Pale Demon

“Will you two stop bickering?” Ivy suddenly said, and I flicked a look at her, seeing her about ready to lose it. The blood, the anger, it was adding up. Trent had pissed me off, and I was filling the car with it. I wasn’t done, but for Ivy, I’d shut my mouth.

“Screw you, Trent,” I said as I flopped back into my seat. In hindsight, it might not have been the best thing to do since Ivy took a deep breath and shuddered.

“I’m just saying—” Trent started, his voice cutting off as Ivy put on the blinker. We hadn’t seen a car in miles, but she flicked it on and took the exit ramp, right before the interstate rose to go over a grass-covered road running north and south.

“Uh, Ivy?” I asked. Trent, too, had put both feet on the floor and sat up straight. I’d almost say he was worried.

“I’m good, Ivy,” Jenks chimed in. The guy had a bladder the size of a pinhead.

“I’m not.” Ivy looked at Trent through the rearview mirror. “You stink.”

I looked over the seat, wincing at the sight of his blood-soaked shirtsleeve and the wad of red tissue he had pressed against his ear again. “Sorry,” he said sourly. “Didn’t mean to offend.”

“You’re not offensive,” she said shortly. “You’re turning me on. Get out. Clean up.”

I turned back around, mouth shut. Tires popping on pebbles, Ivy pulled onto a seldom-used road bracketed by two deserted gas stations and a derelict fast-food joint. Slowing, she made a beeline across the grassy pavement to the station with the least weeds. She brought the car to a halt, sideways to the faded parking lines, and put it in park. Sighing, she turned the engine off.

Silence and crickets took over. It was four according to my cell phone, but it felt like five. Somewhere we’d crossed a time line. “Where are we?”

Jenks looked up through the strip of blue-tinted glass at a faded sign. “Saint Clair?”

The sound of Trent’s door opening was loud, and above us, a car drove by on the interstate. “Good,” he said as he got out, with a wince, to peer at it. “That’s 47 going under the expressway. If we take that, we can hit I-70 in an hour and cut twenty hours out of the drive.”

Ivy leaned back and closed her eyes. “I’m not driving on a two-lane road. Not out here in the abandoned stretches. And not after dark.”

“You’re afraid?” Trent mocked.

Jenks rose up and down in nervousness, but Ivy just settled deeper into the sun. “Absolutely,” she said softly, and I bobbed my head, totally agreeing with her. I didn’t want to get off the interstate, either. There were bad things in the empty stretches, especially out west, where there’d been less of a population to begin with.

“Release the trunk, will you?” Trent said, clearly not going to push the issue.

While Trent shuffled to the back of the car, I began gathering the trash. I don’t remember anyone buying Milk Duds …

“Be quick about it!” Ivy said loudly as she reached for a lever and popped the trunk. “And don’t go in the building for water. I’ve got wet wipes in the outside pocket of my bag.”

“I know better than to knock on doors,” Trent said, feeling his jaw as he pulled his suitcase out and moved to the back of the car.

I watched him in the side-view mirror until the lid of the trunk lifted, blocking my view. Fidgeting, I finished shoving trash into one bag. I didn’t believe his crack about trying to kill me, but I was going to have to make good on our deal at some point. Here in the middle of nowhere might be better than in the middle of San Francisco with witches breathing down my neck. I didn’t trust him, but now was better than later. It might get him to shut up, too.

“Ivy,” I said as I grabbed my shoulder bag. “Do we have twenty minutes?”

“You gotta pee, too?” Jenks guessed, darting outside the window to warm himself in the sun. “Tink’s panties, I don’t know why it takes you women so long,” he said from outside.

“Maybe because we don’t have to do it every twenty minutes,” I suggested.

“Hey!” he said indignantly, but Ivy had opened her eyes, waiting for an explanation.

“I want to take care of his familiar mark,” I said, almost angry.

“Feeling guilty?” she said, eyes closing.

“No,” I said quickly. “And I’m not afraid of him killing me, but it will give him one less thing to bitch about.”

Ivy’s lips quirked, and the sun hit her fully. “If it will shut him up, take an hour.”

“All I need is twenty minutes.” Sublimely aware of Trent rustling in the back, I got out with my bag in one hand, the trash in the other, using my foot to shut the door. Jenks lifted high to do a perimeter, and looking at the 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. Murdering drug lord. Bio-drug dealer. Pretty like a toxin.

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.” Crap, I’m taking his 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. Stop it, Rachel.

“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. Stop it, Rachel. Jenks was right. I thought way too much with my hormones. But seeing Trent sitting cross-legged in jeans, that thin black T-shirt, and blood-splattered boots, I was struck by how quickly the businessman was slipping away. It kind of worried me—even as I liked it.

