For a Few Demons More (55 page)

“What, not going to hang around for cake?” I snapped, snatching at the envelope. I'd take his money. Then buy a lawyer to put him in jail with Trent, currently out on bail.

Quen jerked the envelope out of my reach, his face creasing in bother. “This isn't yours.”

Pixy kids were starting to gather around the doorframe, and Jenks made an ear-piercing chirp. “Hi, Quen, is that mine?” he said as his kids scattered, laughing.

The elf nodded, and I cocked my hip, not believing this. “You're going to stiff me again?” I exclaimed.

“Mr. Kalamack isn't paying you for arresting him,” Quen said stiffly.

“I kept him breathing, didn't I?”

At that, Quen lost his ire, chuckling as he touched his chin and rocked back on his heels. “You have a lot of nerve, Morgan.”

“It's what keeps me alive,” I said sourly, starting when I found Rex at the foot of the belfry stairway, staring at me.
God! Creepy little cat.

“Do tell.” He hesitated, looking past me before he brought his atten
tion back. “Jenks, I've got your paperwork.” He went to hand the envelope to him, then hesitated again. I could see why. The envelope was three times Jenks's weight if it was an ounce.

“Just give it to Rache,” Jenks said, landing on my shoulder, and I smugly held out my hand for it. “Ivy's got a safe we can put it into.”

Quen sourly handed it over, and, curious, I opened it up. It wasn't money. It was a deed. It had our address on it. And Jenks's name.

“You bought the church?” I stammered, and the pixy darted off my shoulder, literally glowing. “Jenks, you
bought the church
?”

Jenks grinned, the dust slipping from him a clear silver. “Yup,” he said proudly. “After Piscary tried to evict us, I couldn't risk you two lunkers losing it in a poker game or something.”

I stared at the paper.
Jenks owned the church?
“Where did you get the money?”

In a flash of vampire incense, Ivy was beside me. She pulled the paper from my slack fingers, eyes wide.

Quen shifted his weight, his shoes gently scuffing. “Good evening, Jenks,” he said, his voice carrying a new respect. “Working with you was enlightening.”

“Whoa, wait up,” I demanded. “Where did you get the money for this?”

Jenks grinned. “Rent is due on the first, Rache. Not the second, or the third, or the first Friday of the month. And I expect you to pay to get it resanctified.”

Quen slipped down the steps with hardly a sound. Ceri was coming up the walk, and the two passed with wary, cautious words. She had a covered plate in her hands: the cake, presumably. She glanced back once as she rose up the stairs, and I moved so she could come in. Ivy, though, was too struck to move.

“You outbid me?” Ivy shouted, and Ceri slipped between us and into the sanctuary, Rex twining around her feet. “That was you I was bidding against? I thought it was my mother!”

The click of Quen's car door opening was lost in the hush of rain, and Jenks still hadn't answered me. Quen glanced at me across the top of his car before he got in and drove away. “Damn it, pixy!” I shouted. “You'd better start talking! Where did you get the money?”

“I…uh, pulled a job with Quen,” he said hesitantly.

The masculine murmur of Keasley and David rose, and I shut the door against the damp night. Jenks had said “job,” not “run.” There was a difference. “What kind of job?” I asked warily.

If a pixy could hover guiltily, Jenks was. “Nothing much,” he said, darting past Ivy and me into the sanctuary. “Nothing that wouldn't have happened anyway.”

My eyes narrowing, I followed him back to the party, setting Ceri's hat on the piano in passing. Ivy was right behind me. “What did you do, Jenks?”

“Nothing that wouldn't have happened on its own,” he whined, shedding green sparkles onto the pool table. “I like where I live,” he said, landing behind the side pocket in his best Peter Pan pose. “You two women are too flaky to put my family in your hands. Just ask anyone here. They'd agree with me!”

Ivy huffed and turned her back on him, muttering under her breath, but I could tell she was relieved her new landlord wasn't her mom.

“What did you do, Jenks?” I demanded.

Ivy's eyes narrowed in a sudden thought. Faster than I would have believed possible, she snatched up a pool cue and slammed it down inches from Jenks. The pixy shot up into the air, almost hitting the ceiling. “You little bug!” she exclaimed, and Ceri grabbed Keasley and the cake and headed toward the kitchen. “The paper says Trent's been released.”

“What!” Appalled, I gazed at Jenks up near the ceiling. Keasley jerked to a brief halt in the hallway, then continued on. David had dropped his head into his hands, but I think he was trying not to laugh.

