A Fistful of Charms (26 page)

E
yes on the rearview mirror, Ivy eased the van to a halt in the restaurant lot in the shade between two semis. The sound of traffic was loud through her window, and I couldn't help but be impressed at being so well hidden this close to the main road. Shifting the gearshift into park, she undid her seat belt and turned. “Rachel, there's a box under the floorboard. Will you get it for me?”

“Sure.” While Ivy got out, I scuffed back the throw rug and pried up the metal plate to find, instead of a spare tire, a dusty cardboard box. Trying to keep it from touching me, I set it on the driver's seat. Ivy looked out from between the two trucks when Jenks parked across the lot. She whistled, and Jax darted up before his dad could even get out of the car.

“What's up, Ms. Tamwood?” the small pixy said, stopping before her. “Why did we stop? Are we in trouble? Do you need gas? My dad has to pee. Can you wait for him?”

I was pleased to see that Jax was wearing a scrap of red tucked into his belt. It was a symbol of good intentions and a quick departure should he stray into another pixy's territory. Seeing him learning the ropes made me feel good, even if the reason behind it was depressing.

“The Weres have the bridge,” Ivy said, gesturing for Jenks to stay where he was beside Kisten's car. He was fumbling with his inside-out cap, and with the jeans he now had on over his running tights and his aviator jacket, he looked good. “Tell your dad to get a table if it looks okay,” Ivy
added, squinting from behind her sunglasses. “I'll be there in a sec.”

“Sure thing, Ms. Tamwood.”

He was gone in a clattering of wings. A light breeze shifted Ivy's hair, and standing beside the open door, she pried the dusty flaps up to pull out a roll of heavy ribbon. A faint smile quirked the corner of her mouth, and Nick and I waited for an explanation.

“I haven't done this in years,” she said, looking to the narrow slice of visible parking lot. “I don't think they saw us,” she said, “but by tonight they will have tracked you and Jenks to your motel, and that lady will tell them you were driving a white van. If we're going to be in town longer than that, we need to change a few things.”

I recognized the thick tape in her hands as magnetic striping, and my eyebrows went up.
Cool. A vehicle disguise.

“There's a license plate somewhere in there,” she said, and I nodded, going back for it. “And the screwdriver?”

Nick cleared his throat, sounding impressed. “What is that? Magnetic pinstripe?”

Ivy didn't look at him. “Kisten has black lightning and flaming crosses too,” she said.

And illegal flash paint,
I mentally added when she shook a can of specially designed spray paint.

She moved the box to the running board of the nearby semi. The door thumped shut, sealing Nick and me inside. “By the time I get done with her, she could win the goth division in a car show,” she said.

Smirking, I handed her the Ohio plate and screwdriver through the window. Even the tags were up to date.

“Sit tight,” she said, taking them. “Nobody moves until I get Jenks's take on the restaurant.”

“I'm sure it's fine,” I said, moving to the front seat. “I'm so hungry, I could eat a seat cushion.”

Ivy's brown eyes met mine from over her sunglasses, and her motion of shaking the spray can slowed. “It's not the food I'm worried about. I want to be sure it's mostly
human.” Her face went worried. “If there are any Weres, we're leaving.”

Oh, yeah.
Worried, I slumped behind the wheel, but Ivy looked unconcerned, taking a rag from the box and starting to wipe the road dust off the van. I was glad she was there. Sure, I was a classically trained runner, and while subterfuge was a part of that, hiding from large numbers of people out to get you wasn't. This stuff was what she had cut her teeth on. I guessed.

Nick undid his belt when Ivy edged out of sight. I could hear her work, the sporadic hisses of paint followed by squeaks as she wiped down the bumpers before the illegal paint took. The smell of fixative tickled my nose. I glanced at Nick, and he opened his mouth.

“Hey, a disguise sounds like a good idea,” I blurted, twisting to reach my bag. “I've got a good half dozen in here. They're for smell, not looks, since Weres track by smell and will find us that way long before they see us. They took the ones I had on the island, but I made extra.”

