A Fistful of Charms (50 page)

Ivy heard my footsteps on the grating and turned with a frown she reserved only for me, a mix of anger and worry. She was ticked. Big surprise there.

“Rachel,” Nick breathed, holding out his hands as if I would take them. I stopped, and his hands fell.

“I wouldn't touch a strange man like that,” I said, reminding him that he was still under a disguise. “Especially one that just hit me.”

His eyes flicked to my dental-floss stitches, and my face warmed. He saw me stiffen, then forced his face smooth. Though he looked nothing like himself, I could tell it was him. Not only was there his voice, but I could see Nick in little mannerisms that only an ex-lover might notice: the twitch of a muscle, the curve of a finger—the glint of annoyance in his eye.

“My God,” he said again, softer. “That was the hardest thing I've ever done. Are you okay? Are you sure you're not hurt?”

Hardest thing he'd ever done?
I thought bitterly, the entire right side of my body sticky with Peter's blood. All he had done was hit me with a truck. I had held Peter while he died, knowing it was wrong but the only thing that would be right.

“The remote doesn't work, Nick,” I said shortly, watching for his tells. “You know anything about that?”

Eyes wide in an emotion I couldn't read, he looked at my bag, telling me he'd seen me put the remote in it. “What do you mean, it doesn't work? It's got to work!”

He reached for it, and I grunted when Jenks yanked me back. My sneakers fumbled for purchase on the metal mesh. In a blink Ivy was between us. The nearby people were getting nervous—thinking we were going to take justice into our own hands—and the Weres watched, evaluating whether this was a scam or a real accident. Peter's body was lying on the pavement, looking like Nick. Someone had covered him with a coat, and a part of me hunched into itself and cried.

“Don't touch me,” I all but hissed, hurting but ready to slug Nick. “You did this, didn't you? You think you're going to get that empty artifact and sell it to them. You'll be in hiding, so they'll come after me when they find out it's not real. It's not going to happen. I won't let you. This is
my
life you're screwing over, not just yours.”

Nick shook his head. “That's not it. You've got to believe me, Ray-ray.”

Shaking from adrenaline, I turned sideways. I didn't like having my back to the truck with the empty focus in it. Ivy had been watching it—along with Nick—but there were too many Weres lurking as accident witnesses for my liking. “Have a good life, Nick,” I said. “Don't include me in it.” Ivy and Jenks flanked me, and we walked away.
What was I going to do?

“I hope you're happy as Ivy's shadow,” he said loudly, his voice full of a vitriolic hatred that he'd probably been denying since Ivy first asked me to be her scion.

I turned, my bandaged hand atop my neck hiding my
stitches. “We aren't…I'm not—”
He had just blown our cover. Son of a bitch…

Three official-looking cars pulled up using the unopened northbound lane, their rear-window lights flashing amber and blue: two FIB, one I.S. The truck wasn't burning yet.
Shit on crap, could it get any worse?

Looking like himself even with the disguise, Nick slumped against the panel of the white Mack truck and held his bleeding knee. His mocking gaze flicked to the cars behind us, their doors slamming shut and loud orders being given to secure the vehicle and get the rubberneckers moving. Three officers headed for us.

“You're rat piss,” Jenks said suddenly to Nick. “No, you're the guy who puts rat piss on his breakfast cereal. We save your worthless human ass, and this is how you thank her? If you come back, I'll kill you myself. You're a foul pile of fairy crap that won't grow stones.”

Nick's face went ugly. “I stole a statue,” he said. “She killed someone and twisted a demon curse to hide that she still has it. I'd say I'm better than a foul, demon-marked witch.”

I sputtered, pulse pounding as I felt myself go light-headed.
Damn him!

Ivy leapt at Nick. Jenks yanked her back, using her shifting momentum to swing himself into Nick. Hands made into fists, Jenks punched him solidly on his jaw.

I took a gasping breath, and the I.S. guys turned their walk into a run. Angry, but with a modicum of restraint compared to Jenks, I got in Nick's face. “You sorry-assed bastard!” I shouted, spitting hair out of my mouth. “
You
ran into
us
!”

