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.”
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.
“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.
“If you’re being followed, just keep going,” Ivy said. “I’ve got a rental car, and I’ll catch up, okay? Ram them or something.”
“We are going to stop,” Trent said again, looking militantly adamant. Maybe he needed to use the little boy’s room after his nappies.
From the backseat, Jenks chimed, “I found it! Trent, be a pal and open it for me, huh?”
I jiggled the phone to my other ear, and the car swerved. Ram them? Was she serious?
“Rachel?” came Ivy’s voice, and I put my attention back on the road.
“You’re not going to ram them,” I said, and Trent rubbed his forehead as if in pain. “And we aren’t going to drive through. We are coming in. I’d rather meet up now than later, even if they are watching. They probably already know you’re waiting for us.”
Jenks darted up from the backseat, his hands on his hips. “Trent, I could use some help here. You just going to sit there like a pile of fairy crap the entire way?”
“We don’t need the map,” I said, starting to get mad. “And we are not driving through. We are stopping for Ivy!”
From my phone, Ivy was protesting, “There’s a bunch of kids here. You really want to risk a fight with the coven?”
“The coven wouldn’t dare,” I said as I started to wonder. “Not with innocents around. We can have an ice cream or something. Make bunny-eared kisses at them from across the park.”
“I suppose,” she agreed, sounding doubtful. “Call me when you park, okay?”