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 anywhere near here.

I twisted where I sat to reach my scrying mirror, setting it between us as the platform on which to do the curse. Trent looked at the dark wine-colored hues that it reflected the world in. His boots shifted. He was nervous. He should be.

“You need the mirror for this?” he asked, though it was obvious.

“Yes,” I said, thinking the plate-size piece of etched glass was beautiful for all its dark purpose. Etched with a stick of yew, the pentagram and associated glyphs were how I accessed the demon database in the ever-after. It also let me chat with my demon teacher, Algaliarept. I guess you could say it was an interdimensional cell phone that ran on black magic, and since this curse needed to be registered, I’d have to use it. Suddenly suspicious, I asked, “Why?”

Trent’s eyes fixed on mine, too innocent. “I was remembering having used it to talk to Minias. It wasn’t hard.”

I flicked the top off the finger stick with my thumb and jabbed myself. The brief pain was familiar, and I massaged three drops of blood into the transfer media. “Demon magic never is,” I said softly as they went plinking in and the expected redwood scent was quickly overshadowed by a whiff of burnt amber. I glanced at Trent, hoping he hadn’t noticed. “That’s why you pay for it the hard way. He’s dead, by the way. Minias. Newt killed him.”

Suddenly tired, I slumped. “I can’t get the familiar bond annulled,” I admitted, knowing he wasn’t going to be happy. “The best I can do is file an emancipation curse. That’s why I need the mirror.”

Sure enough, Trent clenched his jaw. “I’d still be counted a slave?”

“Deal with it!” I exclaimed angrily, eyes flicking up when I heard a pixy whisper from the roof and realized we were being watched. “You were caught, Trent. You were on a demon’s auction block. You had a little red bow around your neck, and you were a commodity. I’m sorry, but you were!”

Scowling, Trent looked past me to the yellow grass.

“If it helps,” I said softly, “the only reason I was able to get the familiar bond between Al and me annulled was because it couldn’t be enforced. And before you ask, if you want to go that route, I’d have to complete the familiar bond, use it, and you’d have to successfully beat me down. After that little stunt at the arch, I think we can agree that that is not going to happen,” I added, not sure if I had the right to be so confident anymore.

Looking as if he were swallowing slugs, Trent gazed past me. “I will be a freed slave.”

I winced in sympathy as I rubbed at one of the candles to get the dried frosting off. “The upside is that no demon can ever claim you. Even Al. At least as long as I’m alive,” I added, watching him as he took it in and his frown eased into a thoughtful expression. It was a serendipitous bit of CYA, but it was true, and it felt good knowing that he wouldn’t be trying to kill me again. Ever. Na-na. Na-na. Na-a-a-a. Na.

His response was a quiet “mmmm,” and I wondered if he thought I was making it up.

Leaning forward, I wiped the glass clean and pressed the candle at the tip of the pentagram to Trent’s right, wiggling it a bit to get the wax to melt a little and stick. “So-o-o-o,” I drawled, not looking up. “You want to tell me why the Withons want you dead so badly that they’d drop the St. Louis arch on us?” I said, and his knees shifted.

“I’d sooner tell you what I wanted to be when I grew up,” Trent said sarcastically, then frowned when our eyes met. “It could have been the coven.”

My hair was getting in my way, and I pushed the nasty curls behind my ear to make them less obvious. “Come on, Trent,” I said. “We all know the Withons were after you. They said as much after you left.”

Trent looked at the holes in the ceiling, silent. I pressed the second candle into the mirror on the point counterclockwise from the first, surreptitiously eying him from under my tangled hair as I took in his tells. He was nervous. That’s all I could determine. I’m doing demon magic at an abandoned gas station within sight of I-44. God! No wonder they shunned me.

I moved to the third candle, rolling it between my fingers before I wiggled it into place. “Quen was so scared that he picked me up from the airport, ready to send us out right from there in the hope of shaking the Withons’ assassins,” I said, and Trent cleared his throat. “They attacked us on the interstate, risking dozens of lives, and then again under the arch. And you knew they would,” I said, suddenly realizing it, “or you wouldn’t have gone to that bunker, looking for that ley line when I told you to find Ivy.”

His head came up, and he glared at me, still refusing to say anything.

“That’s why you were so adamant that we stop there, wasn’t it,” I said, leaning forward. “And why you went to ground. You knew they were after you and you didn’t trust Ivy and me to hold them off. You had your magic all prepped, with your little hat and ribbon,” I accused, and he held his gaze, angry. “And after you did your magic, the arch fell down.” It fell on us, and children, and dogs playing in the park.

Trent’s eye twitched. “I didn’t make it collapse,” he said, his beautiful voice strained.

