Into the Woods (42 page)

“Jenks,” she fussed, clearly liking the attention. “I’m pleased it ended well.”

A flash of guilt darkened his wings. “Yeah, as long as Sylvan doesn’t come back and Rachel doesn’t find out,” he said, gaze going to his kids as they doused Jumoke in pollen from an early dandelion, temporally turning him blond until he shook himself.

“You’re such the worrier,” Matalina teased. “Let the future take care of itself. Vincet’s family is safe, and Jumoke is considering a career outside the garden. I’m proud of you.”

He turned to her, his guilt easing. “You think it will be okay?” he said, and she leaned in, putting her arms around his neck and her forehead against his.

“I’m sure of it. That dryad is long gone. No need to worry.”

Jenks sighed, feeling a knot untying, but still . . . “How do you like the office?” he asked, trying to change the subject. “I’ll get a little bell and they can ring it. I don’t think anyone will come, anyway.”

Matalina smiled as a shaft of light found her face. “They’ll come, Jenks. Just you wait.”

The sound of one of their children wailing drifted to them, and together they sighed.

“Not today, though,” Jenks said, giving her a kiss before he took to the air, his hands leaving hers reluctantly. “Today, I belong entirely to you.”

And, happy, he rose up, scanning his garden, assessing in an instant what had happened and darting down to make things right.

It was what he did. It was what he always did. And it was what he would always do.

Million-Dollar Baby

I like to tell people that I wrote
Pale Demon
to answer the question about whether anything was possible between Rachel and Trent, but when I got done with it, I found a new question had popped up. What happened between Trent and Jenks when they went off on their elf quest? It seemed the readers wanted to know as well, so here’s the answer, the fallout from which has peppered the last few Hollows novels.

ONE

V
ertigo threatened, not at the sensation of disconnection spilling down through his core, but from the abrupt feel of stone under his soft-soled shoes after the nothingness of line travel. Tightening his gut muscles, Trent caught his balance as the organized chaos of the King Street train station materialized around him as if, well . . . like magic, not the well-balanced act of scientific shifting of realities that it was. Calling it magic was convenient.

The twangy echo of announced departures mixed with a myriad of conversations and one child demanding that he wanted his book
no-o-o-ow
! Even at five thirty in the morning, it was busy.
And somewhat . . . smelly
, he thought, shivering at the final ribbons of power sliding off him to vanish like water into sand, or in this case, creation energy slipping through the molecule-thin cracks in the colorful mosaic now under him. The station had the distinctive tang of old mold growing on marble as a faint backdrop. Seattle never seemed to dry out. He didn’t know how Ellasbeth tolerated it. Perhaps her nose was stuck so far up in the air that she didn’t notice.

“Hey, you moss wipe! We haven’t said good-bye yet!” A high voice shrilled inches from his ear. Wincing, Trent glanced past the pixy’s fitfully moving wings to the attractive shadow of five-foot-eight inches of bothersome redhead vanishing from his elbow. Rachel Morgan was gone—never having fully materialized. Just as well. Her surreptitious ogling made him self-conscious. Then again, she’d never seen him in skintight spandex before.

“Seems she has pressing business elsewhere.” Smiling faintly, Trent looked down at the elaborate compass rose the demon Algaliarept had dropped them on, then squinted up to the marvelously tooled ceiling. He would sooner suffer great loss than owe a demon a favor, but since Rachel was paying for the jump, he’d take it: eight hundred miles between San Francisco to Seattle in a blink of an eye. Technically speaking, owing Rachel a favor was the same thing as owing a demon, not that she truly understood that—yet.

Head coming down in a flash of guilt, Trent moved off the compass rose and into the flow of people. Rachel would never understand there was only one way to save her life
and
keep her out of the ever-after. But what did it matter, really? She didn’t have to like him. He didn’t like the decisions he made, either.

“I’m becoming my father,” he whispered, an unexpected flash of anger coloring his thoughts. Just how much was he going to be asked to sacrifice for his people? His morals? His integrity? Even so, he was ready to give it, and watching Ellasbeth selfishly walk away from her responsibility had more than angered him. It wasn’t her selfishness that kept him awake at night, though—it was his undeniable envy of her cowardly decision to walk. He did not like the person he needed to be to pull his people back from the brink of extinction.

