bluff the house had been built into. Maybe his mother’s wing had been underground.
I sat straighter as a soft lassitude threatened to slip into me, and I tickled the top of my mouth with the tip of my tongue to stay awake. Trent’s breathing slowed, and the memory of hearing it beside me as I slept slipped through me, soothing. I blinked fast, and I took up the bag of salt, shifting it from hand to hand to prove to myself that I wasn’t falling asleep.
I’m awake. Eyes open, I dropped the bag to my right hand, then my left, all in time with the ticking clock. I’m wide-awake.
But it was hard to stay that way when Trent began a meditation hum. It was more of a drone really, almost singing, a gathering of power or an invitation for the Goddess to attend.
My head bobbed, the sudden snap waking me up. I frowned at Quen, who was staring at me, but honestly, it was really hard to stay awake when Trent was humming like that. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him use music while meditating, and the last hint of sleep jolted from me at a wisp of remembered anger.
Trent had been singing to the Goddess the night he dragged my sorry ass out of the freezing Ohio River. It was his fault that we’d landed there, barely surviving having the casino boat blown up around us. A dozen of Cincinnati’s finest had gone to the bottom. Trent had been on his way to join them when I’d pulled his head out of the water. I could have made it to shore just fine if I hadn’t been carting his elven ass with me.
Brow furrowed, I looked across the table at him. I’d almost died that night, and it had been his fault. He had been getting me into trouble ever since.
It was his fault I survived, too. The stray thought flitted through me, quickly forgotten as, with a blink, Trent’s aura blossomed, visible though I wasn’t using my second sight. Gold, with a hint of smut to keep it interesting, it flowed from him like the aurora borealis, flitting over his skin, red at the source, sparkles spilling off at the flares, the heat of intensity concentrating about his hands and head.
Curious. Squinting, I looked deeper to see purple and green and a shade of amber that shouldn’t have existed.
And then he stopped humming and opened his eyes. I blinked. His aura was in his eyes.
“This isn’t working.” Trent pushed himself more upright with a sour expression.
“Sweet everlasting moss wipe of a mother pus bucket,” Jenks swore softly, and I turned to him. He was staring at me from Zack’s shoulder.
Damn busybody pixy, I thought as I spilled the bag of salt from hand to hand. I couldn’t count how many times he had irritated the hell out of me.
“That isn’t helping, Jenks,” Trent said, and Jenks snapped his wings and pointed at me.
“Oh, no,” Zack whispered, and Quen’s lips parted when he followed Zack’s attention to me.
“What?” I said, irate.
Jenks took to the air, the sound of his wings tugging at a memory. “Rachel, wake up,” he said as he hovered before me.
“I’m not asleep.” I dropped the bag of salt on the table before pushing back.
Zack pressed deeper into his chair, away from me. “She’s not awake, either.”
But I felt more awake than I’d been in a long time, and I stood, rolling my shoulders to ease their tension, and rocked from foot to foot to feel my new balance.
“It’s her,” Jenks was whispering as I gazed out onto the pool, liking how the sun sparkled on it. I hadn’t seen the sun for what felt like forever, though I knew that was false. “It’s her, but she’s missing stuff,” the pixy added, his eyes following me as I rose to look at Trent’s books to either side of the fireplace. “It’s a her that never existed,” he said, and I snorted. “Like some things never happened to her that should have.”
“Ah, Quen?” Trent said, and I turned from the bookcase to see Quen cut the zip-strip from him. Smirking, I spun to put my back to them all as I felt the elf take communion from the same ley line I had hung a stray thought in.
“The power of the ley line won’t make you strong enough to hold me,” I said, feeling confident as I plucked a book from the shelf and tucked