“Ellasbeth Withon had this to say when she invited us onto the grounds,” the newscaster said, and we both turned to the TV, our hands joined.
“Or maybe not,” I breathed as I saw Ellasbeth sitting in the greenhouse, Lucy eating a cookie on her lap and Ray patting the table and the sparkle of pixy dust there. “I will not believe that Trenton is dead,” she said, her chin raised and her professional speaking skills making her seem just scared enough and deserving of sympathy. “He was with Morgan at the time of the fire, and if anyone can keep him alive, she can. Until he comes back, I will keep our girls safe.”
She was looking right at the camera, and I shivered. She was talking to Trent.
Trent was as pale as his robe, and he sat back, almost vanishing into the cushions. I knew he wanted to call Quen. It might destroy the illusion that we were dead. We’d never be able to flush Landon out. We had to wait.
“Maybe she had nothing to do with it,” I suggested, remembering her silence when I told her not to call back for at least four hours. She hadn’t called back at all. Had she been trying to give him the room I told her he needed, or had she been trying to keep him asleep until the sun rose and we couldn’t jump out?
Trent silently fumed, and I gave his hand a squeeze. “You don’t know she’s working with Landon,” I said, and his eyes finally came back to me.
“No, but she can play it very cool,” he said. “She won’t move until she’s sure we’re dead or her lawyers have a way to take Lucy.”
I remembered Jenks telling me how Ellasbeth had tried to kill Trent when he had abducted Lucy. Part of me was outraged, but another part knew I’d do anything to stop someone from breaking into my house to steal my child, too. Stopping is different from killing . . .
People change, I mused, still wanting to believe Ellasbeth wasn’t involved. “Maybe we should have left little pieces of our DNA on the ceiling.”
“There was no time.” Trent’s response was so fast I knew he’d been thinking about it, too.
The TV was back to commercials. “I was kidding,” I said. “At least she can’t take Ray.”
The mention of his adopted daughter seemed to bring him back, and Trent worked himself out of the cushions. “Quen would kill her if she tried,” he said, clearly uncomfortable. He stood, turning the TV off and frowning at the newly black screen.
Sighing, I wiggled my way to the front of the couch and managed to get up. My God, the thing was a comfort trap. “Come on,” I said as I took his hand and tried to lead him away.
“What? Where?” he demanded, following obediently.
I shrugged as I looked over my shoulder at him. “We can’t do anything, and playing dead was the entire point. Let’s go look at my mom’s studio.”
His fingers slipped from mine, and he set the remote down, reluctantly turning from the TV. “They aren’t even at the airport yet, and you’re in her spelling cabinet?”
Somehow I found a smile. “You never poked around in your mom’s spelling cabinet when she was gone?”
My heart seemed to melt when Trent smiled. It was laced with worry, distracted, but it was real, and it meant a lot. I knew how hard it was to want to fix something and have to wait.
“I stole all my best revenge spells from my mom when I was in junior high,” I said as I hiked up my robe and took the carpeted stairs. “I swear, I think she left some of them out for me to find. Like the one that gave you zits or made your voice break?”
“Clever.”
“And hard to trace since hormones were already jumping around,” I said, hesitating when we reached the top step. It was a huge, open corridor, windows letting in the light and the sound of surf. My mom was cool, and she believed in plausible deniability as a way to find justice in the dog-eat-dog world of teen angst.
Trent eased to a halt beside me. “Which way?”
I felt a light pull to the right. I couldn’t even tell you what it was. The scent of ozone, maybe? The faint vibration of an uninvoked circle? “Here,” I said, following my nose past open windows all the way to the end of the hall. The sound of surf became louder, and quite unexpectedly the outer side of the hallway opened up to a sun-drenched corner room.
“Wow,” Trent said as we slowly crossed from the carpeted hallway back onto tile, the floor a beautiful mosaic of white, black, and teal laid out in spirals and circles. It would be my favorite room just for that, but it got better. Several benches, each having an overhead rack or fume hood, gave it the look of a lab. There were several built-in burners, a waste zone, and one corner devoted to live plants. One tinted-glass cabinet against the interior wall held herbs, and another books. I assumed the ley line stuff was in cupboards. An open, ultramodern-looking hearth took up a corner. From the hook hanging down from the high ceiling it was functional, but I think Takata used it as a place to sit more than my mom to stir spells at by the number of magazines piled up beside the pair of comfortable chairs between it and the wall. There was an empty coffee cup on the table between them, and a sheet of music half hidden under the rug.
“This is fantastic,” I said, fingers running enviously over the magnetic chalk-ready slate counters as a smile of delight eased the tension from my forehead. I could tell there were no electrical lines, no pipes, no phone, no TV, nothing to break a circle. It was a fortress by way of lack, like an island.
“So, you think you can work here?” Trent said, beaming at my awe.
I nodded, eyes on the open notebooks with works in progress carefully detailed in my mom’s handwriting. She was spelling again, and it made me feel good. “Absolutely.”
Trent went to the spelling library, his fingers running over the spines with the fondness he reserved for the horses in his stable. “Rachel, your mom has been sandbagging. She has a fabulous collection.”
I fingered the key in my robe pocket, knowing that anything I could ever want would be here. Trent knew the charm, and I could tweak it so Ivy could invoke it as needed. The rest would fall into place. Finally something was going our way.
“It’s going to take some trial and error, though,” Trent said, surprising me anew with his stubble and disheveled appearance.
Smiling, I leaned against the counter, hardly able to wait to get started. It was a beautiful room, a pleasure to work in. “Maybe we should get dressed first if we want to save the world.”
Trent’s grin was wide as he came back, tugging me to him. “And a shave, maybe. Sounds good to me. I love watching you work.”