Kim Harrison - The Undead Pool

“You can’t go to the ever-after with pieces of the Goddess in you! I know I said it was the only way, but we can think of something else. What if Newt saw you?”

The worry lines at the corners of his eyes pushed the anger from me, and my first biting response died. “We don’t have time for anything else,” I said, feeling numb. “Besides, if I can keep this between Al and me, it will be okay. He won’t turn me in. He’d lose everything.” But a smidgen of fear stirred through me. I’d seen Al’s hatred of the elves. His emotion was not one filtered through generations but raw. The pain was his own, not a passed-down story.

And yet, he had loved Ceri . . .

“It will be fine,” I said as I picked up the cookie and threw it away. “And it’s not any of your concern.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, and I leaned over the counter to him.

“Yes. It. Is.” I took a slow breath, ticked even though I knew he’d made the right decision. We both had. “Mr. Kalamack.”

Shoes scuffing, he sat down with an almost imperceptible sigh. He was facing sideways to me, and I could hear pixies playing in the garden. If it wasn’t for the sirens and faint scent of burning building from across the river, it might almost be a normal day. Slowly the memory of making cookies with Trent surfaced. Tension easing, I resumed moving the cookies to the cooling rack. The memory hadn’t been real in the sense that we’d actually done it—seeing as I’d been trapped in my mind and he had been trying to free me—but he remembered it too, so perhaps it was real after all. The kiss afterward sure had been.

“Your aura is white,” he said, still not looking at me. “How many?” His head turned, and my breath caught. “I can still ask that, can’t I?”

I nudged a cookie to be exactly even with the rest. “It varies. If I tap a line, too many to breathe. Right now, not a lot. Just a few voices. They recognize you from the computer. Congratulations, you’ve been granted the title of trusted singular. I suggest you refrain from wearing hats.”

“Ah . . .” His confusion was sudden and wary, and I managed a wry smile.

“They recognize you as an individual. They weren’t sure from seeing you through the computer. They’ve been ranging about a lot, which makes it easier.” Ranging about, then coming back with confused friends, bombarding me with images, thoughts, and questions about things happening miles away. It was lofty, godlike to know what was going on everywhere. I’m going crazy, and I think I like it.

Jenks’s wings hummed, and he flew from the curtain rod to the cooling cookies. “If you’re not going to fight, I’m going to go rescue your horse from my kids,” he said, and then with a cheerful dust I didn’t understand, he darted out into the garden.

Trent watched him go, looking frustrated as he turned his attention to the spelling pots over the counter. “I vowed I’d never tell you anything you wanted to do was a bad idea,” he said, his low voice pulling at me. “But this isn’t worth the risk. Rachel, look at me!”

I set the spatula down and faced him, cookies and a thousand words unsaid between us. “Why are you here?” I asked softly.

He sighed. “You can’t let the demons see you with mystics in you. Even Al,” he said, and fear spiked through me. “You don’t understand the depth of hatred they have for us. Especially now that there’re a dozen Rosewood survivors growing up healthy. The demons know they exist. They’re simply ignoring them until their neural nets are mature enough to play with.”

“I said, why are you here?” I asked again, breath catching when he got to his feet.

“Rachel, your aura is white with mystics,” he said, and I didn’t pull away when he took my elbow. “They’re not fools. They’ll know. They will remember. They hate the Goddess.”

“Then maybe they know how to contain her,” I said, lifting my elbow away. “Getting help from the demons is the best option we’ve got. So it’s the harder choice—why change anything now?”

Exhaling, Trent leaned closer, and the scent of cinnamon and wine crashed over me. “I want you to slow down,” he said. “We can figure this out. Going to Al is not the only option; it’s the easiest for everyone but you.” A hint of fear settled into his strained expression. “I can’t do easy anymore. It’s too hard on my soul.”

There was danger in his words, and I turned to set the empty pans in the sink. “You’re getting married,” I said, back to him. “You lost your say in what I do.” Lips pressed, I turned around. “Why are you even here?”

“I came to talk some sense into you,” he said. “And I’m not leaving until I know you’re not going to do this.”

My head hurt, and I looked down, thinking my feet were too long to be pretty. “What you want doesn’t matter.” I brought my gaze up, shocked to see how he looked in my kitchen, pleading at me to listen to him. “Trent, you worked hard to become responsible for the elves, and that goes both ways. You belong to them. You belong to Lucy, and Ray, and Ellasbeth. You belong to flipping Cincinnati and every elf east of the Mississippi. I work for you when I need the money, and I’m not doing it anymore. You made a choice. It was a good one and I support it, but you can’t have it both ways. So go away and let me do my job!”

He stepped forward, forcing me back. “You’re right. I made a decision. It was the wrong one.”

Shit. I felt my face go white. Mystics clustered in me, looking for the source of my fear, amazed to find it again in emotion, not physical hurt. More gathered, fascinated and making me dizzy.

“When I heard you were taken by the Goddess, I tried,” Trent said, noting his mismatched sleeves and rolling one up. “I did what I was supposed to do. I stayed where it was safe. I fulfilled my responsibilities by sending that finding charm to Edden. I told myself that he could find you, that you’d be okay. And you were. I did the right thing, what was acceptable and needed—and it worked. But it almost killed me.”

He came close, and I backed up until I hit the counter. Watching me, he took my hand in his, bringing it up between us. I looked at it with mine, seeing the masculine strength in his long, graceful fingers. “I’m not going to work for you ever again,” I whispered, wanting his fingers skating across my skin. “Don’t ask.”

Trent’s eyes fixed on mine. “I told Ellasbeth to leave this morning.”

My breath caught, and I held it, feeling dizzy. “What?”

His smile was faint and tremulous—unsure and confident all at the same time. “Right after you hung up on me. You were right that I had no voice in what you did if I married her, and I didn’t like it. I told Quen to pack her things if she didn’t. I told her to be out by tomorrow. I told her that she would have the girls three months in the summer, and that’s it, and if she contests it, she will never see them again. I’m not going to marry her. Ever. I don’t love her, and I never will.”

His hand on me was trembling. My God. For once in his life, he was setting aside what was expected of him and following . . . his heart. “You can’t do that,” I whispered, scared. “Everyone expects . . .”

“I already did.” His jaw clenched. “I don’t want easy anymore. It’s worthless and the shine doesn’t last. But you already knew that.”

This wasn’t happening. I mean, I’d seen the signs, I’d seen them, and we had agreed . . . “Why are you doing this?” I said, a flash of anger coloring my words. This was unfair! We had agreed! Why was he dangling this in front of me when he knew it wasn’t a real possibility. “You know who I am!”