Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

was still pounding, and through the window, I saw a flash of light as Trent got into his car.
    Hands swinging, I edged backward down the hall where Quen and Felix had gone. Quen would want to know Trent had ditched him again. I expected that the hallway led to the nurseries, and indeed, behind the first door I hesitantly peeped in was the expected double bed, two soft chairs, a rocker, TV, dresser, mirror, and a crib. There was a bank of white cupboards. I was sure they held lifesaving equipment, hidden like an ugly secret.
    “Not here,” I said to myself, starting to relax the farther I got from the noise and warmth of the living room. I pulled the door shut, then hesitated, looking at my fingers. They felt slippery, and I brought them to my nose, breathing in the smell of crushed leaves.
    Pixy dust?
    Pulse quickening, I went down the hallway, following voices. “Felix?” I called out, hiking my dress up so I could move better.
    “In here, Rachel,” Nina called back, and I froze at the tiny ultrasonic wing chirp of surprise that followed. I never would have heard it over the noise, except that I lived with pixies.
    I spun back to the kitchen, my eyes widening. “Jax?” I blurted, seeing the little pixy looking at me from over the rim of the light fixture. “Jax!” I shouted as he darted down the hall and into the kitchen.
    I moved. Dress hiked up, I stormed down the hall, blowing into the kitchen and scaring the two I.S. guys standing at the open fridge. The sparkling of pixy dust hung in the air.
    “Pixy!” I shouted, and the two men stared at me. “Where did he go?”
    Wide-eyed, they said nothing, the pie between them like guilt given substance.
    “Where did the damn pixy go!” I repeated, my heart thudding.
    “Pixy?” one of them asked, as if I were asking about a unicorn.
    The sound of a vehicle starting came in through the open window, and I ran to the back door. Adrenaline surging, I shoved the door open. Cool night air hit me, misty with no moon—and the sifting silver dust of a pixy trailed like a moonbeam. It drifted to the sidewalk running past the Dumpster and vanishing around the corner.
    Breathless, I followed the tracing of dust, my heels sending shocks up my spine as I clip-tapped around the corner. A squeal of tires brought me to a halt, and I put a hand on the Dumpster and watched as a blue Ford truck drove away, tires smoking. Anger sparked, but it wasn’t until it hit a speed bump and the passenger door flew open that I was sure.
    N-n-n-n-nick.

Chapter Three
    T he kitchen was bright with electric light, loud with the shrieks of pixies, and with a snap, I flicked the coffeemaker on before turning back to my sandwich. It was a rather large room, newly remodeled with stainless-steel counters, two stoves, and my mom’s old fridge with the automatic ice dispenser right in the door. My spelling equipment hung over the center island counter, copper pots and ceramic spelling spoons making it look less like the industrial kitchen at the back of a church that it had started out as. Ivy’s thick country-kitchen table where she did most of her research was depressingly empty. She’d been gone this whole week, out in Flagstaff helping Glenn and Daryl get settled in their new digs.
    Standing at the counter in my evening gown, surrounded by cold cuts, condiments, and a half-empty two-liter bottle of pop, I clenched my teeth and wished the pixies would go away. They were playing war among the hanging copper pots, giving me a headache. Copper was one of the few metals that wouldn’t burn them, and they loved banging into it. Telling Jenks about the abducted Rosewood babies had been bad enough, but bringing Nick into it had left us both in a bad mood that his kids weren’t helping get rid of. Nick. If there was anyone who could irritate me by simply breathing, it was Nick.
    The self-proclaimed thief once professed that he’d loved me, and I think he had, inasmuch as he could love another person. He loved money and the security he thought that it represented more. I honestly believed that he felt justified for all the trouble he’d heaped upon me. I hadn’t trusted him for a long time, but when he had betrayed not just me but Trent in the same breath, I’d written him off. That he lured Jenks’s eldest son, Jax, into a life of crime and hardship just pissed me off.
    I’d not heard from Nick since he had spirited himself—and presumably Jax—out of Trent’s high-security lockup.