Pale Demon th-9 Read online

  “Pierce, get in the car!” Ivy shouted from behind the wheel, and he shoved me to the middle as he got in, the car shaking as he slammed the door.

  A cop car’s light played over our car, and swearing, Trent ducked. Ivy gunned it, bouncing my mom’s car’s fender off the bubble containing the fire as she spun in a tight circle. Pierce gaped behind us as Ivy drove like the devil himself was after us, jumping curbs and driving over the bare ground. Vivian and Trent cried out in protest from the back. There was a final, jolting thump, then the road smoothed as Ivy found the way to the interstate. No one followed.

  I closed my eyes, enjoying the smell of excited vampire on my left and the rich tang of witch on my right. The lights of oncoming traffic glowed through my eyelids, and I opened them when my phone started to hum. Jenks’s wings were a beautiful web of silk and diamonds as he held on to the rearview mirror’s stem, watching our back. Always watching our back.

  “Everyone here?” I needlessly asked, my fingers shaking as I flipped open my phone to see that it was Bis. The last two calls were from him as well. He had to be feeling me pull heavily on the lines. He was waking up in the day, too. Maybe he was older than I thought.

  Jenks’s wings hummed to life, turning as gray as my soul as they deflected the light, their beauty lost. “Yeah, everyone’s here,” he said, clearly not believing they were just going to let us drive away.

  I hesitated briefly before letting Bis’s call go to voice mail and tucking the phone away. I couldn’t talk to him right now. Vivian was sobbing in the back, trying not to be obvious about it. I thought it callous of Trent not to give her any comfort, but if she was anything like me, his show of compassion would only get his face bitten off and he probably knew it.

  The hum of the engine grew steady, never varying as we sped north on 95. I flexed my hand, trying to see it in the faint green glow from the dash. The memory of how much energy I’d channeled into Ku’Sox had left my body unmarked, but it had shaken me. It had been enough to fry anyone else to a cinder.

  My fist closed, and I saw Ivy look from it back to the road. Her eyes were worried. Taking a breath, she pushed her wet hair back, steadying herself for whatever I might do next. She looked too young, too beautiful, too perfect to put up with my crap, and when I touched her hand, she jumped.

  We’d gotten away, but my heart was like ash, as black as the coating on my soul. Vivian had seen the depth of it, taken part in it. Maybe she’d leave this part of the trip out of her report.

  “Hey,” Jenks said, his thoughts clearly on the same path as mine, “is it true what they say about Vegas?”

  “No,” Vivian said, and I caught sight of her red-rimmed eyes in the rearview mirror when the lights of a passing car lit up her misery. “I’m telling them. I’m telling them everything.”

  Trent shifted uncomfortably, and Jenks took a breath, a darkly glowing dust spilling from him. I calmed him with a soft nod. I wanted them to know. It might be the only thing that was going to keep my body and soul on this side of the lines. That and maybe Trent’s testimony that I was a good person. I was in trouble if they ever found out Ku’Sox was his demon.

  “Double jeopardy,” Trent whispered. “It’s double jeopardy.” His eyes met mine when I turned to him. “It always has been.”

  Fifteen

  It was the changing sound of the engine that woke me, but the car’s motion never shifted, so I snuggled deeper under my coat and leaned more heavily against the door. A bleary glance at the clock told me we’d been on 80 only for about an hour, and therefore were probably coming into Reno. Four hours of driving a hundred plus in the dark had been more than a little unsettling, but we’d made great time.

  Trent was driving again, had been since getting off 95. He could keep the job for all I cared—even if he bitched incessantly until we cut our bathroom and coffee breaks down to almost nothing. The road between Las Vegas and 80 had been nerve-racking, even though we hadn’t seen anyone. There’d been lights. In the air. Lots of them. And they’d kept pace with us no matter how fast Ivy had gone. Trent and Jenks had slept through it all.

  Three eighteen, I mused as the clock changed, and I resettled myself against the door, still achy from hitting the floor, wall, table, and whatever else Ku’Sox had thrown me into. The mercury light of a truck stop flashed over me, then another. I slowed my breathing, trying to seduce sleep back to me. If this was almost Reno, then San Francisco was only about 240 miles away. A spike of adrenaline lit and died. Tomorrow. It would all start tomorrow.

