“What are you talking about?”
“All the magic stuff.” He took a breath and scratched his head, casting another weary glance at the brawl at the top of the ridge. “The pixies told me like right after I moved in. Bit of a shock, but nothing else weird ever happened, so I didn’t think you’d really notice.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Anyway, they told me you needed help, and that you had this thing, and I should bring it to you, so here we are with your ball.” From his flannel’s pocket, a little flutter of blue light zipped out, followed by two others in green and purple. They waved at Ivy, and she waved back, glad Oakley had been lax on that pest extermination after all. “That’s Paul, Frank, and Joe.”
“Really?”
“I can’t pronounce their real names.”
Ivy rolled her eyes, and it looked like the pixies did the same. “Wait, Oakley, you’re telling me you know about all this charmed stuff? But what about Rufus’s murder?”
“Rufus was murdered?” His eyes went all droopy and sad. “Is that why they’re fighting?”
“Sort of. Some of them think I did it, but it was really Victoria Jiang. And some of them are just fighting to fight.”
Oakley nodded, never concerned by complexities. Then he gestured to her with the orb, but Ivy held her hands up.
“I don’t know if I should,” she said carefully. “I don’t even know what to do with it.” Looking back at the scene, she was glad she couldn’t see the blood in the dark. “The lycans are feral, they probably won’t listen to reason, and the vampires seem to be enjoying themselves too much to stop anyway.”
“Man,”—Oakley bounced the orb once in his hand, his eyes tracking on the glowing ball—“Sucks we can’t all just understand each other a little better.”
Chapter 43
Oakley was walking away before Ivy could even move to stop him. Her brother had regained his breath and sauntered up the last bit of the hill to stand looking out at the vampires and lycans engaged in battle on the edge of the forest. She grabbed his shoulder, but he shrugged her off with a nonchalant word of appeasement, and to her own surprise, she was totally cool with it.
“Hey, guys!” His voice was a weird pop to the bubble of gnashing teeth and roaring howls, the orb held casually in his hand as if it were a baseball and he was proposing a friendly game. “I have it on good intel that the problem you think you’re resolving isn’t the actual problem.”
Heads cocked and ears pricked up as they tried to understand, suddenly halting.
“Victoria’s behind the murders,” Ivy shouted from his side with more urgency.
One of the lycans snapped and another growled, and one of the vampires took a swing, just missing his opponent. Clearly, Ivy didn’t have the same effect on them.
“Sis,” he said, “You gotta be more chill.” He addressed them again. “My dudes, I don’t mean to alarm you, but there has been, like, some bullshit going on.”
One of the vampires took a step toward him, disengaging from the lycan he had pinned to the ground underfoot, and the wolf flopped up onto his side, ears alert.
“I think it all started back in May when I happened on an Internet forum for propagating rare succulents. That’s when I met Rufus.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Ivy rubbed her temples and glanced over her shoulder. She could see the moonlight still sparkling off the water and the large form of Victoria headed for the lake. When she looked back at Oakley he was taking a seat in the grass with the orb in his lap, and the others, even Greg and Calla, followed suit. “You take care of this,” she said. “And please, try to make it quick. I’m going to need help.” She sprinted across the lawn away from them.
If the others were still under the siren song, they’d been led too far away to see. Ivy could only make out a huge snake cutting across the lawn at the edge of the water. If she could distract her long enough for Oakley to talk some sense into the others—and oh, gods, it suddenly hit her that she left her human brother back there surrounded by blood suckers and feral wolves. She stopped short, tripping, and tumbling the rest of the way down the hill, letting out a shriek.
Ivy came to a stop at the bank of the lake, her head spinning. The moon was still bright, but the sky behind it was a deep blue. She took a breath, every bone in her body like lead laid into her skin, her muscles aching, head pounding. She’d been laid up in bed fighting off tarantula venom less than a day ago though it felt like it had been ages.
