Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            “I have to go,” he said, but the heat in his eyes said he didn’t want to.

            His present could wait, and his hand slipped from mine with a reluctant slowness and tingle of line energy. “Don’t forget to ask Lee about helping me with my porch window ward.”

            “I won’t forget. Love you.”

            “I love you, too.” Desperately.

            Trent slipped out the narrow door. His steps were almost silent on the stair to the foyer, and I listened to him say something, probably to Jenks. A moment later, I felt the air shift as he went outside, and then heard the sound of his car rumbling to life and driving away.

            I sighed, staring at my tiny, eight-cornered, peaked-ceiling room. “I really need to get a bed-in-a-box up here.”

            Slippers scuffing, I headed for the stairs as I mentally moved my scant furniture around to make room for a bed. Even with my spelling area now down in the kitchen where it belonged, there wasn’t room for a double, much less the queen I wanted. Until I got past the ward on Hodin’s room, I was stuck up here. I wasn’t going to kick Stef out of my old one. Rude much?

            It had been three months, and Hodin’s door was still giving off a warning tingle when I so much as went past it. The window had been even more strongly warded. It had been an annoyance before, but with the possibility that a cure for David and for Cassie’s employees might be in there, getting past the ward had shifted from an annoying sliver to a driving need.

            Thirty minutes and a shower later, I was on my back porch, my bare feet in a shaft of late-morning sun and a book on breaking magical locks at my elbow. I was still in my robe and pj’s, but now I had coffee, and that made the early hour at least tolerable—especially when it was the good stuff Trent stocked my cupboard with.

            It was one of those glorious late-October mornings when the air was still warm but you could smell the hint of bonfires in the yellowing leaves. The feeling of settling in, of slowing down, was heavy in the crisp air. It was a time when the sun’s heat was sought-after, not avoided, and scrunching deeper into the three-seasons chair beside the unused fireplace, I sipped Trent’s stupendously rich, nutty coffee and watched Jenks and Getty having a loud and dust-filled discussion deep in the graveyard. Come sundown, they’d be in the church avoiding the cold, but for now they could handle the temperatures and were likely bringing in the last of their stores.

            With a sudden flash of dust, the two parted, their argument clearly not over. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship, what with Jenks used to planning a garden with outside opinions but being the deciding voice, and Getty not yet believing that she didn’t have to fight to have her ideas heard and appreciated. Everything was a battle for her. But that the dark-haired pixy had even survived was a miracle.

            Tucking my feet up under me, I settled deeper into the overindulgent cushions with my book and coffee. Jenks was headed for me, his shimmering dust a dismal blue and gold as he went from rock to tree, pretending to check on the state of the world as he inched closer.

            “Good morning,” I said, focused on my book when he finally lit on the chair beside mine.

            Silent, Jenks gave me a sour flip of his hand, his wings dejectedly still as he eyed the sunlit garden. Clearly torn, he took a breath, then let it out as he fiddled with the embroidered hem of his jacket. It was worn, patched within an inch of its life. I figured it was one of the last that his wife had made for him, and I wondered if that might be where their argument started.

            Though only twenty, Jenks had done more living and dying than many would ever do. His small size and large dreams had brought enough heartache and joy to have crushed a lesser soul. And still . . . he was only twenty, having worries and concerns that plague the young.

            “Do you think the wind is too strong by the Davaros statue for hollyhocks?” he finally asked, and I looked up from my book, unsure how I should answer.

            “Not if you plant something around them to serve as support,” I said. “It might not be sunny enough, though. You may have to trim up that oak.” Yeah. That was a good answer, vague and having enough conditions to leave my actual opinion open to debate.

            Jenks’s expression soured. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Wings blurring into invisibility, he rose up, his mood no better.

            Crap on toast, did I make things worse? “Uh, before you go. If you are free tomorrow, I could use your help with the girls. I told Trent I’d babysit, and I’m taking them to the cider mill.”