Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            “Thank you,” I whispered, and Jenks gave me a pixy salute before landing on David’s shoulder. Seeing him there, first Ray and then Lucy fit their hands into David’s, and they wove their way through the tables to the nearby field. They got about ten feet before Lucy let go, hair flying as she ran ahead, Jenks in hot pursuit.

            “Ah, how the elves have fallen,” Al said with a sigh. “Perhaps enough that we might survive them,” he added. “There’s no harm in giving Ray something to protect her sister with. Perhaps if she was equipped with the proper tools, the girl might stop acting like a forty-year-old security guard and enjoy her childhood.”

            “You said it couldn’t hurt anyone.”

            “And so it does not.” Al stood, turning to sit atop the table, where he could watch them better. “Its reach will grow as does her understanding. For now, it kills bugs.”

            Trent was going to be ticked—if he found out. “They love you. You know that, right?”

            “They are my godchildren.”

            I felt a hint of a smile find me. “Elven godchildren. I bet Dali is . . .”

            “Frustrated,” Al finished for me. “Incensed at me, outraged at you, and perturbed at the world, yes, but we have all cared for elven children before. He thinks it’s a step back. I say it’s a step forward. Everything circles back unto itself. There are no straight lines in nature.”

            My attention lingered on David as he lifted a white pumpkin for Ray to inspect. It was easy to forget that the elves had once enslaved the demons as domestics. “When you were . . .”

            “Yes.” Al’s expression was lost in thought. “Strange. It feels much the same. Perhaps it is because children are also much the same, whether now or thousands of years in the past.” He looked askance at me. “Who is Hodin’s student? I would like a word with him or her.”

            I scooted myself up on the table beside him. My worn shoes seemed rather plain beside his new derby boots, the leather gleaming and the stitching still white. “Yeah. About that . . . Walter had a spell-induced cardiac arrest. He triggered it to keep from talking.”

            “Mother pus bucket,” he muttered, surprising me.

            “Parker might know who the mage is,” I offered. “If we’re lucky, she won’t have the same no-divulge curse on her.” But I doubted it. The mage seemed too clever for that.

            Out in the field, David had a large pumpkin in his arms. It was clearly Lucy’s, as Ray was still going from pumpkin to pumpkin, Jenks dusting each one to help her decide. I suddenly regretted that I wasn’t the one out there, but they’d lost their fear of David, and that was more important.

            “You are being uncommonly stupid,” Al said, his eyes lost behind his blue-tinted glasses as I fumbled for my phone, now humming from my pocket. “Give me the ring and be done with it. Trying to save four werefoxes paints an unneeded target on you. If the mage wants the ring back, it’s because he can flip it. Or he thinks you can.”

            “I know,” I said with a sigh. It was Trent. I didn’t answer it, instead shooting off a quick text that we were at the pumpkin patch. If we were going to argue, we were going to do it properly in person, not through the phone.

            Almost immediately a new text came in. He was in the parking lot. Great. I exhaled, my attention rising to the girls half a field away. “If I can uncurse Cassie’s employees, the coven might trust me a little concerning Brad’s curse. It’s worth the risk,” I said, then slid off the table to join Lucy and Ray. They were fine where they were, but Trent would have kittens if he saw them with no one but Jenks and David beside them.

            “Ray! Lucy!” Al pushed off to follow me, and the conversation from the nearest table went silent in alarm as we passed it. “Come here, my darlings. Bring your pumpkins for your aunt Rachel to carry. It’s time for caramel apples!”

            Yay! Caramel-sticky everything! But I smiled, dropping to a knee when Lucy careened into me, bright-eyed and excited for the chance to do something different. “Your daddies are on the way,” I said as I stood with her on my hip, thinking it had been an awfully short round of golf. “Did you find a pumpkin?”

            “Big, big, big!” Lucy said, and David came up alongside, a pumpkin large enough to need two arms in his grip. Ray still was undecided, and I let Lucy slip to the ground so I could take it.