A shower of pixy dust sifted down from the overhanging rack. I hadn’t known Jenks was up there, but I wasn’t surprised as he gave Trent a thumbs-up and darted out after them.
Trent sighed heavily, and together we listened to Ellasbeth’s heels aggressively striking the floor in the sanctuary. “That woman is plotting,” I said softly, and Trent pulled me into a sudden, unexpected hug.
“Oh God,” he almost moaned, his arms tight around me as I scrambled to shift gears. “I think you are the only thing keeping me from going insane sometimes. You and the girls.”
But he had kissed her. “Really?” I mumbled. From the front, the door slammed, making the curtains over the sink drift.
Breath catching, he nodded, still staring at the ceiling as if the words he wanted to say were imprinted up there with pixy dust. “When everything seems to impact everything and there’s no easy answer, I ask myself: Will this decision take me closer or farther from you? And then it’s so clear. Even if it doesn’t make sense at the time.”
He thought this would bring us closer? My heart thudded. He had meant that kiss as show, but fear still lingered. Ellasbeth had brought everything back that I’d been ignoring, everything that Trent had been working his entire life for and lost because of me, everything his father had begun, everything that I couldn’t help him with and she could. I could do nothing as a flash of heartache lit through me. I love him. I can say that now. “You’re going to let her see Lucy? Trent, that’s so dangerous.”
“It was your idea.” He exhaled, pulling me closer so my head was against his shoulder and I could feel every inch of him pressed against me. “You’re right, though. It would be more dangerous not to,” he said, his words making my hair move. “Besides, I’m angry, not cruel, and I’m confident that Ellasbeth is now cognizant of what she gambled and lost by casually tossing that all-or-nothing choice down before me. If she wants to see Lucy, she’s going to make every sacrifice she would’ve made if she had married me in the first place, but now all she gets is to be a part of Lucy’s life, not mine. She will hate Cincinnati for the very things I love about it. My revenge is complete.”
He’s giving her a chance to fulfill her original role, I thought, tension winding through me. Trent wasn’t seeing this as a way for Ellasbeth to wind him around her finger, but I did.
Trent gave me a squeeze, but I couldn’t get myself out of my funk. He was bringing pieces back into play to try to regain his standing. I knew he wouldn’t sacrifice me to reach his end, but there was no way he could do it if I was beside him—and someday he’d realize that. He’d grow cold, indifferent. I’d seen it before.
“I don’t trust Landon,” I said, feeling my breath come back from him as my fingers defined the lines of his back. “I don’t trust Ellasbeth, and I certainly don’t trust them together. As soon as we’re no longer useful to Landon, and she realizes she won’t get what she wants, she’ll try to gain custody with a more permanent means, you know that, right?”
Trent let me go, avoiding me. Damn it, he did know, and yet he was giving her the very chance she needed to stick a knife in his ribs. “Trent—”
“You think Landon’s charm is true?” he interrupted.
He was still holding me, and I pressed into him. “I don’t like using a charm passed down by oral tradition for two thousand years,” I said, then added, “But I think they use it enough that as long as Landon remembered it right, it will work. Are you sure you don’t have anything in your library? He could be setting us up. That charm might take our souls for all I know.”
His reassuring smile only made me more concerned. “He wants an end to the vampires more than an end to me or you. We can trust that.”
“So we’re safe until the undead vampires are dead. I should probably write it down before I forget.” I reluctantly pulled from him to get a pencil and paper from Ivy’s desk. “Even if it will be in my handwriting and not his.”
“I think Jenks has it,” Trent said, looking out at the garden. “Jenks!” he shouted, startling me. “Where’s the charm?”
Pen in hand, I turned from the table to see Trent stretching to the hanging rack to turn the few hanging pots as if to empty them. “You had him copy it? Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you—” Spent dust spilled out of one, covering Trent in silver. He sneezed, missing the postage-stamp-size scrap of paper now drifting to the floor. It had to be the copied charm, and I picked it up, recognizing Jenks’s handwriting and the glyph of a pentagram. “There it is,” he said, seeing it in my hand and smiling. “Because you aren’t used to dealing with civil servants disguised as religious leaders.”
A smile found me. “Have I told you lately how wonderful you are?” I tugged at his belt, pulling him to me again. My arms went around his neck, and I beamed at him, the copied spell in one hand, the fingers of my other hand playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, stretching until I could just brush the arch of his pointy ears. Heartache swept me. How long could I hold on to him? A year? Two?
“Repeatedly, but I’m open to hearing it again,” he said, eyes alight with possibilities as he tilted his head and our lips met in a kiss.
Emotion spilled through me, heat tingling from our lips down to my middle, all the sweeter for knowing it could never last. My hand fisted in his hair, and his breath caught at the tight demand. He pulled me closer, his hands at my waist almost lifting me off my feet. The kitchen, I thought as my back hit the counter and his hand slipped under my shirt, his fingers both smooth and demanding, tracing over my skin. What was it about the kitchen that seemed to get both of us in a rush?
My eyes opened as our lips parted, but the tingling he’d started continued, making me move against him in time with his ever-moving hands, searching, rising to hint at finding my breast and send new tingles down to my spine. “You know what to do when you think of me, huh?” I said, thinking it was one of the most telling things anyone had ever said to me, making me feel loved and needed all at the same time.
“Always,” he breathed, looking at my lips.
“What are you thinking now?” I teased.
“I’m trying to remember why you haven’t moved in with me,” he said, and we slowly stilled, pressed against each other and content to just be.