sink as I washed the salt off my hands and mentally went over my list. Wine. I forgot the wine. Stepping carefully over the uninvoked salt circle, I took out a bottle of local red from the restaurant-size wine cooler. Check.
“I know you do,” Trent said into the growing silence. I could hear his desire for me to move in with him. A part of me wanted to, but a larger part knew I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him. I did. And the girls. But I’d made a success of myself with Ivy. I had to do the same on my own before I could stand beside Trent and not feel as if I was . . . leaning on him.
Frustrated, I pulled my bowl closer and rummaged to find my silver snips. They’d tarnished, and I began to rub them clean with the silk scarf. No, that’s smoke damage, I realized, wondering if that would make them more or less useful in twisting curses. “That reminds me.” I leaned against the counter beside the sink and rubbed harder. “There was an elf at the church.”
“Landon,” Trent said flatly, shocking me at the clenched-jaw anger in his voice.
“No,” I said, surprised. “I never got his name.” I gave up on the snips and set them beside the mirror with a soft click. “He ran off when Ivy and Jenks showed up. Young, about sixteen? You guys all look the same to me.”
“Because we are,” Trent said sourly, and I smiled, totally understanding his desire to be unique among his peers, but thanks to Trent’s dad’s efforts to save their species, they all looked pretty much alike. Why work individualism in and risk screwing up something that sufficed?
“He wants to meet you.” Head down, I began opening and closing drawers as I looked for my ceremonial knife. It hadn’t been on the boat, which meant I’d left it here the last time I made some sleepy-time potions. “Sorry about not getting his name.”
“I’ll ask around,” he said after another yawn, and I smiled at the familiar sound of him settling back for a nap. I knew he slept in his chair most workdays, trying to give at least the illusion of keeping to a human time clock.
“If he shows up again, you want me to bring him out?” Frustrated, I put my hands on my hips and stared at the kitchen. Where would Nina have put my knife?
“Sure, but stop at the gatehouse so Quen can talk to him.”
Could be a Landon spy. My head bobbed, and I crossed the kitchen to the novelty pizza cutters. Sure enough, my knife was among the circular unicycle cutter and long toucan-beak scissors. “You got it, boss,” I said, and I heard a sleepy chuckle.
The silence lengthened, and thinking he might have drifted off, I picked up my phone to end the connection with a whispered “I love you.” He’d fallen asleep while talking to me before, and whereas some might find insult, I only felt loved. But my coming words choked to nothing when he softly said, “I’m going to grant Ellasbeth the girls this weekend.”
I froze, worry knotting my gut. He’d said it so formally. Grant her. But giving his ex-fiancée time alone with the girls was utterly at his discretion, the law having terminated her rights to Lucy, and Ray never having been hers. “I thought that was a no-go with you,” I said, concerned.
“I think you’re right that it’s safer than refusing to let her have Lucy on a regular schedule,” he said. “And Quen will be with them. She’s done everything I’ve asked. Has a new flat overlooking the river. Sold her house in Seattle. She’s teaching classes at the university as she promised. She’s even gotten over her West Coast snobbery and begun to show some interest in Cincinnati’s considerable finer arts.”
Elbows on the counter, I cradled the phone in my hands as I wrapped my mind around this. Elf children matured a lot faster than what was considered normal. Still, Lucy was only four months shy of two and she’d already been kidnapped three times, first by Trent, then by an insane demon, and lastly by Landon. No wonder nothing fazed the little girl. “What about Landon?”
“Landon already tried stealing power with Lucy and failed,” Trent said, a frightening coldness in his voice. “Besides, if she gets too distressed, she knows how to call Al.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding,” I said, not sure