A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(59)

The silence stretched, and with a small sigh, Ceri handed Lucy to Winona, rising as she said, “I’ll make some tea. Winona, can you help me settle the girls down for their naps? Jenks, I’d like a word with you concerning your vocabulary around my daughters.”
Jenks let slip a burst of embarrassed red dust, then meekly followed Ceri into the kitchen as Winona stood with Lucy, looking like a demonic teacher/nursemaid as she literally trotted into one of the four rooms that opened up onto the main common room, taking the stairs out of the lowered living room pit with practiced ease. Lucy was still waving that book, babbling as she craned her neck to see Trent, her tiny features starting to twist up into dismay.
Frustration warred with anger, and I tried to keep my expression pleasant as Ray sat cradled in Trent’s lap, silently, and perhaps smugly, watching Lucy being carted out. “They’re sweet kids,” I said, then shifted my eyes to Trent. “You’ve already had them on a horse, right?”
Trent smiled, turning from successful drug lord and city power to proud father. “More than once.” Standing, he handed Ray to Winona as the woman came back out.
From the nursery, a loud complaint was gaining strength. Ceri was “chatting” with Jenks in the kitchen, the pixy sitting miserably on the coffeepot, a gray dust sifting from his drooped wings, and I suddenly felt uncomfortable facing Trent, a world of questions between us. There hadn’t been much time when I’d come in between getting cleaned up and put back together.
“How did you find me?” I said as Trent simultaneously asked again, “How much did they get?”
I winced, and Trent sat down across from me, insisting, “Me first.”
Pushing back into the cushions, I glanced into the nursery as Winona sang to distract the girls. Everyone I cared about was in danger because I’d let a power-hungry human hate group get my blood. I’d learned the catch-22 of being a demon too late. “Too much,” I said, then met Trent’s eyes in time to see his flash of worry. “They had ten cc’s last night. There’s a faction in HAPA that wants to use magic to eradicate us. As soon as they find that enzyme that suppresses the Rosewood enzyme, they’re going to synthesize it and . . .” Words failed me, and I looked down. Trent knew what they would do—the same thing the elves had tried to do to the demons only to end up on the verge of extinction themselves.“They know how to store it, too,” I said softly. “It’s going to last a good four days.”
“I thought they might,” Trent said, his beautiful voice going soft. “I have something I want to show you downstairs.”
“Now?” I blurted out, and Ceri broke off from her harangue in the kitchen long enough to clear her throat in rebuke.
Trent shifted, the fabric of his shirt making a soft hush of sound as he smiled at her, accepting, tolerant, and in acknowledgment that she was right and he was being rude by taking me downstairs before I’d even had a cup of coffee. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of relationship theirs was evolving into. Ceri loved Quen, but she let the press believe she was Trent’s lover because it was the political thing to do. Trent clearly loved both girls as if they were his own, but I was willing to bet Quen had a lot of say in Ray’s upbringing.
Ceri had been raised with the idea that you could love one man and be politically attached to another, so a formal marriage between Trent and Ceri might be in the future, but I knew she’d never share his bed. Regardless, they clearly functioned with a great deal of parental unity. It was weird, but it worked, and this show of dry humor at his own expense was a good sign that they were getting along on something other than a professional level.
“After you’ve eaten, of course,” Trent said, almost rolling his eyes at Ceri. “Your turn.”
My turn. I had a handful of questions, but what came out of my mouth was “The machines I’ve seen aren’t cheap. The research into placing their sites isn’t easy to come by, either, seeing that they’re located to passively hide them from magic. Spells and charms aren’t going to find them easily anymore, but we might be able to track their backer down using the money trail. Get them from that angle.”
“Yeah, cut off the money supply to the Tink-blasted lunkers, and HAPA will dry up like a fairy’s fling-flan,” Jenks said from the kitchen, and Ceri succinctly told him to shut his mouth, her eyes flashing with parental outrage as she prepared the tea.
I watched Trent’s tells as he leaned back into the couch, his eyes distant in thought. You couldn’t have four perfect places to hide from the I.S. and the FIB where you could plug your illegal genetic machines in without a lot of hush money. At least I knew Trent wasn’t behind it.