A familiar hiss made her shoot up, adrenaline overcoming her weakness but less potent this time. Her heart flashed against her chest as the snake lunged at her, its form doubled in her blurring vision. “Nasty, little human!” Jaws snapped near her, and she took off at a shamble across the bank.
Ivy ran as fast as she could toward the broken wall. It was high, but there was a possibility she could scale it by using the deep cracks Victoria had made. She jumped as she came upon it, fingers gripping into where the bricks had been chipped away, but her foot never found purchase, and she slipped, bouncing her chin off the stone and crumbling in a pile to the ground.
Victoria’s voice laughed in her mind, and then popped outside of her head, coming from behind her. Ivy pushed herself up just enough to turn and fall back against the wall. Victoria was there, human once again. She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t work, feet slipping against the wet ground.
“I don’t even need to be a monster to end you,” Victoria said, taking slow steps up to her. Ivy scrambled back, nowhere to go, grasping behind her for anything to pull herself up, but the broken bricks only crumbled away under her fingers.
Hands wrapped around Ivy’s neck. The siren—or whatever she was—didn’t seem pleased about having to touch her, but she was determined. She squeezed, and Ivy gasped, but there was no new air to fill her lungs.
Ivy’s hands flailed behind her. Her fingers slid over old, rough brick as a dark halo pressed in on her vision. Then there was a smoother stone, heavy with pointed edges that fit between her fingers. She raised a shaking arm up with the stone in hand staring Victoria in the eyes, still green and angry, as the last of her breath went out.
Ivy brought down the amethyst star with the full force of all she had left. The woman wailed and jerked away as her eye split. Blood spurt from the wound, and she stumbled backward, cursing the human. Ivy sucked in a deep breath, her vision doubled but returning. She was on her knees now, the bloodied star tumbling from her hand into the mud.
But Victoria was renewed, and she shifted before Ivy back into a snake, jaws open. She still had one good eye, and the destruction of the other had spurred her on. But from that one eye she could not see what Ivy could coming from across the lawn. Something large and odd moved over the grass, but she didn’t want to turn and let Victoria know. Another monster, probably with Ivy’s current luck, but she was willing to risk whatever it might be.
And then a mass of white feathers pelted Victoria right in the side of the head.
The snake hissed and recoiled, mouth open, good eye aghast. Another chicken came sailing through the air, a caramel-colored hen who looked just as surprised to be flying as Victoria was surprised to be seeing it fly. It missed her by only a few inches, but she recoiled from that too, the pair of ruffled birds regaining their balance and haughtily squawking from their new spot in the mud.
From the darkness over the hill, a machine was rumbling in their direction. Cobbled together with long wooden planks and dark iron hinges, it was like a dune buggy but with a massive arm attached to its top. And it was catapulting chickens.
Tharman roared over the sound of the vehicle he piloted, “Take these gol dang birds back, will ya?”
The chickens flew as Bryony loaded them into the catapult and Tharman drove them ever-closer to where Ivy and Victoria were. The snake was reeling, waving its head about uncontrollably. She really didn’t like poultry.
Then from the forest a group of figures descended, the vampires and
lycans walking side-by-side with Oakley in the lead. It was leisurely the way they strolled as if they weren’t happening upon a giant snake being pelted with domesticated fowl from a mobile catapult driven by dwarves.
The next chicken to be rocketed toward them, though, was no chicken at all, but the cockatrice, its leathery wings spread out and getting more air than any of its feathered kin. Its trajectory totally missed Victoria, cresting over her head and sailing straight for the others. Oakley came to a stop, watching it head right for him, and he threw out his arms to catch it, the netherlight fragment still in hand. The cockatrice plowed right into him.
Oakley rolled backward, and then there was a flash that lit up the whole lake. Ivy covered her face, and when she blinked back into the even deeper darkness left in the light’s wake, she was shocked to see the cockatrice standing before her but the size of an elephant.
