my eyes and scuffed my boots to the passenger side of the car. Yanking the door open, I met Trent’s startled gaze. He was wearing a pair of classy, green-tinted sunglasses, and it made him look all the better. “You’re driving,” I said flatly.

Trent stared. “I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t have a license,” I said, waiting for him to get out. “The I.S. took it when I got summoned out on I-77 and plowed my car into a bridge railing. You’re driving, bucko. At least until we get out of the city and no one will recognize me.”

He blinked, then muttered, “For God’s sake,” as he undid his seat belt and slid over.

Jenks darted into the car as I got in, taking his usual seat on the rearview mirror. “You’re not going to swear all the bloody Tink-blasted way there, are you?” he asked.

Feeling weird, I settled myself, my bag going on the backseat. “I’ve got one more condition, or this stops right here,” I said, and Trent sighed, his hands on the wheel, staring at the dusty trunk of the car in front of us. Overhead, a plane roared.

“What,” he said flatly, more of a demand than a question.

My thoughts went back to the enthrallment curse and him wiping the memories of Jack and Jill, and I laboriously rolled my window down. My mom didn’t trust electronics, and they were the old crank style. “You do nothing but drive,” I said. “Got it? No wiping memories, no enthrallment, and no fighting if there’s trouble. Nothing. You sit in a bubble and play tiddledywinks.”

Jenks made a scoffing sound. “You’re not good at this, greenie weenie, and you’re going to slow us down if you try.”

“You don’t like my magic?” he said, a thread of pride in him.

“No,” I shot back, stifling a shiver at the memory of his wild, elven magic. “I don’t. Calling on the divine for strength is risky, and you never know what you’re going to get. Keep it to yourself, or I’m going to zip-strip you.”

His eyebrows rose mockingly. “Not a good feeling, is it? Knowing someone has the ability to do bad things and you just have to trust they won’t.”

“I only do black magic as a last resort,” I said through clenched teeth. It was all I could do not to smack the smug, satisfied look off his face.

“Keys?” Trent said mockingly, and Jenks hummed his wings in anticipation.

Twisting, I reached over the seat for my bag, flushing when I got myself back where I belonged. Sheesh, my butt had been inches from Trent, and Jenks was laughing as I refastened my seat belt. Trent was still utterly emotionless, and I smacked the keys into his hand with enough force to bring his eyes to mine.

“She’s all yours, Jeeves,” I said, closing my eyes as I tried to gather my strength. This was going to be a long ride. They stayed shut for all of three seconds, flashing open when Trent revved the engine hard, jamming it into reverse and making me reach for the dash. “Take it easy!” I shouted, staring at Trent, his eyes on the rearview mirror.

“Watch where you’re driving that piece of blue-haired crap!” someone yelled, and I turned to the businessman behind us, clearly hot and bad tempered as he looked for his car.

I went to shout something appropriately rude, but Trent had already yanked the wheel around and was accelerating, leaving him in a cloud of gravel dust. “When we get to St. Louis, we’re renting a real car,” Trent muttered.

“There is nothing wrong with my mom’s car,” I snapped.

Trent was silent, staring straight ahead, but I was fuming. There was nothing wrong with my mom’s car. Nothing at all.

Five

Anarrow slice of early-afternoon sun made it into the front seat to warm my arm, resting on the open window. I was driving—big surprise—and the wind had my hair in a tangle that would take half a bottle of cream rinse to fix. We’d stopped three hours out in the bottom part of Indiana for Jenks to find something to eat and somewhere to pee, and after that he told me he was going to nap. Elves had a similar sleep schedule, and though he hadn’t said anything, it was obvious that Trent was getting sleepy, too, so I’d offered to drive.

Actually, I mused as I glanced at a somnolent Trent, the last four hours had been nice. Trent’s face was pleasant when he wasn’t scowling. His jeans and shirt made him look dramatically different—more attractive than his usual suit somehow. Accessible maybe. The wind shifted his baby-fine hair as he slumped against the door, as far from me as he could get.

