Demons of Good and Evil by Kim Harrison

            Trent frowned at a recipe. “He’s a busy man, and busy men are seldom late.” His lips quirked. “Usually.”

            Warning lifted through me. “You didn’t tell him a different day, did you?”

            Trent straightened, sighing as he cracked his spine. “Not this time.”

            I gave Trent a sidelong look, then shifted to sit properly beside him. I swear, the two men still acted as if they were at camp trying to get each other into trouble.

            “Hey, Trent?” I said as I dropped the textbook on the table. “I know it’s last minute, but I don’t mind coming out with you and Lee to the festival tomorrow as extra security.”

            “Really? I didn’t want to ask, seeing as how early it is.” Trent leaned deeper into the couch, and I snuggled up against him, appreciating his warmth in the autumn chill rolling in over the wide steps. It had taken lunch at Eden Park followed by a book-buying spree downtown with the girls, but every hint of our argument was gone. “I know Quen wasn’t looking forward to it. You sure you can handle eight?”

            I nodded, but he had already lost himself, intent on a shortbread cookie that used lavender to carry a spell to give the person who ate it pleasant dreams. My thoughts on exotic coffee and tiny tasting cups, I focused on the dark garden. The faint silver light flitting about the damp graveyard was probably Getty. The bulb I’d given her had already sprouted tiny rootlets, galvanizing her into a new intensity as she ransacked the garden for anything remotely edible.

            Between the pixies in the garden and Bis on the steeple, I was not worried about Parker—at the moment. She’d taken a beating this morning, and most bullies needed at least a day to convince themselves that it had been a fluke and to come at you again. I wasn’t happy that she’d attacked me at all. My belief that the girls would be safe with me had unraveled like an exploded baseball.

            Uneasy, I took the ring out of my pocket, cradling it in my fingertips to stare through the hole at the empty fireplace. “Is this a mistake?”

            “Is what a mistake?” Trent asked as he flipped a page.

            “Asking for Lee’s help with a ward?”

            Immediately Trent broke from his book. “No. Of course not.” His expressive eyes pinched. “You aren’t still worried about having tricked him into being Al’s familiar, are you? He was trying to sell you to Al. And you did free Lee. Eventually.”

            “I’m not worried about that as much as our three years at camp,” I said as I shoved the ring into my pocket. “Three years that I think he remembers more than both of us combined.”

            “Oh.” But his wicked, fond smile faded as he flexed his right hand in a remembered hurt.

            I put my arches on the edge of the coffee table, jerking when it slid two inches. “Sometimes I wonder if you two hung out together not because you were friends, but because Lee knew you and he were the only paying customers. Everyone else was a charity case.”

            Trent snapped the book closed. “You weren’t a charity case.”

            “You’re right. My dad paid for my treatment with his life,” I said, unable to look at him.

            “Rachel . . .”

            I shrugged, my gaze fixed on the dark garden. My dad and Trent’s dad had been friends, but it had been an unequal situation. I’d long suspected that Trent’s dad hadn’t saved my and Lee’s lives for anything less than the hope that one of us might be able to infiltrate the demons’ genetic vault and steal a pre-curse sample of elven DNA. Which I had, leading to the genetic health of the elven race and saving them from extinction. That I had also saved the demons probably had Trent Senior rolling in his grave.

            Both Lee and I were witch-born demons, but only I could pass the corrected genes on to any possible children. I refused to believe that little item had been an accident. Elves did nothing without purpose.

            “Trent?” I played with a curl of my hair, hoping I wasn’t opening a can of worms. “Do you think that your dad intentionally put the cure to the Rosewood syndrome into the mitochondria so that Lee couldn’t pass the cure on? So that if he had any kids, they might need your help to survive, and thereby ensure that the Saladans maintain good relations with you?”

            Trent’s reach for the open bag of beet chips hesitated. “My God. I never thought of it that way. That might explain a lot.”