The faint hum of Jenks’s wings faded as the pixy came to an unfelt landing on his shoulder. Rachel’s business partner and backup was on loan to him for the duration. “Dude, look at those ceilings,” the pixy said, then snickered. “Hey, I, ah, get the whole thief outfit thing you were going for, but you’d be more inconspicuous in a suit. I’ll be right back. The Withons would be more stupid than a winter-born pixy to not have a man here. I’ll ferret him out.”

Trent took a breath to tell him not to bother, but the pixy was gone, his dragonfly-like wings glinting in the faint light coming in the high round windows. “A man in a suit is exactly who they’re looking for,” he muttered. Pace stiff, he angled to a billboard advertising the latest computer system where his black tights and shirt would be less conspicuous. The specially tailored guise was perfect. In the right setting, he would look like a cyclist, a diver, or a thief, though what he was after was worth far more than a bauble or money.

His eye twitched, and Trent rubbed his chin. There was a high probability that thieving from the Withons’ family estate would cost him his life, but his people wouldn’t listen to him if he didn’t. Trent’s eyes closed in a long, soul-searching blink. If he survived, his species would survive—but he might damn his soul in the process. Perhaps it would be better to die.

High above him, the clock tower chimed the half hour. It had begun. Trent stifled a pang of angst, scanning the station as he walked. Reaching the wall, he leaned back against the billboard. His stomach began to knot. Before him, people in suits with briefcases and families in jeans with pull-behind suitcases crisscrossed in tired distraction. Attendants with little hats instead of winged pins directed people, and they seemed to smile more than their airplane counterparts. Jenks was right. He didn’t fit in. Where the hell was his contact? His window was small, his timetable tight. The stress of hitting the mark on a short-note was not unfamiliar, but this was the first time his life depended upon it.

But then a slim man in tight-fitting racing spandex came in the King Street entrance, a biking helmet under one arm, a package under the other—right on time. Exhaling, Trent pushed off from the billboard, taking a longer, circular route that would keep him out of the main floor space. True, he was wearing black tights while surrounded by suits and casual clothes, but in a moment, no one would see him at all.

He heard Jenks before he saw him. “We got trouble,” the pixy said, hovering backward as Trent continued to walk. “Sniper on the balcony. Don’t look up!” he shouted when Trent’s head shifted. “He spotted you already. You keep going on this line, and he’ll have a good shot in about twenty paces. I told you you were a sore thumb.”

“Thank you.” The words came out of his mouth with a terse quickness, and he made a quick right through an open archway and into the men’s room. Tall ceilings and inlaid floors did little to disguise the room’s purpose even if the doors on the stalls were mahogany. The attendant with his jar of breath mints, cologne, and wolfsbane never looked up as Trent washed his hands as he thought. Most of his thief tools were in the package with the man in the bike suit.

Looking up, he was startled by the sight of Jenks sitting on his shoulder.
If I have a pixy, I should use him
. “My contact is in the bike suit at the west entrance,” he said, his lips barely moving as his eyes met Jenks’s through the mirror.

Immediately the pixy brightened, a bright silver dust slipping from him to pool in the sink to look like mercury floating on the running water. “The biker? What are we doing, anyway? Stealing your grandma’s wedding ring back?”

Trent stifled a surge of pique. He wasn’t used to being questioned, especially by someone who was four inches tall. “I can’t move forward until that sniper is gone.” He turned the water off and shook his hands. “Is he coming in or waiting for me to come out?”

“I’ll check.”

The attendant, an older man with a mustache and a uniform that looked vaguely like a train conductor’s, watched Jenks fly out, his eyes widening. Coming closer, Trent wrangled his belt pack open. Most of what he needed was in that package under the courier’s arm, but money went a long way. Giving the man a twenty, he said, “Can I borrow this?” as he pointed at the glass jar of packaged mints. It looked like an old-fashioned caboose lantern and was heavy enough to do some damage.

“Sure, governor.” The man fingered the bill as Jenks darted back in, the green dust sifting from him telling Trent all he needed to know.