  “She’ll get you there in time,” Jenks said, his soft voice paced a shade slower than usual, and carrying a hint of both irritation and the altitude sickness he was dealing with. I’d offered him the charm to make him big, and he’d refused, saying the car was crowded enough.

  “You keep saying that,” Trent said just as softly. I’d never have heard them if I hadn’t been in the front seat.

  “Well, you keep pushing the pedal to the floor,” he shot back, his voice putting him in the ashtray, not the rearview mirror. “You should trust her. She had every right to dump you on the side of the road for freeing Ku’Sox, and she didn’t. That must have been some conversation you had in the john, because if it had been me, your ass would be under the grass right now.”

  Sleep vanished, but I didn’t move. Jenks would know I was awake because of my “aura brightening” or some such crap, but Trent wouldn’t, and I worked to maintain my slow, sedate breathing. Vivian, too, must be asleep or Jenks would never have brought up the demon.

  “You don’t know when you got it good, elf boy.”

  It had been a soft mutter, but I knew Trent heard, as there was a creak of plastic and the vent started blowing cold air. “I have my reasons,” Trent said.

  “You have trust issues is what you have,” Jenks said. “And turn the air off. What are you, a friggin’ penguin?”

  “You don’t know half of what’s going on.”

  You got that right, I thought as the air turned warm again. My nose was tickling from a thread on my coat, but I didn’t move, hoping Trent would say more. He might. Jenks and Trent had been spending a lot of time together while the rest of us slept, and Jenks liked to talk. Especially when he was cranky. Anything over 2,500 feet above sea level and he had a hard time flying. Hit 3,000 feet and he was down.

  “Well?” Jenks said sarcastically, almost daring him.

  A small sound of mistrust slipped from Trent. “You’d tell her.”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t want her sympathy.”

  Sympathy? I cracked my eyes open enough to see a faint haze of pixy dust in the ashtray, glowing in the predawn gloom. “Come on, Trent,” Jenks wheedled as he shoved the doughnut napkin off himself and sat up. “What is so damn important in Seattle? Maybe I can help.”

  Again came Trent’s huff of disbelief. “You talk too much.”

  Indignant, Jenks flashed his wings. Making a wobbling flight to the dash, he stood with his hands on his knees, bent over and wheezing. “I helped Quen lift your paperwork from the FIB,” he said between breaths. “I never said anything. I can help. It’s allowed. I checked. If you’re really on an elf quest, you’re allowed a pixy. Pixies helped elves on quests all the time.”

  Elf quest, I thought. It sounded so…undignified, like an overdone renaissance fair show, and I stifled a smile imagining Trent in costume riding through his woods to rescue the imprisoned princess. Crap, is he going to come back to Cincy with Ellasbeth?

  “I’m breaking into a high-security location, not riding across the countryside on some fairy-tale adventure,” Trent said tightly, his thoughts clearly akin to my own.

  “So you’re in a borrowed Buick instead of on a mighty steed, and your pixy sidekick can short out security systems instead of spot orcs. It’s the times, Trent. Roll with it.”

  Jenks was laughing at him, and though I couldn’t see Trent, I could imagine his tight mouth and red ears when he grumped, “It’s not like that.”<
br />
  “It looks like it to me,” Jenks said. “Even got your band of ragtag misfits.”

  In the seat behind me, Ivy shifted. For a moment, neither one said anything.

  “What are you doing?” Jenks whispered. “Scrambling the Withons’ tax returns?”

  I let out my held breath, almost missing Trent’s soft, “I’m claiming something. Ellasbeth has it. It’s mine.”

  He wasn’t after Ellasbeth then. Thank God. And why did Trent have to prove himself? Old traditions? Apart from going into the ever-after for that elf DNA sample, he’d been coasting on his father’s legacy. Was this some way to prove to the remaining elves that he could lead them? As if the cure for the demon curse wasn’t enough?

  “I can help,” Jenks said. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

  The car drifted to the right, avoiding traffic by the sound of it. Reno must be close. “Why do you want to help me?” Trent asked as he settled into a new lane. “You don’t owe me anything. I’ve given Rachel nothing but trouble.”

