Hollows 11 - Ever After (10 page)

But they weren’t listening, having figured out Trent was in the car as well. Head down, I hustled back to my car as they fell on his like zombies. If I could give him Ray right now, I could be home in thirty minutes and the press probably wouldn’t follow.

Sneezing, I wondered if I could make it in twenty if someone from the I.S. ran vanguard.

A man from the gatehouse came out, waving everyone back, shouting that Mr. Kalamack would make a statement in an hour, and that they were welcome to wait at the gatehouse pressroom if they liked. In pairs and groups, they parted, and the black car moved slowly through the gate and turned into the parking lot where I waited.

Nervous, I leaned against my car, pointing Trent’s car out to Ray and telling her that one of her daddies was in it. She was still gumming that charm when the car pulled to a halt two spots down. Immediately a back door opened, Trent not waiting for the driver to get it for him. Jenks darted out, shedding encouraging silver sparkles, but Trent was a great deal slower, moving as if he was in pain. Upon closer inspection, I decided he was just tired, his jeans creased and the sleeves of his riding shirt rolled up. There was a tuft of cotton and a Band-Aid inside his elbow, and I wondered if he’d given blood.

Squinting at the sun, he crossed the warm pavement, his hands outstretched for Ray. The little girl had begun to wiggle when she’d caught sight of him, and the smile that came over Trent caught in my heart. It didn’t matter if this child was not his blood—she was his child. And Quen’s, and Ceri’s.

My smile faded. I had to fix this.

“Ray,” he breathed, and suddenly I felt her absence keenly as he took her. “Your daddy is going to be okay, I think.” His eyes rose to mine. “We got him there in time. Ten more minutes and they might not have been able to stop the cascading reaction.” He blinked fast, then looked away. “That’s twice you’ve saved Quen’s life. Thank you.”

I shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable. “I’m sorry this happened.”

“Me too.”

Our eyes met for a long, silent moment. Ray jumped and wiggled as Jenks’s dust sifted over her, and I flushed when Trent noticed what she was gumming, her little fingers gripping the charm so hard they were white. I sneezed, and I shook my head at Trent’s unspoken question.

“Ah, I’m sorry about this,” I said as the driver of his car began to move the car seat to the black Jag. “I hate coming home to find reporters in my driveway. I hadn’t heard from you and I need to talk to Al. That’s why I’m sneezing. Ray wouldn’t go down for her nap, and I figured she’d fall asleep in the car.” I hesitated. “You look tired.”

“I napped during some of the tests,” he said, and I wondered at the incongruity of us standing in the sun and talking as other people moved Ray’s things to his car. “I didn’t want to leave until he was stable. They got his aura to stop cycling, but they don’t know why he won’t regain consciousness. Thank you for handling the press. One of the guards relayed what you said. You did pretty well.”

My eyes dropped at his wry smile. “I’ve been dodging them the last couple of years. I know how much you have to give them for them to leave you alone.”

Ray had fallen against him, her head tucked under his chin as she started to drift asleep, her eyes never leaving me. “Oh God,” Jenks said from my shoulder, and her eyelids flickered. “Here come the vampires.”

Sure enough, coming up the road on a golf cart were four I.S. officers. The grit ground under Trent’s heel as he spun slowly to watch as they parked beside their cars and the one in the dress suit angled toward us.

It was Nina, or Felix, maybe. I could tell by the grace and slightly pained motion of the living vampire as she crossed the lot. The sun normally didn’t bother living vampires, but Nina was channeling Felix by the looks of it.

Trent seemed to shed his fatigue like an old shirt, but I could see it in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “They had a warrant,” I explained, and he bobbed his head in acceptance. “The I.S. in your backyard is another thing I don’t like coming home to. They’ve been on the grounds for the last couple of hours, but your security tells me they’ve been escorting them the entire time so they wouldn’t wander. The hospital called them, probably.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, gently patting Ray as the tallish Hispanic woman in the black dress suit put a hand up to ask us to wait. “You did exactly what Qu— What should have been done.”

I quashed the feeling of hurt. “I used to work for them. I know your rights.”

“Trenton!” the woman boomed out, her voice too expansive and masculine for her slight frame. Clearly Felix was in her again, and I worried about her. It wasn’t uncommon for the undead to use their “children” as moving walkie-talkies, but it was unusual that Felix kept doing it. But who tells an undead no?

