Chapter Twenty-four
The green glow stick that Glenn had left me made Jenks look like a tiny, sickly wraith as he sat on my knee with his legs pulled up, mirroring me. It seemed colder now that I wasn't moving, and my back was to the curved wall as I sat beside the ventilation shaft, my shoulder bag next to me. The draft was pulling the stray strands of my hair up and back. I rolled the glow stick between my palms as I listened to the sporadic radio chatter. I had the speaker cranked since it wasn't in my ear, dangling down my front so Jenks could hear it, too. The conversations revolved around HAPA: who they were, what they were capable of, how many times they'd evaded arrest. I should've been listening, but I was thinking about Trent's charms.
"You okay?" Jenks asked, his wings glittering like they held water drops.
I smiled, remembering how beautiful his wings were close up when I'd shrunk down to help him through the first difficult day after his wife died. "Thinking about Trent's charms," I admitted.
Jenks scowled, his angular features pinching as he picked at his boots. "Yeah? That Pandora charm he made you almost killed you. You should've let me bury them in the garden."
I dragged my shoulder bag closer, peering down at the blue and gold pins. It was hard to tell the difference in the dim light, but I shoved two paralyzing charms in my right boot, two blinding charms in my left.
"Oh God. You're going to use them!" Jenks moaned, and I moved my knee wildly until he took off.
"I'll look pretty stupid if I need them and I don't have them," I said, wiggling my foot until the cool metal warmed and their pinch vanished. I wasn't one for organization, but even I knew that leaving loose charms rattling in a bag wasn't a good idea, and as Jenks pantomimed hanging himself, I gathered the rest, slipping them into a zippered inner pocket of my shoulder bag where they wouldn't interfere with my reach for the splat gun. I still didn't know what the tiny ring Trent had left me did, and I looked at it, remembering what Jenks had said about his boys. Trent had simply forgotten. That's all.
"Do I have time to make a call?" I asked, leaning over to get my phone out of my bag.
"What? Right now?" Jenks dropped back down to my knee, his expression disgusted. "Seriously, Rachel, it was sweet and all that he made you charms, but are you willing to trust your life to Trent's maybe skills?"
The memory of watching him preparing to break into the Withons' high-security compound and steal his own daughter filled my thoughts. It wasn't how good he had looked in that black thief outfit, every line of muscle showing, or the obvious preparations he'd made, all the way down to getting me to help him get there alive. It was his confidence, his desire. I'd seen it under the arch before it fell, in the Arizona desert when he summoned Ku'Sox, and in a stupid little bar in Las Vegas when he didn't want to leave to get our car. I'd seen it yesterday afternoon when he helped me with Al. He was trying to be what he wanted, and he really . . . wasn't half bad. For some weird reason, I trusted him. God help me.
If he got me killed, I was going to be pissed.
"How much time do we have?" I asked Jenks again, my pulse hammering as I turned my phone on, praying I'd get a signal. One bar. It might be enough, and Jenks was silent as I scrolled through my recently called numbers and hit Trent's.
"Enough if you're quick about it," Jenks said, his expression worried. His wings moved fitfully as he stood, his back almost to me as a show of his ambivalence.
"I just want to know," I said as I tossed my hair from my ear and put the phone to it.
It rang three times before it was picked up, and I fidgeted while Jenks pouted. I didn't know what I was going to say, a feeling that was compounded when the line clicked open and Trent's very muzzy voice murmured, "Rachel? Mmm, hi."
My eyes met Jenks's, and he sniggered at me. Hi? He sounded half asleep. Elves usually napped around noon, but Trent had been taking a lot of flack since coming out of the closet as an elf, and I'd be willing to bet that he was trying to stretch his natural sleep schedule to at least finish out a human workday before crashing. "Um, you got a minute?" I said, warming.
"I didn't think about this before I installed that switchboard," he said, his voice sounding more like his own. "What can I do for you? Since I'm awake."
Embarrassed, I winced. "Sorry," I said, meaning it. "Ah, about those charms you gave me?" I should have called him earlier, and my scuffing feet made echoes as I turned the radio down all the way. Jenks could probably still hear it.
"Charms." Trent's voice smoothed, his polish returning, and I heard the sliding sound of fabric as he got out of bed, presumably. His voice was normal, meaning he didn't have anyone in there with him, and I don't know why the thought occurred to me even as he added, "What about them?"
"You, ah, didn't tell me what the ring does."
"Oh. Sorry," Trent said, and I heard a click and an echo as he put me on speakerphone. "It's a line jump," he added, and I almost dropped the phone.
"I didn't know you could do that," I said, my wide eyes touching on Jenks's to find he was as mystified as me. "Who did you buy it from?" Don't say Al. Please don't say Al.
I heard the smooth shutting of a drawer, and Trent's easy voice saying, "No one. Elves can jump the lines with enough prep work. Ah, I've never actually tried that one out. It's supposed to bring the two rings together. It was originally a way for star-crossed lovers to meet against fate, but when you break it down to bare tacks, it's simply a line jump. A come-to-me kind of thing. Just turn the ring, tap a line, think of me, and say ta na shay. I've already got mine on."