“The fingerprint they lifted from Brett and the paperwork was lost,” Ivy said, smacking a beam with the cue to make Jenks dart to the next one over. “They dropped the charges. You stupid pixy! He murdered Brett. She had him, and you helped Quen get him off?”

“Wha-a-a-at,” he griped, moving to my shoulder for protection. “I had to do something to save your pretty little ass, Rache. Trent was thi-i-i-i-is close to taking you out.” His voice went high in exaggeration. “Arresting him at his own wedding was stupid, and you know it!”

My anger evaporated as I remembered Trent's expression when the cuffs ratcheted shut. God, that had felt good. “Okay, I'll give you that,” I
said, trying to see him on my shoulder. “But it was fun. Did you see the look on Ellasbeth's face?”

Jenks laughed, doubling up. “You should have seen her dad's,” he said. “Oooooh, doggies, that man was more upset than a pixy papa with eight sets of girls.”

Ivy set the pool cue on the table and relaxed. “I don't remember it,” she said softly.

Her lack of memory was disturbing, and trying to ignore that I was missing chunks of my week, too, I looked up as Ceri and Keasley came back in, the cake almost on fire from all the candles they'd stuck into it.

I couldn't very well stay mad when they started singing “Happy Birthday,” and I felt the tears prick again that I had people in my life who cared enough to go through the misery of trying to pretend everything was normal when it wasn't. Ceri settled the cake on the coffee table, and I hesitated only briefly at my wish. It had been the same every year since my father had died. My eyes closed against the smoke as I blew the candles out. They smarted, and I wiped them with no one saying anything as they clapped, teasing to find out what the wish was.

Taking up the big knife, I started slicing the cake, layering perfectly triangular pieces on paper plates decorated with spring flowers. The chatter became overly loud and forced, and with Jenks's kids everywhere it was a madhouse. Ivy wouldn't look at me as she took her plate, and seeing as she was the last, I settled myself across from her.

David followed Ceri and the cat to the piano, where she started playing some complicated tune that was probably older than the Constitution. Keasley was trying to keep the pixies occupied and out of the frosting, entertaining them with the way his wrinkles disappeared when he puffed his cheeks out. And I was sitting with a plate of cake on my lap, absolutely miserable and having no cause for it. Or not really.

The awful feeling of loss I had felt in the FIB conference room rose from nowhere, pulled into existence by the reminder of Kisten's death. I'd thought Ivy and Jenks were dead. I'd thought everyone I cared about had been severed from me. And that I had given up and accepted the damage of a demon curse when I thought I'd nothing left to lose had opened my eyes really fast. Either I was an emotional wimp and had to learn to handle the potential loss of everyone I loved without caving or—and this was the one that scared me the most—I had to come to grips
and accept that my black-and-white outlook on demon curses wasn't so black and white anymore.

I had a sick feeling that it was the latter. I was going bad. The lure of demon magic and power was too much to best. But damn it, when she's fighting demons and nasty elves with the strength of the world's economics on their side, a girl has to get a little dirty.

I looked at my chocolate cake and forced my jaw to unclench. I wasn't going to agonize over the smut on my soul. I couldn't and still live with myself. Ceri was coated with it, and she was a good person. Hell, the woman had almost cried over forgetting my birthday cake. I was going to have to handle demon magic the same way I did earth and ley line magic. If the stuff that went into the spell or curse didn't hurt anyone, and the working of the spell/curse didn't hurt anyone, and the result of the spell/curse didn't harm anyone but me, then I was going to twist the stupid curse and call myself a good person. I didn't give a damn what anyone else thought. Jenks would tell me if I was straying, wouldn't he?

Fork in hand, I cut a bite, then put it back on the plate untasted. I met Ivy's miserable expression, seeing the tears in her eyes. Kisten was dead. To sit here and eat my cake seemed so hypocritical. And trite. But I wanted something normal. I needed something to tell myself that I was going to live past this, that I had good friends—and since I didn't drown my sorrows in beer, I'd do it in chocolate.

“You going to eat that, or cry over it?” Jenks said, flitting in from the piano.

“Shut up, Jenks,” I said tiredly, and he smirked, sending a glitter of sparkles to puddle on the table before the breeze from the upper transom window blew them into infinity.

“You shut up,” he said, spooning up a wad of my frosting with a pair of chopsticks. “Eat your cake. We made it for your damned birthday.”