“I agree,” he finally said, crossing his knees, which told me he didn’t like where his thoughts had gone. “It’s more than disturbing that they got into the lower levels and lifted two of my machines.” His focus sharpened on me. “It’s someone with a lot of money, very good intel, or both. Very few people even know they existed, much less where they were.” 
Jenks settled on the coffee table as Ceri made her graceful way down into the seating area, a small tray in her hands. There were cookies along with the expected steaming pot and three delicate teacups, and my stomach rumbled. “Trenton, you interviewed the techs who worked the machines. I can’t believe it was any of them,” Ceri said.
He nodded, even as he frowned. “Again, I agree.” His eyes met mine, a hint of worry in them. “My concern is that it was someone my father once helped with a pesky case of diabetes.”
I sighed, leaning back and rubbing the edges of my wound to see how close I could get. It could be anyone. Anyone rich, that is. Back to square one.
“I’ll go through my Christmas card list,” Trent said, his tone soft in thought.
We were silent, Jenks’s wings still. “Where are my manners?” Ceri said suddenly, the cookie plate scraping the table as she extended it to me. “Rachel, you must be starving. That IV you were on last night won’t do a thing for your appetite. Please. Take a cookie.”
The world is falling apart, and Ceri wants me to eat a cookie? “I’m fine,” I said as I accepted the cup of tea she handed me—I was desperate for caffeine in any form—but when my stomach rumbled, I took a cookie, then another, then finally a third when she refused to offer them to Trent until I did.
Trent shook his head when Ceri offered him a cup of tea, and I started when he stood in a quick motion. “Could you excuse me a moment?”
Ceri frowned up at him. “Honestly, Trenton. Can’t you stop working for even an hour?”
The polished man stopped short and beamed a genuine smile at her. “This is what I am,” he said, inclining his head and making her twist her lips in acknowledgment. “Quen needs to know what’s going on or HAPA will be right back in here stealing the newer replacements I had installed last week. That’s what thieves do. Take the old, then return for the new.”
“Ah, tell Quen that they probably have a doppelgänger curse,” I said, then hid my chagrin behind my cup of tea. It was too hot to sip, but that way I wouldn’t have to look at him. The hem of his slacks was shifting in agitation, and when I glanced up, he wiped the ire from his face.
“I’ll be back in five minutes,” he said as he stepped over the twin shallow stairs and started for the stairway to the ground floor. “Eat your cookies. I want to show you something.”
Crap, I hadn’t had the chance to ask him about taking off the bracelet, and I stiffened.
Misunderstanding my tension, Jenks rose, his wings humming. “Trent? You want to run by me what you’re going to show Rache?” he said, and when I gave him a tiny finger motion to go, he buzzed over to the man. Trent jumped, startled, then accepted his presence.
“Quen!” Trent shouted as he jogged down the stairs, and Jenks darted to the main floor ahead of him. From the nursery, a fussing complaint rose, and the trip-trap of Winona’s feet as she shut the nursery door but for a crack.
Concerned, I looked at Ceri. “What am I going to be looking at?”
Ceri snapped a cookie in two between her teeth. “I’ve no idea,” she said around a sigh. “Probably the room that the equipment was taken from.”
She looked so happily frazzled, so much a person and so little a dead-inside demon familiar, that I felt a warm glow. Not all my screwed-up choices ended up bad. “So how’s life?” I said, and her entire face seemed to light up.
“I am so happy it should be illegal,” she said as she touched my hand, then drew away. “The children alone,” she sighed at the closed dayroom door. “I never thought any of this, any life at all, would be mine. I wake up every morning and pinch myself.”Pleased, I set my tea down and bit into a cookie. It had that lemon flavor that I knew was hiding the distinct tang of Brimstone. I took a breath to protest, then glumly shoved the rest in my mouth and chewed. I didn’t like using the Inderland drug, illegal since the Turn, but seeing that Trent manufactured it, purified it to remove the stuff that the people on the street bought it for, and left only the metabolism boosters that the vamps wanted, I’d probably be okay. I might set the FIB’s Brimstone dogs into canine throes of delight, though.