Chapter Sixteen
The sun was almost up, and I stretched beside the car in the brightening, predawn damp, feeling all the bruises that I'd gotten in Margaritaville. There weren't many people around this time of day, either Inderlanders or humans, and a quiet hush held our voices down. It was either that or we were all too numb to say anything. Here among the buildings, the fog had retreated, but the glimpse I got of the bay on the way in said that it would be a while before it lifted and I'd get a glimpse of Alcatraz.
Squinting up at the brightening sky, I breathed deep to bring in the scent of salt, old garbage, exhaust, and the sticky smell of the petunias in the huge planters outside the hotel. The air felt slippery from the salt, and I shifted my shoulders as if trying to fit in a new skin. The hotel stretching above us looked nice, I guess. Ivy had made the reservations, so it would have to be. Trent had a room here, too, which was convenient. He was currently with Vivian and the doorman. I lifted my bag out of the trunk, then Trent's. Ivy already had her bag, and was heading in, the small carry-on rolling quietly behind her. I hurt all over, and I set the bags down with a click of plastic.
"Jenks, stay close," I said when I caught sight of the pixies tending the huge flowerpots. They looked almost militant. A traveling pixy was almost as rare as a sole traveling vampire.
Jenks darted from me to prove he wasn't scared, the overhead light glinting on his sword. "God, it feels good to be at sea level," he said, facing the unseen bay. "Smell that?"
I winced, my thoughts drifting to Alcatraz. It seemed a whole lot more real that I might end up there now. "Sure. Nice." But it did feel good to get out of the car. "You want to go in and check the lobby for lethal charms?" It might be overkill, but we did have reservations, and I wouldn't put it past the coven to hit me here-seeing that Vivian had ridden almost the entire way with us and they probably didn't want a credible witness to my death.
Giving me a thumbs-up, he followed Trent inside when the doorman returned to his station to call a cab for Vivian. She was staying down on the bay with the rest of the coven in someone's house. Glancing at Pierce, who was standing alone and looking like a doorman himself with his vest and hat, she came up to me, smiling.
"I don't know if I should thank you or not," she said, her purse over her shoulder. Her hair was mussed and her clothes were wrinkled. She was far away and distant from the trendy, polished coven member I remembered from the grocery store this last spring. The confidence was still there, though.
She stuck out her hand, and I took it, feeling an odd sense of peace when her small fingers met mine. "I'll say it, then," I said. "Thank you. For helping." Hesitating, I pulled my attention from Pierce trying to talk to the hotel pixies. "I'm glad you saw everything."
Vivian squinted as she ran a hand over her tangled, car-trip hair. "I have to tell them."
I nodded, thinking she looked positively bedraggled. "Good. Maybe they'll begin to understand the inherent problems in shunning black magic to the point of ignorance."
My gaze went to Pierce. I didn't know what to think anymore. My world had gone from black and white to shades of gray a long time ago, and there were no answers, easy or otherwise. I couldn't condemn Pierce for trying to kill Al by using magic unless I condemned myself for having tried to kill Ku'Sox with the same. Sure, Ku'Sox was bad, but so was Al. That Al was important to me wasn't a good enough reason. Everyone was important to someone.
A deep breath went in and out of Vivian, and she couldn't meet my eyes. "They're afraid. Hell, Rachel, I'm afraid. We're at such a disadvantage. They're going to want to bury everything and hope we don't have to deal with it for another generation."
My gaze flicked back to Pierce. It worked last time. Why try anything new?
Clearly having heard her, Pierce turned, a mix of determination and irritation on his face. "That's what I've abided by all along, and look where it got me."
Hands in her pockets, Vivian shrugged. She was one of six and the youngest.
I carefully lifted my bridesmaid's dress out and shut the trunk with a thump, hearing the solid sound echo. It was as if the world was still asleep, here on the verge of a new day. "They should be afraid," I said as I draped the dress over my arm. "It's not going to go away. They have to do something." I hesitated, hoisting my duffel bag in my free hand. "Besides giving me a lobotomy, that is."
Vivian rocked back as her cab pulled up and the doorman opened the door for her. "Well, thank you," she said, chuckling ruefully. "It's been an education." Her gaze went to Pierce, now standing beside me and trying to take my suitcase. "If I don't get the chance to see you alone again, good luck."
Good luck. I'd need it. "Oh! Wait!" I said as she started to turn away, and I let Pierce take my bag, then made him hold my dress, too. "I've got something for you," I said, head down as I rummaged in my shoulder bag.
Vivian paused, and I held my breath in annoyance until my searching fingers found the little Mobius-strip pin. "This is yours," I said as I handed it over, feeling flustered for some reason. "I didn't magic it or anything. I thought you might want it back. Seeing as you don't have one...anymore."
A huge smile spread across her face as she took it, pleasure and real gratitude in her expression. "Thanks," she said softly, her smooth fingers curving over the pin possessively. "I'll probably have to give it up because you touched it, but thank you. Brooke-" Her words broke off and her gaze dropped. "Brooke gave me hell for losing it."
There were new wrinkles at the corners of her eyes when she looked up, and a deep sadness. Leaning forward, she gave me a hug, her fist holding her pin, pressing hard into my back. She wasn't very tall, and I was again struck by how someone so slight could be so powerful.
"Thanks," she whispered as she stepped back, her eyes flicking to mine as if embarrassed. She had smelled like redwood, and I wondered if she had sensed the stink of burnt amber on me when she turned and headed for her cab, her eyes unable to meet mine.
The door thumped shut behind her, and she waved, looking worried as the car pulled away. The sound of the engine was muffled in the rising fog, and it was just Pierce and me standing outside a squat hotel in the middle of San Francisco, the doorman waiting for the keys so he could park my mom's car.
Pierce had my stuff, so I handed the attendant my keys along with a couple of bills, and the guy thanked me, his suspicions easing. Pierce's eyes widened at the amount, but he was probably still running on eighteenth-century gratuities, and I don't think a nickel would have done it. The car vanished in the same way as the first, and I looked at the hotel, almost losing my balance as I ran my eyes up to the brightening sky. The thought of earthquakes slipped through me, and I took my garment bag back from Pierce. It would be just like the coven to destroy an entire building to get to me.
My lethal-amulet detector hung conspicuously from the side of my bag as I headed to the double doors with my dress over my arm. It felt like I was entering a war zone.
A minor shiver lifted through my aura as I passed over the threshold, and my shoulders dropped. Pierce grunted as he felt it, too, and I was guessing it was a rather expensive calming charm, temporary, to be sure, but effective.
"This looks nice," I said as I looked over the deep reception/living room designed in solid blocks of color that were rich and sophisticated. The ceilings weren't that high, but they were decorated to hide the retrofitted earthquake support. To my right was the reception desk where the night clerk was talking to Ivy. Trent was standing before it chatting amicably to the manager. He must have been dropping hundred-dollar bills again because the man in the suit was almost bowing and scraping. Ivy, though, was having trouble, clearly not happy with the woman behind the desk. Jenks was snarling something at her, a red dust pooling on her keyboard.
"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.
"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.