Victoria’s snake-like form froze, letting out an evil hiss toward the scaled, humongous bird. The cockatrice jerked its massive head toward her as if only noticing her then for the first time. At this size, it wasn’t just a weird, little fowl. Dragonesque with a giant, red wattle and comb, hooked beak, and wings that spanned the length of a garage door, when it eyed the serpent even Ivy felt a jolt of fear. Victoria should have slithered off when she had the chance.
The cockatrice went for her, its beak now tremendous and with a deadly point. It attacked precisely, blotting out the snake’s other eye with one peck and then going for its shining scales, glinting like metal under the full moon’s glow. Over and over it struck with a merciless quickness, black blood spurting out and across the lawn, and the snake could barely fight back, striking blindly and missing the bird-thing each time.
Ivy looked away and could see that even the lycans and vampires were a bit grossed out by what was happening. But there was no stopping it, and with a final, hot flash of fire from the cockatrice, the snake fell into a limp, burnt pile. The cockatrice gave her one last peck for good measure, and its tail spasmed, and then it shrunk in on itself, the snake gone, in its place a bloody, crispy, but human form.
The cockatrice jerked its head toward Ivy then, and she squealed in the back of her throat. He was huge now, and she couldn’t just scoop him up and stuff him in a coop though that hadn’t exactly been her experience when he was little either.
She looked about for any kind of help, and a metallic glint caught her eye in the mud. Ivy snatched up the broken chain with the battered, golden locket on it and held it up. “Remember the doughnut,” she whispered, her arm out stretched with the offering.
The cockatrice thrust his head toward her and squatted. He flapped out his leathery wings, the wind off of them blowing back Ivy’s hair. The bird peered down at her with eyes devoid of empathy, and all she could do was give the necklace a little jiggle.
Then he squawked, loud and low, shook his hind end, and all at once a bright ball of light squirted out of the cockatrice’s backside. The orb splattered down at the edge of the lake into the mud and went rolling, and in the same instant the cockatrice’s body contorted, and he shrunk in on himself. He flapped his wings in the space he suddenly found himself in, twenty feet off the ground, and then plummeted down into the mud, returned to the size of any other chicken.
“Ivy!” Safiya’s voice echoed over the water as a handful of figures came charging down from the far side of the lake. Wavering, Ivy staggered against the wall and slid down to the ground. Safiya and Hunter reached her first, behind Pauline was clutching Penny on her hip, and further back the Proctors along with two others were leading the three sirens, bound in some magical glow. Oakley, Calla, the lycans and their kin descended from the other side of the lake, and Tharman and Bryony exited their chicken catapult, all gathering to marvel at the charred body.
“Victoria,” Ivy sputtered, backing up against the wall, her mind reeling. “I didn’t know this would happen. I’m sorry.” Her eyes were bleary as she looked up at the witches, vampires, lycans, and all manner of things in between. Enough of them knew she was human now, and in some twisted and weird way she had actually caused one of their deaths.
“Dear, are you hurt?” Mae’s short form pushed through the others and with an unexpected strength hauled Ivy to her feet. “You’re bleeding!”
“No, that’s not her blood,” Calla’s voice purred. “But I can’t imagine the poor thing’s not concussed.”
Safiya grabbed Ivy from behind, squeezing tight. “You didn’t get eaten,” she said, a hitch to her voice. “Good job!”
Ivy looked around at the rest of them, and content she wasn’t about to be done in herself, finally relaxed.
Then there was a little peck at her leg, and the cockatrice was there, eyeing her expectantly. She handed off the charm to him, and he plucked it greedily from her before skittering away.
Chapter 44
When the Sylvan Society for Hexed Individuals arrived the next morning to assess Avalon Estates and grant them an extended lease on the netherlight fragment there were two problems: one, no one was exactly sure where the orb had rolled off to, but by most accounts it was likely at the bottom of the lake, and two was the general state of…well, everything.
