I smiled as the little girl gave him a sloppy kiss and shouted, “Good night!”
“It’s good to be home,” Quen said, his expression fixing to a bland nothing as he turned to Ellasbeth. “Will we be needing to stop somewhere on the way home, Ms. Withon?”
“Actually, I do need a few things,” Ellasbeth said as she took a step to the hallway. “But it can wait. The girls need to go down for their naps. Trenton, can I have a word with you?”
Looking resigned, Trent edged past me and into the hall. “What?”
Quen worked hard to hide his smirk as she click-clacked into the sanctuary, Ray on her hip and dragging Trent behind her.
“Sorry about all this,” I said to Quen as I tucked Lucy’s flyaway hair behind an ear and gave her a tickle under her chin.
“It’s not your fault,” he said, his tone making it clear he wasn’t entirely sure. “You will keep him safe?”
“Always.” But I couldn’t help but worry over how Al was going to react with me dropping in with his most favorite elf.
Our attentions flicked to the hallway as Trent’s voice rose in a hushed anger, and I felt myself warm. “She has saved my life more times than you have rings for your fingers, Ellie. I’m not going to let her go alone to tell a demon that wild magic is leaking from her ley line. She needs someone to watch her back, and pixies can’t be in the ever-after until sunset. I’m going. End of discussion.”
On second thought, Al probably wasn’t going to care about Trent once he found out that wild magic was not only leaking from my line but crossing Cincinnati to find me. Maybe we should just go out to the Loveland line and see it for ourselves.
Nine
The engine’s thrum muted as we got off the interstate. I tried not to listen to Trent’s phone conversation as the wind noise dropped, but my car wasn’t that big. It wasn’t as if Trent minded talking to Quen with me listening, but I knew Trent wasn’t happy that Quen had called in the first place, prompted by Trent’s text that our visit to Al’s had been nixed in exchange for a personal visit out to my ley line. If Trent had wanted to turn it into a committee decision, he would have called.
“Good,” the man said, wind in his hair. “Keep an eye on the news. Rachel has talked to the FIB and there’s going to be a public announcement in the next half hour. Whenever you hear sirens, don’t do any magic for an hour.
“No,” Trent said as he fiddled with the level of the window. “If it’s already running, the charm will be untouched. Don’t shut them down.” His eyes flicked up and away. “Ah, me too. See you tonight, Ellie,” he said, then ended the call.
Not Quen, then. I’d wondered. His tone hadn’t been quite right. Eyes fixed firmly on the road, I took a yield, my little car straining at the unusually steep dirt road as the paved road quickly became very country. Sighing, Trent checked his e-mail before tucking the phone away. “Thanks for coming with me,” I said, noticing his ears were red on the rims. “I know you wanted to talk to Al.”
“I like this just as well. A trip to your line will probably result in more information.” Smiling, he reached across the small space, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze.
Eyes firmly on the road, I pulled into the parking lot at Loveland Castle. Smile never dimming, Trent took his hand back, and I exhaled, glad that no one was here. There were posted hours, but the castle itself was seldom locked up, open to the public from dawn to dusk. The antitheft and vandalism hex on the door wasn’t legal, but the local cops probably appreciated it, not wanting to police such a lonely, trouble-inviting place.
Gravel popped as I put the car in park and turned the engine off. For a moment, we sat. Slowly the chatter of the unseen river and the haze of insect sound became obvious. Reluctant to get out of the car just yet, I looked past the crumbling icon to one man’s idea of perfect nobility to the never-finished garden, tall with weeds and terraced with crumbling stone.
I’d fought Ku’Sox there, surviving with the help of Quen and Etude, Bis’s dad. It was becoming increasingly hard to live with the fact that my errors could end up with others getting hurt, and as Trent undid his seat belt and got out, I stifled the urge to tell him to stay in the car.
He could take care of himself, but after three months of watching his back, I found it hard not to be protective.
We’re just going to look at my line, I told myself, hastening to follow him. No harm ever came from just looking at the ever-after.
Worried, I brought up my second sight, but as expected, my line was humming with a peaceful reddish haze, the glowing twenty-by-three-by-two horizontal column hovering at chest height. Hands on his hips, reminding me of Jenks, Trent stood with his feet in the knee-high grass and scanned the open area between the fallow garden and the hidden river. He looked good there in the sun in his faded jeans and pullover shirt that he’d gone shopping with the girls in, and a sudden thought of waking up to find him between my sheets flitted through me and was gone—chased away by the memory of Ellasbeth.
“Your line appears fine,” he said, then strode into the meadow for a closer look.
Embarrassed, I unfocused my attention even more, almost losing my vision of reality as I concentrated on the ever-after. A gritty red haze overlaid itself across the quiet green, making the trees look black. My tennis shoes brushed through the dry grass, sending up puffs of imaginary ever-after dust as I followed him. Sending a thought out, I connected more firmly to the line, letting the force of it pour through me, shocking me awake. Still it felt okay, and I carefully tasted the energy, hearing the pure sound/color and calling it good.
I’d created this line by accident when sliding through realities. It carried the taint of my aura, differentiating it from everyone else’s and making line jumps possible. But the memory of burning my aura off was still too new for me to try line jumping again, especially with Bis sleeping until sundown.
Slowly I came to a weed-shushing halt beside Trent. “It looks fine,” he said, squinting at it in the sun. “When was the last wave?”
“Ivy said one went through about five this morning.” Not that it made much difference. We had yet to find a pattern to them. Most Inderlanders except pixies and elves would’ve been asleep right about then. Was it just luck, or was someone trying to minimize the misfires?
The tall grass smelled wonderful, and I tugged at a knee-high tuft of it as I listened to the crickets. I breathed deep, smelling the hot grass and the July heat rising up from the earth, enjoying how it mixed with Trent’s scent of shortbread and wine—making me wish we were here for some other reason than checking for telltale signs of wild magic.