  “True,” Jenks admitted. “But working with Quen got me a church and security for my family,” he added, and I slitted my eyes to see him sitting on the dash in front of the wheel, his wings almost blue with cold and altitude. “But mostly it’s because if you get caught, Rachel won’t have you to speak for her at the coven meeting.”

  There was that…

  “That’s not enough to risk your life for me. I want to know why,” Trent insisted.

  Jenks’s wings hummed, and I lifted an eyelid a bit. Through the windshield, gray buildings passed in the gloom. “Where are you going?” Jenks asked, his tone one of mistrust as the turn signal clicked on again. We were changing lanes, the buildings seeming to tilt as the car moved.

  “Seattle.”

  I bolted upright, stiff muscles complaining. “Hey! We’re going to San Francisco!”

  Trent jumped, clearly shocked. But the car was in an exit-only lane. “H-how long…,” he stammered, but I was more concerned about the SEATTLE-395 THIS EXIT sign that flashed past.

  “We are going to San Francisco!” I hissed, not caring if I woke everyone up. “Get the car back on the interstate!”

  Trent stared. “How long have you been listening to us?”

  My teeth clenched seeing the broken white line turn solid. “So help me, Trent, if you don’t get back on the interstate, I’m going to, to…hate you forever!”

  Jenks’s wings hummed as he laughed. “I’d get your ass back on the interstate, cookie maker. You wouldn’t like it if Rachel hated you forever.”

  “I don’t have time to stop in San Francisco,” he said stiffly. “Two hundred miles might be the difference between my making my appointment or not.”

  My side hurt, and holding it, I stared at him. “I’ll get you there.”

  “I don’t see how!”

  “I’ll get you there!” I exclaimed. Oh God, the triangle of gravelly pavement was getting bigger. “Trent, trust me. Just trust me. You asked me to trust you!”

  I could see the frustration in the set of his jaw. On the dash, Jenks waited, tense and not a slip of dust escaping from him. Trust me. If he didn’t, then why should I trust him?

  In a moment, there would be a metal barrier between 395 and 80—and an even larger one between Trent and me.

  Trent’s face became ugly, and with a growled curse, he yanked the wheel to the left.

  “Hey!” Ivy exclaimed from the backseat as the car swerved violently.

  My heart was beating fast, and I pulled my hand from the dash. Jenks had made it to the rearview mirror, and he was grinning.

  “Are we there yet?” came Vivian’s sleepy voice, and I glanced back to see her with a really bad case of pillow hair.

  “No, go back to sleep,” I said, noticing that Pierce had never even woken up, pressed into the corner behind Trent and huddled under his long coat.

  I settled back, pulling my own coat up in the chill Trent kept the car in. His face was set in a determined, angry expression. We were back on 80 and headed to the coven meeting, but he wasn’t happy. He’d said he trusted me, but his body language said otherwise.

  “I’m not going to make it,” he said, and I smiled when the SAN FRANCISCO—217 MILES sign flashed over us. He was going to make it. And even better, I was, too.

  “Thank you, Trent,” I said, my headache easing a little.

  “I’m not going to make it,” he said again, sounding more lost now than angry.

  It wasn’t like I could pretend to be asleep anymore, so I reached for the bag of sugar and carbs we’d gotten in another state and rummaged around until I found a squished brownie. Who in the Turn is buying the Milk Duds?

  “You’ll make it,” I said as I tore the cellophane open and the scent of enriched flour and chocolate hit me. I took a bite: the chocolate had too much wax and the peanut chunks tasted stale, but it was sugar. Leaning forward, I handed Jenks a chunk as big as his head. “Soon as I check in with the coven, I’ll have Al pop you up there,” I said around my full mouth. “QED.”

  The noise that came out of Trent was sort of a strangled cough of out-rage caught in a steel trap of fury. I turned from Jenks, who was saluting me with his brownie, to Trent, now staring at me. “Want any of this?” I asked, holding my brownie higher in explanation.

  “You could have jumped me there at any time?” Trent said hotly.