Lycans and vampires alike were seeking treatment in the clubhouse, comparing injuries jovially and complimenting one another’s skill in a turn Ivy had not seen coming. Calla was even offering to help tend to the scars she herself had given to the lycan who had almost done Ivy in, a young man, it turned out, who didn’t seem bothered by the vampire’s touch this time at all.
The dwarves tasked themselves with cleaning up the lake, repairing the wall, and dealing with the body—Tharman had declared proudly that his ilk wasn’t afraid of a little dirty work—and of course they were tracking mud all over the grounds including right into the clubhouse to report back how things were going.
Mae and Alastair were busy crushing ingredients and mixing up extra batches of salves side-by-side as the aged lycan woman with white hair discussed with Greg what to do with the sirens. The girls, still trapped in a glow about their wrists, were turning on one another, blaming Victoria for as much as possible.
“We didn’t know she was going to kill them!” said one.
“And she said we’d get sparkly fish tails!” insisted another.
Oakley was sitting beside Ivy in the clubhouse, the pixies still buzzing around him. He pointed at the sirens, leaning over to her. “I think…I think they were spying on us for Mrs. Jiang. Kind of a bummer. I really liked one of them.”
She glared at him. “Which one?”
Oakley frowned back. “Is that really what’s important right now?”
She opened her mouth to chastise him but stopped herself.
Her brother was staring back at her, a dopey grin making its way over his face. Too many times when she looked at him she saw the childhood instigator, the troublemaker, the needy kid her parents made her all too responsible for, but when given the chance, he had proved to be someone wholly different.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?” He made a face like he’d never heard those words before. For all she could remember, he probably hadn’t.
“For everything.” She rolled her eyes then nudged him with her shoulder. “For saving my ass out there tonight. And just saving it in general.”
“You would have figured it out, Ivy League,” he said with all the confidence of a man who actually did know what he was talking about.
She shook her head. “Oakley, I mean it. I had nowhere to go, and—”
“Hey, now.” He interrupted, pushing himself up from the floor then gesturing across the room before he walked off. “Save the mushy stuff for someone else, okay?”
Hunter was making his way over, and she felt her breath hitch. He knelt down before her with a pungent smelling bag full of clinking jars. She tried to get up, but he made her stay. “You probably do have a concussion.” He leaned forward, looking deep into her eyes. “But we’d need an apothecary
to diagnose that. These scrapes though,”—he ran a thumb over her chin—“I’ve got something for those.”
“Of course you do,” she said quietly as he fished around in the bag.
As Hunter unscrewed the lid of a minty salve, she put her hands on his, stopping him. “I’m sorry.” She swallowed, throat dry. “For putting you on the list and for the lies. For everything really.”
He opened the jar with a little nod downward, scooping out some of the ointment inside.
“I know you have a lot to deal with right now,” she said as he started to smooth the cream over her cut. “And I don’t expect you to really give this another shot, I just wanted—”
“Ivy.” Hunter looked back up at her, his voice cutting her off. “When you’re under a siren’s spell, they show you the thing you want most.” He tipped her face toward his and kissed her, slow and soft. “You can guess what I saw.”
She sighed. “That feels better.”
He gave her a half-smile. “I’ve got to go check on a few more wounds, but I’ll be back. Don’t run off, okay? I’ll take you home.”
She nodded and rested her head against the wall, watching him head over to a lycan with a deep gash in his arm, eager to show it off. Home. That would be nice.
Safiya was just emerging from her office with Mr. Faulkner and a tall, regal-looking woman with teal hair and coppery skin that Ivy could only assume was an actual sylvan. She escorted them through the gauntlet of bruised bodies and out the door then maneuvered over to Ivy, sliding down beside her.
“I bought us another week.” She pulled off her glasses and rubbed her face, and the two women stared at each other, heads lolling up against the wall. “You figured it out.”
“A little late.” Ivy snorted. “But yeah. And we both survived.”
The Association Page 29