'Ma'am?' It was Gerald, and he held the velveteen rope aside for me.
Feeling out of place in my jeans and top, I started up, holding the rail since I couldn't take my eyes off the room. It was astounding. Trent's entertaining room was the size of a football field. Well, not really, but the fireplace at the far end was as big as a dump truck. One of those big ones. Takata was on a small stage at the other end with his band, and the dance floor was filled with kids and adults. The ward on the huge opening that looked out onto the deck and pool had been removed, and people moved freely inside and out. Kids were everywhere, running from the hot tub to jump into the big pool and come up shouting from the cold.
I paused at the top of the landing and tried to get Takata to look at me, but he just kept jamming. That never worked except in the movies.
'Please, ma'am,' Gerald insisted, and tearing my attention away, I followed him past the second rope and twin security guards into the open walkway that overlooked the party and went on to the cozy living room I knew was ahead.
'If you would, please,' Gerald said, his eyes darting from me to the floor. 'Stay in Mr. Kalamack's private quarters.'
I nodded, and Gerald settled in beside the archway to make sure I didn't wander.
The music wasn't as overpowering up here, and as I went in, I scanned the suite arrangement of four doors opening up onto a sunken lounging pit and a black, wide-screen TV taking up a huge amount of space. Tucked in the back was an open, normal-size kitchen and an informal dining area. Seated at the round table were two people.
My pace bobbled, and stifling a frown, I continued forward. Great. Now I'd have to make nice-nice with two of Trent's special friends. Dressed in costume, no less.
Or maybe not, I thought as I got closer. They were both wearing lab coats, and my plastic smile went even more stilted as I realized they were probably Quen's doctors. The younger one had very straight black hair and the tired look of an intern. The other was clearly the superior of the two, older and with the upright posture and stiffness that I'd seen in professionals who thought too much of themselves. I looked closer at the tall woman with her silvered hair back in an ugly bun, then looked again. Apparently Trent had gotten his wish for a ley line witch after all.
'Holy crap,' I said. 'I thought you were dead.'
Dr. Anders stiffened, her face rising to give me a smile utterly lacking in warmth. Glancing at her companion, she shifted her head to get a wisp of her silver hair out of her eyes. She was tall and thin, her narrow face having no makeup or charm spell to make her look younger than she was. She'd probably been born around the turn of the century. Most witches born then were reluctant to show their magic, and that she had become a teacher of it was unusual.
I'd had the distasteful woman for an instructor, twice. The first time she flunked me the first week of class for no good reason, and the second time she threatened to do the same if I didn't take a familiar. She had been a murder suspect I was checking out, and her car had gone over a bridge during the investigation, eliminating her as a suspect. But I'd known she hadn't committed the crimes. Dr. Anders was nasty, but murder wasn't on her syllabus.
Yet seeing her having coffee in Trent's private kitchen, I wondered if she was learning new skills. Apparently Trent had helped her stage her death so the real ley line witch murderer wouldn't target her and she could safely come to work for him.
She reminded me of Jonathan, her disdain for earth magic as palpable as Jonathan's dislike for me. I ran my gaze over her too-thin form as I neared. It had to be her. Who would want to dress up in costume and pretend to be a woman that plain looking?
'Rachel,' the woman said as she turned, her legs crossing now that they were out from under the table. She glanced inquiringly at the heavy-magic detection amulet around my bruised and bitten neck, and my eye twitched when her voice brought back oodles and oodles of good memories of being embarrassed in class.
'How nice to see you doing so well,' she continued as her intern glanced between us, weighing our moods. 'I understand you managed to break the familiar bond with your boyfriend.' She smiled with the warmth of a penguin. 'Can I ask how? Another curse, perhaps? Your aura is smutty.' She sniffed as if her long nose could smell the blackness on my soul. 'What have you been doing to it?'
I stopped three feet back, hip cocked, and imagined how good it would feel to plug my foot in her gut and send her chair crashing back. She had faked her own death, leaving me to try to figure out how to break the bond on my own—the harpy. 'The familiar bond broke spontaneously when a demon made me his familiar,' I said, hoping to shock her.
The intern gasped, his almond-shaped eyes widening as he sat back in his seat, the tips of his black hair shifting.
Feeling like a smartass, I pulled out a chair and propped my foot on it instead of sitting down. 'When the bond didn't work through the lines,' I said lightly, enjoying the man's horror, 'he forced a tighter connection by making me take some of his aura. That broke the original bond with Nick. It also made him my familiar. He didn't expect that.'
'You have a demon for a familiar?' The young man stammered, and Dr. Anders gave him a look to tell him to shut up.
I was tired of this, and as Takata shifted to one of his few ballads, I shook my head. 'No. We agreed that because the familiar bonds were unenforceable, so was the deal. I'm no one's familiar but my own.'
Dr. Anders's expression changed, her long face becoming greedy. 'Tell me how,' she demanded as she leaned forward slightly. 'I've read about this. You can spindle line energy in your thoughts. Can't you?'
I looked at her in disgust. She had belittled and shamed me in front of two entire classes because I had pursued earth magic instead of ley line skills, and she thought I'd tell her how to be her own familiar? 'Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Anders,' I said dryly, and she pursed her lips sourly at me. I leaned over my bent knee toward her to hammer my words home. 'I can't tell you,' I said softly. 'If I do, I'm his. Just like you belong to Trent, only a lot more honestly.'
A faint flush colored her cheeks. 'He doesn't own me. I work for him. That's all.'
Her intern was looking nervous, and taking my foot from the chair, I stood and rummaged in my bag. 'Did he help you fake your death?' I said as I pulled out my cell phone and checked for messages and the time. Two A.M. —still no demon, still alive. She said nothing, and flipping through the menu, I made sure my phone was on vibrate before dropping it away and adding my splat gun. 'Then you belong to him,' I added cruelly, thinking of Keasley and hoping it might be otherwise for him.
But Dr. Anders sat back, snorting through her long nose. 'I told you he wasn't murdering the ley line witches.'
'He murdered those Weres last June, though.'
The older woman dropped her eyes and anger flooded me. She had known. Helped him, maybe. Absolutely disgusted, I shoved the chair in, refusing to sit with her. 'Thanks for helping me with my problem,' I added bitterly.
My accusation had unbalanced her, and the woman's face reddened in anger. 'I couldn't risk breaking my cover by helping you. I had to pretend to die, or I would have died for real. You are a child, Rachel. Don't even begin to think to lecture me on morality.'
I thought I would have enjoyed this more than I was, and in the soft hush of Takata whispering 'I loved you best/I loved you best,' I said bitingly, 'Even a child would have known better than to leave me hanging like that. A letter would have done it. Or a phone call. I wouldn't have told anyone you were alive.' I rocked back, my bag held tight to me. 'And now you think I'm going to risk my soul to tell you how to spindle line energy?'
She had the grace to look discomforted. Still standing, I crossed my arms and looked at the intern. 'How is Quen?' I asked him, but Dr. Anders touched his arm, stopping his words.
'He has an eleven percent chance of seeing the sunrise,' she said, glancing to one of the doors. 'If he makes it that far, his chances of surviving rise to fifty-fifty.'
My knees went weak and I locked them. He had a chance. Trent had let me drive all the way out here thinking his death was inevitable.
'Trent says it's my fault,' I said, not caring if she knew by my pale face that I felt guilty. 'What happened?'