“He’s coming,” the pixy said breathlessly. Trent, his heart pounding, hefted the glass container and moved to stand right beside the archway. “What can I do?” Jenks asked.

“Stay out of the way.” Trent took a breath, reaching out to tap a line in case he needed it. Energy tasting of fish and cracked rock seeped into him, making the tips of his hair float. The Goddess help him, but the lines were awful in the earthquake-prone West Coast. No wonder his parents had never returned.

Teeth clenched at the uncomfortable sensation, Trent lifted the jar high, listening to the soft scuff of fine leather on stone, hardly audible over the calling of another train’s numbers. The attendant’s eyes widened.

“No, wait!” Jenks shouted, but Trent was already swinging at the brown shadow passing through the marble archway.

The impact reverberated up Trent’s arms. His hands went numb, and the jar of mints hit the tile floor, shattering. Panic shocked through him as the round-faced man in a suit turned to look at him, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head as he collapsed.

Damn it, it is the wrong man!

“It’s the wrong man, cookie farts!” Jenks exclaimed, his wings clattering. “Did I say now? Did I! Tink’s little pink dildo, save me from amateurs!”

Trent stared at the man on the floor, his legs twisted under his briefcase. Now what?

“Behind you!” Jenks shrilled, and he spun, heart pounding as a man in jeans and a too-large coat came in. His eyes flicked to the man on the floor, then Trent. In a smooth, unhurried motion, he reached behind the fold of his coat.

Adrenaline was a slap. Grabbing the attendant’s metal chair, Trent swung it around and up, knocking the man’s arm aside. Snarling, the assassin watched his pistol arc through the air to clatter into a distant corner, but Trent was still moving, dancing forward over the fallen businessman. The chair landed squarely on four feet, and Trent used it to lever himself up, teeth clenched as he smashed his feet into the assassin’s chest.

Arms flailing, the man fell back, grunting as he hit the marble wall, his head meeting it with a dull
thwap
.

Trent followed the man down, hand aching with power and ready to stun him into submission with a blast of ley line energy.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Kung Fu!” Jenks shouted, silver sparkles dusting. “I think you got him!”

His fisted hands sprang open, and Trent let go of the line. Shaky, he pulled himself to his full height, staring down at the assassin as the twin feelings of elation and revulsion flowed through him.
I am not my father
, he thought as he lifted the man’s eyelids to see that they both dilated properly. But it was hard to argue with the thrill coursing through him as the man slumped at his feet, bleeding from his nose.

Jenks whistled long and loudly, as Trent, his hands shaking, moved the chair back where it belonged. The attendant was wide-eyed, his mints scattered and the two men at his feet. The distinctive odor of sea and rock that all West Coast elves had was growing stronger. Sort of surfer meets sandbar, with a bit of red wine thrown in to keep it happy.

“What the hell did you do that for?” the attendant mumbled, edging back as Trent searched the downed man’s pockets. “Is he a mugger?” he added as Trent tossed the cartridge of bullets into the trash and slid the two-way radio into his belt pack. “You want me to get security?”

Shaking his head, Trent stood, and dipping into his belt pack, he handed the man five one-hundred-dollar bills. “The first man fell into your table, breaking the jar, and the second tripped on him,” Trent said, and the man took them. “What a shame.”

The man’s alarm evolved into pleasure as he turned the bills over as if never having seen one before. “Yes, sir, they did,” he said loudly, pulling his arthritic back more erect. “You have a nice day, now. Mind your step. Those mints are slippery!”

Relieved, Trent gave him a sharp nod and sidestepped the next man coming in. Ignoring the cry of “What happened?,” Trent exited, breathing in the cooler air of the huge lobby. One down, a hundred to go. From behind him, the attendant was already deep into his story, enthusiastically explaining what had happened and telling the man to watch his step until he got the mints swept.

The clatter of pixy wings brought Trent’s hand up, and he almost smacked Jenks, mistaking the sound as an attack.

“It’s only me, moss wipe,” Jenks grumbled, easily evading him and coming to a halt on his shoulder. “You’re kind of jumpy, you know that? Nice going. You could have avoided most of it if you would’ve listened to me.”

“I’ll do better next time,” Trent grumped, relieved when he saw that his contact was still waiting.