I could reach right out and smack him if I wanted. I hadn’t liked his quiet disdain of my mom’s car. So it didn’t have a six-speaker system or power doors or windows. It wasn’t shiny, and the blue color didn’t do anything for me, either. But I could do ten miles an hour more in my old-lady car than in my shiny red car and never get noticed. It had lots of cup holders, too.

Tucking a wayward curl behind an ear, I eyed his sunglasses in envy, just sitting on the dash while he slept. I bet they’d look better on me than on him. The sun was giving me a headache, and I almost reached for them—until I noticed that Trent’s hands were clenched, even in sleep. Okay, maybe he wasn’t as comfortable with this as he wanted me to believe. Still, it said something that he’d even fallen asleep.

Looking back to the flat landscape we’d been in for the last hour or so, I wondered if I’d be able to fall asleep with Trent driving. This was weird, and not just because a witch, an elf, and a pixy were on the Great American Road Trip. I still owed Trent that “freed familiar” curse, and guilt was tugging at me.

Bothered, I glanced at my shoulder bag where his curse was, then back to the road. A quick look at the rearview mirror assured me that Jenks was still sleeping, soaking in the sun like a tiny winged cat in the back window. Sighing, I returned my attention to the landscape. I’d never driven like this, and the open spaces were getting to me. The road had been built pre-Turn, and it was creepy driving past town after town that had been abandoned during the plague the Turn had been born of. The trees growing through the roofs of abandoned buildings and the tall yellow M’s and old gas station signs high above new forests made me positively uncomfortable.

The mix of vegetation covering the old destruction was reminiscent of the ever-after, and curious, I brought up my second sight. My scalp tingled, the sensation shifting over my skull to make me shiver as the red-tinted ever-after swam up, coating everything in a sheen of red. The sun seemed to cast two shadows, but apart from the road, which now looked broken and covered with weeds, everything looked pretty much the same. A sun-baked field of nothing but grass stretched from horizon to horizon. Demons congregated where the ley lines were, living under them in the ground where nothing changed much.

According to Al, the ever-after was a broken reality, unable to stand on its own, and was being dragged along behind ours, connected to and kept alive by the ley lines. Energy flowed like tides between them, preventing the ever-after from vanishing and giving the alternate reality a broken visage. It was a reflection of reality but shattered. So if Cincinnati put up a new building, a new one would show up in the ever-after, but would begin to fall apart even before it was completed. That’s why demons lived underground. We didn’t construct much below a certain level, so nothing changed there but what the demons fashioned for themselves. They used gargoyles like familiars, pulling ley-line energy deep into the earth to where they could use it.

But here, out in the spaces between big conglomerations of ley lines where the cities were, there was a whole lot of red-sheened nothing: trees, grass, bushes. You’d think that being an earth witch I’d like nature, but I didn’t. Not like this anyway. It felt broken. It didn’t help that the ever-after looked almost normal out here. Except for the black parts …

Squinting, I tried to figure out what they were. I’d never seen them in Cincinnati’s version of the ever-after, and they glinted silver under the red-tinted sun, like a heat mirage or something, reflecting … nothing.

Still using my second sight, I looked over the trees to St. Louis, feeling better with the tall buildings, even if they looked broken with the overlay of my second sight. We were close, and I dropped my second sight and twisted in my seat to pull my phone out of my back pocket. I’d gotten a text from Ivy earlier when she’d boarded her plane, then again when she’d landed. We were going to meet at the arch. I should give her a call.

“What were you just doing?” Trent said suddenly, and I jerked, dropping my phone.

“Jeez, Trent!” I yelped. “How long have you been watching me?” I flushed, glancing in the back to see Jenks’s wings shift and spill a silver dust as he slept on. “I’m calling Ivy.”

Trent sat up, rubbing his right bicep where his familiar mark was, before he bent almost double to get my phone from under my feet. “You forgot I was here,” he said as he handed it to me, smiling as if it pleased him. “What were you doing? Before, I mean. You were looking at something, and it wasn’t the view. Your aura had a shadow on it. I’ve never seen that.”

