Pale Demon (9 page)

T
he faint smell of cinnamon, blood, and wine drifted forward from the backseat despite the fact that all the windows were down. My elbow was propped up on the sill, and my hair was a tangled mess. Jenks was on the rearview mirror, his wings flat against his back to keep them from being torn to tatters. Ivy was driving. We were an hour out of St. Louis, and no one was happy. I would have asked Ivy if she’d mind if I rolled mine up, but her grip on the wheel was tight and her eyes were halfway to black, slowly edging into hunger.

My chest hurt, and I wrapped my arm around my middle, staring out at the whole-lot-of-nothing we were passing through. The sun shifted as we took a slow turn. From the back where Trent sulked, a new burst of blood and cinnamon grew as the warmth found him. Ivy swallowed hard. That we hadn’t stopped to give him a chance to change his clothes told me she was scared.

I exchanged a worried look with Jenks. Trent had tried to clean up, but there was only so much that bottled water and fast-food napkins could do. Dried blood cracked and flaked from the absorbent black cloth he’d tied around his bicep. It looked like a shoe-polishing rag, and I was sure he’d gotten it from his suitcase, thrown into the backseat before we tore out of St. Louis. At least his face was clean. Even his ears where the blood had dripped down. He had been bleeding from his ears! What had they tried to do to him?

I shifted, my foot scraping against the fast-food bag half full of candy wrappers, coffee cups, and water bottles. The scent of fries mixed with that of dried blood somehow reminding me of my prom. I’d be hungry, except my stomach was knotting over the news coming out of St. Louis.

“Experts claim that an adhesive that dissolves in salt water is to blame,” the woman on the radio said, her voice a mix of urgent drama and calm journalism. “This salt-water-dissolving adhesive is routinely used in major road construction in no-frost zones outside the coastlines, and it’s thought that the salt used to de-ice the nearby sidewalks soaked into the soil, eating away at the foundation over the years until today’s disastrous toll.”

Salt-dissolving adhesive,
I thought darkly. That was Inderland speak for a magic misfire. No need to scare the humans. Despite all the integration we’d achieved, the equality that we managed, there were still secrets, still hidden ugliness.

Jenks’s wings hummed from the rearview mirror. “Anyone mind if I change the station?” he asked. “They’re just repeating themselves now.”

His tone was heavy, and I looked at Ivy. She was the one who’d turned it on. From the back, Trent sighed, finishing off a bottle of flavored water enhanced with B vitamins and complex amino acids or something, capping it and tossing it to the front for me to jam in with the rest of the trash. Ivy clicked off the radio, her motions just shy of vampiric speed.

I squinted out the window in the new silence as I shoved the bottle in the trash, not really seeing the gently rolling grasslands. They looked hot under the lengthening afternoon sun, and I wished I had my sunglasses to cut the glare. I’d put on Trent’s, but he’d probably want them back, and I didn’t know what to think of him anymore. The third assassin hadn’t been at the car when we’d stumbled back to it. Neither Trent, Ivy, or Jenks had asked what happened, and I wasn’t about to admit, especially to Trent, that I’d almost died. I hadn’t known elven magic could be so insidiously deadly, and a new wariness, or respect maybe, had me quietly thinking.

Depressed, I hoisted my shoulder bag with its early-warning amulet higher onto my lap, the ley-line amulet glowing briefly when it fell into my aura’s influence. Thanks to them, Jenks had looked for and found the explosive charm stuck to the car before it blew, and then the bug they’d put on it in case we found the bomb. Ivy had been ticked. Trent, impressed. It was the bug that had prompted Ivy to take 44 southwest instead of jumping on 70, ticking off Trent, whose ultimate destination was Seattle. I wasn’t going to Seattle. I was going to San Francisco. The deal was the West Coast in two days, not Seattle.

I turned to look at the man, wondering if he could sing. “How’s your shoulder?” I asked. He’d missed a smear of blood just under his hairline, and I forced my attention from it. I could see it in peekaboo snatches when the wind hit him just right.

Trent’s sour expression shifted to one of irritation. “Better,” he said, the word clipped. “I don’t think I’m
bleeding through my pores
anymore.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Ivy tighten her grip on the wheel, her French-manicured nails catching the light. Jenks hummed his wings in worry, and I took an uneasy breath. “Sorry,” I said shortly, wondering if I should ask Ivy to stop.

“You care?” Trent muttered.

“No,” I said, resettling myself to look out the front. “But I told Quen I’d keep you alive. Even when you do stupid stuff like hide in a hole instead of finding Ivy like I told you to.”

“I wasn’t aware that keeping your word was important to you,” he mocked.

My eyes narrowed. Jenks shook his head, warning me not to rise to the bait, but I couldn’t help it. “It is,” I said, eying my nails. There was blood under my cuticles.
Trent’s?

“And that’s why you refuse to take my familiar mark off?” Trent asked.

Ivy exhaled loudly, and I looked sideways at him. “I don’t trust you,” I said. “Duh.”

Seeing my irritation, Trent put his leg across his knee and lounged in the backseat like it was a limo, the sun in his hair and eyes as he looked out at the hot, flat view. How could someone with a bloody rag around their arm look that confident?
Because he could sing someone to death?
“That’s patently obvious,” he said softly, almost like a rebuke. “But you
did
agree.”

I huffed and turned back around. “Like you hold to all your agreements.”

“I do,” he said quickly. “Agreements…and threats.”

Jenks’s expression had gone dark. Ivy, too, was clenching her jaw. The scent of cinnamon and wine grew stronger. Trent might look calm, but he was losing it on the inside. I might not have noticed it last year, but after spending almost a day with him, I could now.

“Then why haven’t you killed me? Huh?” I said, turning and holding myself back from the seat so I could look at him square on. “Go for it, you little spot of sunshine! I just beat off three assassins, one by myself. I’m stronger than you, and you know it.” I smiled insincerely. “It bothers you, doesn’t it? You rely on Quen far too much.”

His eyes flicked to mine, then away. “That’s not it at all,” he said mildly, the wind playing in his hair, showing that smear of blood again.

“Is so,” I said, and Jenks cleared his throat. “You’re lucky I pushed that magic back into those idiots and got them to back off. There was enough there to kill both of us.”

Irritation crossed his face, so quick I wasn’t sure it even existed. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, dabbing a bloody cloth against an ear. “Obviously you’re more capable than I in magic. It’s why I wanted to
hire
you in the first place,” he said, making it sound like an insult. “The deal was that I give you until the witches’ conference to resolve this issue.” I made a “well?” face at him, and he snarkily added, “We aren’t there yet. You’ve got a day or two before I start trying to kill you again.”

My mouth dropped open. From behind me, Jenks coughed, covering up a laugh. “I just saved your life!” I said loudly, anger spilling into my voice. “Again!”

“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 shirt-sleeve 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.