“Rachel,” Pierce said loudly, interrupting my sudden panic attack. “Jenks and I will mind the plunder, er, luggage. There’s not enough room in the lift nohow.”

I stifled a shudder as I minced into the elevator. “Okay,” I said, not wanting two more bodies in here anyway, even if one could fly. “See you up there.” Just get me up there and out of this box, I thought as the doors slid shut again. I wasn’t claustrophobic, and I didn’t mind elevators. Where was this coming from?

Trent reached past Ivy to push the topmost button, and I caught a whiff of cinnamon, heavy in the cramped quarters. The car shook as the gears shifted, and we headed up, far too slowly for my liking. I breathed deep, watching the light move.

Beside me, Ivy’s eyes flashed black. She edged away from me as Trent chuckled. “I didn’t know you were afraid of elevators, Rachel,” he said, his voice holding a light mockery.

“I’m not,” I said as I gave Ivy a worried look. My thoughts flashed back to Kisten and our first kiss in an elevator, and she pretty much flung herself into the corner, not knowing what I was thinking but tasting the memory of fear and desire flooding me. Better and better, I thought as Trent looked between us, amused.

“It’s not the elevator, it’s the coven,” I added when the elevator finally dinged. I held my breath as I waited forever for the doors to open, but it was Ivy who was first out, brushing past me in a spicy wave of vampire incense that made me quiver.

Trent leaned in, whispering, “It’s when I’m gone that you’re going to have to be careful.”

Oh, really? I thought, my attention on the brightly patterned carpet as I stepped from the elevator into the hallway, slowly, so it didn’t look like I was bolting.

“We’re on the end, there,” Trent was saying as he checked his envelope, but Ivy again was ahead of us, steps fast as she strode to the end of the short hall where the big window looked out onto a fire escape. She tried the last door, and I could hear her sigh when it opened. She was inside and gone before Trent and I were even halfway down the corridor. Either she had some intestinal problem she had to take care of or my fear in the elevator combined with the memory of Kisten had hit her hard.

It felt funny walking down the hallway with Trent, both of us carrying the small items we thought were too important to risk coming up on the trolley. I caught glimpses of us in the long mirrors set next to the occasional door, looking like fake windows, and again I was struck by the idea that we were with each other but not together. Like the night on the boat when it had blown up under us, and we were the only two to survive—Trent because I had made a protective bubble around us by using the connection made through his familiar, and then me because he’d pulled my frozen ass out of the Ohio River and kept me from dying of hypothermia.