Algaliarept’s smile widened.
“Quen, help me circle them!” Trisk rasped, and she patted her jeans for her absent chalk. Taking a stick of charred wood, they traced a new line around Kal’s barrier. With a sigh of relief, Trisk watched a new circle spring up to create a double-walled circle. Three circles glowed in the night. Now, even if Algaliarept should get past Kal’s barrier, the demon would not escape.
“I’m listening.” Algaliarept poked a gloved finger at Kal’s inner circle, testing.
Trisk let the burnt stick fall, walking backward to Daniel as all her plans began to dissolve. She never should have summoned Algaliarept, and certainly not where an entire room of Inderlanders could hear. Her grandmother might have been smart, but she was an idiot.
“You want him?” Kal looked at a horrified Ulbrine. “I’ll give him to you, but I will walk away from this clean. Not a hint now or ever that I or my family was involved in the plague. Blame it on a ladybug. I don’t care, but not me.”
“Difficult, but not impossible,” Algaliarept said, eyeing Piscary.
“And I want her research on the universal donor virus,” Kal added. “If I am to do this, I want everything.”
“What!” Incensed, Trisk took a step toward the bubble. “You can’t do that.” She looked from a stiff-faced Kal to a grinning demon. “You promised my name would go on my research!” she exclaimed, shrugging off Daniel’s calming hand.
“I’m a member of the enclave,” Ulbrine said, eyes haunted. “You can’t give me to him.”
Kal’s lip twitched. “You made a mistake, Ulbrine,” he said, an odd, dangerous, lost light in his eye. “My family can trace our name to the elven warlords that fought in the ever-after. Yours only goes back to the slave pens. I have no problem sacrificing a bishop to save a king.”
“You are no king, Kalamack,” Ulbrine whispered, but he was afraid, and Algaliarept began to laugh.
“Done and done,” the demon said, holding his gloved hand out. “Give him to me, and it will be as you say.”
Trisk stepped closer until Algaliarept’s image became wavy from the triple bubble. “You promised my name on my research.”
“Let it go, Trisk,” Daniel said, and she rounded on him.
“You think this is about my pride?” she said bitterly. “If Kal walks away from this, we are dead. I can’t make Piscary’s metabolism booster, and if that doesn’t happen, we don’t come out of the closet, and then we all die for breaking the silence, you included! That’s how he gets his name on my research. We’re all dead!”
“He wouldn’t . . .” Daniel looked behind him to Piscary, going white as he realized the vampire would.
Algaliarept actually bowed, short and stilted because of the narrowness of his prison. “My dear mistress, I have already fulfilled my end of your bargain.”
“You have not!” she exclaimed, and Algaliarept’s lips twitched in a flash of ire.
“I have. Did I not suggest you roll with him? Did you not take my advice? You are pregnant, and is not the father of the child bound by elven law to marry and support you?”
She went still. Quen sighed. She heard it clearly in the night air. She couldn’t look away from Algaliarept, even when Piscary began to laugh. Daniel’s shoes scraped, and she flashed warm, blushing as Algaliarept began to pull his glove off, one finger at a time.
“Is he not required by law to sta-a-a-ay with you,” the demon drawled, clearly enjoying this. “See that you and your child are well treated, fed, and have all the best a little elf can give an elfling?”
“You’re pregnant?” Kal blurted, and she flushed deeper at his horror.
“You slept with her,” Ulbrine muttered, and she clenched her jaw.
“Trisk?” Quen said, and she jumped when his hand landed gently on her shoulder.
She nodded, furious that she was going to have to sacrifice her own happiness to get what she thought she wanted. She’d be alive, though, and Daniel, and what was left of the world. “I will stay in Cincinnati,” she said in a low voice. Kal’s lips twisted in annoyance, and she lifted her head defiantly, knowing that custom and law would demand Kal remain with her. “I will stay!” she exclaimed. “And you, Kal, will stay with me.”
“That child might not even be mine,” Kal said, and Algaliarept smirked.
“It is,” the demon said, and Trisk glared at Kal, hating him. “It’s a boy.” Algaliarept cocked his head, breathing deep. “A healthy boy. Or he will be, with a little tinkering. Blond with brown eyes, but Kal, you can change that with your bride’s research so the little tyke won’t offend your mother.” He eyed Kal over his glasses. “I’d say yes. Your code is so tattered that you’ll never manage a child without the hybrid vigor of a dark elf.”
Trisk burned, hating them all now.
“Do you still wish to trade, Trenton Lee Kalamack? Or will you simply marry the bitch and create a drug that a fifth of the world will want?” Algaliarept leered at him. “Need. Pay for.”