“Trouble,” Pierce muttered as he set my bag down and put his hands behind his back, feet spread wide as he scanned the place.

“Of course there’s trouble,” I said as Ivy stepped from the desk. Her eyes were black, and her motions were edging into that eerie vampiric quickness. Jenks’s wings were clattering in anger, and I sighed, knowing what was coming.

“They lost our reservation!” Jenks shrilled. “The Tink-blasted hotel didn’t hold the room. ‘So sorry,’” he said in a high falsetto. “‘Nothing we can do.’ We drove two thousand miles, and we don’t have a room! No one in the city does because of the convention!”

Ivy’s lips were pressed tight, her anger in check. Las Vegas must have helped. “I made that reservation through Rynn Cormel’s secretary,” she complained.

“It was a good thought,” I said as I tried to think, but I was too numb. “We’ll find something.” A park bench. Maybe the parking lot of the local Wally World. Yeah, that’d be safe. I could wear my bridesmaid’s dress and fit right in with the kooks.

Trent ambled our way, a hotel envelope in his hand. He looked too satisfied to live. The manager with him scooped up my bag, and I felt a surge of adrenaline when he dropped it on the luggage trolley with Trent’s. My protest died, though, when Trent smiled that infuriating smile of his and handed both Ivy and me a plastic key. “Ready to go up?” he asked pleasantly.

Ivy closed her eyes in a long blink, then tossed her bag onto the trolley, keeping her smaller computer bag right where it was, over her shoulder.

“Sweet mother of Tink,” Jenks swore. “What did you do? Buy the place?”

“Something like that,” Trent said, his smooth, suave demeanor slipping back even if he was still in jeans and a casual top. “You don’t have a room because I booked the top floor for us. Can we hurry up about it? I have an appointment. I’m already late.”

In Seattle, I thought, starting for the elevators when the manager, still blathering at Trent about parking and how to call for a car, pointed them out. The calming spell took hold again, and my tension slipped away.

“Thank you, Trent,” I said as I hung my garment bag on the trolley and fingered the little plastic card. It was small for the amount of grief it had just saved us. “I don’t know how you do it. I mean, I know, but how? They know we’re together.”

Trent angled in front of Ivy to push the elevator button, and I smiled. I hadn’t known he was a button pusher. Jenks was, too. I couldn’t care less who hit the buttons as long as we got there. “I bought the place last year,” Trent admitted, then turned to look past me to the lobby. “This is nice. I should come out here more.”

Jenks and Pierce were with the bellhop, who was clearly not going to accompany us but would take our stuff up through a secondary elevator. The elevator before us opened to show a lift the size of my closet. Earthquakes, I thought, balking.