“Excuse me!” a somewhat feminine voice called out. “Yes, at the elevator?”

We turned to the tall man coming down the stairway. He was in a trendy suit, a living vampire by the way he moved, having confidence and fear mixed in all together. “Jenks, don’t go too far but see what you can find out,” I muttered, and he tweaked my ear before flying away, his dust matching the color of the marble floor exactly.

Trent sighed as he pulled himself upright and found a professional expression. The sharp taps of dress shoes on the stairs echoed as the man jogged down, his hands free and arms swinging. “Ms. Morgan?” he said as he got close, clearly nervous and more than a little excited. “Could you accompany me downstairs?”

“Maybe.” Damn it, this felt wrong.

The clerk moved as if to put a hand to my back, and I jumped to avoid him. Flustered, the man tried to find his aplomb. “Mr. Cormel would like to speak with you,” he said, all civilized, but there were two big guys at the lobby doors now, and people lined the glass railings, watching.

Trent scratched the side of his nose, not being ignored as such, but clearly not the focus of the man’s interest. “I want to pay Ivy’s bond,” I said, though it was actually Trent’s money that would do it.

Nodding, the clerk pushed the down button on a different panel. “He can arrange that.”

“I bet he can,” I said as the door opened and Trent and the clerk got in. Eyes wide, the clerk gestured for me to join them, and sullen, I stomped into the lift. “This is not a good idea,” I grumbled as the doors closed and the clerk ran a card. Jenks hadn’t made it, but elevators had never stopped him before.

“It’s better than having them come at us over dinner,” Trent said softly, and the clerk caught back a snort.

My eyes went to the panel. Sixth floor? Way out of reach of a ley line.

“Cormel is a reasonable man,” Trent said, more for the aide than me. “He’s not going to shove us in a hole.” Trent’s voice had been confident, but the tension in his fingers against my back gave him away. He was wire tight, and my own alarm ratcheted higher.

“Yeah, well, if he tries, I’m going to burn his office down to his red stapler.” I could talk to the aide, too, and Trent’s hand fell from my back as the doors opened to show a wide, brightly lit carpeted hallway. Two more pretty men and one sexy woman waited by the narrow table against the wall. Orchids and cut flowers made it less six stories under and more thirty stories up. The silk, linen, and jewelry they wore made no attempt to hide the scars.