Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            My eyes narrowed. I was sure the man could hear our argument. He was a vampire after all. “He doesn’t like me,” I said, thinking it was pretty lame, but this conversation wasn’t my idea. “Look. David wants us to hash this out, and I will, for my part in it, because he’s important to me in ways that you will never understand. But if you ever lie to me again, we are done, and I need to hear you say you understand that, because I am not going to lose my friendship with David over you, so if you got a problem with me, or the FIB in general, you tell me now.” I took a breath, lungs empty from the long sentence. “Got it?”

            Cassie stared at me with an angry intensity. I could feel her strength, her pride. It was obvious now that she and David were more than casual partners, and something in me seemed to shrivel and die. He was my friend, and I didn’t want to lose him because of her.

            “But let me be clear,” I added when she said nothing. “I am forgiving you for going behind my back to rescue David because I know why you did it. I am not forgiving you for lying to me. That’s going to take longer. He’s worth both of us combined.”

            Cassie’s posture eased. “On that, we agree,” she said. “For David, I will apologize for not taking your call and not telling you what I was doing. I should have trusted you. And the FIB.”

            That last was grudgingly said, but I let it go. It was as good as the prideful woman could manage with half a dozen people watching. My trust in her was cracked. A few forced words were not going to mend it.

            “Ah, I am serious about David not going to the hospital,” I said, and Cassie stiffened. “Trent has better security. I wish you would go with him. I need to talk to Al, and I don’t want to leave David alone.”

            Unsure, Cassie glanced over her shoulder as Ivy and Pike started our way. Jenks was with them, his cheerful gold dust telling me they’d gotten the ring. “You couldn’t stop me from stayin’ with him,” she said, clearly not happy.

            “Great.” I met Ivy’s gaze and she smiled, one arm draped over Pike, the other on Brad. Glenn followed at a distance, his head down over his phone.

            “Jenks, do you want to go out to Trent’s estate with Cassie and me?” I asked when the pixy darted close, and the thrum of his wings eased when he dropped the ring into my palm. I tensed, expecting at least a tingle of magic, but there was nothing. It was dead silver, and my hope faltered. But perhaps it slept until the invocation phrase. If it had uncursed David, it could uncurse the rest. “We won’t have to find Walter if Al knows the invocation phrase, and his place is only a few minutes’ walk in the ever-after from Trent’s ley line.” If I could jump the lines, I could have been there in three seconds from even here, but until Bis and I figured it out, the only way I could reach the ever-after was to stand in a ley line and will myself across. It made me feel less like a demon and more like a witch, and I was tired of it. Grumpy, I stuffed the unadorned ring into a pocket. I wasn’t about to put it on.

            “Naw,” the pixy said. “Glenn’s offered to drop me at the church. Tell Jumoke I said hey, will you?”

            “If I see him.” I turned to Cassie. “Just you and me and David. Good. We don’t talk enough.”

            “Great,” Cassie said softly. She looked as if she had eaten a slug but was too full of herself to admit it and spit it out. It was likely going to be a cold, silent ride to the hospital.

            But that wouldn’t be my fault.





CHAPTER


            10

            Trent’s fingers laced in mine felt more than right, and I stifled a shiver of libido when the energy he was using to make a globe of light spilled into me, tingling. He’d taken my hand shortly after we had crossed into the ever-after from the ley line snaking through his estate, keeping me steady as I walked with my head craned to the moonlit heavens and giving me the chance to soak in the beauty of the ever-after stars. A light rain had started in reality, but here the skies were clear, and the great bands of heated gases marking the Milky Way had to have come from Bis’s ancestral memory, because they certainly hadn’t come from mine.

            I didn’t often have the chance to walk under an ever-after midnight sky, and Trent had been silent as we made the short trip to Al’s wagon in the woods. We’d long since found the forest and lost the primordial heavens, but Trent still held my hand. And I felt loved.

            “Thanks for coming with me,” I said as the trees seemed to close in on us. It was positively dank in the woods, and I held Trent’s light higher as I spotted a glint of glitter on his front. “I see the girls gave you their cards.”