I'd give him one thing. He hid his smugness well. "The Pandora charm?" I supplied to jiggle his conveniently faulty memory. "It was us riding your horse at camp. You're scum, Trent!"
"I didn't try to kill you. You fell off!" he said indignantly.
He thought I was talking about the memory? "Not the horse!" I said, suddenly unsure. "Your spell! It almost killed me. The memory ended with me lying on the ground with the breath knocked out of me, and it froze everything. I couldn't breathe when the charm ended. I could have died! If you can't have me, no one will, huh? What in hell is wrong with you!"
"Be reasonable, Rachel," Trent said coldly. "If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't do it with a charm I helped craft that could be traced back to me."
"I think you would!" I exclaimed. "You want me dead!"
"There are at least five people I can think of off the top of my head who want you dead."
"Wanting me dead is not the same as having the resources to do it" I reminded him.
I heard him take a breath to say something, then pause as if in sudden thought. "I have to go," he said abruptly. "You're okay? Right?" he asked, and I looked at Ivy, knowing she could hear both ends of the conversation as well as Jenks, on my shoulder.
He cared if I was all right? And he hadnt called Lee hack either when he knew I was afraid of him. "Don't you hang up on me, Trent," I said. "Don't you do it!"
"Good, you're okay. I'll talk to you later. I have to check on something. Ah, sorry about the charm."
My breath came in fast, and I sat up. "Trent!" I shouted, but the phone went dead. "He hung up on me," I said sourly, then flipped the phone closed and handed it to Ivy.
Jenks took off from my shoulder, and a shiver coursed through me. "That sounded like real surprise to me," he said, hovering before the tight-lipped vampire.
"Me, too," she said, looking worried as she leaned back against the dresser.
"Even so, I wouldn't trust him," Pierce said. "His father was a devious sort, and I've seen nothing to convince me he's any different."
"Yeah. I know." Exhaling, I pressed my knees together so no one would see them shake. Do I believe him, or not? God! Why can't it be simple just once? I had invoked the charm to figure out why my gut kept telling me there was something good about this guy, and I was more confused than before. I'd give anything to know Trent's thoughts just before he'd hung up. "That was a complete waste of time," I said softly.
"I don't care if Rynn complains," Ivy said dryly. "I'm going to kill Trent. Slowly."
Pierce was nodding his agreement, but my damned intuition had me clenching my jaw in doubt. Trent had killed people before, one right in front of me. And once he had pulled out a gun and shot me with a subjugation spell, the decision made and acted on in a second. It wasn't that Trent couldn't kill me, but if he was going to do it, it would be over and done within an hour of his decision. Not like this. This smacked of cowardice. It wasn't his style.
I rubbed my wrist where he had grabbed me, feeling it as if it had just been today. He'd violated my person to see if I was as dangerous as his father had warned him - and I had thrown him into a tree the next day, proving it. He was good and bad all at the same time. God, I hated Trent. Or maybe I just hated that I didn't know if I could trust him or not.
"I opine it wasn't a curse," Pierce said as I fingered the smooth rope. "It was a spell crafted to not cleanly break. Death by something designed as innocent so as not to invoke your lethal-charm amulet. Powerful tricky. But you didn't make a die of it, and that's what matters."
My eyes went to his, and Pierce dropped his attention to the hat in his hands, his ears going a faint red. "Thanks, Pierce," I said softly. "I owe you. Big."
Jenks snorted and Ivy sighed, making motions to try to leave. Sheesh, Pierce had pulled a line through me to burn the malfunctioning charm to nothing. No