abandoned gas station, I sighed. Yellowed weeds grew in the cracks, but there was a nice bit of concrete under the gas station overhang. That was likely the best spot to make a circle, and I did want this done in a circle.
“Rachel?” Ivy called, and I turned to see her leaning across the front seat, to my window. “Find out why the Withons are trying to kill him, will you?” she whispered, her brown eyes going darker. “We’re going to hit desert soon. That’s a lot of space for bad things to happen in.”
Squinting from the sun, I followed her gaze to the lifted trunk lid and settled my bag on my shoulder. The memory of the attack outside St. Louis sifted through me, and then my nearly succumbing to wild magic. And then the arch falling on us? It was a far cry from the “assassins” in my kitchen, and I wanted to know myself. It was times like this when I missed Pierce. He’d probably threaten Trent with a curse and be done with it, which wasn’t much better than Trent, but I did appreciate his results. I had to be more circumspect for my answers.
Nodding, I started for the back of the car. Jenks was sitting on the rim of the upraised trunk talking to Trent, and upon seeing the man, I stopped, blinking in appreciation.
Trent had his shirt off, wadded up and in a pile at his feet. His suitcase was open, but he quickly shut it when my shadow touched him. A wad of wet towelettes was in his hand, and his skin was glistening in the sun where he’d wiped himself down. Damn, he looked good. Lots of definition and not a single tan line. Not to mention the six-pack abs disappearing into a pair of faded jeans.
His expression cross, Trent dropped the used wipes on his bloodstained shirt and snatched up the one draped over my garment bag. “What?” he said shortly, and I flushed.
Sitting on the highest part of the hood, his feet dangling down, Jenks sighed.
“I need something from my bag,” I said as I dropped the trash into the nearby fifty-five-gallon drum and edged closer. Shoving Trent down with my mere presence, I pulled my scrying mirror from the side pocket of my carry-on. The rest of the curse—five candles, magnetic chalk, finger stick, transfer media, and stick of redwood— was in my bag. It was a simple curse, really.
“I’m tired of you bitching at me,” I said, jamming my carry-on bag back where it had been. “I’m going to take care of your familiar mark. Right now.”
“Here?” Trent said, the sun making his surprise easy to see.
“That’s generally what ‘right now’ means, yes, unless you want to do it in a car going ninety miles an hour down the interstate.”
His motion to wrangle a black T-shirt on across his shoulders was fast. “Now is fine,” he said as it settled over him, not too tight, not too loose. Oh. My. God. He looked good, unaware that I was watching. His hair was mussed where he’d tried to slick it back after wiping off the blood, and it was all I could do not to reach out and smooth it. My hand gripped the scrying mirror tighter as he tucked the black cotton shirt behind his waistband in a move that was both casual and intimate.
Upon noticing my eyes on him, he stopped, a mistrustful wariness coming over him. Motions sharp, he zipped his suitcase closed and slammed the trunk shut. “What can I do to help?” he asked.
“You help?” Jenks said, flying since Trent had shut the trunk out from under him. “You’re the reason we’re in this trouble. The day we need your help—”
“Relax, Jenks,” I interrupted. Sure, Trent had sicced the coven on me, but he wasn’t the one getting filmed being dragged down the street by a demon. Jenks made a hum of discontent, and I gripped my scrying mirror tighter, it feeling slippery in the sun. “There’ve got to be pixies here,” I said, leaning to look at the gas station overhang. “Can you talk to them? Find out where the local big bad uglies are so I don’t do my magic on their doorstep?”
Face screwing up, Jenks shifted his wings in sullen affirmation. His hand rose to slap his bicep to make sure he had on his red bandanna, then dropped to rest on the butt of his sword, again on his hip thanks to Ivy. “Sure,” he said, buzzing off with a noisy wing clatter. “Tink’s a Disney whore, Rache. Why don’t you start thinking with something other than your hormones?”
“Hey!” I shouted after him, stiffening when he was suddenly surrounded by pixies in brown shirts and pants. They had spears pointed at him, but they soon dropped them and he went with them willingly. Slowly I exhaled. Trent scuffed his boots, and I looked over the abandoned gas station. A car went by, looking a thousand miles away on the overpass.
