Bis jumped back in, and Jenks yelped, taking to the air and dodging the winged gargoyle until the bigger flier snagged him. "I'm going last!" Jenks protested. "I'm going last with Rachel, you overgrown worm!" And then he was gone. It was just me, Nina, and Trent.

The scrape of wood on rock jerked my eyes to a surface demon, its gaunt shadow rising up black against the still-darkening horizon. And the surface demons, I thought, setting up a new protection circle and wondering if it was too late.

Behind me, a rock clinked. Slowly Trent moved to put his back to mine.

Yep, it was.

"Rachel?" The air tingled at the pull Trent drew on the ley line.

"There," I said, flicking a tiny pop of energy at a swiftly moving shadow. Shit, there were two of them in here. Heart pounding, I turned to the first. "Detrudo!" I shouted, and he pinwheeled back, crashing into the inside of my circle. His staff lay on the dirt, and I ran forward, scooping it up before running back to Trent.

Hissing, the larger surface demon jumped from rock to rock, looking alien as he circled us. Nina was white faced, pressed up against that rock, and I beckoned to her. Scared, she inched closer, but she was moving too slowly, and there was a demon creeping up behind her.

"Nina! Get down!" I shouted, leaping to get between them. Without thought, I pulled on the line, sending it from my chi to my hand, condensing it as it took fewer and fewer pathways until it finally reached my fingertips and ran down the staff. "Dilatare!" I shouted as it exploded from the end, the rod acting like a rifle bore to focus it into a finite point that slammed into the surface demon with a thunderous ache of release.

Nina screamed as she dropped, the burst of light showing surface demons doing cartwheels into the rocks and pebbles. The shock echoed back up my arm, and the staff fell from my senseless fingers. Shaking, I looked at it, wondering what the thing was made of.

And still . . . a hunched shadow found its feet, not giving up as it began to creep forward again, low to the ground and hissing.

Slow with surprise, Trent helped Nina up before coming to stand beside me. His jaw was set, and he looked fantastic, eyes bright and a glow of magic about his hands. Seeing him as he wanted to be, not the careful businessman he was so good at being and that others had forced on him, I felt my heart swell. I'd had something to do with it, and I was proud of him for finding the courage to be what he wanted. Why can't it last? I thought, aching.

"Together?" I said, and Trend nodded, eager to blend our strengths into one. I quashed the fear that Al was watching. If he'd known Trent was here, he'd be trying to kill him.

Pale, Nina scooped up the staff, holding it inexpertly. My hand found Trent's, and my breath came fast as his energies mixed with mine like shades of gold twining together. The rank taint of burnt amber eased, overpowered by the clean scent of grass and trees and sweet wine. My chin rose. This wasn't wrong. I didn't care that the demons and elves said it was. This wasn't wrong!

The surface demon hissed, his ragged clothes hanging like a tattered aura. He hunched, preparing to jump, and Trent and I gathered our power.

"Now!" I shouted, exhilarated as our joined energies wound together and struck the demon, sending it rolling back into the darkness. Trent's eyes were alight, his hair almost floating as he inhaled, bringing with it a wash of sparkles through me. My God, it was almost better than sex with the man.

Nina's scream iced through me, and we spun. The second demon was on her, the staff the only thing keeping it from her neck. Snarling, the twisted form fought to wrench the staff away. My heart thudded. I reached out, fingertips aching as I made a fist, unable to use my magic for fear of hitting her. "Nina, get him off you!" I shouted. "Let him have the stupid staff!"

But she couldn't let go, afraid. Her gasping breaths cut through the air, and I jumped when Trent blasted the first surface demon behind us. Jaw clenched, I ran for her, feeling as if my hand sank into the demon when I reached for it.

It screamed at my touch, and I stumbled back, ripping it off her as I fell on my butt.

It didn't do much good, as the age-twisted thing went right back at her.

"Oh God!" Nina cried, and then both surface demons were on her, smelling the blood.

Son of a bitch! I stared, flat on my ass, aghast and panicking as they covered her. I could not go back to Ivy and tell her Nina died in the ever-after.

"Trent!" I shouted, head hurting as I pulled in a massive amount of ever-after. This was going to end right now.

"Get! Off!" Nina thundered, and I froze, halfway to her, when first one, then the other surface demon flew through the red-tinted air to land in the rock-strewn shadows.

Someone touched me, and I jerked, pulling my energies back when I saw Trent. "Trent . . . ," I started, words failing when I realized he was dragging me away from Nina.

My eyes darted to her, and my mouth went dry.

I didn't think it was just Nina anymore.

She'd rolled to her feet, hands still holding that staff as she hunched into a ball and bared her teeth at the surface demons still shaking off the fall. Her eyes flicked to Trent and me, and I shuddered as I recognized the second presence smothering her psyche. It was Felix. And it had happened far too fast.

