still wasn’t allowed into San Francisco, which sucked because that’s where the witches’ yearly con was.
Ivy hunched in the cold, her dark hair glistening in the bright sun and her thoughts visibly shifting behind her eyes. “We had another assault this morning. I don’t suppose you might want to come down this afternoon and interview her at the I.S., would you?”
My breath caught, and then I collapsed in on myself. “Ah, Trent and I were about to go to lunch and then the museum,” I hedged.
But Trent was smiling as he tugged me closer, making me shiver when he whispered, “This is more important.”
“Everyone dead is downstairs,” Ivy insisted, ignoring Jenks pretending to barf sparkles. “If I’m going to sneak you in—and I’m going to have to sneak you in—now is the time. It would be easier with only Rachel and Jenks, but I can get you in there, too, Trent.”
Trent shook his head, his smile holding more than a hint of pride. I knew he was disappointed that I was trashing our plans, the first weekend without the girls in two months, but he also knew that the three of us—Ivy, Jenks, and myself—might get this wrapped up in a week instead of it languishing for months with more deaths every day. “No, thank you,” he said, giving me another squeeze I could feel through my jacket. “I’ll wait somewhere and catch a few z’s. Or bail you out. Whatever comes first.”
“You sure?” I said in gratitude. Not for bailing us out, but that he was taking it so well.
He let go of me and dropped back. “I’ll use the time to arrange a private viewing. Maybe smooth out some of Landon’s lies.” He tilted his head to Jenks. “Harvest a stalk of milkweed?”
“Two,” Jenks countered, “as thick as your thumb,” and my jaw dropped. He was going to let Trent harvest something for him? From the church? How come he never let me help him?
Ivy turned to Piscary’s. “I’ll drive. Let me tell Nina where I’m going and grab my coat,” she said, and when I nodded, she spun, pacing fast to Piscary’s delivery entrance.
“You’re the best,” I said to Trent, and Jenks groaned, dusting a heavy green as I gave Trent a long kiss and a hug, my love for him making me feel I was finally doing something right with my life. “Thanks for not wigging out.”
“Yeah, thanks for picking up my grandkids’ poop bags,” Jenks said, ruining it as he hovered two inches from our faces, hands on his hips in his best Peter Pan pose.
Sighing, Trent let go and dropped back to his car. “I’ll see you in a few hours. Call me when you’re done. Or if you need me.”
“Will do,” I said, and with Jenks on my shoulder, I followed Ivy back into Piscary’s.
CHAPTER
11
“Relax, Rache,” Jenks said from my shoulder as we walked through the back hallways of the I.S. tower. “Trent isn’t mad for you ditching him. Did you see his aura brighten up? He’s got stuff to do.”
“Like what?” I grimaced, not liking that Ivy felt the need to sneak us in through the garage.
“Like defusing that bomb you exploded yesterday on air in Cincinnati?” Jenks said, and I winced at Ivy’s chuckle. “He’s not napping,” he added confidently. “He’s testing the waters in the enclave.” Jenks’s wings tickled my neck. “Now that the truth is out.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” I said, arms swinging as I paced beside Ivy and tried to look as if I still belonged here. But my guilt didn’t ease, it only shifted focus. Jenks was right. Trent had things to do other than go to the museum—things that would further his standing and voice. He was neglecting his career to spend time with me. I was bringing him down.
Jenks’s cold wings hummed against me, then went still. “Mmmm. Or he’s napping, maybe,” he said when Ivy gave him a dark look.
“What does it matter what Trent is doing as long as he stays out of the way?” Ivy grumped as she pointed out a secondary, seldom-used bank of elevators. “This will take twenty minutes.”
Perhaps, but I’d seen worlds collapse in less time.
The halls weren’t empty, but being Saturday, it was mostly witches and Weres, and a few living vampires cloistered in their offices. The tower always had a few dead vamps awake in the basement, and I wasn’t entirely happy that that was where we were probably headed.
But it wasn’t the down button that Ivy hit,