Eyes warming from unshed tears, I jammed the fork into my mouth just so I wouldn't have to say anything else. The sweet chocolate tasted like ashes on my tongue, and I forced it down, reaching for another bite like it was a chore. Across from me Ivy was doing the same thing. It was my birthday cake, and we were going to eat it.

In the rafters pixies played, safe in their garden and church until the two worlds collided. Kisten's death would darken my coming months until I found a new pattern to my life, but there were good things to bal
ance against the heartache. David seemed to be handling the curse—he seemed to like it, actually—and since he had a real pack, his boss would stop gunning for me. Al was tucked away in an ever-after prison, most likely. The Weres were off my case. Piscary was not only no longer my landlord but was dead. Really dead. Lee would step into the gambling and protection vacuum he'd left behind, and seeing as I had some part in freeing him, he probably would give up on his urge to knock me off. Having Lee back would pacify Trent, too, though it rankled me back to the Turn that he was out of jail. God! The man was like Teflon.

And Ivy? Ivy wasn't going anywhere. We would figure this out eventually, and no one would die trying. No longer tied to Piscary, she was her own person. Together with Jenks, we three could do anything.

Right?

The sun was a slow flash through Cincinnati's buildings as I fought afternoon traffic headed for the bridge and the Hollows beyond. The interstate was clogged, and it was easier to simply settle in behind a truck in the far right lane and make slow and steady progress than to try and maintain the posted limit by weaving in and out of traffic.

My radio was on, but it was all news and none of it good. The misfired charm at Trent's facility wasn't the only one this morning, and so far down on the drama scale that it hadn't even been noticed, pushed out by the cooking class in intensive care for massive burns and the sudden collapse of a girder slamming through the roof of a coffeehouse and injuring three. The entire east side of the 71 corridor was a mess, making me think my sand-trap crater had been part of something bigger. Misfires weren't that common, usually clustered by the batch and never linked only by space and time.

Jenks was silent, a worried green dust hazing him as he rested on the rearview mirror. But when the story changed to a cleaning crew found dead, the apparent cause being brain damage from a sudden lack of fat in their bodies, I turned it off in horror.

Jenks's heels thumped the glass. “That's nasty.”

I nodded, anxious now to get home and turn on the news. But even as I tried not to think about how painful it would be to die from a sudden lack of brain
tissue, my mind shifted. Was I really seeing what I thought I was in Trent, or was I simply projecting what I wanted? I mean, the man had everything but the freedom to be what he wanted. Why would he want . . . me? And yet, there it was, refusing to go away.

Elbow on the open window as we crept forward, I twisted a curl around a finger. Even the press could tell there was something between us, but it wasn't as if I could tell them it was the sharing of dangerous, well-kept secrets,
not
the familiarity of knowing if he wore boxers or briefs. I knew Trent had issues with what everyone expected him to be. I knew his days stretched long, especially now that Ceri was gone and Quen and the girls were splitting their time between Trent and Ellasbeth. But there were better ways to fill his time than to court political calamity by asking me to work security—me being good at it aside. We were going to have to talk about it and do the smart thing. For once, I was going to do the smart thing.
So why does my gut hurt?

“Rache!” Jenks yelled from the rearview mirror, and my attention jerked from the truck in front of me.

“What!” I shouted back, startled. I wasn't anywhere near to hitting it.

Pixy dust, green and sour, sifted from him to vanish in the breeze. “For the fairy-farting third time, will you shift the air currents in this thing? The wind is tearing my wings to shreds.”

Warming, I glanced at the dust leaking from the tear in his wing. “Sorry.” Rolling my window halfway up, I cracked the two back windows. Jenks resettled himself, his dust shifting to a more content yellow.

“Thanks. Where were you?” he asked.

“Ah,” I hedged. “My closet,” I lied. “I don't know what to wear tonight.” Tonight. That would be a good time to bring it up. Trent would have three months to think about it.

Jenks eyed me in distrust as a kid in a black convertible wove in and out of traffic, working his way up car length by car length. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Trent's girls are coming back tomorrow, right?”

The pixy knew when I lied. Apparently my aura shifted. “Yes,” I said, trying for flippant. “I can use the time off. Trent is more social than a fourteen-year-old living-vampire girl.” Though he could text just as fast.

Jenks's wings blurred. “No money for three months . . .”

My grip on the wheel tightened, and I took the on-ramp for the bridge. “I've got your rent, pixy. Relax.”

“Tink's little pink rosebuds!” Jenks suddenly exploded, his wings blurring to invisibility. “Why don't you just have sex with the man?”