In a smooth, unhurried motion, Nina rose, her feet placed wide to bind the skirt about her knees. An almost visible charismatic power spilled from her in the new dark. Black eyes glinting, she whirled the staff in a dangerous arc, making it smack into the earth in a clear threat.

Anger tightened my resolve, and I pulled myself straight. Nina had lied. She had outright lied to Ivy, telling her she'd made a break from Felix. There was no way the master vampire would've known she was in danger if she hadn't already had him in her, balancing her emotions and soaking in her thoughts of sunlight and love.

From the darkness, a surface demon hissed.

Trent spun, his shoes grinding the grit as his magic tugged at my energies. The smaller demon was running at her, Nina screaming at it, egging it on, whirling the staff again as if it were a sword.

But it never reached her as that second, larger surface demon plowed into the first.

"Look out!" I cried, pulling Trent back as the demons rolled in the dirt, grappling, hissing and howling, clawing at the tatters of their clothes and gouging each other's eyes.

"Get back!" Trent said when, with a scream of outrage, the larger demon finally beat the first away. Standing between Nina and the darkness, the tall surface demon raised his hands to the sky, howling as if making a claim. His cry echoed against the flat spaces, dying away to leave the demon staring at us, his chest moving up and down as he panted, thin hands clenched.

Trent's fingers tightened in mine, his uninvoked charm hovering just under his skin. "Wait," I said as the surface demon spun to Nina. "No, wait!" I demanded as the silence was broken by the soft clicks of rock and the whisper of dead grass as the surrounding surface demons skulked back, leaving us. "I think he drove the rest off."

With a high-pitched whine, the tall surface demon fell prostrate before Nina, burbling and groaning, the tattered remnants of its aura smearing the dust to leave patterns. Nina/Felix stared, inching backward.

"What is it doing?" I whispered as the demon closed the new gap, his wizened arm black with age or disease, stretched out as if wanting to touch her but afraid to.

Bis popped in, winging up for altitude when he saw the surface demon writhing at her feet, gibbering like a monkey. I'd never seen anything like it, and the noise it made crawled up my spine like ice.

"Go away, you putrid thing," Nina threatened, her voice dropping into the lower ranges. It was Nina, but not, and I started when Bis landed on my shoulder to wrap his tail around my back and under my arm for balance. He wouldn't dare jump her out. Hell, I think he was scared to touch her, much less share mental space with her.

But the surface demon cowered like a beaten dog as it couldn't move forward, couldn't move back, snatching glances at Nina and the blood dripping from a scratch under her eye. I'd never been this close to one before and not been fighting for my life. It was almost as if I was looking at him through a fog. His features were indistinct, but gaunt, as if starved. The tattered remnants of his clothes gave no indication of color, and as soon as I looked away, I couldn't remember if his hair was long or short. Again, I was struck by the feeling that he was there, but not, and I shuddered at the memory of how it had felt when I had pulled it off her.

"I said, go!" Nina/Felix shouted, and the surface demon scuttled back at her swinging foot. Feet spread in a way no woman in a skirt ever would, Nina threw the staff after it to clatter into the dust.

My circle was long gone, but it didn't matter. The surface demons had left, even the ones at the outskirts. I exhaled, relieved. But another part of me was seething in anger. Felix had taken Nina over far too easily. The woman had been lying to Ivy, lying for three whole months. The worst part was, I think Ivy knew it.

"I ought to leave you here to rot," I said, talking to Felix, but if I did, Nina would be the one to suffer.

Nina stiffened, her lip curling to show tiny pointed canines. She wouldn't get the extended fangs until she died, which-if I got my way-would be tomorrow.

"Rachel," Bis whispered as his feet pinched my shoulder in worry. Trent, too, wanted to leave, but I couldn't. Not yet. The son of a bastard was playing Ivy for a fool.

"Get out of Nina," I said, shaking off Trent's hand and moving a step closer.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nina said, foolishly trying to hide the fact that it really was Felix, but young women in dress suits do not tug their sleeves down in agitation.

"Do we have to do this right now?" Trent said, eyes on the darkening shadows.

"Yes," I said, coming another step closer. "Felix, get out of Nina. Get out and don't come back. Right now, or I'm telling Ivy."

The woman bared her teeth, dark eyes going darker. "Ivy? She doesn't matter!"

"Maybe not to you," I said shaking from the spent adrenaline. "But if Ivy knows, she might give up on Nina."

"That's fine with me." Nina's eyes narrowed, making the woman look dead already in the last of the light.

"Me too," I said, heartsick for Ivy even as I hated Felix. "But if she does, Nina is going to find the balls to kick you out for good."

Beside me, Trent made a sound of understanding. Nina's expression twisted up in a snarl, hearing the truth of it.

