Trent in greeting, and I gratefully took the mug Trent was extending before he went back to the kitchen to help Zack with the oatmeal. “Weast has been tracking the baku for the last three weeks,” Glenn continued. “Once it settles into a body, he will turn him into a zombie and put him with the rest.”
Nasty. Even if it was Landon they were going for, no one deserved that. It was as illegal as all hell, but the Order had put themselves above the law, and I didn’t like it. Even the I.S. was looking the other way in the face of “the greater good.”
“Not if we put it into a bottle first,” Trent said as he adjusted the two high chairs at the table. “Much as I’d like to see Landon as a zombie, the dewar might get off our case if we save him.”
“You really think you can do that?” Glenn’s expressive face grew hopeful.
“Yep,” Jenks said from my shoulder, wings stilling. “She and Trent spent all night learning how to mesh things together. Oh, baby, oh, baby, oh, baby!”
“Damn it, Jenks, you were supposed to be keeping watch outside!” I blurted, then flushed, realizing I’d confirmed everyone’s suspicions. “Just shut up,” I muttered, pulling my robe tight and hiding behind a sip of coffee as the pixy laughed all the harder.
“A bottle?” Glenn prompted, ignoring Jenks.
Trent touched the curse peeping from his robe. “I think we have a good chance.”
Ivy was looking at me for confirmation, and I nodded. My eyes went to Zack and Trent in the kitchen, again noticing how much they looked alike. “Zack, does Landon know about the Order?” I asked him, and he jumped, startled.
“No,” he blurted. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Then warning him and offering a way out might convince him to help us,” Trent said as he took two primary-colored bowls from a cupboard and set them on the counter. “I’m going to go help with the girls. Zack, will you ladle some oatmeal out to cool? I need to talk to Quen.”
Which was of course the real reason he wanted to go downstairs, and I grimaced.
“Sure,” Zack said, clearly uncomfortable. Ivy eyed me in the new silence, a knowing expression on her face at the almost hidden tension in Trent’s voice. Frowning, I turned to Jenks. The pixy couldn’t have kept his mouth shut if his life depended on it, and what Quen had withheld from Trent was sweet enough gossip to keep a faire of pixies alive through the winter.
Nice going, I thought, staring at him, and he dusted an embarrassed red as he sat on Zack’s shoulder and pointed out where the big spoons were.
Jaw tight, Trent strode to the stairs as the girls’ voices rose high in the great room. Somehow he managed to look fully in control despite being in a robe and barefoot. I wasn’t sure how this was going to play out. It felt as if something had broken between Quen and him.
“Daddy!” Lucy shouted, but upstairs, an uncomfortable silence had begun to grow.
“Uh, any new attacks last night?” I asked Ivy.
“I have no idea,” she grumped, and Glenn bobbed his head in sympathy, his mouth full of pull-apart bread. “The flow of information has stopped. I say baku, and everyone looks at me as if I’ve got fangs coming out of my nose,” she said, and from the kitchen, Jenks snorted.
“It’s not funny,” Ivy said, and Jenks laughed like wind chimes.
“Yes, it is. See?” he said, and I quailed as he stuck his chopsticks in his nose and pretended to be a Hollywood vampire and bite Zack’s neck.
Ivy’s eyes narrowed, and Glenn stifled a laugh. “Don’t let the girls see you do that, or you will be banned from the Kalamack compound,” I said, and Zack twisted, almost knocking Jenks off his shoulder as he tried to see.
Annoyed, Ivy crossed her knees and bobbed her foot. “I gave them your findings. The I.S. still intends to shove these people into the system and let them drown to shut them up. No one deserves to be locked up because someone practiced killing Trent with them.”
Hungry, I sipped my coffee and watched Zack fill a third, larger serving bowl with oatmeal, adding nuts by the handful and drenching it with equal portions of milk and maple syrup. If I hadn’t seen his fear at the top of Carew Tower, I’d have been concerned that this was going to land in Landon’s ears,