I was babbling, and Nick knew it. He puffed his breath out and settled back while I rummaged for them. “A disguise sounds good,” he said. “Thanks.”

“No prob,” I answered, bringing out a new finger stick along with a handful of amulets. I broke the safety seal and arranged four amulets on my knees. I didn't know how to treat Nick anymore. We had done well together until it fell apart, but it had been a long, lonely three months until he finally left. I was mad at him, but it was hard to stay that way. I knew it was my need to help the downtrodden, but there it was.

The silence was uncomfortable, and I pricked my finger anew. I invoked them all to make the scent of redwood blossom, then handed him the first. “Thank you,” he said as he took it, lacing it over his head, where it fell to clink against his pain amulet. “For everything, Ray-ray. I really owe you. What you did…I can never repay you for that.”

It was the first time we'd been alone since pulling him out of that back room, and I wasn't surprised at his words. I
flashed him a blank smile then looked away, draping my amulet over my head and tucking it behind my shirt to touch my skin. “It's okay,” I said, not wanting to talk about it. “You saved my life; I saved yours.”

“So we're even, huh?” he said lightly.

“That's not…what I meant.” I watched Ivy spray an elaborate symbol on the hood, her hidden artistic talents making something both beautiful and surprising as she blurred the gray paint into the white of the van to look very professional. Glancing at me in question, she tossed the can to the box and went to the back to change the plate.

Nick was silent, then, “You can Were, now?” he asked, stress wrinkles crinkling the corners of his eyes. The blue of them seemed faded somehow. “You make a beautiful wolf.”

“Thank you.” I couldn't leave it at that, and I turned to see him miserable and alone.
Damn it, why did I always fall for the underdog?
“It was a one-shot deal. I have to twist a new curse if I want to do it again. It's…not going to happen again.” I had so much black on my soul, I'd never be rid of it. I wanted to blame Nick, but
I
was the one who took the curse. I could have submitted to the drugs and stuck it out until someone came to rescue my ass. But no-o-o-o. I took the easy way by using a demon curse, and I was going to pay for it dearly.

His head went up and down, not knowing my thoughts but clearly glad I was talking. “So it isn't like you're a Were now in addition to being a witch.”

I shook my head, startled when my longer hair brushed my shoulders. He knew the only way to become a Were was to be born one; he was trying to keep the conversation going.

Ivy came to the door, smelling of the fixative and wiping the gray from her fingers with a rag. “Here,” she said, handing the old plate through. “If you look in the console, there should be an altered registration taped to the top. Can you switch them out?”

“You bet.”
Swell. Let's add falsifying legal documents to the list,
I thought, but I took the Kentucky plate and screwdriver,
giving her two amulets in their place. “These are for you and Jenks. Make sure he puts it on. I don't care what he says it makes him smell like.”

Ivy's long fingers curved around them, shifting so they dangled from the cord and wouldn't effect her. “Scent disguise? Good thinking—for you.” Showing the faintest blush of nervousness, she handed one of them back. “I'm not wearing one.”

“Ivy,” I protested, having no clue why she'd never accept any of my spells or charms.

“They don't know what I smell like, and I'm not wearing it!” she said, and I put up a hand in surrender. Immediately her brow smoothed, and she dug in a pocket for the keys to the van, handing them to me through the window. “I'll be right back,” she said. “If I'm not out in four minutes, go.” I took a breath to protest, and she added, “I mean it. Come rescue me by all means, but plan it out, don't burst in with your hair flying and in flip-flops.”

A half smile came over me. “Four minutes,” I said, and she walked away. I watched her in the side mirror. Her shoulders were hunched and her head was down—and then she was gone.

“I've got a bad feeling about this,” I said.

“What?” Nick said softly. “That she's walking into a trap?”

I turned to him. “No. That she's not going to leave until it's over.”

Worry filled his eyes; he was going to say something I didn't want to hear. “Rachel—”

“By the Turn, I'm hungry. I hope she hurries up,” I babbled.

“Rachel, please. Just listen?”

I closed the console and eased into the seat. This conversation would happen whether I wanted it to or not. Breath slipping from me, I looked at him, to find his haggard face determined.

