Pale Demon th-9 Read online

  While Ivy stretched in what I recognized as her martial-arts warm-up, I reached out a finger of awareness and looked for the nearest ley line. My lips curled up in a smile. There was so little water in the ground here that it seemed as if I could feel the earth forever. The mental landscape of ley lines stretched as far and as clear as the flat horizon. There was space here, both visually and in the more nebulous regions of the mind. Lots of space, and nothing to stop any of the senses until the very earth curved from you. It was odd, and I took a moment to just taste it.

  Breaking my line of sight, Ivy grabbed her overnight bag from the trunk. “I’ll see if they’ll rent us a room for an hour,” she said, flicking her gaze at Trent, daring him to protest. “You want to shower, Rachel?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “After I eat. Want me to order you something?”

  Ivy shook her head, her gaze on the interstate. It was almost empty at this hour. “No. I’ll get something to go while you’re cleaning up.”

  Moving with an uncharacteristic stiffness, Trent started for the cloudy pair of restaurant doors. Jenks took to the air as if unsure of who to follow. His new boots and jacket caught the light, shining brilliantly.

  “Trent, you going to want a shower?” Ivy called.

  “Yes,” he said, not turning. “Then I’m taking a nap.”

  Jenks’s wings clattered in relief. “We’ll get a table,” he said quickly, then hummed heavily after Trent.

  Ivy’s smile was faint but sincere. “Someone found a new friend,” she said dryly.

  I chuckled, thinking Trent looked dead tired. It was weird seeing him like that, so far from the usual polished, put-together face he showed the world. “Can you believe where we are? It’s not fair. If I drove ten miles over the limit, I’d get pulled over.”

  She made a sound of agreement, then glanced at Vivian, sleeping with her head propped up on the steering wheel. “You sure you don’t want to shower first?” she asked.

  Grabbing my bag from the backseat, I flicked my lethal-magic detector. “Nah. I’m hungry. I’ll babysit Trent until you’re done. I don’t mind going last. Save me some water.”

  Nodding, Ivy turned on her heel and headed for the faded OFFICE sign and the wilted flowers in the huge earthen pots decorated with Aztec-looking figures that reminded me of ley-line glyphs.

  I pulled my suitcase to the front of the trunk to grab a new shirt, bra, panties, and socks. My jeans were okay for another day. I shoved everything in my shoulder bag, and slammed the trunk shut. Across the parking lot, Vivian jumped awake. Waving at her, I went in. Poor girl. You’d think they’d give her some help in spying on us. Maybe it was a punishment of some sort.

  The windows fronting the road had been tinted, and only the barest glimmer of light and warmth made it inside. As soon as the milky glass doors shut behind me, I felt cold, as if I had stepped into a cave. My attention went to the cash register, hoping for a stand of sunglasses, but there was nothing. Maybe the next stop.

  The few people were clustered in such a way that it was obvious they didn’t know one another. A pinball machine flashed silently, trying to attract a quarter, and the carpet was almost threadbare. It smelled like Were more than vampire in here, but they had an MPL posted on the door, so I knew it was a mixed-population restaurant. Not that humans ever drove much through the between places anymore. Entire human populations had died in small towns during the Turn, and the fear lingered. It was only in the cities that there had been enough of a support structure to keep them alive in any numbers.

  No one looked up as I entered except the waitress, and after I pointed at Trent, she turned away. True to his nature, Trent had taken a table in the center of the place, not in the sun but close. Oddly enough, even though he didn’t fit in with the rough Weres and brooding witches smoking I-don’t-want-to-know-what, he didn’t look out of place. It might have been Jenks on the napkin dispenser.

  “We can’t take all day with this,” Trent said as I pulled out the seat across from him, sitting down with a tired thump.

  “We can skip your shower if you want,” I said, arranging my bag so I could see the lethal-amulet detector hanging off it.

  Green eyes looking black in the dim light, he frowned. “I didn’t drive ninety miles an hour all night so you two could waste it under a shower-head.”

  “I still have the dust from the arch in my hair,” I said, turning my mug over to hopefully get something in it soon. “I know we’re in a hurry. I want to get there as much as you do.”