"Love is funny like that," I added.

Nina's expression darkened, anger bubbling up until she was as ugly as the monster seeing the world through her eyes, wallowing in Ivy's love as if it was his to have. My chin lifted, and seeing my determination, he suddenly left her.

Nina staggered, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Sobbing, she huddled on the ground, exhausted and hyped up on the hormones Felix had pulled into her blood system. She touched her face, shocked at the blood, and my heart just about broke for Ivy. God, I hated the master vampires.

He might be gone, but the flash of evil intent that had crossed her left me shaking.

He'd be back.

Chapter 4.

The coffee smell coming from the wax-coated cup was nauseatingly familiar, and I held it listlessly as I sat in the chair I'd pulled into the carpeted hallway. The oil-like sheen on the surface caught the fluorescent lights, showing the shake in my hand. I'd managed a few fitful hours of sleep after Ivy had come out of surgery, and though the beds in Trent's surgical suites were comfortable, I'd been too worried to do more than doze. Besides, the smell of antiseptic and stainless steel kept waking me up.

Nina had crashed right in Ivy's room. She was in there still, the guilt that I'd found out her secret making her noticeably passive and pliant. It pissed me off that she'd been lying to Ivy all this time, but I think Ivy had known it, her belief that she didn't deserve anything good or lasting keeping her mouth shut and her eyes blind. I hoped that Bis and Jenks were doing better, the two of them having returned to the church to try to get the squatters out.

My breath came in with a harsh sound, and I listened to the voices echoing down from the third floor where Trent had his living quarters. I'd always wondered what took up Trent's second floor. Now I knew. Two well-outfitted hospital suites were tucked between the ground floor and the third story, but the surgery itself was downstairs, closer to his labs.

Hand trembling, I sipped the coffee. It had no taste. I'd just been in to check on Ivy. She'd been sleeping: clean and sanitized between ivory sheets. The angry red suture lines and orange antiseptic stains had been hidden behind a cotton nightgown, but I'd seen them before I'd lost it and cried from relief. Now I just felt numb.

And yet something sparked in me at the sound of Trent's footsteps on the unseen stairway, and I sat up straighter when Jonathan's voice twined melodiously with Trent's. I didn't like Jonathan, but I'd be willing to bet Trent's number two adviser had a singing voice that could make angels weep.

I managed a smile as the two of them came around a corner. Trent looked as confident as always with his hands in his pockets like a GQ model, his smile faltering as he took in my tired misery. His hair was free of the ever-after dust, and he was smooth shaven. I'd taken the time to shower, but I felt scruffy in a pair of jeans and clean sweater I'd left over here a few weeks ago. Jonathan wrinkling his nose at me in disapproval didn't help, and I checked to make sure all my hair was back in a scrunchy, the frizzy red tamed with a band of elastic instead of a charm.

A lot had changed since the allegations of drug running and illegal genetic research had been levied against Trent. It had been ages since I'd seen him in a full suit and coat; his business meetings had dropped to almost zero and the research campus had been closed. On the plus side, he was more relaxed, more apt to crack a dry joke, more often smelling like ozone or his stables than the boardroom. He was doing more on his own, needing me less and less for security.

My focus blurred, and I looked into the depths of my coffee as I imagined what it would be like to go to the mall with Trent, catch a bad movie and dinner. Maybe I should ask.

The one-sided conversation between Trent and Jonathan was clearly coming to an end, and their forward progress halted. Trent gestured elegantly as he made his point, and I stood, leaning heavily against the wall as I waited. I knew he got lonely, even with Quen and the girls keeping him occupied. Falling out of high society had been good for him and his family, if you ignored the increased number of death threats and his loss of income. Trains still ran, though, and farms still grew food. He wasn't destitute. Yet. Ellasbeth was still working on that in her effort to gain control of the girls, and through them, Trent.

Not going to happen, I vowed, but after having witnessed the four of them on a good day, the girls playing happily and both Trent and Ellasbeth as loving, though not united, parents, a questioning guilt slid through me. Quen, too, seemed to regard Trent's and my relationship as a phase tied to Trent's newest preoccupation with furthering his magical studies. It was irksome, but every time Trent spoke of Ellasbeth and the girls, it left me wondering why I was delaying the inevitable.

"Thank you, Jon," Trent finally said, touching the tall, almost gaunt man on the shoulder as he gave him a grateful smile. "That makes my day a hundred times easier."

Contenting himself with a short nod and a dry look at me, Jonathan turned and went back the way they'd come. I knew the girls loved the man, but I liked him just as much as he liked me. Which was to say not at all.

"Is Jonathan going gray?" I asked as Trent closed the few steps remaining between us.

"I haven't noticed. But that might be why he's cutting it so short lately." Trent stopped before me, worry creasing his features. "You could have slept upstairs. You did sleep, yes?"

