He smacked a button on the panel, and the lift eased to a jerky halt. In the distance, a faint buzzer sounded. “Your life was never in danger, and I apologized for that, too.” His eyes were virulent, and something in me liked it.
“You hunted me like an animal!” I said, his anger fueling my own.
Smelling of ozone and broken trees, Trent leaned over me, his hands on the arms of the chair and his suit coat open to show his trim waist. “You broke into my desk,” he said tightly. “You stole something that could put me and my entire species in the ground. You think I’m going to ignore that? I wouldn’t hunt you now.”
The chair shook as he pushed himself up and away again, standing with a fist on his hip and his stance tight.
Fine. I could write that one off. But it was easy to come up with things about Trent that irritated me. “You kill people,” I said, coming out with what really bothered me. “All the time. I hate it.”
“And you can’t.” His voice was mocking, pissing me off as he turned to face me. “Someday you’ll thank me for that particular skill. I’m not proud of that ability, but I’m glad I have it. And you’re alive because of it. I’m not asking for gratitude, but stop rubbing my nose in the ugly things I do to help you that you are afraid to do yourself.”
Oh. My. God. He thought the ability to kill people was a skill? “You murder your own associates!” I shouted, my stomach clenching as I leaned forward in the chair and gestured wildly. “Jonathan practically raised you! And you ran him down under a pack of dogs like a common thief! Ivy and Jenks kill people, too, but never those who trust them!”
“Jonathan isn’t dead.”
As if that ended the conversation, Trent smacked the button to make the elevator move. Shocked, I lurched out of the chair and hit the stop button again. The car swayed and settled as Trent backed away from me, his stance stiff. My heart pounded. “He-he isn’t?” I stammered, remembering the awful cry at sunset, the horse under me prancing at the chilling sound. The horse had known what it was. I had, too.
Trent’s eyes flicked to me. “I told you he wasn’t dead. I’ve never lied to you. Well, once, maybe. Do I have to apologize for that, too?”
Stunned, I reached for the chair and slipped back into it. “Where is he? Vacation?”
Trent seemed to relax, the tension in his shoulders easing as I carefully lifted my leg, painfully putting my foot on the rest. “He’s in the doghouse. Literally.”
I looked askance at him, and Trent shrugged, a faint smile playing about his lips as he fastened my crutch to the back of the chair. “I asked Quen to turn him into a hound at the last possible moment. He got bitten in the confusion, but he survived—as I wanted. I would’ve done it myself, but you were squeamish, and making you understand your position was more important than making Jonathan understand his.”
“Is that what you were going to do to me? Turn me into a dog? Put me in your kennel until I learned to sit and heel at your command?” I said, warming as I remembered the dogs singing for my blood as I ran, then later, those same dogs jumping at the fence to get at me even as I stood before them and watched them slaver.Trent unlocked the chair and shifted it slightly. “He tried to kill you using my magic,” he said, not answering me. “I could not let that go. I’ll turn him back when his disposition improves. I like him better as a dog, though. He’s one of my best trackers.”
Stunned, I sat in the chair and tried to make sense of it. Jonathan was alive? I don’t know why that was important to me, but it was. Trent was still a murdering bastard, but somehow it felt different. “I don’t know if I’m impressed as all hell, or disgusted.”
“Like I said,” Trent said as he pushed the button to get the elevator moving again. “Always angry with me.”
I was silent, feeling him standing behind me, remembering the dangerous determination in his voice when he thought Winona was trying to hurt me. He’d looked for me. Found me when others couldn’t. That was important, too.
“I wish you’d stop it,” Trent said, his tone distant, as if he was talking to himself. “I like working with you. And Jenks. Even if my judgment needs some fine tuning, apparently. Everyone else I work with is so damn . . . polite.”
This was a long way from the cocky businessman who offered me a job I couldn’t refuse but had two years ago. I didn’t know what to think anymore. The scent of wine and cinnamon was drifting over my shoulder, becoming stronger, reminding me of our three days in a car, the passionate kiss we had shared, his arms around me not twenty-four hours ago. The doors started to open, and I felt a moment of panic. Beyond the elevator was a white hallway, Quen and Jenks turning to see us. Beyond the elevator also waited Trent’s mask. He was putting it on already. I could feel his posture stiffening, his hands on the chair becoming relaxed, the strong emotion that I’d seen in him moments ago already hidden.
