Head going down, Trent shifted his feet and three pixies flowed out the door at ankle height, giggling and laughing. Jenks was tight on their dust, and the noise level dropped.
His relief obvious, Trent came farther in and set his briefcase down before placing the bag of doughnuts on the center counter and the paper sack on the table with a heavy thump. He was silent, utterly still, and I looked up. "Are you doing okay?"
I closed the demon textbook and shoved it to the center of the table. "No."
Trent dropped his rain-spotted hat on the table and began to unpack the leather-bound books of odd sizes from the paper sack. "It was a hard night."
I couldn't stop my sarcastic laughter. His daughter had been dangled before him and he had been given a horrible choice. A minor entrusted to my care had been abducted. Bis was only fifty years old. He shouldn't have even been there. The tears welled, and I held my breath, not wanting to cry in front of him again. "Look at me," I said as I dabbed at my eyes, trying to make light of it. "I'm such a baby. I can't stop crying."
"It's okay," he said as he stood by the table and carefully folded the paper sack.
"No, it's not," I protested, and Trent walked over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. His shoes were untied, and I looked up, startled when he crouched to put our eyes at the same level. His eyes were dark with a shared pain. "I meant it's okay to cry," he said, and I remembered to breathe. "You're wound so tight right now, you need a healthy release."
I shook my head, glad he wasn't trying to convince me that everything was going to be okay. It wasn't. This was bad. Really bad. Knowing that he understood helped. He had lost his child. How could I even come close to his grief? His frustration? I thought again, If he can function, then I can too.
With a surprising touch on my cheek, he stood up and edged away. "We'll get him back. We'll get them all back."
I could feel a tingle where his hand had been, and I gazed at him, numb. "I don't see how. I can fix the line, but not without Bis. And no one will help me if the line is broken." It was a trap my mind kept circling, and until I broke from it, I was dead in the water.
Still in his coat, Trent pulled Ivy's chair out of the corner. His motions held a restrained excitement as he sat down to retie his shoes. "That's why I'm here. I've been thinking about tonight," he said, glancing up as Jenks flew back in.
"Me too." My voice was a dull flatness compared to his excited eagerness.
"Ku'Sox did a few things tonight to show what he's afraid of," Trent insisted.
"What does it matter? They engineered him to be stronger than everyone," I said, glancing at the books he'd brought. More books. That ought to help, I thought sarcastically, then I looked closer, sitting up and reaching for one. They all had library stickers on them-from the restricted section.
"Hey, these are from the restricted section," I said, taking one. "Did you steal them?"
Trent flushed, the rims of his ears going charmingly red. "No, of course not. They let me take them out."
My eyes slid to the brown paper bag he'd brought them over in. "Out of the restricted section? Of the library?"
"Yes, so please don't get anything on them," he said, moving my cup of chamomile tea to the center counter. "Oh, it's gone cold," he said softly, standing up and taking his coat off.
I still couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that they'd let him take restricted books from the library grounds.
Clearly discomfited, Trent dropped his coat over Ivy's chair. Reaching for his bag of doughnuts, he muttered, "It's amazing what they let you do when you supply a new roof for the children's wing and pay for the salary of the children's events coordinator."
"They let him take restricted books out," I said to Jenks, and the pixy shrugged.
Behind the counter, Trent rustled in his bag. "Ah, would you mind if I ate? I sent the staff home Monday and haven't called them back yet. Ellasbeth can boil water but she won't." He paused. "You don't want any, do you?"
The scent of fried doughnuts was strong. Tearing my gaze from the books, I eyed him standing behind the counter, his head almost touching the hanging utensils. His hair was darker than usual in the electric light, and his face was freshly shaven. Tall and unbowed, the calmness he radiated soaked into me, pushing my panic back to the edges so I could think again. "No, go ahead."
"Jenks, where are the plates?" Trent asked, and the pixy landed on his shoulder to point the cabinet out.
It felt funny with Trent in here, but the pixy kids were keeping it to a dull roar. The scrape of a plate was loud, and Trent put six pastries on it, taking a stark, plain doughnut from the pile when he set the plate before me and moved the books all the way back to the wall.
"Ku'Sox broke our rings," Trent said as if it was important, and I watched him take a bite from his plain doughnut, thinking it was odd seeing him here in my kitchen in his suit and tie at four in the morning. "I think that is significant. He didn't know we were using them as a safety net. He said 'meld your abilities to an elf to best me.' Ku'Sox thought we were using them to join our skills, to make ourselves stronger."
My stomach rumbled at the smell of the fried dough, and hearing it, Trent gestured for me to help myself. I shook my head, eyeing the one with the sprinkles.
"That's how the demons overpowered him before," Trent said, still standing in the middle of my kitchen. "He's afraid of us, demons, elves, anyone, working together. All his actions are to pull the demons apart, break alliances."
"I can't argue with that." Though Trent was clear across the kitchen, I felt as if he was too close, too accessible as he stood there looking good in my church eating a no-frills doughnut.
"And Bis," he said, making my stomach clench. "He didn't take him because he wanted leverage on you. If it was only that, he could have twisted the knife and gotten you to take the curse off right then and there."
I shoved my panic aside. "He took Bis so I couldn't fix the line," I said, and Trent nodded.
"Exactly my thoughts," he said, setting his doughnut with one bite out of it on a napkin from the bag. "He needs it broken. With purple sludge gone, everyone can see the curse he used to damage your line. That's why he can't allow you to fix it. But if you could move all the imbalance at once, you might get the same effect. Would you mind if I made something to drink?"
My lips parted at the new thought. "Sure, go ahead," I said, and he wiped his fingers off on a second napkin, turning to the fridge. Damn, I could move all the imbalance at once. I mean, I knew what my line was supposed to sound like. All I needed to do was bundle up everything that didn't belong and drop it into another line.