“Good to see you again,” Trent said, shaking the woman’s hand with an expansive motion that he usually only used with men. “How much longer until you are off my property?”

The vampire smiled, setting a finger aside her nose in a gesture I hadn’t seen anyone under the age of fifty use. “Rachel, is Ivy back from Arizona yet?”

“No.” I shook Nina’s hand, struggling with my desire to wipe it off. Her fingers had been cool and dry, but the man animating her bothered me. “Was it a demon attack?”

“It would be a lot easier to tell if you hadn’t exploded three trees over the entire crime site.” Nina squinted uncomfortably. “Can we move this inside?”

“No,” I said again, shifting my bag up higher on my shoulder. “Can I leave, or do you want something?”

Jenks’s wings shifted against my neck in warning. Okay, it wasn’t smart to antagonize a vampire, especially a dead one, but Ray wasn’t the only one tired here.

“I need a statement, if you would please. Before you leave.”

I sneezed, my entire body contracting and the noise making Ray crack her eyes. Al was getting impatient. “I’m kind of busy right now.”

“Then you shouldn’t have obliterated the evidence,” Felix said, Nina’s beautiful white teeth bared at me in a threat thinly disguised as a smile.

“Oh. My. God,” Jenks said, safely parked on my shoulder but his dust shifting a bright red. “Rache, they think you did it. Do you really believe the crap that is coming out of your mouth,” the pixy added as Nina reflectively steepled her fingers as I’d seen older men do, “or do you just make shit up to see how stupid people might think you are?”

I knew I was filling the air with my anger, a close second to a vampire’s favorite smell after fear. The wind helped, but by Nina’s smirk I knew that she was picking up on some of it.

“You
are
a demon,” Nina said, making Jenks’s wings seem to hum in anger. “And yes, this has all the markings of a demon attack. It occurred in the daylight, meaning
you
are the only one who could accomplish it.”

“That’s dumber than Tink’s dildo!” Jenks exclaimed, and I raised a hand to keep him from flying at her; the vampire might be quick enough to catch him. I doubted Felix truly believed I’d done this, or he would’ve had a dozen other magic users out here to bring me in. Unless he knew even that wouldn’t be enough, and I’d been moved to the level of a banshee where they’d just kill me outright with a sniper’s spell.
Grea-a-a-at.

“Then there is option number two,” Nina said brightly as I fumed, and she turned to include Trent. “Do you wish to start an investigation on the Withons?”

“Ellasbeth didn’t do this.” Trent’s voice was soft because of Ray, but it had the sureness of wind and water. Slumped against him, Ray slept, at peace at last. Nina tilted her head as if unsure, and I agreed with Felix. Ellasbeth’s family was one of the wealthiest on the West Coast. She had motive, opportunity, and the clout to buy a demon attack. I wished it
was
her. It would make my life easier. But with Nick involved . . .

Nina eyed Trent, a cruel twist to her lips. “Isn’t that what you did to her? Steal her child?” she said as she held her hair against a gust of wind. “What’s good for the goose, eh?”

Jenks’s wings clattered, tickling my neck, and Trent frowned, letting a hint of his anger show. Beyond the gates, the press teams were coiling cords and packing away lights, but their long-range cameras were reading lips. “Ellasbeth did not arrange this,” Trent said shortly, his back to them. “I stole Lucy with my own efforts under an arranged tradition older than your species, vampire. If Ellasbeth had come here and taken Lucy by herself, then I’d be angry for having allowed it. I wouldn’t deserve her. But this wasn’t Ellasbeth.”

Nina swung back to me. “Which brings us back to you, Rachel.”

Exasperated, I dropped back to my car, sneezing and trying not to look pensive. “Just because a demon can’t come to reality doesn’t mean that his influence ends at the ley lines. I saw Nick Sparagmos leaving the hospital in a hurry yesterday amid that media circus you instigated. I did some asking around and found out he belongs to Ku’Sox Sha-Ku’ru. Ku’Sox could have done this through Nick.”

Not easily, but he could have.

“And why didn’t you say anything earlier?” Nina almost purred, making me think Felix had known about it all along. Damn it, I hated when I fell into their mind games.

“Because up until today, Nick was stealing thriving Rosewood syndrome babies, not Trent’s family.”

Nina squinted, her guile replaced with a frown. “You think the two crimes are linked?”