  Trent was silent, and Jenks looked between us, an unhappy expression on his face.

  “You look tired,” I finally said when Jenks made a motion for me to say something.

  Trent’s pinched brow eased. “I am,” he admitted, and Jenks perked up.

  “Me, too,” he offered.

  “I don’t mind driving for a while,” I said, trying to catch the waitress’s eye.

  “That’d be nice, Rache,” Jenks said snidely, hands on his hips and slipping a silver dust. “Since you’ve only driven about two hundred miles so far.”

  “No,” Trent offered. “You need to stay hands free in case the coven…” He hesitated, lifting a shoulder and letting it fall. “In case the Withons send someone else,” he finished.

  “Yeah, okay,” Jenks said, but I was surprised he’d taken Trent’s side in the first place.

  The waitress finally came forward, two pots in her hands. She looked about sixty and smelled of both Were and witch, so I couldn’t easily tell what she was. She had cowboy boots on and an apron, wearing both like they were comfortable slippers. “Morning, folks,” she said, her sharp-evaluation look clearly trying to peg us as well. “Regular or decaf?”

  “Um, regular,” I said, and Trent put a hand over his mug.

  “Decaf,” he said, and the smell of the coffee rolled over the table as she poured first mine, then Trent’s. Jenks flew to my cup and dipped a pixy-size portion out, the waitress watching the entire time. She looked suspicious, not charmed, and I guessed that she had had dealings with pixies before.

  “What can I get you?” she said as Jenks lifted from the rim of my cup and I took a sip.

  “Oh God, this is good,” I said, and the woman beamed, her wrinkles folding in on themselves to make her look wind-beaten beautiful.

  “Thank you, hon. We’ve got some batter in the back. Want me to have Len make up some pancakes for you?”

  I nodded, willing to put myself at the woman’s mercy if she gave me coffee like this.

  “I’ll have the tomato soup,” Trent said as he slid his menu to her, and the woman made a small sound. Jenks, too, turned to Trent. Ordering tomatoes wasn’t unusual, especially out in the wild where there weren’t many humans, but for Trent it was. He’d been masquerading as a human his entire life. Getting out of Cincy must be a new experience for him. Freeing, perhaps. “That is, if Len makes a good soup,” he added, smiling up at her.

  “The best this side of the Mississippi,” she said, tucking the menus under her arm. “You want the spicy or mild?”

  “Mild.”

  Leaving both carafes, she wandered back to the kitchen. For a moment, silence but for the pinball machine and the comfortable kitchen noises swirled around us as we all lost ourselves in the pleasure of sitting somewhere other than in the car, drinking something that wasn’t coming out of a can or a bottle.

  “The best coffee I ever had in a restaurant was in this little place in downtown Cincinnati,” Trent said suddenly, looking like a different person as he set his chipped mug down. The memory of the smile he’d given the woman, genuine and sincere, wouldn’t leave me. “It had pictures on the walls of babies—”

  “Dressed like flowers?” I blurted out, and Jenks let a flash of gold dust slip from him.

  “You know it?” Trent asked, eyes wide.

  “Know it? She’s been banned from it,” Jenks said, laughing.

  “Junior’s,” I said over the rim of my coffee, then set the mug dow
n. I could smell pancakes, and my mouth began to water. “Mike’s,” I said, correcting myself. “He banned me when I got shunned. That was the night I tried to arrest the banshee that had been terrorizing the city last New Year’s. Remember the fires at Aston’s roller rink and Fountain Square?”

  Depressed, I looked into the depths of my coffee. I’d never gotten any public credit for that one, either.

  “His name is Mike?” Trent asked, and my attention came back up at the amazement in his voice, and when I nodded, Trent shook his head. “You know a lot of people.”

  I lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “So do you.”

  This was kind of freaky. I was sitting with Trent, and neither one of us was baiting the other. Maybe my mom was right. Whenever Robbie and I got on each other’s nerves, she would make us clean the garage or something. My mom had had a very clean garage.

  “Food’s here,” Trent said, sounding relieved as he pushed back from the table to make room for his bowl.