“Jenks!” I exclaimed, then hit the brakes and swerved when the kid in the convertible cut off the truck ahead of me. My tires popped gravel as I swung on the shoulder and back to the road again, but I was more embarrassed about what he'd said than mad at the jerk in the car. “It's not like that.”

“Yeah?” he said, a curious silver tint to his dust. “Watching you and Trent is like watching two kids who don't know how their lips work yet. You like him.”

“What's not to like?” I grumbled, appreciating the thinner traffic on the bridge.

“Yeah, but you thought you hated him last year. That means you really
like
him.”

My hands were clenched, and I forced them to relax on the wheel. “Is there a point to this other than you talking about sex?”

He swung his feet to thump on the rearview mirror. “No. That's about it.”

“The man is engaged,” I said, frustrated that my life was so transparent.

“No, he isn't.”

“Well, he will be,” I shot back as the bridge girders made new shadows and Jenks's dust glowed like a sunbeam.
Will be again
.

Jenks snorted. “Yeah, he lives in Cincy, and she lives in Seattle. If he liked her, he'd let her move in with him.”

“They've got a kid,” I said firmly. “Their marriage will solidify the East and West Coast elven clans. That's what Trent wants. What everyone wants. It's going to happen, and I'm not going to interfere.”

“Ha!” he barked. “I knew you liked him. Besides, you don't plan love, it just happens.”

“Love!” Three cars ahead, horns blew and brake lights flashed. I slowed, anticipating trouble. “It's not love.”

“Lust, then,” Jenks said, seeming to think that was better than love anyway. “Why else would you explode that ball? A little overly protective, yes?”

My elbow wedged itself against the window, and I dropped my head into my hand. Traffic had stopped, and I inched forward into a spot of sun. I was not in love. Or lust. And neither was Trent, despite that I'm-not-drunk kiss. He'd been
alone and vulnerable, and so had I. But I couldn't help but wonder if all the engagements this last month were normal or if he was trying to get out of the house. With me.
Stop it, Rachel.

A horn blew behind me, and I inched forward a car length. Trent had his entire life before him, planned out better than one of Ivy's runs. Ellasbeth and their daughter, Lucy, fit in there. Ray, too, though the little girl didn't share a drop of blood with him. Trent wanted more, but he couldn't be two things at once. I had tried, and it had almost killed me.

My gaze slid to my shoulder bag and the golf ball tucked inside. “The explosion was probably the same thing affecting the 71 corridor,” I said. “Not because I overreacted.”

Jenks sniffed. “I like my idea better.”

Traffic was almost back up to speed, and I shifted lanes to get off at the exit just over the bridge. We passed under a girder, and a sheet of tingles passed over me. Surprised, I looked up at the sound of wings, not seeing anything.
Why are my fingertipstingling?

“Dude!” Jenks exclaimed. “Did you feel that? Crap on toast, Rache! Your aura just went white!”

“What?” I took a breath, then my attention jerked forward at the screech of tires. I slammed on the brakes. Both I and the car ahead of me jerked to the left. Before us, a car dove to the right. Tires squealed behind me, but somehow we all stopped, shaken but not a scratch.

“I bet it was that kid,” I said, my adrenaline shifting to anger. But then I paled, eyes widening at the huge bubble of ever-after rising up over the cars.

“Jenks!” I shouted, and he turned, darting into the air in alarm. The bubble was huge, coated in silver-edged black sparkles with red smears of energy darting over it. I'd never seen a bubble grow that slowly, and it was headed right for us.

“Go!” I shouted, reaching for my seat belt and scrambling to get out of the car. No one else was moving, and as Jenks darted out, I reached for a line to make a protection circle. But I was over water. There was no way.

Turning, I plowed right into someone's door as it opened. I scrambled up, frantically looking over my shoulder as the bubble hit my foot. “No!” I screamed as my foot went dead. I hit the pavement and fell into the shadow of the car. Suddenly I couldn't breathe. Brownish-red sparkles flowed into me instead of air, and my ears were full of the sound of feathers. I couldn't see. There was no sensation from my fingers as I pushed into the pavement. There was simply nothing to feel.

My heart isn't beating!
I thought frantically as the sound of feathers muted into a solid numbness. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. It was as if I was being smothered in brown smog. Panicked, I looked again for a line, but there was nothing. What in hell was it?! If I could figure that out, I could break it.

A slow roaring grew, painfully loud until it cut off with a soft lub. A sparkle drifted before me, then another. I wasn't breathing, but I wasn't
suffocating, either. Slowly the roaring started again, rising to a crescendo to end in a soft hush.