I nodded, pulling my jacket tighter around my shoulders to make Jenks take to the air. Just as well since I sneezed again. Both the pixy and Trent eyed me in concern. “There’s no way in the two worlds that you’ll find him. You want his phone number? That’s all I got, and it’s probably not going to work anymore.” I dug in my bag for a tissue. If I didn’t get to my scrying mirror soon, Al was going to be pissed.

Nina’s eyes narrowed. “I do not like you withholding information, Rachel Morgan.”

I leaned forward to get into her face, emboldened by the news crews watching. “Then maybe you should stop accusing me of everything. I didn’t have any evidence, and one thing I’ve learned is no one acts on what I believe, only what I can prove.”

“I would,” Trent said, and I smiled at him with a wash of gratitude. Jenks had moved himself to his shoulder, and he looked different with a baby on one side, a pixy on the other.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” I said softly, and Nina’s stance became antagonistic.

“I want a statement,” she insisted.

“Am I a suspect?”

Nina sighed dramatically. “No-o-o-o.”

“A person of interest?” I pushed, and she rolled her head on her shoulders as if stretching into a new skin and finding it unpleasant.

“No, not really,” she said flatly.

“Then you can wait until I can come in tomorrow and give you a statement. Right now I have to talk to Al and find out what happened to the ley lines this afternoon. Okay? I’ll even tell you what he said. Deal?”

Nina glared, brown eyes becoming black. I held her gaze, my heart hammering as I saw past the woman to the ugly old vampire speaking through her. Frightening ideas churned in him, whispers showing and vanishing like bursting bubbles of oil. He was old, maybe too old to adapt to the reality of demons among us and to make decisions to ease the coming chaos. His attention bore into me, and I took it without flinching. Would he accept me and the possible demon baggage I might bring to reality, or forever keep me in the “them” category? The second choice was familiar, comfortable, but it would lead to their damnation. I thought he was smart enough to see it. The question was, could he sell it to those who looked to him?

“Very well. Tomorrow,” the vampire finally said, and I exhaled as our eye contact broke, trying to make it inaudible but knowing that Nina could sense my relief easier than she could feel the wind in her hair. I hadn’t gotten the full acceptance that I wanted, but rather a cautious maybe. It was enough for now. “Still, it would be easier if you hadn’t obliterated evidence of the attack,” she grumped.

“I was trying to save Quen’s life,” I said darkly. The news crews were finally going into the gatehouse pressroom. Soon as they left, I’d head home. “You did a moulage, right?” I couldn’t see the imprint left by strong emotions, but vampires, whether they be living or dead, could. If Ivy was here, she could tell me, but she wasn’t. I had an uncomfortable thought that she’d much rather be helping Glenn than our investigative firm.

Nina sniffed, clearly uncomfortable in the sun, but I leaned back against my car, enjoying the stored heat it was giving off. “Most has already evaporated with the sun,” Nina said. “The evaluation is still being scored, but even though neither I nor Nina is rated for the courts it’s obvious that there was violence, determination, frustration, and panic in large amounts. Mostly violence between two people.”

“Gee, you think?” Jenks smart-mouthed. “You come up with that all on your own?”

Quen and Ku’Sox,
I thought, seeing frustration cross Trent’s face.

“It seems,” Nina said, idly looking at her perfect nails, “as if Ceri did nothing. Perhaps she was knocked out or protecting the baby.”

Trent turned away, the rims of his ears red in the sun. Jenks had taken wing, hovering protectively. Seeing it, Nina smiled like a cat who’d cornered a mouse. “I sensed three, maybe four auras present, but only Quen and one other were active. I’d be comfortable guessing that there was one person who abducted Ceri and Lucy, someone proficient in magic. Quen fought him or her, realized he couldn’t overcome them, and the two females were taken.”

How can she just stand there and say it?
I thought, my frustration bubbling up. Lucy and Ceri were gone! Quen was possibly dying, having tried to save them. Trent . . .

I glanced at him, wishing he didn’t have to deal with this. Demons sucked.

Nina was silent, reading the emotions as neither one of us said anything. Ray was slumped against Trent’s shoulder, Jenks a silent presence of support I didn’t understand. It was obvious that Trent had never admitted to himself how much Ceri and Lucy had come to mean to him. He might not even know it now, so wrought with the pressure of dealing with the present that he couldn’t see clearly. He was suffering, though. He had no one. I didn’t think he realized it yet—he wasn’t angry enough. I could feel his realization coming. Maybe in a day. Maybe two.