Page 128 of Demon's Bluff
A misplaced anger flickered. “Because I was here when it happened and you weren’t!” I gathered my courage and turned to Quen. “Kisten dies twice. I can’t stop that. But the coven has a spell to raise his ghost, and I need someone to handle vampire affairs while I hide out in the ever-after.”With Trent and Al. Yeah. He’d believe that.
Quen glanced at Elyse, and she twiddled her fingers at him as if to say,Hi. Yep, I’m coven. “Why doyouneed someone to handle the vampire affairs?” His brow furrowed. “Who is Piscary’s replacement? Ivy Tamwood? Are you helping Tamwood?”
“I’m stopping Kisten from being cremated. That’s it,” I said, not wanting to get into why I was shepherding Cincy’s vampire population. He’d never believe it. “I can’t let you kill me, and you can’t tell Trent why you didn’t. He will thank you in two years. I promise.”
But the haze was beginning to thicken about his fingers again. “There’s nothing I can say that will satisfy him if I don’t come back with your head.”
Boy, did I understand that. “Tell him…Tell him that as we fought, you realized that I am his dad’s magnum opus, not Stanley Saladan,” I said, suddenly breathless. “Tell him that Lee puts his own family first and always will but that I can be tricked into anything, even into the ever-after.” Elyse cleared her throat, but I thought the statement innocent enough.“Together we can get the pre-curse elven DNA as our fathers could not. And after that, he can kill me. Tell him he has to wait. He’s good at that.”
Quen’s expression creased. “How do you know about your fathers working together?”
“My mom,” I said. “Though Trent confirms it when he tells me Takata is my birth father.”
Quen’s doubt began to shift to incredulity. “You know who your genetic father is?”
“I will,” I said cryptically. “Don’t tell me. Trent does when he’s angry and wants to hurt me. He needs it. Can you do that? Can you keep your mouth shut? I need this to happen, Quen. Trent needs this to happen, and if you tell him what’s to come, it won’t.” And if it didn’t, he would never…I would never…Oh, God.
Quen’s lip twitched again, and I panicked. He wasn’t going to believe me.
“Please!” I held up my hand to stop him, Trent’s ring glinting in the morning light between us. “I’m sorry, but we fall in love. No one wanted it, most of all us. You don’t want it, Trent doesn’t want it,” I practically moaned. “The demons don’t want it, but it happens. And it makes Trent better, whole. Quen, he becomes the person he wants to be, not the person his dad made him to keep your people alive.”
Quen stared at my hand, his lips parting as an unknown heartache crossed him.
“He changes,” I gushed, wondering what had shifted. “Once he no longer has to struggle to keep his people alive, he changes. He adores the girls. He’s so good with them, it makes my heart ache. He makes peace with Ellasbeth. He strives to make peace with…his enemies,” I said, knowing that to tell him Trent voluntarily parked his tent next to a demon’s RV would be too much. “He finds love in so many ways. Please. Don’t tell him the future or you might change it, and I can’t bear the thought. I can’t lose him. I wouldn’t have told you, but I won’t let you kill me, and I can’t kill you; he would have to go through it all alone, and he needs you.”
Elyse stared at me as if I had just ripped the time continuum apart and crapped in it, and maybe I had. But I couldn’t kill Quen, and I couldn’t let him kill me.
And then Quen rocked back a step, his head bowing. “Take good care of it,” he said, his attention flicking to my hand. “It saved your life.”
My hand closed into a fist. “What?”
“That ring.” Saying nothing more, Quen turned and walked away.
“Quen?” I called, but he didn’t stop. Four steps into the brush, and he was gone.
“I knew someone had followed us,” Elyse muttered.
I licked my lips, not sure anymore what Trent had given me. Suddenly I was more afraid than I’d been before.
“I can’t believe you told him,” Elyse said. “Hey, you want to break your hold spell? We have to get Johnny in place and get out of here.” She squinted at the bare branches cutting the perfect blue of the sky. “It won’t take a lot to clean the area. I doubt they will do much of an investigation anyway. Seeing as he’s a blood gift.”
I severed the curse, and Elyse took a relieved breath. “No, they don’t,” I whispered, eyes still on the last place I’d seen Quen. He had known about me coming here for the last two years and had never said anything. Thank God I hadn’t told him about Ceri.
Head down, I followed Elyse onto the boat, no longer sure what I would find when I got home.
If I got home.
Chapter
31
The coffeehouse was right acrossthe street from the morgue downtown, which meant it was noisy with people meeting up for lunch or on their phones and laptops playing office—though there were fewer now than when Elyse and I had stumbled in, both of us bedraggled and tired after not nearly enough sleep. Yawning yet again, I sat with my back to the wall at a table tucked into a corner and my phone plugged into a socket. I had an extremely large cup of coffee in my hand, and it still didn’t feel like enough to wake me up. A bag of miniature pastries was open between me and Elyse’s empty chair, and after glancing at the door to the bathroom, I ate the last one.You snooze, you lose, babe.
The shop was nice, with high ceilings and big windows that looked out onto the street, but it wasn’t Junior’s and I felt out of place, nervous as I pulled my stinky bag and everything I’d brought with me on this magic carpet ride closer: my never-used splat gun, Al’s broken necklace to mark our exit from the curse, the curse book and all my modifications that got us here.
Elyse had her stasis ley line charm in her pocket. It seemed prudent for her to have it, and it gave the woman a needed feeling of control.
My gaze shifted from my charging phone to the barista at the far side of the shop, and I made a stupid wave when she stared at me. Clearly annoyed, the dark-haired woman returned to her work. She’d been eyeing us since we’d stumbled in like two bandits off the desert. I figured she thoughtwe were homeless, which we kind of were, but we had paid for our food so she couldn’t kick us out—even if Elyse had been in the bathroom for the last twenty minutes using their sink to try to rub off both a trip to the ever-after and a night spent in the library basement.And I still stink like burnt amber,I thought as I plucked my shirt and winced at the puff of air.