  “Yeah,” Jenks said, voice muffled from the brownie. “You just click your heels and think there’s no place like being pwned.”

  Trent clenched his jaw and corrected for the truck we were barreling toward. “Rachel,” he said, that one word holding an entire argument. He was pissed, his grip tight on the wheel. Our speed, too, had gone up by about fifteen miles per hour.

  “No, I can’t do it at any time I want,” I said with a huge grin, lips closed so I didn’t look like a goober with brownie in my teeth. “The magic doesn’t work until you learn a life lesson,” I teased. “Wasn’t it fun, though? Only two hundred miles left. We can do that on our heads! Unless it violates your elf quest? I mean, if I’m your sword, your shield, and your mirror, then it’s fair if I’m the one who gets you there, right?”

  There was a snuffle from the back. Clearly Ivy was still awake, but I think that had slipped Trent’s notice. “Two thousand miles, Rachel,” he said tightly, and I guessed that no, it didn’t violate the rules of whatever he was doing out here, because he sure wasn’t out here keeping the coven from attacking me. “I have eaten nothing but slop for two days and used facilities I wouldn’t let my dogs urinate in. And what about that couple in the RV outside Texas? I’ll never get that memory out of my head.”

  I nodded, working the brownie out of my teeth. “I could’ve done without that visual myself.”

  “I could have done without the entire trip,” Trent grumbled, but his anger was slowing as he realized he was going to be in Seattle in a matter of hours.

  I tucked my foot under me and turned to him. “You want me to work with you, right?” I said as I crumpled up the cellophane and tossed it into the bag. “Consider the trip your interview.”

  Jenks choked on his brownie, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind, red faced as he alternated his attention between me and someone in the back, probably Ivy. I shifted my lips in a soft grimace at the pixy. What was I going to do here, realistically? Either I cozied up really close to Trent to get him to say the right things at the meeting in two days, or I wound up first in Alcatraz, then the ever-after when I admitted I’d lost my bet with Al and fled to his protection. Some choice, but really, Trent was the better of the two. Even if he had let Ku’Sox out of his box. Stupid elf.

  Trent made a huff of noise. “You were interviewing me. You. Interviewing me?”

  I stifled a shiver. “Maybe.” I could feel Ivy staring at the back of my head. It almost hurt.

  His lips turning up, Trent smiled at the road, his expression becoming one of confidence and satisfaction. Not surprised, I collapsed in on mysel
f and rolled my eyes. He was going to milk this forever. “So you’re saying you might work with me?” he asked, apparently needing to hear it. The tone of the engine dropped, and for the first time since leaving Las Vegas, the speedometer dropped into double digits. “How did I do?” Trent asked, a smile in his voice. “On my interview?”

  Damn it, he was laughing at me, but a knot had loosened in my gut. I might work with him. I’d said it—admitted it to myself. I wasn’t going to sign his paper—become his witch—but a job…I might do a job. I was going to need something while I earned the trust of Cincinnati back and the work trickled in. “You’re not much of a team player,” I said as I scraped the last of the sticky cake off my fingertips with a napkin so stiff it was nearly useless. “Inclined to take on too much and not let other team members know what you’re doing, which causes problems that could easily have been avoided.”

  Trent’s entire demeanor had changed. Relaxed, he let one hand fall to his lap and drove with the other. It just about pegged my attraction meter, but I frowned when he said, “Sounds like you.”

  “But on the whole, a good risk,” I added sourly. “If the benefits were there. And I felt like it.” And I can’t make rent.

  Jenks dropped down to his ashtray, burying himself under a tissue and a doughnut napkin. “All this good feeling is making me sick,” he said, hidden away. We had the mountains to get through. It was going to be a rough couple of hours.

  “I can’t believe you let me sweat over this. Rachel, I ate fast food,” Trent complained.

  “And tomatoes in public,” I said, remembering the soup. “It felt good, didn’t it? Not hiding what you are?”

  A slow smile came over him, hard to see in the dim light. “It did,” he said so softly I might have missed it if I hadn’t known it was coming.

  “And you got to see the Petrified Forest,” I added.

  From the ashtray came Jenks’s voice saying, “And pixies being eaten alive.”