“Rachel?” Trent questioned, and I took a breath.
“I’m fine,” I said for the third time, but it was beginning to sound ridiculous, even to me. I didn’t want him to come to my rescue, but damn it, I wanted to see him, wrap my arms around him, and breathe him in to remind myself that I was still alive and that everything would be okay.
“Is it Zack?” Trent asked. “Rachel—”
“Zack is okay,” I blurted, not wanting to tell him about Nash yet. “So far.” I took a slow breath to find a sliver of professionalism. Calm. “I’m still working on it. I called to tell you I was okay. Sorry about the ring. Is it a one-shot deal, or can we set it up again?”
“What’s the matter?” Trent insisted. “You’re upset. Is Ivy okay? Jenks?”
“All good!” I said with a forced cheerfulness. “I’m sort of stuck until midnight, when I can get a ride to the airport.” Don’t tell him where you are. Don’t!
“I thought Hollows International was shut down,” Trent said, and I slumped.
“It is.” I turned to the mirror, telling my reflection it was too dumb to try to lie.
“Rachel, where are you?”
My eyes closed, and a lump thickened my throat. Sure, I was mad at Al, or guilty, or something, but I hadn’t wanted Trent to know how badly I’d effed this up. “Alcatraz,” I whispered, but I knew Trent heard me when he didn’t say anything. “Al dropped me here. As a joke.” My eyes opened, and I held my arm around my middle. A joke, I had said. But it wasn’t a joke, and it hurt. “I’m fine,” I said again. “The warden has been great. Vivian vouched for me. I’m waiting for the next boat so I can get to the airport and get back home.”
“I’ll be there in forty minutes,” Trent said, and I heard him snapping his fingers for Quen’s attention . . . and then the scratching of a pen on paper.
“Trent, I’ve got this,” I said, but I was three seconds away from crying. “I didn’t call because I needed a knight on a white horse. I’ve got money for a ticket home.”
“Good, because my horse is black and I’m a little short on cash. You might have to buy me dinner,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. “I’m coming. I need to get out of here before I smack Ellasbeth. She’s . . . I’ll tell you when I see you. God, Rachel, coming out here without you was a mistake. You’ll be okay until I get there?”
I blinked back the tears, feeling loved. Loving him. “I will. Pike is here with me.”
“Pike?” he said, clearly caught off guard, and then he ended the call.
He hadn’t said good-bye. He hadn’t said he loved me. They were both pretty obvious. Sighing, I locked my phone’s screen and smiled at the bedraggled woman in the mirror.
After I called Jenks and David, I was going to run the hot-water tank cold.
CHAPTER
18
“David is finding places for the weres, but the witches have set up a tent in the backyard,” Jenks was saying, his tiny voice louder than usual through the phone’s speaker. “Stef moved all your stuff except for your bed up to the belfry so Finley could set up some temporary cots and storage. The mattress wouldn’t fit up the stairs, so we put it in storage. The fainting couch is still up there, though. Are you good with that? I can get you a cot.”
“The couch is fine,” I said as I drew a strand of blessedly clean hair from my mouth and looked out over the blue and gold water tinted with sunset. The scent of Mandy’s detangler was heavy despite the stiff wind, but we’d gotten word that Trent was on his way, and the warden and two of his officers had joined us on the dock to wait for him. It was the only place on the island where I felt remotely comfortable. Even in the shower surrounded by perfumes and soap, I’d felt the presence of the ancient ghosts who’d held the island long before the Europeans.
“I went ahead and okayed Finley’s plan so she could buy some stuff,” Jenks was saying as I scanned the stiff waves. “The lumberyard pushed back the delivery for two months when they found out where it was going, but the vamps went out and got it after the demo.” He laughed. “And then some.”
Demo? “I don’t want to know, do I . . .” I said.
“Not when you’re two thousand miles away.”
I gripped the plastic grocery bag holding my blue-tinted clothes tighter and rocked from foot to foot, grimacing when my boots squished. Putting on the size eight inmate sneakers I’d found beside the sweats hadn’t been an option. The guard-emblazoned sweats, though, I’d accepted, and the stiff breeze was going right through them.
Pike seemed warm enough in a long, borrowed rain slicker, the heavy black fabric and classic cut giving him a gangster look as he chatted with the warden in the gathering dusk. Two officers lurked behind us with Pike’s weapons. There were two more guards in the small skiff tied to the dock, and my pulse quickened when I followed their sudden pointing to a tourist boat cutting through the waves. Trent.
One of the officers blew an air horn, and immediately the boat slowed, its wake rolling out before it. The two guards in the skiff pushed from the quay, a spotlight playing over the tourist boat as they went to check its credentials. Even in the twilight I could recognize Trent in the huge, covered cockpit, and I waved, getting an enthusiastic wave back.
“It’s a good thing they did, because the stores are beginning to empty out,” Jenks said, but I really wasn’t listening and had no clue what he was talking about. “You can’t find a roll of toilet paper or loaf of bread unless you go into the Hollows. Hey, you owe Edden big.”
“Edden, why?” I asked, and Pike’s conversation with the warden faltered.
“He got to your purse before the I.S. did,” the pixy said with a laugh, and I glanced at Pike to see if he was listening. Two thousand miles away, someone was playing their music too loud. Cutting through it was a rising argument about chip dip and the sound of a nail gun. Which, when you put it all together, made standing on the dock at Alcatraz almost pleasant.
“I had Stef put it in the belfry,” Jenks continued. “So far, you aren’t being blamed for the five dead vampires, just fleeing the scene and blowing out three blocks of electronics. He worries about you, Rache.”
I exhaled, wishing the guards tying their boats together would hurry up. There were two deckhands and a captain clustered in a spotlight on the rafted boats, and one of them couldn’t find his wallet. “Tell Edden thanks, and that I’ll be in to tell him my side of it when I can,” I said as I looked at Pike again and the vampire returned to his conversation about handguns with the warden. “It might be a while.”