Great. He’d been watching me. Grimacing, I focused on the road. The traffic was starting to thicken as we approached the city. “Really?” I said shortly. Jenks had said the same thing to me once when I was doing some high magic. I didn’t like that my “aura shadow” showed up when I was using my second sight. Smiling as if nothing was wrong, I tossed my phone to him, and he deftly caught it. “Will you call Ivy for me? Tell her where we are?”

He tossed it back, and it thumped onto my lap. “I’m not your secretary.”

Dude, that was just rude, I thought, intentionally swerving from the right lane to the left as I flipped the phone open.

Trent clutched the door and the dash, and from the backseat Jenks shrilled, “Hey! Rache! What the Disney blasted hell are you doing?”

I was smiling my prettiest as Trent growled, “Give me the phone.”

“Thank you,” I all but sang, dropping it into his hand and rolling up the window so he could hear better. He seemed harmless in his jeans and shirt, and I wondered how much of his charisma came from his wardrobe. Jenks apparently appreciated the drop in wind, and he flew back to the front, looking rumpled and sleepy as he yawned and sat on the rearview mirror.

“Where are we?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his wings to check for tears.

“Still on I-70,” I said as Trent scrolled through my call list, eyebrows going high when he found the mayor’s number. Yeah, we had talked. Got that little misunderstanding about her son a few years ago taken care of. “We’ll be crossing the Mississippi in a minute,” I added.

Rubbing his arm again, Trent hit a button and put the phone to his ear. I wondered if he knew he was doing it, rubbing his familiar mark. “One of these days your smart-ass attitude is going to get you killed,” he said softly.

“Not today,” I said, then watched Jenks peer behind us.

“Huh,” the pixy said, not sounding at all worried. “They’re still there.”

Nodding, I flicked my gaze to the mirror, seeing a gold Cadillac a way back. “Yup.”

Phone to his ear, Trent turned to look. “We’re being followed?”

“Relax, cookie maker,” Jenks said as he continued to work over his wings. “They’ve been there since Terre Haute.”

A knot of worry started to tighten. Was it me they were following or Trent?

There was a faint hail on the tiny speaker, and Trent continued to watch the car behind us through the side mirror. “Ms. Tamwood,” he said, and I marveled at his voice. “Rachel would like to talk to you,” he added as I held out my hand.

“Hey, hi,” I said as I wrangled the phone to my ear. “We’re almost across the Mississippi. How was your flight?”

“Lousy.” Ivy sounded tired, but she’d been up longer than I had. “I’m at the arch,” she continued. “Stay on I-70, then take the South Memorial Drive exit just after the bridge.”

“Thanks, I already looked at the map,” I said, mildly peeved. The woman had not only laminated the map, but she’d used a marker to star where we could stop for Jenks.

“Follow Memorial Drive all the way down to Washington,” she continued, as if I’d said nothing. “There’re signs everywhere to the parking structure.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said, exasperated, but Jenks was laughing as he landed on my shoulder.

“Rache, those guys are getting closer,” he said, pitching his voice so Ivy could hear him.

“What guys?” Ivy asked, her concern clear through the tiny speaker.

I fluffed my hair to make Jenks take off. Thanks a hell of a lot, Jenks.

“Someone’s tailing us,” I said casually.

“For how long?” she said, loud enough for Trent to hear.

“Long enough,” I said. “They aren’t that close. Quarter mile.”

“Two hundred feet, Ivy,” Jenks said loudly, back on the rearview mirror and knowing her superior vamp hearing would pick it up. “Three guys unless someone’s taking a nap.”

The good news being that if they were that close, the car probably wasn’t bugged.

“Maybe we should drive straight through. Where’s the map?” Jenks said, taking off in a burst of sparkles and vanishing in the backseat.

Trent stiffened, his gaze sharp on mine. “We need to stop.”

“I don’t need a map, Jenks,” I said, paying more attention to the road. We’d picked up a dump truck somewhere, and the road was getting crowded with semis and SUVs.