“Something like that,” Trent said, his smooth, suave demeanor slipping back even if he was still in jeans and a casual top. “You don’t have a room because I booked the top floor for us. Can we hurry up about it? I have an appointment. I’m already late.”
“Thank you, Trent,” I said as I hung my garment bag on the trolley and fingered the little plastic card. It was small for the amount of grief it had just saved us. “I don’t know how you do it. I mean, I know, but how? They know we’re together.”
Trent angled in front of Ivy to push the elevator button, and I smiled. I hadn’t known he was a button pusher. Jenks was, too. I couldn’t care less who hit the buttons as long as we got there. “I bought the place last year,” Trent admitted, then turned to look past me to the lobby. “This is nice. I should come out here more.”
Jenks and Pierce were with the bellhop, who was clearly not going to accompany us but would take our stuff up through a secondary elevator. The elevator before us opened to show a lift the size of my closet.
“Rachel,” Pierce said loudly, interrupting my sudden panic attack. “Jenks and I will mind the plunder, er, luggage. There’s not enough room in the lift nohow.”
I stifled a shudder as I minced into the elevator. “Okay,” I said, not wanting two more bodies in here anyway, even if one could fly. “See you up there.”
Trent reached past Ivy to push the topmost button, and I caught a whiff of cinnamon, heavy in the cramped quarters. The car shook as the gears shifted, and we headed up, far too slowly for my liking. I breathed deep, watching the light move.
Beside me, Ivy’s eyes flashed black. She edged away from me as Trent chuckled. “I didn’t know you were afraid of elevators, Rachel,” he said, his voice holding a light mockery.
“I’m not,” I said as I gave Ivy a worried look. My thoughts flashed back to Kisten and our first kiss in an elevator, and she pretty much flung herself into the corner, not knowing what I was thinking but tasting the memory of fear and desire flooding me.
“It’s not the elevator, it’s the coven,” I added when the elevator finally dinged. I held my breath as I waited forever for the doors to open, but it was Ivy who was first out, brushing past me in a spicy wave of vampire incense that made me quiver.
Trent leaned in, whispering, “It’s when I’m gone that you’re going to have to be careful.”
“We’re on the end, there,” Trent was saying as he checked his envelope, but Ivy again was ahead of us, steps fast as she strode to the end of the short hall where the big window looked out onto a fire escape. She tried the last door, and I could hear her sigh when it opened. She was inside and gone before Trent and I were even halfway down the corridor. Either she had some intestinal problem she had to take care of or my fear in the elevator combined with the memory of Kisten had hit her hard.
It felt funny walking down the hallway with Trent, both of us carrying the small items we thought were too important to risk coming up on the trolley. I caught glimpses of us in the long mirrors set next to the occasional door, looking like fake windows, and again I was struck by the idea that we were with each other but not together. Like the night on the boat when it had blown up under us, and we were the only two to survive—Trent because I had made a protective bubble around us by using the connection made through his familiar, and then me because he’d pulled my frozen ass out of the Ohio River and kept me from dying of hypothermia.
But now, as we walked down the hallway, there was a new awareness—not of kinship, but an understanding. And it made me nervous even as it was…comforting.
“Hey, Rache!” came Jenks’s hail from behind us, and the rattle of the trolley as Pierce helped the bellhop at the distant end of the hall. “Top floor,” Jenks said proudly. “We’re in the penthouse suite. Where’s Ivy?”
“Inside already,” I said, and Trent ran his card and held the door open for me.
Jenks darted in, and I followed, eager to see what a penthouse suite looked like. Nice. I think the word would be “nice.” Or really nice. I’d go as far as friggin’ nice.
“Wow,” I whispered, stopping somewhere in the middle of what I’d probably call a living room, arranged with two couches facing each other, a coffee table in between decorated with stuff to make it homey and inviting. To my right was a small kitchen, a bar with three stools making a pleasant place to eat if the small table in it wasn’t enough. There were fruit and cold cuts laid out, and bread—fresh, by the smell of it. I think the maid had baked it in the oven while she tidied the place.
Looking past the living room, I could see a second living room with a bank of windows. It was on a platform and looked more plush and comfortable. There was a huge TV between the two rooms that seemed to rotate on a swivel. A wet bar took up one side of the upper living room, and it all looked out on a spectacular view of the bay. I hadn’t realized we were up so high in the hills, and though it was still foggy, I could see the tops of the bridge poking through. A room with a view—of Alcatraz.
Trent dropped his small satchel on the coffee table. “This is pleasant,” he said, gaze darting to the closed doors off the raised living room, which had to be the bedrooms, not closets. “Better than roadside hotels, anyway.”
I would have gotten angry with him, but he was smiling, probably remembering that nasty shower I’d dragged him out of, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the bathroom here was like. I was betting nice.
Trailing a silver dust, Jenks buzzed out of one room and tucked under the door of another. Ivy’s faint shout to leave filtered in, and Jenks darted back into the living room. In an instant, he was at the windows, checking things out. At least we knew where Ivy was.
“I’d just about kill for a shower,” I said as the trolley rattled in, Pierce holding the door for it. His eyes widened upon seeing the room, and he stumbled out of the bellhop’s way.
In a burst of noise, Ivy’s door was flung open. The bellhop’s spiel faltered as she strode forward, grabbed her bag, and then vanished behind her door again. I flopped onto the couch with my back to the window, my gaze going to the second bedroom. I’d be willing to bet Trent would claim it even if he wasn’t going to be here tonight—off doing his little elf-quest…thing.
“She’s a little cranky,” Jenks said, distracting the bellhop, who looked more than a bit startled as he turned from hanging my garment bag in the front closet.
“Dialing zero will get you the front desk,” the bellhop started again, glancing from Trent to Pierce and then to me, clearly trying to match us up before attempting to move any more luggage. Trent’s bag was headed in with Ivy until Trent cleared his throat and—sure enough—claimed the second room with little more than a nod.
“I guess I’ve got a couch,” I said, and the bellhop simply emptied the trolley and left the luggage in the entryway. Jenks was still checking the place out, and Pierce had joined him, whistling when he found the bathroom, next to the kitchen.
“Will there be anything else, Mr. Kalamack?” the bellhop was asking when Trent bodily took him by the elbow and delicately propelled him to the door.
“Privacy,” Trent said, leaving him at the door and going back for the trolley. “No deliveries. Leave them at the desk. No turn-down service. No incoming calls, except from me. A table for dinner would be pleasant, say about ten. Family style if at all convenient. Chef’s choice. Heavy on the vegetables. No deep-fried anything. It’s been a long trip.”
“Yes, sir,” the man was saying, now in the hall with the trolley. “Thank you, sir!” he added when Trent handed him a folded bill. “Welcome home, Mr. Kalamack.”
Smiling and nodding, Trent shut the door in his face. He waited until the faint sound of the trolley creaking away came through the door, and then he sighed, his shoulders slumping for all of three seconds before he pulled them back up.
I could hear Pierce trying out the faucets in the bathroom, and I smiled as I draped my arms across the top of the couch. “This is nice.”