I wanted to say more, but Nick pushed himself at me. Jenks was still holding him, and all three of us went down. Instinct kept my hands before my face, and the bandages on my palms were the only thing that saved my skin. Pain shot through my ribs and hands as I hit the grating. The cold metal pressed into my leg where my jeans were torn.

“Get off her!” Ivy snarled. She yanked Nick up and away,
and suddenly I could breathe again I looked up in time to see him spin into Jenks. Like a choreographed dance, Jenks cocked his fist and this time connected right under his jaw. Nick's eyes rolled up and he crumpled.

“Damn, that felt good,” the pixy said, shaking his hand as a thick I.S. officer grabbed his shoulders. “You know how long I've wanted to do that?” he said, letting the men drag him off. “Being big is good.”

Shaking so hard I felt I might fall apart, I got up, bobbing my head at the FIB officer's unheard questions and obediently going where he directed me, but I lost it when a hand closed on my arm.

“Rachel, no!” Ivy shouted, and I turned my spin-and-kick into a spin-and-hair-toss. Adrenaline cleared my thoughts, and I took a painfully deep breath. The man released me, knowing I had almost landed one on him. His mustache bunched and his eyebrows were high, questioning, as he looked at me with new eyes.

“He killed him!” I shouted for the benefit of the watching Weres and starting to cry like a distraught girlfriend. “He killed him! He's dead!”

The sad reality was the tears leaking from me weren't that hard to dredge up. How could Nick say that to me even in anger? A foul, demon-marked witch. He had called me a foul demon-marked witch. My sense of betrayal rose higher, cementing my anger.

Jenks wiggled out of the grip of the two men holding him, and as they shouted and tried to catch him, he darted for my bag on the pavement. Grinning, he tucked my phone and my wallet inside before shaking everything down. I wasn't sure, but I think the remote went through the grating, and I breathed easier.

An I.S. officer grabbed him, cuffing him before shoving him back into our little group. The man shuffled through my bag before returning it to me. I thought it better to let the stone-faced guy have his way than bring up my rights.

“Thanks,” I muttered to Jenks, feeling my ribs ache as
I looped the strap over my shoulder. I looked at Nick's wrecked truck as we passed. The artifact was still there, thanks to an excited FIB guy in a brown suit keeping everyone back.

“My pleasure,” he said, limping.

“I meant for hitting him.”

“So did I.”

The I.S. officer at my elbow frowned, but when he saw the covered body, he seemed to ease. Jenks had punched Nick, not done anything permanent.
Like killing him.
“Ma'am,” the officer said. “I'd ask you to stay away from the other party until we get this sorted out.”

Party. Yeah, this was one big joke.
“Yes, sir,” I said, then stiffened when he slipped one of those plastic-coated charmed-silver wraps on my wrist and tightened it with a slick motion.

Damn it all to hell.
“Hey!” I protested, feeling abused as Jenks and Ivy exchanged tired looks. “I'm fine! I'm not going to hurt anyone. I can't even do ley line magic.”
Not on this bridge anyway.
The officer shook his head, and I felt trapped, the weight of Kisten's bracelet caught between my skin and the restraint. “Can I sit with…with my boyfriend?” I managed a warble in my voice, and the beefy man put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said, his voice softening. “They're taking him to the hospital to pronounce him. You can ride with him if you want. I'm sorry. He looked like a nice guy.”

Plan A for getting the wacko witch off the accident scene. Right out of the handbook.
“Thank you,” I said, wiping my eyes.

“You were the driver, ma'am?” he asked as we walked, and when I nodded, he added, “May I see your license?”

Aw, shit.
“Yes, sir,” I said, fumbling in my bag for it. In five minutes the Cincinnati branch of the I.S. would be telling him all about me. We halted at the back of a black I.S. blazer, the tailgate down to show an open kennel.
There was a dog out here?
Behind me, I heard Ivy and Jenks telling the
officers with them that they were my roommates.
Oh God. Ivy's Brimstone. I probably smelled like an addict. Accident. Points. What if they took my license?