  “One stack of hotcakes,” the woman said, setting a plate of three very brown pancakes before me. “And a bowl of tomato soup.”

  Trent was already reaching for the bowl. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said with such eagerness that she smiled.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked, setting the bill between us, facedown.

  Jenks clattered his wings for attention but didn’t take flight. “Would you mind if I browsed in your flowerpots? I’m just about dead on refined sugar and processed peanut butter.”

  The woman’s brow pinched. “You’re welcome to what you can find, but it will be a mite thin. There’s been some singing in the rills lately. We’ve got a rove clan about somewheres. Not that they bother us big folk, but they might not take kindly to you.”

  Jenks beamed. “I’ll be fine. Thanks,” he said, taking a slurp of his coffee to make his wings hum faster. “One more cup of coffee, and I could take on an entire fairy clan.”

  “You just be careful,” she said as she went back to the kitchen.

  The smell of my pancakes was heavenly, and shunning a knife and fork, I rolled the top one up in a tube and took a bite. Trent sighed heavily, carefully polishing his soup spoon with a paper napkin before taking a cautious taste.

  His eyes blinked and started to water. “It’s hot. She gave me the spicy. This is good.” Still gasping, Trent started eating in earnest, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose on his napkin.

  I doubted she gave him the hot. It was more likely that the mild was hotter than most volcanoes. The light shifted as the door opened, and I turned to see Vivian standing alone and small in the narrowing band of sun arching to nothing. Giving us a halfhearted wave, she shuffled to the bar and ordered something, putting her head down on her crossed arms when the waitress yelled back to the cook to make up a milk shake.

  I chewed, looking at her slumped petite form at the bar, remembering her honesty at Loveland Castle, and then her phone call that had given me leverage with Oliver, the coven’s leader. When I’d first met her, she’d been polished and refined, wearing a cashmere coat and having a trendy bag. By the end of the week, she was begrimed, sore, and full of the knowledge that everything she’d been told had been a lie. Right now, she was somewhere in between, wearing jeans and a sweater that looked too hot. Everything was designer label, though, and her makeup, though thin, had been expertly applied.

  “You mind if I ask her to join us?” I asked Trent, and he looked up, green eyes watering.

  For an instant he was silent, and then his spoon clattered against the white porcelain. “Why not?” he said as he stood. “Since you’re so sure she’s not going to kill you. I’ve not yet made her acquaintance.”

  “I was going to do it,” I said, but he’d already crossed the room.

  “Why not?” Jenks mocked, his wings a bright red from the caffeine. “Get him away from Quen and he thinks he’s cock of the world.”

  “You noticed that, too?” I said softly. “I like his new shoes.”

  “Thief shoes,” Jenks said around a belch. “I wonder what he’s stealing.”

  “Not our problem.” I hope. Taking another bite, I watched Vivian sit up, startled when Trent came up beside her, and then her quick glance at me. “Are you doing okay?” I asked Jenks, seeing his flushed face and slowly moving wings.

  “I’ll be fine.” Jenks tugged his new red jacket straight and rinsed his cup out in my glass of water, leaving a thin ribbon of coffee trailing down. “I want to see if she put a bomb under our car. You going to be okay alone with them?” Thinking of Ivy in the shower, I nodded, and he rose up to leave a fading glow of yellow sunbeam on the table. “I’ll be in back in five.”

  “Be careful,” I said as he flew off, and he gave me a flash of red dust, the pixy equivalent of rolling his eyes.

  At the bar, Vivian was sliding off her stool, one hand holding a tall glass of milk shake and a dangling napkin. Behind her, Trent followed, smiling as if he were crossing a ballroom floor, not a bar/restaurant surrounded by nothing in the middle of New Mexico.

  “Ah, I don’t know what to say,” the small woman said as she approached, and I pushed out a chair for her.

  “Sit,” I said, smiling. “Trent won’t bite. It’s Ivy you have to worry about, and she’s in the shower.”

