A Perfect Blood

please,” I whispered as my eyes shut. “I know this guy. You can trust him.” My eyes opened, and I looked at Winona, seeing her need to believe that there might be a way out of this. “He can help us both,” I slurred, then clenched as a new wave of pain hit. Oh God, the spell wasn’t dissipating fast enough. I was going to go into shock.
    “You’re Trent Kalamack?” she warbled, and Trent nodded. She shifted from foot to foot, but I think it was Jenks still hovering over him that did it, and I sighed when Trent put his hands on me and the pain lessened. I sagged in relief, and Winona stiffened.
    “It’s okay!” Jenks yelled before she ran off with me. “He just broke the pain charm.”
    “I still hurt,” I said, my eyes opening. I smelled cinnamon and wine, and Trent’s finger turned my face to his. He was smiling, a hint of guilt and embarrassment behind it, and I tried to smile back. “What are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be taking over a corporation or something?”
    “Ah, sorry about that,” he said, worry pinching his brow. “Better now?”
    Sorry? He was sorry?
    “She’s been shot,” Jenks said, and I felt a new wash of warmth as he dusted my leg again.
    “I see that,” he said, his gaze going up the hill to the fire trucks. “I would’ve found you sooner, but everyone was focused on a trailer park, and it wasn’t until Quen left that I had the chance to do a finding spell.” He grimaced as he took me from Winona and the soothing scent of cinnamon and wine flowed over me anew. His hand with the missing fingers pinched, the pressure needed to hold me channeled into fewer fingers. “Maybe next time, they’ll listen to me.”
    “Happens to me all the time,” I said, eyes closing as he started walking and my head thumped into his chest. Things were getting fuzzy again, and I felt like I was being rocked as he walked, Jenks shining ahead of us.
    “I’ve a car a quarter mile up the road,” Trent said, concern edging his voice. “I’ll have you in a tub of water in half an hour.” He glanced at Winona. “Both of you.”
    A tub of water sounded like heaven. “You’d better be nice to Winona,” I said. “Or I’m going to kick your ass. Understand?”
    “More than you know.”
    I was cold, and my head slumping into him, I breathed him in, giving myself up to whatever came next. I was going to be okay, and that was enough for now. Trent had been looking for me? How nice was that?
    But my next thought woke me back up. He thought he was my Sa’han? What the hell did that mean?

Chapter Seventeen

    A high-pitched child’s wail cut through the thick walls as if they were paper, sliding between my sleep and reason and pricking me awake. A soft adult admonishment quickly followed, soothing the desperate demand into a pitiful whining that dulled to the inaudible. I smiled. Kids were great, but I was really glad not to have any right now.
    My eyes opened, and I looked up at the high arched ceiling, bright with the sun leaking past the curtains. The ceiling was painted with a hunting scene, like you might find in a museum, with dogs and horses—and one running fox. Somehow it managed not to look overdone. The opulent surroundings helped.
    In less than a day I’d gone from sleeping on a grimy floor to Egyptian cotton, silk pj’s, and enough pillows to drown in. Thank God there’d been a shower in between. Not to mention a trip downstairs to Trent’s surgery suite to get the bullet yanked out of my thigh. I’d be there still, but after they patched me up and made sure my kidneys were working, I had taken out the IV and demanded a real bed or I was going to call Ivy to pick me up that instant.
    It felt good to be alive, clean, rested . . . and sleeping in Ellasbeth’s old room. Na, na. Na, na. Na-a-a-a, na. It had been redecorated in soft, earthy colors, and I could see Ceri’s hand everywhere from the lace draped over the top of the huge mirror to the elegant French provincial furnishings. The bathroom, though, looked the same as the night Ellasbeth had walked in on me while I’d been innocently soaking in her tub. She’d probably been pregnant with Lucy at the time, now that I think about it.
    Ray, Ceri and Quen’s child, was only five months old. Lucy was eight months, and from the sound of it, had learned how to communicate without words. She was a smart little kid, the product of East Coast and West Coast elves, the attempt at forging a union between the two