The officer before me squinted to see my license in the fading light, smiling when he looked up. “I'll have this right back to you, Ms. Morgan. Then you can go with your boyfriend and get yourself looked at.” Eyebrows high, he glanced at my bandaged hands and ripped jeans before nodding to Jenks and Ivy and trotting away to leave us with two officers.

“Thank you,” I said to no one. Exhausted, I leaned against the truck. Jenks had been cuffed to the truck, and the two FIB guys moved a short distance, close enough to intervene if necessary but clearly waiting for more I.S. personnel to handle our interrogation. Holding my elbows with my scraped hands, I watched my life swirl down the crapper.

Rubberneckers passed with an infuriating slowness, faces pressed against the windows as they struggled to see in the deepening dusk. My new jeans were ripped almost to the knee. The truck refused to burn. A fourth Were pack wearing military dress uniforms had joined the three already here, all of them edging the limits of the FIB and I.S. officers keeping them back. Had I forgotten anything? Oh yeah. I had helped kill someone, and it was going to turn around and bite me on the ass. I didn't want to go to jail. Unlike Takata, I looked awful in orange.

“Damn it,” Ivy said, licking a thumb and trying to rub out the new scrape on her leather pants. “These were my favorite pair.”

My gaze went to the truck. The knot in my stomach grew tighter. Leaning, I reclined against the Blazer's tailgate and silently fumed as I categorized the arriving Inderlanders into their jobs, pulled in from their scattered locations.

The willowy blond witch was probably their extraction specialist, not only comforting information from distraught victims but from testosterone-laden bucks who wouldn't talk to anyone unless it might get her into bed with them. Then
there was the guy too fat to do real street work but who had a mustache, so he
had
to be important. He'd be good at keeping angry people apart and would tell me he could get me a deal if I was willing to spill. The dog team was at the Mack truck since he was the one who had crossed the yellow line, but I was sure he'd get to the pickup soon, then probably make a little visit over here.

I looked for, and finally found, the officer who was slightly off and took his job too seriously to be safe. This was the guy that no one trusted and even fewer liked, usually a witch or Were, too young to be a fat man with a mustache but too gun-happy to be a data guy. He was walking around the broken pickup, hiking up his belt with his weapon and looking at the girders as if they might hold a sniper ready to take us all out.
And don't forget the I.S. detective,
I thought. I didn't see him or her, but since someone had died, one would show up soon.

FIB officers were everywhere, taking their measurements and pictures. Seeing them in control of the site kind of threw me, but remembering the intensive data the Cincinnati FIB had shared with me during a murder investigation, I probably shouldn't have been surprised.

Ivy slumped against the side of the I.S. vehicle, arms crossed and thoroughly ticked. She stared at the ambulance Nick was in as if she could kill him by her gaze alone. Me? I was more worried about how we were going to get that truck burning. I was getting the feeling it wasn't going to happen. A heavy wrecker was inching its way into place, rollers moving with a sedate laziness. Apparently they wanted to get it off the bridge before the news crews showed up.

Slipping out of his cuffs, Jenks levered himself to sit beside me on the tailgate, a pained grunt coming from him. “You okay?” I asked, though clearly he wasn't.

“Bruise,” he said, eyes fixed to Nick's blue truck. With an obnoxious beeping, the wrecker backed up to it.

“Here,” I said, pulling my bag around and starting to rummage. “I've got an amulet. Ivy never takes any of my amulets,
and I'm not used to you being big enough to use them.”

“Why aren't you using it?” he said, stretching his shoulder with a pained look.

“I have no right to,” I said, my throat closing when I glanced at Peter. I was glad he wasn't trying to convince me otherwise, and I hardly felt the prick of the finger stick for the blood to invoke it. Ivy shifted, telling me she had noticed the fresh blood despite the wind, but she was the last vamp I had anything to be worried about. Usually.

“Thanks,” he said as he draped it over his head in obvious relief. “I wonder if there's any way you can make tiny amulets? I'm going to miss these.”

“It's worth a try,” I said, thinking that unless that truck spontaneously combusted from Ivy's glare, I'd have about a week to find out. Once the Weres realized the artifact was fake, they'd be knocking on my door. Assuming I didn't land in jail. I felt as if we were three kids standing outside the principal's office. Not that I had any experience in that area. Much.