  Her milk shake hit the table, and she sat. The heavy-magic detection amulet on my bag started to glow, but the lethal one remained dark. It didn’t go unnoticed by Vivian, and she took a sip of her drink while Trent resettled himself. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the last time I’d sat with her and had coffee. It had been in Mike’s, actually, and she’d been prepared to shoot me if I hadn’t gone with her. But that had been before she’d watched me stand next to a demon and try to save her mentor, Brooke.

  “Ivy said you were at the airport,” I said, taking a sip of coffee and probably getting Jenks’s glitter on my lips. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?” I asked, and Trent choked on his tomato soup.

  Eying Trent, she shook her head, her eyes red rimmed and tired looking. “They’re hoping you do something demonic on the way, and if so, I’m to report it,” she said, nervous until Trent stopped coughing. “Not that everyone isn’t pretty much set on how they are going to vote already. Except for whoever they elect to take Brooke’s spot. Oh, anything you say to me is going to be used against you in the vote.”

  Vote? I thought, my gaze going to Trent as I realized he’d been right. They were going to try to put me away despite what Oliver had promised. “This was a done deal!” I said, then lowered my voice. “Oliver said if I dropped my claim that the council is corrupt, you’d pardon me!” I almost hissed.

  Vivian shrugged as she sucked on her straw, and Trent wiped his mouth, red faced but finally under control. “Ms. Morgan is somewhat naive when it comes to world powers,” he said.

  “Why? Because I expect them to keep their word?” I said darkly.

  Looking innocent drinking her milk shake, Vivian sat back, her blue eyes downcast. The diamonds on her watch glittered, and the time was off. “It would help a lot if you brought back Brooke. She’d vote for you then.”

  I couldn’t stop my rueful laugh. “No, she wouldn’t.”

  Trent had gone back to his soup, watching us both. It made me feel like I was on trial not once, but twice.

  “And we’re not corrupt,” Vivian said, almost as an afterthought.

  Why is she saying this crap? I thought, rolling up a second pancake and taking a bite. It was like she was reading a script. Maybe she was afraid of what Trent thought? Maybe she was bugged and this entire conversation was going to end up in someone else’s ears?

  Regardless, I couldn’t let that one go without a rebuttal, so, taking a huge bite of pancake, I mumbled, “Right. Okay. Let’s just say the coven is lily-white, but Brooke was dabbling in demonology.” Swallowing, I added, “She summoned Big Al all on her own, knowing that’s who she was going to get, not me. She didn’t pay or threaten anyone into doing
it, she did it herself. I warned her not to. I went out of my way to try to stop her. Burned my synapses and fried my brain trying to jump a line to get to her in time. If I’m to be shunned, then she should be, too.”

  Sure enough, Vivian didn’t look appalled or insulted. Though we were alone, we were not unheard. “Can you…” She looked at Trent, hesitating.

  “No,” I said, knowing where her thoughts were. “I can’t rescue her. Brooke summoned Al. He broke her circle because she didn’t know what she was doing. I’m sorry. I know you think I control him, but I don’t. I’m just trying to stay alive here.”

  Vivian bent her head back over her milk shake. “I had to ask,” she said, her thin fingers looking cold on the glass.

  The table grew quiet. I kept shoveling pancake in my mouth, not knowing what to say now that I knew we were being eavesdropped upon.

  “Vivian,” Trent said, his attention lifting from my unused syrup as he broke the awkward silence. “What role do you have in the coven? You seem to be involved in everything.”

  “I’m the plumber,” she said with pride. “It’s traditional for the junior ley-line magic user.”

  Plumber was a nice way of saying that she plugged information leaks and kept the crap moving. And I almost laughed at the junior tag. Junior or not, she could smear my face in the playground dirt with her white magic.

  “I fix things,” Vivian added to make sure Trent understood. “Make things run smoothly. That’s why I…” Her words faltered, and she looked embarrassed as she took another pull on her straw.

  “Got this gem of an assignment,” I said, and she nodded. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s what I like,” she said, shrugging. “Usually.”

  The last was said rather dryly, and I wondered if it was for our listener’s benefit.

  “Just be careful,” I said, not entirely in jest. “That’s what Pierce was before they cemented him into the ground.”

  Trent was still eying my syrup, even as he scraped his spoon to get the last dregs of the soup, and I pushed the little container to him.