Feeling used, I set the fourth candle, my hair falling onto the mirror to meet its reflection. “I never said you did,” I said. “But they want you dead, and they want you dead now. What are you trying to do that the Withons will sacrifice a park full of people to prevent?” I looked at him, thinking he appeared sharp and cold in the shadow with me. “People got hurt because of us. Killed. Kids, Trent. If I hadn’t gone to St. Louis, the arch would still be standing and those kids … those kids would still be okay. I deserve to know why!” I said, not wanting to get back in the car without an answer.

Trent, his expression a blank nothing, looked into the field where the pixies were showing off for Jenks. “It’s something between Ellasbeth and myself,” he finally said reluctantly.

The fourth candle fell over when I let go of it, and it rolled almost off the mirror before I caught it. “You going to kill her?” I asked outright, my heart pounding.

“No!” I felt better at the horror in his voice, and he said it again, as if I might not believe him. “No. Never.”

The wind shifted his hair, and I couldn’t help but think he looked better now than in a thousand-dollar suit. Silent, I waited. Finally he grimaced and looked at his feet. “Ellasbeth has something that belongs to me,” he said. “I’m going to get it. She wants to keep it, is all.”

“We caused a pileup on the interstate and hurt a bunch of kids over a family heirloom ring?” I guessed, disgusted. “A stupid hunk of rock?”

“It’s not a hunk of rock.” Trent’s green eyes lowered as he looked at his hands in his lap, fixing on me fervently when he looked up. “It’s the direction the next generation of elves is going to take. What happens in the following days will shape the next two hundred years.”

Oh, really? Thinking that over, I tried to get the candle to stick, holding my breath as I let it go, watching it carefully. I didn’t know why I was helping him. I really didn’t.

“You don’t believe me,” Trent said, his anger showing at last. “You asked why they want me dead. I told you the truth, and you haven’t said anything.”

My gaze coming up from the mirror, I looked at him from under my straggly hair. I was so friggin’ tired it hurt. “The Withons are trying to stop you from getting this thing so they can shape the next two hundred years of elfdom, not you, eh?”

“That’s it.” Trent’s shoulders eased at my sarcasm. “Our marriage was supposed to be a way to avoid this. If I can claim it by sunrise Monday, then it’s mine forever. If not, then I lose everything.” His expression was empty of emotion. “Everything, Rachel.”

I stifled a shiver, trying to disguise it by wiggling the last candle into place. “So this is kind of like an ancient elven spirit quest, rite of passage, and closed election all in one?”

Trent’s lips parted. “Uh, ye-yes,” he stammered, looking embarrassed. “Actually, that’s not a bad comparison. It’s also why Quen couldn’t help and why air travel was out. I’m allowed a horse, and the car is the modern equivalent.”

I nodded, jumping when the fifth candle fell over. “And me? What am I?”

“You’re my mirror, my sword, and my shield,” Trent said dryly.

I looked askance at him to see if he was serious. Mirror? “Times change, eh?” I said, not sure what to think. The candle wasn’t sticking, and I was getting frustrated.

“I have to be in Seattle by Sunday or it means nothing. Rachel, this is the most important thing in my life.”

The candle went rolling, and Trent jerked his hand out, catching it. I froze in my reach, eyes narrowing as Trent breathed on the end and quickly stuck it to the mirror. My gaze went to the moon, pale in the sunlight. Maybe that was his deadline. Elves loved marking things by the moon. “I don’t have to help you steal it, do I?” I asked, and he shook his head, unable to hide his relief that I believed him. And I did believe him.

“If I can’t claim it on my own, then I don’t deserve it.”

Back to the coming-of-age elf-quest thing. “I want a say,” I said, and Trent blinked.

“Excuse me?”

I lifted a shoulder and let it fall, carefully spilling a bit of primed transfer media onto the mirror. “If I’m your mirror, sword, and shield, then I want a say as to how it’s used. I’ve seen you work, and I don’t like your way of getting things done. Maybe Ellasbeth’s family would be better at directing the elven race than you.”

Trent’s eyes were wide. “You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know what I believe, but I want a say.” Especially if it bothers you so much.

Mouth moving, Trent finally managed, “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

“I know,” I said flippantly. “But here we are. Yes or no?”

Trent looked like he was going to say no, but then his posture slipped and he smiled. “I agree,” he said lightly, extending his hand over the scrying mirror. “You have a say.”

His eyes were glinting like Al’s, but my hand went out, and we shook over the prepared curse. His fingers were warm in mine, pleasant, and I pulled away fast. “Why do I feel like I’ve made a mistake,” I muttered, and Trent’s smile widened, worrying me more.