“I’ll get you there and back, but you’re taking me with you,” he said, and Ceri hissed at him to be still.

I glanced at Ivy when Jenks landed on her shoulder and made her short hair billow with the wind from his wings. “Why?” I said, not believing this.

“I’ll pay for it,” he repeated, his feet solidly planted on the salt-dusted, faded linoleum. “I’ll take the smut. For both of us.”

“Trenton,” Ceri pleaded. “You don’t understand. There’s more here than you know.”

His eyes flicked to her, and his fear softened. “I understand I can do this. I need to. If I don’t, I’ll never learn how to live by the eleven percent.” His gaze rose to mine, and there was a new light in them. “I’ll pay for your trip there and back, but I’m going.”

Making a puff of disbelief, I dropped back a step. Why was he doing this? To impress Ceri? “This is stupid,” I said harshly. “Ceri, tell him this is stupid.”

Trent faced me with his hair disarrayed and his jaw clenched, almost a different man. “I’ll pay for your trip, but you are going to keep me alive while I get an elven sample.”

My mouth dropped open and I blinked. Ceri fell from her tiptoes and backed away. A hand to her head, she turned her back on us, silent. From Ivy’s shoulder, Jenks started to swear with a steady stream of half-heard curses. It was the only noise apart from the wind in the dry-leafed branches and the cheerful shrieks of his children at play.

“Elves were kept as familiars since before the start of the war,” Trent said, putting a hand on Ceri’s shoulder as she started to shake silently. “If there’s a sample in the archives of an elf from over two thousand years ago, I want it.”

Twenty-five

The cool chill of sunset seeped in around David’s borrowed leather coat, and the smell of grilling burgers made my stomach hurt. I was too worried to eat. Too worried and too tired. Dressed in my working leathers, I sat alone in a folding chair under a tree in the dying autumn garden as everyone pretended everything was normal, clustered at the picnic table to eat their hot dogs before we called a demon into the graveyard.

My fingers played with the charm about my neck, and I felt the soft scar on my lower lip with my tongue. I don’t know why I was worried about becoming bound to a vamp. I wasn’t likely to live past tonight.