Ever After (The Hollows 11)

Chapter Fifteen

The faint ringing of the phone vibrated against the inside of my skull, and though I tried to incorporate the sound into my dreams of tiny purple hallways and black doors the size of acorns, it pushed itself into my conscious thought, shoving me awake.

The phone is ringing.

Eyes open, I stared at my clock glowing a steady 7:47. "Are you kidding me?" I whispered, and I rolled over on my stomach and put the pillow over my head. I'd only been asleep for a couple of hours and wasn't planning on getting up until noon.

I'd gone to bed late, not sleeping well with my dreams of shrinking rooms and being crushed in that singularity that Al had been trapped in making my sleep restless. That the sun was up seemed an insult, the bright rays making it past my curtain. Jenks would get the phone. It wouldn't be for me, anyway. No one hired a demon, and not at seven freaking forty-seven in the morning.

I sighed in relief as the phone finally quit. Then it started again. I groaned, wishing it would go away.

"Ra-a-a-ache!" Jenks's voice scraped along every nerve I had, and I propped myself up on my elbows.

"What!" I shouted, all the way awake now.

"My kids found Wayde's glue. I'm unsticking Rex's whiskers. Will you get that?"

"Are you serious?" I exclaimed.

"You want to hold the cat instead?"

I threw my pillow to the floor. Grumbling, I swung my feet down, jerking them back from the cold. "It's not even eight yet," I muttered, trying and failing to get my hair to lie flat as I looked in my dresser mirror. No, I didn't want to hold a hysterical cat who had had her whiskers glued together. God! I'd be happy when Ivy got home.

I reached for my blue terrycloth robe and jammed my arms in the sleeves. I couldn't find the slipper the pixies had been playing with yesterday, and staggering down the hall with a scuff-pad, scuff-pad, I tied my robe shut, ready to ream out the magazine salesman who was likely trying to work his way around our answering machine. Everyone important had my cell-phone number. If it was an emergency, they'd call me there.

I squinted in the brighter light in the kitchen, feeling ill from the lack of sleep. Trent's stack of books sat waiting. There wasn't a single pixy anywhere, and I wondered if Jenks had finally gotten them all out in the garden. It was spookily quiet.

"I'm coming!" I griped as the phone kept ringing, and ticked, I reached for the receiver. My heart seemed to catch when I saw the caller ID. It was Trent.

I picked up the phone, not knowing what was going on anymore. "Trent?" I said as I hesitantly put the receiver to my ear, not sure if I should be worried or mad. "What by God's little green apples are you doing calling me at seven forty-seven in the morning?"

There was a short silence, and then a familiar feminine voice said, "Sorry, wrong number."

I took a fast breath. "Ellasbeth?" I exclaimed, pushing the receiver tighter against my ear. "Is that you?"

Again there was silence. I could hear Ray crying in the background, and my spine stiffened. "Ellasbeth," I said softly, a hand to my forehead as I turned away from the bright kitchen window. "Trent and I have not slept together. Ever. I think you and he make a great couple. Can I please go back to sleep now?" This was ridiculous. Leave it to Ellasbeth to go poking around the first chance she got.

"I didn't know it was you," the woman said, the thread of fear in her voice waking me up faster than slamming a double grande. "You're the first number on Trenton's emergency list."

Ray was still crying. "Where's Trent?" She didn't say anything, and I hunched over the phone as Jenks came in, a worried gold dust slipping from him. "Look you . . . elf woman," I said, not wanting her to hang up on me. "I know you don't like me, but so help your trickster goddess, if you don't tell me why you're calling Trent's emergency numbers, I'm going to crawl through this telephone line and strangle you."

Jenks landed on the rim of my vat of saltwater, his expression becoming concerned when Ellasbeth took a frustrated breath. "He's gone! I think he went into the ever-after to get Lucy."

My grip on the phone tightened, and Jenks's wings hummed to life. Trent went off on his own? He dropped a perfectly good plan in my lap and went off and left me here? Son of a bastard!

Jenks darted out, and I stalked across the kitchen, waiting for Ellasbeth to take a breath, but she was well practiced, getting in three sentences belittling Trent before I could attempt even a word. "Ellasbeth, can I talk to Quen, please?" I asked, seething. He was gone. The smart-ass elf was going to get himself killed.

"I'm alone up here!" Ellasbeth shouted. "This baby won't stop screaming, and there's no one here to help me!"

Belle came in with Jenks, the fairy concerned as Jenks dropped down and smacked Rex's paw aside as he filled her in.

"Ellasbeth, stop having hysterics," I said as I met Jenks's eyes. "Where is Quen, and how long has Trent been gone?"

Finally she stopped. "I don't know. Quen is in the basement trying to open the vault."

Fear, thick and cloying, slithered out from the hopeful promises I'd been telling myself. "How long has Trent been gone?"

"I told you I don't know!" she shouted, and Ray cried all the louder, frustrated and forgotten in her crib by the sound of it. "The only thing I could get out of Quen was that Trenton used the vault door to get to the ever-after, but before he left, he set the machine to overload and it burned out the fuse. It's going to be days until we can get a new one. The last time I saw Trent was when he went to work this morning. That was about five."

Five in the morning-not long after leaving me. Son of a bitch! What was he doing going to confront Ku'Sox by himself? Alone? Damn it all to the Turn and back. I should have made him thumb promise. He was going to get himself killed. But then the thought occurred to me that maybe that had been his plan. He'd said he'd been at his lawyer's office.

Shit.

My eyes came up. Jenks was pale, waiting to see what I would do. "Ellasbeth, hold on a second," I said, interrupting her latest harangue.

"Don't you tell me to hold on, you little witch!"