Hiking my shoulder bag up, I headed for the man-made shade of the overhang. Trent moved to stay with me, dropping his bloody shirt and wet wipes into the trash can along the way. “Ah, I should apologize for not doing this sooner,” I said, feeling a pang of guilt.
“You were scared,” Trent said, his lofty attitude making my eyes narrow.
“I’m not talking about yesterday,” I said tartly, guilt vanishing. “I mean the last two months. Al wouldn’t tell me the curse, and it took me a while to find it.”
Trent glanced at me, his pace going stiff. “It’s a new curse,” he stated flatly. “I thought you would simply untwist the one you put on me.”
“I didn’t curse you,” I said sharply. “I took ownership of the one Minias claimed you with. But don’t worry. This one won’t hurt. I’ll take the smut.”
“Ah…,” he started, and I scuffed to a halt, my toes edging shadow as I squinted at him in the sun. Damn, he looked good in that T-shirt, and looked even better out of it.
“I’m not going to ask you to pay for it,” I said, tired. “I’m so covered with smut that this little bit won’t show. On you, though…” I slipped under the gas station’s overhang, appreciating the cooler temp. “We don’t want to jeopardize your bid for mayor, do we?” Okay, that might have been catty, but everything about this bothered me. Pulling my magnetic chalk out, I dropped my shoulder bag. “How’s that going anyway?” I asked as I set my scrying mirror beside it. “The Weres have had the mayoral seat for over fifteen years.”
Trent edged under the overhang, his eyes on the holes in the roof. “Not as well as I’d like,” he said, a practiced polish coming across with his words, as if he had been saying it a lot lately. “I’m writing off the Were demographic. There’s been a marked increase in registered Were voters in the last two months, which will make things difficult. If I knew it was an intentional block by you, I’d be irritated.”
He went silent, spinning to keep me in his sight as I walked around him, bent almost double to trace a circle on the dirty concrete. Straightening, I kicked out an old pop can, and sank to the ground. His eyebrows rose, and I shrugged. “Have a seat,” I said, indicating a spot about four feet in front of me.
Still silent, he bent his knees and found his way to the ground in a graceful move that was as far away from the boardroom as his present clothes were. He had an almost animal-like grace now that he wasn’t in a suit, and something twisted in me.
Trent’s gaze dropped from the broken roof to me, and I warily shuffled my things around, trying to figure out what was going through his mind. He’d known Ceri for almost a year now, and her old-school, black-magic-using elf mentality had been rubbing off on him. She’d believed demon magic was a tool. A dangerous tool, but a tool. Trent had been taught to fear it, much like the coven had. But clearly that was changing. I didn’t know what he could do anymore, and it moved him from a familiar threat to something I had to be wary of.
Looking across the two-lane road, I whistled for Jenks, getting a burst of green dust signifying that we were good. On the horizon, the waxing moon rose in the bright light of afternoon. At the car, Ivy was busy cleaning the backseat with her special orange wipes. Nervous, I wiped my palms on my thighs. The wind moved my hair, and I tucked the strands, still caked with the dust of the arch, behind an ear. Ivy wanted to drive all night, but I wanted to rent a room to shower, if nothing else. I felt icky.
“I meant it when I said I didn’t mean to drag this out to the last few days,” I said as I pawed through my bag. “Al wouldn’t tell me how to do the curse, just gave me a book. Demon texts don’t have indexes, so I had to look page by page. It wasn’t in there. But it does have a page or two with info like substitutions, sun and moon tables, conversions…”
I found the index card with the Latin Trent was going to have to say, and I handed it to him. He automatically took it, his expression one of surprise. “The curse to free a familiar was—”
“At the back with the metric to English conversions, yes,” I said sourly. “I guess they don’t do this often.” I set five candles on the cement. They were from my last birthday cake. How sad was that? The finger stick and shaft of redwood were next. I had a moment of panic until I found the vial of transfer media. I could buy it, sure, but not
