A Perfect Blood

over me, inches away, the scent of a green woods coming from him to ease my headache.
    “Tell me how you plan on staying alive long enough to bargain with him if you don’t use what I’ve prepared,” he asked, his tone telling me he thought I was being stupid.
    I looked up, feeling sick. “I don’t really have a plan, but hiding in a spell-proof room surrounded by an arsenal isn’t going to help. He’s got my summoning name.”
    His brow furrowed. “So do I,” he said as he went to his desk.
    True. My breath slipped from me in a long exhale. I was not going to be their dog toy. I’d seen dog toys, and they were eventually broken and covered in slobber, left in the rain to be forgotten. My faint smile faded as I saw Trent’s worry, his concern . . . his fear under his professional veneer. He would do this with me, and he knew the danger.
    Rummaging now in his top drawer, Trent said, “Can’t I just—”
    “Defense only. Promise me,” I demanded. He hesitated, his eyes never shifting from mine. “Damn it, Trent, promise me,” I said, not wanting him to lie to me. “You’re all about my taking responsibility, well, this is my decision. I have to do it my way.”
    Grimacing, he slammed the drawer shut, a bit of colorful silk in his hand. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, ” he said as he straightened, stressing it.
    I shifted the heavy glass on my knees. It used to be alive, but now it felt dead. Or was I the one who was dead? “Trust me?” I mocked. “He might kill you. I’m not saying he won’t. But if you raise one charm in anything other than defense, I will spell you down myself.” I waited while he frowned at me, his desk between us. “Sure you want to stay?”
    His grumble was enough for me, and I looked behind him at the door, feeling like two kids behind the barn playing show-and-tell. Ivy and Jenks were going to be mad. Ceri would be ticked that I didn’t ask for her help. Quen would say I was foolish for not asking for his assistance. But I didn’t want to endanger them. Ivy and Jenks were moving on without me, and that was good. Ceri had her life with her children before her, and I wouldn’t risk that. Quen was a dragon, ready to swoop in and save me, but leaving me still afraid. Trent . . . Trent was good enough to help, and bad enough to not be a crutch. Perhaps more important, I wanted to do this on my own. Trent could help because I needed it and he’d gotten me into this. He was damn well going to be there when I got out.
    Goose bumps tingled up my arms when I recognized the cap and ribbon in his hand. “Thank you,” I whispered, remembering the vengeance of the lines running through me with no aura between me and the energy of creation. “Is it going to hurt?”
    “No.” His word crisp and short, he put his cap on with a quickness that dared me to say he looked funny. He seemed so different, I didn’t know what to think anymore. The ribbon went around his neck, over his collar and down his front. It swung as he dragged his chair into the line to face me squarely. I should have been able to feel the line, see the ever-after with my second sight, but I was dead inside.
    “Why am I even here if you won’t let me do anything?” he grumbled as he settled himself, his knees inches from mine.
    I was starting to shake hard enough for him to notice, but I couldn’t stop, and I should be shaking. Why was he here? Because he was strong enough to watch my back, and weak enough that it would be me solving this, not him. But I couldn’t tell him that.
    “Give me your hands,” he said, and my eyes jerked to his. His need to do this shone in them. He was itching to give something back to Al for his missing fingers, itching to prove to the demon that he wasn’t a doormat, a familiar, a commodity, but someone the demon needed to take seriously. God, I knew how that felt. How was I going to keep him alive?
    My fingers slipped into his, and we clasped hands, my knuckles resting on the cool glass of my scrying mirror. His hands were cool, mine were shaking, and he gave me a little squeeze, jerking my attention back up.
    “Don’t let go until I say,” he said as I stared at him, startled. But he had closed his eyes, his lips moving in something that wasn’t Latin, wasn’t English. The syllables slipped through the folds of my brain like slushy ice, chilling and numbing, the musical rise and fall like unsung music, the wind in the trees, the growth of a tree to the