Ta na shay. I'd heard that before somewhere. Holding the ring up in the faint pixy light, I slipped it on my ring finger, then moved it to my pinky when it was too tight. Jenks made kissing sounds as he stood on the rim of my bag, and I flicked a finger at him. The ring fit my pinky perfectly, which threw me until recalling that Trent had stolen my pinky ring once.
"I thought you could use it if you ever got trapped in someone's circle," Trent said. "That has got to be . . . frustrating."
It was. Every time. "Thank you," I said softly. "I can't ever repay you for this."
"You could come work with me," he said, and I made a fist of my hand, the ring glinting. "Is that all you wanted?"
I heard in his voice his desire to be gone and about his day, but something in me hesitated. "No," I said, and Jenks's wings stilled and drooped. "Since I've got you on the phone, do you know anything about the FIB taking on new people? A new division, maybe?"
Immediately Jenks's attention sharpened, his wings clattering to dust silver into my bag. A chill dropped down my spine, magnified by the dark nothing we were surrounded by. Jenks had noticed the-men-who-don't-belong, too, it wasn't my imagination.
"I don't generally follow the FIB's hiring and firing practices unless it impacts my interests." Trent's voice was somewhat concerned but not really. He was dissing me, and I didn't like it.
I grimaced, finding the words to explain hard in coming. It wasn't as if I could tell Trent that my roommate's boyfriend was acting distant and that I thought something hinky was going on at the FIB. Jenks gestured for me to say something, and encouraged, I said, "Glenn's been acting funny since I got nabbed by HAPA."
Jenks smacked his head with his palm. From the phone, Trent said, "I'm sure he simply blames himself for your capture - "
"Trent, listen to me," I said quickly, cutting him off. "I wouldn't come to you with something unless I thought it was important. I don't know what it means, but you are going to take me seriously or I'm never going to come to you again. Don't assume that because you didn't see the dragon first that it doesn't exist."
I heard him sigh, then the squeak of a chair. "I'm listening."
My pulse hammered. He was listening. I was going to him with a concern, and he was listening. Like a business associate, or like a friend? Did it matter?
"Something is wrong. Glenn has Ivy, Jenks, and me out at the outskirts of the run."
"You're on a run?" Trent said, his voice rising in disbelief. "Right now? And you just thought to call me about the ring?"
Irritation flooded me, but I pressed on whereas I might normally have just hung up. "He has us on the outskirts. Everyone with Inderland blood in them is on the fringe. It's humans only at the take site. Last time, it was an even mix."
"Perhaps he wants this to be recorded as a human effort," he said, but Jenks was shaking his head right along with me.
Fiddling with the zipper on my boot, I said, "I'd go with that except that there's an entirely different unit of people down here. I've never seen them before. They're like . . . men in black. They almost ignore Glenn, even as they seem to be helping. I'm sure they're the source of the new equipment, the really top-of-the-line stuff. It feels like they're running the take and letting him have the credit if he stays out of the way."
Jenks hummed his wings. "Tell him the guys with the tech stuff smell like the desert."
I looked at Jenks, surprised, and he shrugged.
"The tech people smell like the desert?" Trent repeated.
"The FIB doesn't fund Glenn enough to have doughnuts at his weekly meetings," I said as I flicked my earpiece, hanging down my front. "He's hiding something from Ivy, too. He's never been secretive, well, not when it comes to business."
"New people running the take . . ." The faint scratching of a pencil came through the phone, sounding alien in the chill dark. "Allowing Glenn apparent free movement in terms of personnel and sharing their equipment. I'll look into it," he said, and I heard something clunk. Shoes maybe?
I frowned. He was brushing me off. "Hey."
"I said I'll look into it," he said, his voice a tad harsh. "I'm not brushing you off, but I'd like to show at my office, and I'm not dressed."
Jenks snickered, and I felt myself warm. "Oh. Sorry."
From the earpiece dangling across my front, a tiny voice shouted, "Down! Down!"
Shit, it had started. "Trent, I gotta go."
"My God, you really are on a run," Trent said, and I stood, flustered.
"Thanks for the charms," I said, then closed the phone, cutting him off. Jenks rose up, his dust lighting a good bit of tunnel.
"Holy crap, that was gunfire!" Jenks exclaimed, landing on my shoulder to hear better. I grabbed the earpiece and held it before us like a candle. If I put it in my ear, Jenks wouldn't be able to hear.
"Give me an excuse!" Glenn shouted. "Everyone down! Fingers laced. One twitch of magic, and you will be shot!"
Chris's voice was shrill, swearing at Eloy, at Glenn, at me. Why is she swearing at me?
"Chris! Help!" Jennifer cried, and then she shrieked. There was a masculine grunt, and I tensed, leaning forward. It was a weird feeling, knowing what was going on and not being a part of it. Jenks, too, looked frustrated.
"Cease and desist!" Glenn shouted. "You are wanted for questioning in the - "
"Corrumpro!" Chris exclaimed harshly. Gasps of fear rose, and then a cry of pain.
"Put that out," Glenn directed calmly, and I heard another crash. "Someone cuff her! I don't know, shove a sock in her mouth! Use the zip strips!"
I looked at Jenks. He was itching to fly. "They should have had someone who can do magic there," I said, and he nodded.