Heart pounding, I reached out and hit the button to close the door. Jenks rose from Quen’s shoulder in a clatter of angry wings, and then the doors shut and we were alone. I was shaking, and I laboriously shifted the chair so I could face him.
“What did you want to tell me?” I said, my heart pounding as I searched his expression, finding a tightness to his eyes that spoke of an opportunity ill spent.
Then it was gone, and I felt alone.
He shrugged, reaching to take my chair and slowly move me to face the doors. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and he reached past me to push the button to open the door, the complex scent of linen and starch a breath in me.
“It does to me,” I said, but the doors were opening, and Trent took the key from the elevator panel, tucking it away in a pocket as he bumped me over the small gap and out into the hall. Damn it, what had I wasted?
Quen had moved a few steps down the hallway with Jenks. The lean, sinewy man had his back to us, but he’d turned at the noise of the doors opening again. Quen was Trent’s longtime security officer, dark where Trent was light, but still looking like an elf. It was in their eyes. The older man’s face had the pockmarks that some Inderlanders came away with from the Turn, and spoke of the taint of human blood. You wouldn’t know it from his magic, both wickedly fast and powerful. He was wearing his usual loose-fitting uniform, but the black fabric had a tighter fit now that showed off his build, and I wondered if Ceri was the reason for the change. His expression wasn’t happy. Neither was Jenks’s.
“Rache, we got no time for your elevator fetish,” Jenks complained as he swooped to land on the chair’s arm. “David’s going to be here in half an hour.”
“David?” I looked up from trying to appear as if the ride down here had been uneventful, but Quen was eyeing us suspiciously. He knew Trent better than anyone, having raised him as much as, if not more than, Jonathan after both his parents had died. “I thought Ivy was going to pick me up.”
“Your alpha called this morning,” Trent said from behind me, his voice polished and having a professional, almost plastic sound as he pushed me forward, so different from the elevator. “And since we needed to talk . . .”
I didn’t like Trent pushing me. I could feel his eyes on my tattoo. David, though, had a cooler head than Ivy, and the ride home would be easier on my nerves, so I said nothing.
“Good thing you’re in a chair,” Jenks said, “or it would take you that long just to walk down the hallway.”
“Sure. Okay.” I felt vulnerable as Trent slid out from behind the chair and Quen seamlessly took over. “Quen is the only one allowed to push me. Got it?”
“Heaven should fall if I did,” Trent muttered as he fell into step beside the chair.
Jenks hummed his wings for an explanation, and I ignored him. “So . . . we’re going to look at an empty room?” I asked.
“Something like that.” His manner distant, Trent walked beside me, his steps almost silent. “I want you to look at the replacements and tell me if you saw them during your captivity.”
“Winona could have done that,” Jenks said, and Trent flicked his gaze to him.
“It’s a workday. There are people down here, and Winona isn’t ready to face the world.”
I stiffened, wishing I hadn’t yelled at him in the elevator, but a young man in a lab coat with hair as red as mine was striding down the hall toward us, his pace intent and slightly anxious.
“Sir?” he called out as if there was any question that we were his goal. “Mr. Kalamack?”
Trent sighed, and the chair stopped when the man halted before us, glancing at me in curiosity, then going bug eyed when Jenks gave him a peace sign from the arm of the chair. “Sir, if you have a moment?” the man asked, and Trent forced a neutral smile.
“Donnelley, I’d like you to meet Ms. Rachel Morgan and Jenks of Oak Staff,” Trent said as he shifted to make more of a circle.
“Jenks of Oak Staff,” Jenks echoed, clearly pleased as he rose to dust his hello.
“Pleasure,” Donnelley said, shifting his clipboard to shake my hand. “How do you do.”
“The pleasure is mine, Darby,” I said, and the head lab rat started as I used his first name.