Ever After

The cork came out with a pop, and he looked at his glass, halfway across the room on the sill.

Shocked, I stared at him. He wanted me to decide? He wanted me . . . to make a decision that he would have to live by?

Giving up, he drank right from the bottle. “I don’t want to be alone anymore, Rachel,” he said. “And if you make the choice, you have to help me see it through.”

“I want them to live,” I said softly, and he slumped, his disgust obvious when his bottle clinked against the floor. “What, you asked my opinion, and that’s it. You’re not going back now that it wasn’t anything you wanted to hear.”

“No.” Trent eyed me sourly. “It would be easier the other way.”

Smirking, I crossed the room and sat down beside him. Taking the bottle he handed me, I poured a swallow in my glass. “If it was easy—”

“Everyone would do it,” he finished, clinking his bottle to my glass and downing a swig.

“What about Ellasbeth?” I said, my expansive mood hesitating.

Trent didn’t look at me. “What about her?”

I thought of the distasteful woman, on a plane to the West Coast right now, but she’d be back, worming her way into elven politics. “Aren’t you supposed to be getting married to her?”

Drawing away, he looked sideways at me. The fire was warm on our backs, and his focus was starting to go distant. “This is a business arrangement. Nothing more.”

“Well, that’s what I thought,” I said quickly, and from behind the curtain, Al started to snore. “But she doesn’t like me.”

“So?”

I thought about that for a moment. “You are drunk,” I said as he tried to get the bottle to balance on the rim of its base.

His eyes came to mine. “I am not,” he said, and I caught it as it began to tip. “But I will be before the night ends.”

I took another sip, actually tasting it this time. I’d have a migraine in about an hour, but I didn’t care. “You know, the last time we shared a bottle, you wiped the top off,” Trent said.

“Red pop?” I guessed, smiling at a memory, and he nodded.

“You remember. Are the rings gone?”

I swung the bottle between my knees, and my gaze slid to Al snoring behind the curtain. “Al and I destroyed them,” I said. “Melted them so they couldn’t be reinvoked. You have a problem with that?”

Trent shook his head and reached for the bottle. “No. It was nice being able to reach your thoughts, though. You have nice thoughts.”

A smile curved my lips up, and I leaned away so I could see him better. “You are drunk.”

“I am not drunk.” He shifted closer, and I didn’t mind. “I’m bored out of my mind.”

I took another sip. “This is good,” I said, and he acknowledged it gracefully. “I know what you mean about the quiet,” I went on. “Jenks’s kids are scattering. He’ll be down to six kids by fall. Ivy is spending most of her time with Nina. I’m starting to think about finding a new apartment somewhere with Jenks.”

“Really?”

I shrugged and passed the bottle to him. “I don’t know. I like it at the church, but things have changed. If I wasn’t there, Ivy might ask Nina to move in. One vampire in the church is okay, two is asking for trouble. Even for a demon.”

Trent set the bottle aside, almost out of his reach. “You don’t think you could handle it?”

Thinking about what Cormel had said, I shrugged. “Oh, sure, but people talk.”

“They do, don’t they,” Trent said around a sigh, and my thoughts turned to Ellasbeth. Seriously? He could do better than that. “Nick was too scruffy for you, even when he wasn’t a demon toady,” he said then, surprising me. “Marshal didn’t have enough chutzpah to keep up with the elegance you’re capable of. Pierce was a first-generation model in a six-g world—novel, but really how far would you get before the software crashed the system? Kisten . . .” Trent’s fingers shifted in agitation. “Kisten was an interesting choice.”

The reminder of Pierce hurt, but it felt good to think of him and smile. “You’re critiquing my ex- boyfriends?”

He made a small noise of agreement. “I like people. Most of the time I can figure them out. You don’t make any sense. What are you looking for, Rachel?”

Drawing my knees up, I rocked back and forth before the fire. “I don’t know. Someone smart, powerful, who doesn’t take crap from anyone. Who are you looking for?”

Trent raised a hand in protest, scooting an inch or two from me. “No, no, no. I’m not going to play this game.”

“Hey, you started it. Give. Just pretend we’re in camp.”

“Someone funny, capable, sexy.”

To balance out his strict life. “I didn’t bring looks into it. How like a man.”

Trent chuckled. “This is my list, not yours. Someone who won’t see lovers in the shadows when I’m late for an appointment. Someone who can break a schedule and a nail and not worry about it, but still look good in a dress and not be late for everything.”

I looked across the room, seeing nothing. “I want someone who will let me do my job without talking me out of it. Maybe give me a gun for my birthday once in a while.”

“Someone not afraid of the money, the press,” Trent said. “Someone who won’t get caught in the trap that money makes.”

“Someone who can do his own magic so he could survive the mess of my life,” I finished, getting depressed.

“You live in a church, I live in a prison.” Trent became silent.

“It would never work between us,” I said, thinking we had strayed onto dangerous ground.

From the cot, Al snorted in his sleep, mumbled about pie, and went silent.

“You’re great to work with, Rachel, but we have nothing in common.”

Reassured, I let go of my knees and stretched them out, palms on the warm hearth beside me. “That’s what I’m saying. You live in a big house, I live in a church.” And yet I am sitting in his little playhouse drinking wine.

“We don’t know any of the same people.”

I reached across him for the wine, stretching as I thought of the mayor, the demons, Rynn Cormel. “We don’t go in the same circles at all,” I said as I leaned back and took a swallow. But I had fit in at the casino boat and his parties.

“People would talk,” he said softly, and I set the empty bottle down. The firelight had turned his hair as red as mine. “Which is a shame. I like working closely with you. God, why is it so hard to tell you that? I compliment people all the time on their work ethics. Rachel, I like working with you. You’re fast and inventive, and not always looking for direction.”

This was going somewhere I wasn’t sure I liked. “Trent,” I started, glancing at the curtain when Al choked on his own spit and then began to snore again.

“No, let me finish,” he said, a hand going firmly down on the stone between us. “Do you know how tiring it gets? ‘Mr. Kalamack, should we do this, or that? Have you weighed all the factors, Mr. Kalamack?’ Even Quen hesitates, and it drives me batty.”

“Sorry.”

“You, on the other hand, just go and do what you think needs to be done. If I can’t keep up, you don’t care. I like that. I’m glad you’re going to help me with the Rosewood demons.”

“Yeah,” I said, wondering if he had any more of that wine stashed somewhere. “That’s what you say now, but wait until they start playing with the ley lines.”

“My God, you have beautiful hair in the firelight,” he said softly, and I blinked. “It’s like your thoughts, all cinnamon and wild untamed. I’ve always liked your hair.”

I froze when he reached out and touched it, my breath slipping from me when his fingers grazed my neck. Slowly I reached up and took his hand, bringing it down. “Okay, we need to get you inside, Mr. Kalamack,” I said,