“I didn't know you were alive,” he said, panic in his eyes. “Al said he had you.”

“He did.”

“And you never answered your phone. I called. God knows I did.”

“It's at the bottom of the Ohio River,” I said flatly, thinking he was a wimp for not calling the church. Then I wondered if he had and Ivy simply hung up on him.

“The paper said you died in a boat explosion saving Kalamack's life.”

“I almost did,” I said, remembering waking up in Trent's limo, having passed out after I pulled the man's freaking elf-ass out of the freezing water.

Nick stretched a swollen hand across the consol between us, and I jerked out of his reach. Making a frustrated sound, he put an elbow on his closed window and looked at the nearby semi. “Damn it, Ray-ray, I thought you were dead. I couldn't stay in Cincinnati. And now that I find you're alive, you won't even let me touch you. Do you have any idea how I mourned?”

I swallowed, the memory of the budded red rose in the jelly jar vase with the pentagram of protection on it lifting through me. My throat tightened.
Why did it have to be so confusing?

“I missed you,” he said, brown eyes thick with pain. “This isn't what I had planned.”

“Me neither,” I said, miserable. “But you left me long before you left Cincinnati. It took me a long time to get over you lying to me about where you had been, and I'm not going back to the way things were. I don't care that it wasn't about another woman. Maybe that I could understand, but it was money. You're a thief, and you let me believe you were something else.”

Nick slumped into a defeated stillness. “I've changed.”

I didn't want to hear this. They never changed, they simply hid it better. “I'm seeing someone,” I said, my voice low so it wouldn't shake. “He's there when I need him, and I'm there for him. He makes me feel good. I don't want to return to how things were, so don't ask me to. You were gone, and he—” I wiped a hand under my eye, embarrassed that they
were wet. “He was there,” I said.
He helped me forget you, you bastard.

“You love him?”

“Whether I love him or not isn't relevant,” I said, hands in my lap.

“He's a vampire?” Nick asked, not moving one inch, and I nodded.

“You can't trust that,” he protested, long hands gesturing weakly. “He's just trying to bind you to him. You know that. God, you can't be that naive! Didn't you just see what happened with your scar? With Ivy?”

I stared at him, my feelings of betrayal rising anew, both angry and frightened. “You told me once that if I wanted to be Ivy's scion, that you would drive me back to the church and walk away. That you loved me enough to leave if it meant I would be happy.” My heart was pounding and I forced my clenched hands apart. “Well, what's the difference, Nick?”

He bowed his head. When he looked up, his face was tight with emotion. “I hadn't lost you then. I didn't know what you meant to me. I do now. Ray-ray, please. It's not you making decisions anymore, but vampire pheromones. You've got to get out before you make a mistake you can't walk away from!”

A movement in the mirror caught my eye.
Ivy. Thank God.
I reached for the door handle. “Don't talk to me about making mistakes,” I said, grabbing my bag and getting out.

I slammed the door, glad to see Ivy for the distraction if nothing else. The van was now gray at the bottom, shading to white at the top and plastered with professional-looking decals. The cloying scent of fixative was a fading hint. Ivy was watching the nearby road as she approached, her subtle finger motions telling me to stay between the shelter of the dirty trucks.

Rocking to a halt, I crossed my arms and waited by the back bumper, lips pressed while Nick shut his door and shuffled forward. “All clear inside?” I said brightly when Ivy joined us. “Good. I'm starved.”

“Just a minute, I want my stuff.” Slipping past me, she
yanked the driver's side door open and retrieved a rolled-down paper bag from under the front seat. She shut the door hard before pushing past Nick and pulling me into her wake. A pause at the head of the shelter the two semis made, and we started for the restaurant, my flip-flops noisy next to her vamp-soft steps. Behind us, I could hear Nick. By all rights, as the most vulnerable member of the group, he should have been between us, but I didn't feel like protecting him, and the danger was minimal.

“Your hair is longer,” Ivy said as we crossed the paved lot to the low wood-slatted building snuggled in among the pines.
Squirrel's End? How…redneck.