person. I had completely forgotten about the two people we’d assaulted in the dewar’s stairwell. But Trent didn’t.
“One hot cocoa,” Mark said as he set a whipped-cream-covered grande before Zack.
“Thanks.” Zack reached for it eagerly. “They haven’t let me have any sugar since putting me in this zookeeper suit.”
“Ah, sure.” Eyebrows high, Mark retreated to deliver the twin cups of coffee to the guys by the door comparing phone screens.
Ivy, too, had her head down over her phone, and I wondered why everyone was here horning in on my misery. “Mark,” Ivy called out, and the kid jerked as if she’d slapped him, almost spilling the two coffees. “When you get a moment, I need a venti salted caramel. No rush.”
“You got it,” he said with a sigh.
“Salted caramel?” Jenks’s wings hummed, dust spilling from his bent wing.
My misery deepened. “You called Glenn? Thanks.”
Ivy snapped her phone closed and tucked it in a back pocket. “There are fire trucks at the church. You don’t think the FIB has been looking for you? I told him you were fine, and he said he wants to see what fine looks like today.” A smile hinting at her relief threatened to show.
I stiffened with a sudden thought. Crap on toast. Al. I’d been sitting here for hours, and I’d forgotten to tell the demons that the baku was in a bottle. I reached for my pocket, hesitating when I remembered Al was under house arrest. I didn’t have Dali’s number. But Mark might. “Ah, Mark?” I said loudly, and he smiled at me from behind the counter.
“You want me to tell Dali that you’re okay?” he said as he made Glenn’s latte, and I nodded, quite sure I didn’t like how cavalier he was about phoning demons. But the kid was Dali’s boss.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” I said, and Jenks snorted, his bent wing leaking dust all over the table as he sat on top of Bis’s bottle. “Could you tell Dali that the baku is in a bottle and to let Al sleep?”
“You got it.” Mark pulled off his gloves and reached for his phone, clearly resigned to having lost his day off.
I hated to admit it, but between the coffee and the weird normalcy of Jenks begging Zack for a wad of whipped cream, I was starting to feel better. Zack looked utterly fantastic in a teen-crush sort of way in his suit and his new, hesitant confidence, miles away and just next door in comparison to the scared kid I’d found eating leftovers and hiding in my church. Seeing him with Jenks, I found a sliver of hope. If he was in charge of the dewar and they actually let him make some decisions, things might change.
The memory of Bis swam up, and I quashed it in a flood of hurt.
“So they made you the dewar’s Sa’han,” I said to distract myself, and Zack’s head snapped up, a faint flush on his cheeks. “Did you learn what you wanted to about Trent in your little walkabout?” I asked between sips of coffee.
“Ah.” Zack wiped the whipped cream from his lips when Jenks pantomimed the same. “He’s everything that Landon said he was,” he said, green eyes flicking to Trent sitting beside me, head down as he surfed the net.
“Sexy.” Jenks rose up with a wad of whipped cream on his chopsticks. “Smart. Good with magic and kids.”
Trent looked up from his phone, his fingers stilling and a smirk on his lips.
“Ruthless in his drive,” Zack added uncomfortably. “Willing to sacrifice what shouldn’t be for an end that might not be worthy. Landon was right.”
“He wants the elves to succeed,” I said as I gave Trent’s hand an encouraging squeeze when his smile vanished. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Then maybe we should stop trying to put him in jail for it,” Zack muttered from behind his hot cocoa as if afraid to say it louder.
“See, Zack?” Jenks said cheerfully. “I told you there wasn’t some old dried-up elf soul in you. No way, no how would one of those old moss wipes say anything like that.”
Zack colored, but I privately thought there probably was. He’d been too good with those healing charms. No one had died, and even I wasn’t that good.
“Zack?” Mark called from behind the counter. “Can you give me a hand? I need your opinion on something.”
Whatever that something was, it smelled like Thanksgiving, and Zack immediately stood, taking his nearly empty cup with him. “Sure.”