"A few hours." I fell into step beside him when he gestured for us to continue down the hall past Ivy's door. "I'm not a spare room kind of girl."

"It wouldn't have been the spare room you would have been in," he said, matching our steps and giving me a sideways hug. "Life is too short for bad coffee," he said, taking my cup out of my hand and setting it on a table in the hall. "How's Ivy?"

"Okay, thanks to you," I said, not wanting to talk about it. My arm went around him and my head fell onto his shoulder. Trent eased us to a halt and I pulled him to me, resting my head against his chest. The light scent of his aftershave was a bare hint, just enough, and my jaw finally began to relax. I could hear the sound of his waterfall downstairs, past the great room, and my eyes closed.

The relief that he came to help me in the ever-after had almost hurt, even if he'd risked his life and an already failing reputation. There hadn't been a wisp of regret in him, and I shoved the coming heartache down because even though he meshed with my life perfectly, I did not mesh with his.

Trent had been moving toward bringing his people back from the brink of extinction his entire life. The path had been laid out. He'd willingly sacrificed for it-and he would again. The ugly truth was, I couldn't help him accomplish what he needed to do, I could only hinder it. That was why Jonathan disliked me and Quen disapproved even as he agreed that this was the happiest Trent had ever been despite his dwindling fortune and the lawsuits piling up like cordwood. Trent was all about duty-and I was dragging him down.

"You okay?" he asked, and I tilted my head and turned the hug into a brief kiss.

"Yes." I dropped my head again, needing to feel him next to me if only for this space of time. "I don't like leaving her in that ugly white bed."

"It's going to be okay." His voice rumbled up through me.

I didn't want to move. Ever. "I don't know what I would have done if she had-"

I couldn't even say it, and my eyes warmed as the tears spilled over.

His grip strengthened, and I blinked up at him, feeling like a wimp. "But she didn't," he said firmly, understanding in his eyes. "You did good. You got her out of immediate danger, and more important, gave her a place to meet her future with dignity and peace. If she had died, she would've done so with the person she loved most in the world with her. No one can ask for more than that, even kings."

How could he understand so clearly? "When you put it like that . . ." I sniffed back the tears, letting go of him to wipe my eyes. "Sorry," I said with a sad little laugh that really wasn't one. "I haven't gotten enough sleep. I don't know how you do it, getting up at daybreak like this. This is crazy."

He eased me back into motion, heading down the hallway. "Coffee helps. Have you found the staff break room? There's a mini kitchen. Frozen waffles . . . ," he coaxed.

I remembered the homemade ones Maggie had made for us. It had been the first meal we'd ever shared. "Sure, thanks." His hand lingered about my waist, and I dropped my head onto his shoulder again, breathing him in, gaining his strength. I wished things were different. Ivy was going to be okay, but that Trent had saved her life wasn't going to help his political standing. Keeping her alive was going to be even harder. Cormel didn't want money, he wanted his soul.

The click of Ivy's door brought me around, and we hesitated when Nina came out looking exhausted and rumpled-worse than the day after she and Ivy had come back from a five-day backpacking adventure in what was left of a Turn-ravaged Guam.

"Coffee?" the bedraggled woman rasped, her hair still dull with dust and hanging in strands about her creased, worried face. The scratch the surface demon had given her was red rimmed and swollen, looking worse than it probably was.

"And waffles." Trent gestured for her to join us. "Right this way."

Relief flickered across her face. "Thank you," she whispered, shuffling forward in her torn nylons. She hadn't even taken the time for a shower, and was still in the same clothes she'd had on in the ever-after. The faint scent of burnt amber lingered even now. Her clothes were a monochromatic orange from the dust, and guilt kept her head down. That was fine with me.

"We keep this stocked for the medical staff," Trent was saying as we found the comfortable, if somewhat sterile, break room, open to the hallway. "I'm assuming that you'd rather eat here than upstairs?"

I nodded as I took in the clean counters, homey tables, and fresh flowers in vases still beaded up with condensation. Four monitors hung from the ceiling, three dark and one lit with Ivy's vitals. An entire wall was taken up with one of those floor-to-ceiling vid screens showing a deck and a garden, and I collapsed at a table, thankful for the small comfort.

Nina took a chair across from me, easing down with a little more grace and a cautious glance. There were dirty dishes in the sink from the doctor and nurse on call. I'd put them in the dishwasher later.

I loved watching a man cook, even if it was only toast, and I collapsed my head onto the cradle my arms made on the table, exhausted, as Trent took waffles out of the tiny freezer in the top of the fridge. "If you want to come upstairs, I can make them from scratch," he said as the door sealed with a sucking sound. "The girls are at the stables with Quen. I thought it better to keep them occupied out of the, ah, house."