Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

into the car seat the nice-looking guy in Trent’s garage helped me move into my little Cooper. “Don’t start with me,” I warned her, my unfamiliar tone catching her attention and distracting her. It might have been Jenks making faces at her from the rearview mirror, though, and I backed out of the car, blowing a strand of hair out of my eyes.
    It was nearing three, I smelled like horse, and I had a cranky toddler who refused to go down for her nap. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried. Trent’s secretary had gotten me back to Trent’s apartments to wait for him, but that had been four books, two songs, and three hours ago. Watching TV with Jenks had only made being stuck at Trent’s big empty apartments worse. That line hiccup I’d felt wasn’t just out at Trent’s place, but everywhere, the entire United States and off continent, too. The lines were fine now, but the media was scrambling, interviewing specialists and wackos with little signs saying the end was near.
    Jenks gave me a thumbs-up from inside the car, and I sighed. Diaper bag, extra food, change of clothes, blanket from her crib, and three stuffed animals she had pointed to when I asked her which ones she wanted. Yep, I had it all. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate camping out at Trent’s apartments, watching his big-screen TV and raiding his fridge for fresh fruit and pudding, but I had stuff to do, stuff that I could get done while Ray napped. And boy, did she need to nap.
    A sneeze shook me as I shut the door. My brow furrowed. If it followed the emerging pattern, I’d sneeze again in about ten minutes. Al was trying to get a hold of me, and my scrying mirror was across town in the Hollows. I’d tried stepping into the line that bisected Trent’s estate and contacting him that way, but Al hadn’t showed and I hadn’t lingered since the lines felt sour somehow. I hoped it was only the uncomfortable state of the lines that he wanted to discuss, but I had a bad feeling it was more, and my eyes flicked to Ray in her car seat as I got in.
    Jenks eyed me suspiciously as I settled myself, wiping my nose with a tissue I took out of my shoulder bag. “Bless you,” he said sourly. “That’s like, what, the twentieth one?”
    “I lost count.” Smiling at Ray, who was making s-s-s-s-s noises to get Jenks’s attention, I headed for the bright square of light and out of Trent’s underground garage. Worry flitted through me that I was taking Ray off the grounds, but Trent hadn’t told me I couldn’t.
    Jenks went drowsy in the new sun, and I slowly wove my way past the employee parking lots and low buildings to the gatehouse. It was up about half a mile, and Ray was well on her way to snoozeville, too, when I came around a bend and slowed.
    Trent had modified his gatehouse twice since I’d known him, once when I had blown through the simple metal bar on my way out, and again when Ivy had tossed me over his new wall when I was in a hurry to leave and he had wanted me to stay. The modest, one-story building was now a two-story edifice that straddled the road, officers on both sides to monitor traffic leaving as well as coming in. Parking lots were available on either side of the highly landscaped wall, the bushes trying to hide how tall and thick it was. It wasn’t the five I.S. vehicles parked just this side of the bar that made me take my foot off the gas and coast in—it was the three news vans just past the gate.
    Crap on toast, that hadn’t taken long.
    My sigh roused Jenks, and he whistled, bringing Ray’s eyes open for a brief moment. I’d known the I.S. was out here, having seen the fax of the warrant sent to Trent’s living room when they’d arrived. The I.S. I could handle. The news vans were another story.
    “You think they saw you?” Jenks asked as I pulled into the parking lot.
    “Probably. But I’m leaving with Trent’s kid. I probably have to sign something,” I said as I leaned to undo her buckle and pull the whining, tired girl to me. Leaving her in the car was not an option.
    Both Ray and I sneezed on Jenks’s dust as he shot out before us, and I took a clean breath as I stood beside the car, baby on my hip and blinking in the wind and sun. An anxious, nervous man in Trent’s security uniform was gesturing for me at a glass door, and I headed for him, my bag over one shoulder, Ray gripping the other. Sure enough, a reporter on the other side of the gate shouted my name. I’d been spotted.