I covered the receiver. "I think Trent went to confront Ku'Sox alone."

Jenks's face darkened. "The idiot!" he shrilled. "He promised me he wouldn't!"

"Yeah, he sort of let me think that, too," I said as I looked past him to the kitchen trying to decide the best way to deal with this. As a freed familiar, Trent had some immunity from Ku'Sox, but not if he attacked him. He'd only been there a couple of hours. Maybe he hadn't done anything yet.

My gaze dropped to my hand and the pinkie ring, twin to Trent's. The one time I'd used it, Trent had been pulled to me. The question was, had he been wearing it the last time I saw him? Ellasbeth had been razzing him about it, and I knew he was trying to appease her, make it work.

My heart pounded, and I put the phone back to my ear. Ellasbeth was still going on, clueless that I hadn't been listening. "Ellasbeth. Ellasbeth!" I shouted. "Shut up and listen to me!"

"How dare you-"

"I want you to take Ray," I said, my tone caustic. "I want you to pick her up out of that crib and I want you to give her a bath. I want you to bake cookies with her. I want you to read her a book. I don't care what you do, but you are not going to let her sit in her crib and cry. You got me?"

"You want me to read her a book?" Ellasbeth said in disbelief. "My fiance is battling a demon, and you want me to read a child a book?"

My face burned. "You are going to read her a book," I said, my words slow so I wouldn't yell at her. "If I find out you put her in her crib to cry, I'm going to be pissed. Understand? When Quen comes up for air, tell him that I'm trying to yank Trent's ass out of the ever-after before he goes and does something stupid. Can you do that for me?"

Finally there was silence. "Ellasbeth?" I took a slow breath, trying to find a state of calm. "I'm not Trent's emergency contact because I look good in leather."

The click from the line being disconnected was loud. Lips twisting, I hit the button to end the call and set the phone back in the cradle.

"Well?" Jenks asked.

I tightened the tie of my robe. "Just a guess, but I think Trent got tired of waiting for results and went to talk to Ku'Sox."

I pushed off the counter, and Jenks took to the air. "Ah, Rache?"

"I'm just getting dressed, okay?" I said as I stomped down the hallway to my room, Jenks following me. "I can't fight the bad guys wearing a robe." I shut my room's door in Jenks's face, and the pixy simply darted under the crack in the door. His wings clattered in nervousness as I threw open my closet and started grabbing things. First Ceri and Lucy, then Bis. Now Trent. Thank God Ivy was on her way home. I needed her help. Damn it, I am tired of this!

"Rache?" Jenks said, coming to rest on a bedpost as I tugged on a pair of jeans, my nightgown riding up.

My heart was pounding. It was almost eight. He'd only been there a couple of hours. Maybe it wasn't too late. "Turn your back, or I'll ask Belle where you sleep."

Wings shifting tone, the pixy spun away. "Rache, I can't be in the ever-after after sunup."

His voice was scared, and shocked, I slowed as I pulled my nightgown over my head, snagging my hair. "I'm not going into the ever-after," I said, then covered myself when he almost turned back around.

"You're not?"

The cotton shirt rubbed my nose as I yanked it over my head. I couldn't help a faint smile at the amazement in his voice. "You think I'm crazy?" I said as I stuffed the shirt behind my jeans, then dropped to my knees to find my boots under my bed. "Ku'Sox is psychotic."

"Then what are you doing?" Jenks flew down to light the underside of my bed. Stretching, I snagged my boots and dragged them out. "You want me to call Felix? Bring the I.S. in on this?"

I sat on the floor of my room and tugged my boots on over my bare feet. "No I.S.," I said as I got the second boot on and looked at Jenks, my stomach empty and hurting. "But I am going to snatch that idiot out of the ever-after. If I'm lucky, he'll be with Lucy and Ceri, and we'll have them both." Maybe that is his plan.

The pixy's wings took on a bright silver hue. "Thank Tink's little pink-ah, rosebuds," he said in relief as I stood and reached for my door handle. "I thought you were going after Ku'Sox."

"Not this time."

My boots clunked on the hard wooden floor. I was not stupid, but I was angry. Trent had gone off without me. Right after we had a plan all worked out. Maybe the books were to distract me.

"She's not running off!" Jenks said brightly as he zipped into the kitchen ahead of me, and Belle turned from the kitchen window, her expression shocked.

"She's-s-s-s not?" she said, and I made a face at both of them.

"Good God, you think I'm stupid?" I said, then frowned when neither of them said a word. "Why should I go to the ever-after when all I want is Trent?" I said, holding up my hand so the light caught my pinkie ring.

"Hot piss on a toadstool!" Jenks exclaimed, and Belle waved at his orange sparkles in annoyance. "I forgot about that. You think it will work?"

My feet felt funny in my boots without socks between me and the leather, and I tapped a toe on the center counter's footplate. "Can't hurt to try." If it didn't work, I might try Newt. My gaze became distant as I remembered being bloody and beaten under Cincy's streets and using the ring to jump me out and finding it jumped the other person in. It hadn't been exactly what I had wanted, but that's the way wild elf magic worked.

It had better work again, I thought as I looked down at it, my knees feeling funny as I recalled the words to invoke the charm. Ta na shay. I needed to find out what that meant.

I took a breath. Grown-up decisions, I thought, thinking that Ivy would be proud of me. "One seriously angry elf, coming up!" I said, tapping the line out back and spinning the ring on my finger. "Ta na shay!"

But then my breath came in with a gasp as the ley line in the back reached out and yanked me into it.

"No!" I shouted, the last thing I saw before the line took me completely being Belle's and Jenks's shocked expressions as I vanished from my kitchen.