It's my heart,
I realized suddenly, seeing more sparkles as I exhaled as if in slow motion, and with that, I knew. I was trapped in an inertia dampening field. There'd been an accident, and a safety charm had malfunctioned.
But why had it risen to encompass all of us?
I thought, reaching deep into my chi and pulling together the ever-after energy I'd stored there. I couldn't make a protection circle without linking to a ley line, but I sure as hell could do a spell.

Separare!
I thought, and with a painful suddenness, the world exploded.

“Oh God,” I moaned, eyes shut as the light burned my eyes. Fire seemed to flash over me and mute to a gentle warmth. Panting, I cracked my eyes to see it had only been the sunbeam I was lying in.
Sunbeam?I'd fallen into the shade. And where are the cars?

“Rachel!” a familiar, gray voice whispered intently, and I pulled my squinting gaze from the overhead girders to my hand. Ivy was holding it, her long pale fingers trembling.

“How did you get here?” I said, and she pulled me into a hug, right there in the middle of the road.

“Thank God you're all right,” she said, the scent of vampiric incense pouring over me. Everything felt painfully sharp, the wind cooler, the sunlight brighter, and the noise of FIB and I.S. sirens louder, the scent of Ivy sharp in my nose.

The noise of the FIB and I.S. sirens louder?
Confused, I patted Ivy's back as she squeezed me almost too hard to breathe. I must have passed out, because there was a barricade at the Hollows end of the bridge. Most of the cars were gone. I.S. and FIB vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances had taken their place, all their lights going. It looked like a street party gone bad with the cops from two divisions and at least three pay grades mucking about. Behind me was more noise, and I pushed from Ivy to see.

Her eyes were red rimmed; she'd been crying. Smiling, she let me go, her long black hair swinging free. “You've been out for three hours.”

“Three hours?” I echoed breathily, seeing much the same behind me at the Cincy end of things. More cars, more police vehicles, more ambulances . . . and a row of eight people, their faces uncovered, telling me they were alive, probably still stuck in whatever I'd been in.

“You weren't in a car, so I made them leave you,” she said, and I turned back to her, feeling stiff and slightly ill.

My bag was lying beside her, and I pulled it closer, the fabric scraping unusually rough on my fingertips. “What happened? Where's Jenks?”

“Looking for something to eat. He's fine.” Her boots ground against the pavement as she stood to help me rise. Shaking, I got to my feet. “He called me as soon as it happened. I got here before the I.S. even. They're telling the media an inertia dampening charm triggered the safety spells of every car on the bridge.”

“Good story. I'd stick with that.” I leaned heavily on her as we limped to the side of the bridge and into the shade of a pylon. “But those kind of charms can't do that.”

“Rache!” a shrill pixy voice called, and I looked up, blinding myself as Jenks dropped down from the sun. “You're up! See, Ivy. I told you she'd be okay. Look, even her aura is back to normal.”

Well, that was one good thing, but I was starting to see a pattern here, and I didn't like it. “You got out okay?” I asked, and he landed on Ivy's shoulder.

“Hell, yes. That wasn't multiple spells. I watched the whole thing. It was one bubble, and it came from that black car with the jerk-ass driver.”

Hands shaking, I leaned heavily on the cool railing. Two medical people were headed our way, and I winced. “Oh, crap,” I whispered, grabbing Ivy's arm as they descended on us, medical instruments flopping from pockets and their tight grips.

“I'm okay. I'm okay!” I shouted as the first tried to get me to sit back down, and the second started flashing a light in my eyes. “It was just an inertia dampening charm. I think it was so big ordinary metabolic functions couldn't break it. I got out using a standard breakage charm. And get that light out of my eyes, will you?”

“A breakage charm?” the one trying to fit a blood pressure cuff on me said, and I nodded, glad that ambulance teams were required by law to have at least one witch on staff and he knew what I was talking about.

“I'm willing to try anything,” the first said, turning to look at the line of people.

“They're going to wake up thirsty,” I said, but they were already striding back to the people under the sheets with a new purpose. Thankful that Ivy hadn't let them put me in that horrible line, I gave her arm a squeeze. “Thanks,” I whispered, and her fingers slipped from me.

“It works!” came an exuberant cry, and a cheer rose as a man sat up, groggy and holding a hand over his eyes.

I was
so
glad that I wasn't going to be the only one to wake up from this. “Where's my car?” I asked as I scanned for it, and Ivy winced.