The Witch With No Name. Ким Харрисон

      My circle was long gone, but it didn’t matter. The surface demons had left, even the ones at the outskirts. I exhaled, relieved. But another part of me was seething in anger. Felix had taken Nina over far too easily. The woman had been lying to Ivy, lying for three whole months. The worst part was, I think Ivy knew it.

      “I ought to leave you here to rot,” I said, talking to Felix, but if I did, Nina would be the one to suffer.

      Nina stiffened, her lip curling to show tiny pointed canines. She wouldn’t get the extended fangs until she died, which—if I got my way—would be tomorrow.

      “Rachel,” Bis whispered as his feet pinched my shoulder in worry. Trent, too, wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. Not yet. The son of a bastard was playing Ivy for a fool.

      “Get out of Nina,” I said, shaking off Trent’s hand and moving a step closer.

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nina said, foolishly trying to hide the fact that it really was Felix, but young women in dress suits do not tug their sleeves down in agitation.

      “Do we have to do this right now?” Trent said, eyes on the darkening shadows.

      “Yes,” I said, coming another step closer. “Felix, get out of Nina. Get out and don’t come back. Right now, or I’m telling Ivy.”

      The woman bared her teeth, dark eyes going darker. “Ivy? She doesn’t matter!”

      “Maybe not to you,” I said shaking from the spent adrenaline. “But if Ivy knows, she might give up on Nina.”

      “That’s fine with me.” Nina’s eyes narrowed, making the woman look dead already in the last of the light.

      “Me too,” I said, heartsick for Ivy even as I hated Felix. “But if she does, Nina is going to find the balls to kick you out for good.”

      Beside me, Trent made a sound of understanding. Nina’s expression twisted up in a snarl, hearing the truth of it.

      “Love is funny like that,” I added.

      Nina’s expression darkened, anger bubbling up until she was as ugly as the monster seeing the world through her eyes, wallowing in Ivy’s love as if it was his to have. My chin lifted, and seeing my determination, he suddenly left her.

      Nina staggered, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Sobbing, she huddled on the ground, exhausted and hyped up on the hormones Felix had pulled into her blood system. She touched her face, shocked at the blood, and my heart just about broke for Ivy. God, I hated the master vampires.

      He might be gone, but the flash of evil intent that had crossed her left me shaking.

      He’d be back.

       Four

      The coffee smell coming from the wax-coated cup was nauseatingly familiar, and I held it listlessly as I sat in the chair I’d pulled into the carpeted hallway. The oil-like sheen on the surface caught the fluorescent lights, showing the shake in my hand. I’d managed a few fitful hours of sleep after Ivy had come out of surgery, and though the beds in Trent’s surgical suites were comfortable, I’d been too worried to do more than doze. Besides, the smell of antiseptic and stainless steel kept waking me up.

      Nina had crashed right in Ivy’s room. She was in there still, the guilt that I’d found out her secret making her noticeably passive and pliant. It pissed me off that she’d been lying to Ivy all this time, but I think Ivy had known it, her belief that she didn’t deserve anything good or lasting keeping her mouth shut and her eyes blind. I hoped that Bis and Jenks were doing better, the two of them having returned to the church to try to get the squatters out.

      My breath came in with a harsh sound, and I listened to the voices echoing down from the third floor where Trent had his living quarters. I’d always wondered what took up Trent’s second floor. Now I knew. Two well-outfitted hospital suites were tucked between the ground floor and the third story, but the surgery itself was downstairs, closer to his labs.

      Hand trembling, I sipped the coffee. It had no taste. I’d just been in to check on Ivy. She’d been sleeping: clean and sanitized between ivory sheets. The angry red suture lines and orange antiseptic stains had been hidden behind a cotton nightgown, but I’d seen them before I’d lost it and cried from relief. Now I just felt numb.

      And yet something sparked in me at the sound of Trent’s footsteps on the unseen stairway, and I sat up straighter when Jonathan’s voice twined melodiously with Trent’s. I didn’t like Jonathan, but I’d be willing to bet Trent’s number two adviser had a singing voice that could make angels weep.

      I managed a smile as the two of them came around a corner. Trent looked as confident as always with his hands in his pockets like a GQ model, his smile faltering as he took in my tired misery. His hair was free of the ever-after dust, and he was smooth shaven. I’d taken the time to shower, but I felt scruffy in a pair of jeans and clean sweater I’d left over here a few weeks ago. Jonathan wrinkling his nose at me in disapproval didn’t help, and I checked to make sure all my hair was back in a scrunchy, the frizzy red tamed with a band of elastic instead of a charm.

      A lot had changed since the allegations of drug running and illegal genetic research had been levied against Trent. It had been ages since I’d seen him in a full suit and coat; his business meetings had dropped to almost zero and the research campus had been closed. On the plus side, he was more relaxed, more apt to crack a dry joke, more often smelling like ozone or his stables than the boardroom. He was doing more on his own, needing me less and less for security.

      My focus blurred, and I looked into the depths of my coffee as I imagined what it would be like to go to the mall with Trent, catch a bad movie and dinner. Maybe I should ask.

      The one-sided conversation between Trent and Jonathan was clearly coming to an end, and their forward progress halted. Trent gestured elegantly as he made his point, and I stood, leaning heavily against the wall as I waited. I knew he got lonely, even with Quen and the girls keeping him occupied. Falling out of high society had been good for him and his family, if you ignored the increased number of death threats and his loss of income. Trains still ran, though, and farms still grew food. He wasn’t destitute. Yet. Ellasbeth was still working on that in her effort to gain control of the girls, and through them, Trent.

      Not going to happen, I vowed, but after having witnessed the four of them on a good day, the girls playing happily and both Trent and Ellasbeth as loving, though not united, parents, a questioning guilt slid through me. Quen, too, seemed to regard Trent’s and my relationship as a phase tied to Trent’s newest preoccupation with furthering his magical studies. It was irksome, but every time Trent spoke of Ellasbeth and the girls, it left me wondering why I was delaying the inevitable.

      “Thank you, Jon,” Trent finally said, touching the tall, almost gaunt man on the shoulder as he gave him a grateful smile. “That makes my day a hundred times easier.”

      Contenting himself with a short nod and a dry look at me, Jonathan turned and went back the way they’d come. I knew the girls loved the man, but I liked him just as much as he liked me. Which was to say not at all.

      “Is Jonathan going gray?” I asked as Trent closed the few steps remaining between us.

      “I haven’t noticed. But that might be why he’s cutting it so short lately.” Trent stopped before me, worry creasing his features. “You could have slept upstairs. You did sleep, yes?”

      “A few hours.” I fell into step beside him when he gestured for us to continue down the hall past Ivy’s door. “I’m not a spare room kind of girl.”

      “It wouldn’t have been the spare room you would have been in,” he said, matching our steps and giving me a sideways hug. “Life is too short for bad coffee,” he said, taking my cup out of my hand and setting it on