My thoughts shot to his neatly arranged discs, and it was with an incredible resolve that I kept my eyes on his instead of following my suspicions to his desk drawer. God, help me. The man ran biodrugs along with Brimstone. The man was a freaking biodrug lord. My heart hammered and my mouth went dry. You were jailed for running Brimstone. But you were staked, burned, and scattered for running biodrugs. And he wanted me to work for him.
“You’ve shown an unexpected capacity to plan, Ms. Morgan,” Trent said, interrupting my racing thoughts. “Vampire assassins won’t attack you while under a Tamwood’s protection. And arranging a pixy clan to protect you against fairies as well as living in a church to keep the Weres at bay are beautiful in their simplicity. Let me know when you change your mind about working for me. You would find satisfaction here—and recognition. Something the I.S. has been most remiss with.”
I steeled my face, concentrating on keeping my voice from shaking. I hadn’t planned anything. Ivy had, and I wasn’t sure what her motives were. “With all due respect, Mr. Kalamack, you can go Turn yourself.”
Jonathan stiffened, but Trent simply nodded and went back behind his desk.
A heavy hand hit my shoulder. I instinctively grabbed it, crouching to fling whoever had touched me over my shoulder and to the floor. Jonathan hit with a surprised grunt. I was kneeling on his neck before I realized I had moved. Frightened for what I had done, I rose and backed away. Trent glanced up in unconcern from replacing the disc in the drawer.
Three other people had entered at Jonathan’s heavy thump. Two centered about me, one stood before Trent.
“Let her go,” Trent said. “It was Jon’s error.” He sighed with mild disappointment. “Jon,” he added tiredly, “she isn’t the fluff she pretends to be.”
The tall man had risen smoothly to his feet. He tugged his shirt straight and ran his hand to smooth his hair. He eyed me with hatred. Not only had I bested him before his employer, but he had also been rebuked in front of me. The angry man scooped Jenks up with bad grace and motioned to the door.
I walked free, back out into the sun, more afraid of what I had turned down than of having left the I.S.
I yanked at the pizza dough, taking my frustrations concerning my fabulous afternoon out on the helpless yeast and flour. A crackle of stiff paper came from Ivy’s wooden table. My attention jerked to her. Head bowed and brow furrowed, she kept her attention on her map. I’d be a fool not to recognize that her reactions had quickened with sunset. She moved with that unnerving grace again, but she looked irate, not amorous. Still, I was aware of her every move.
Ivy had a real run, I thought sourly as I stood at the center island and made pizza. Ivy had a life. Ivy wasn’t trying to prove the city’s most prominent, beloved citizen was a biodrug lord and play head cook at the same time.
Three days on her own, and Ivy had already got a run to find a missing human. I thought it odd a human would come to a vamp for help, but Ivy had her own charms, or scary competence, rather. Her nose had been buried in her map of the city all night, plotting the man’s usual haunts with colored markers and drawing out the paths he would likely take while driving from home to work and such.
“I’m no expert,” Ivy said to the table, “but is that how you’re supposed to do that?”
“You want to make dinner?” I snapped, then looked at what I was doing. The circle was more of a lopsided oval, so thin in places it almost broke through. Embarrassed, I pushed the dough to fill in the thin spot and tugged it to fit the baking stone properly. As I fussed with the edges, I surreptitiously watched her. At her first sultry glance or overly quick move, I was going out the door to hide behind Jenks’s stump. The jar of sauce opened with a loud pop. My eyes flicked to Ivy. Seeing no change, I dumped most of it onto the pizza and recapped the jar.
What else should go on it? I wondered. It would be a miracle if Ivy let me top it with everything I usually did. Deciding not to even attempt the cashews, I pulled out the mundane toppings. “Peppers,” I muttered. “Mushrooms.” I glanced at Ivy. She looked like a meat kind of a gal. “Bacon left from breakfast.”
The marker squeaked as Ivy drew a purple line from the campus to the Hollow’s more hazardous strip of nightclubs and bars by the riverfront. “So,” she drawled. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you, or am I going to have to order pizza in after you burn that one?”
I put the pepper in the sink and leaned against the counter. “Trent runs biodrugs,” I said, hearing the ugliness anew as I said it. “If he knew I was going to try and tag him with that, he’d kill me quicker than the I.S.”
“But he doesn’t.” Ivy drew another line. “All he knows is you think he runs Brimstone and had his secretary murdered. If he was worried, he wouldn’t have offered you that job.”
“Job?” I said, turning my back to her as I washed the pepper. “It’s in the South Seas—running his Brimstone plantations, no doubt. He wants me out of the way, that’s all.”
“How about that,” she said as she capped her pen by pounding it on the table. Startled, I spun, flinging drops of water everywhere. “He thinks you’re a threat,” she finished, making a show of brushing away the water I had accidentally hit her with.
I gave her a sheepish smile, hoping she couldn’t tell she had me on edge. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I said.
Ivy went back to her map, frowning as she dabbed at the stains the water had made on her crisp lines. “Give me some time to check around,” she said in a preoccupied voice. “If we can get ahold of his financial records and a few of his buyers, we can find a paper trail. But I still say it’s just Brimstone.”
I yanked open the fridge for the Parmesan and mozzarella. If Trent didn’t run biodrugs, then I was a pixy princess. There was a clatter as Ivy tossed one of her markers into the cup beside her monitor. My back was to her, and the noise startled me.
“Just because he has a drawer full of discs labeled with diseases once helped by biodrugs doesn’t mean he’s a drug lord,” Ivy said, throwing another. “Maybe they’re client lists. The man is big into philanthropy. Keeps half a dozen country hospitals running alone with his donations.”
“Maybe,” I said, unconvinced. I knew about Trent’s generous contributions. Last fall he had been auctioned off in Cincinnati’s For the Children charity for more money than I used to make in a year. Personally, I thought his efforts were a publicity front. The man was dirt.
“Besides,” Ivy said as she leaned back in her chair and tossed another one of her markers into the cup in an unreal show of hand-eye coordination. “Why would he be running biodrugs? The man is independently wealthy. He doesn’t need any more money. People are motivated by three things, Rachel. Love …” A red marker clattered in with the rest. “Revenge …” A black one landed next to it. “And power,” she finished, tossing in a green one. “Trent has enough money to buy all three.”
“You forgot one,” I said, wondering if I should just keep my mouth shut. “Family.”
Ivy grabbed the pens out of the cup. Leaning back in her chair to balance on two legs, she started tossing them again. “Doesn’t family come in with love?” she asked.
I watched her from the corner of my sight. Not if they were dead, I thought, my memories turning to my dad. In that case, it might come under revenge.
The kitchen went silent as I sprinkled a thin dusting of Parmesan on the sauce. Only the clacks of Ivy’s pens broke the stillness. Every single one went in, the sporadic rattles getting