by Kim Harrison
Luke took a sobbing gasp of air. He was going to make it—for now, and I eased back to sit on the edge of the cushy couch, elbows on my knees and head dropped into my hands. The amulets on my bracelet clinked, and I sighed. The salt water had ruined them. I’d tack it on to Marsha’s bill, but I didn’t think she had the money. Besides, she was going to be a little busy trying to survive.
“You can touch him now,” I said, realizing that Marsha was still hovering over him.
Frantic, she dropped to her knees. Water squished from the carpet, and she pulled him to her. “Oh, baby!” she gushed, oblivious that he was covered in salt water. “Did he hurt you?”
By the bruises, clearly someone—probably his own master—had, but he raised a shaky hand and brushed her cheek. “I’m okay,” he rasped, a flash of ugly memory finding me at the sight of him, his black hair plastered to his face and his eyes not quite open. It hurt like the devil to shift with earth magic, but his toned, athletic, and beaten body covered in easily hidden scars looked as if it was used to pain.
Crying, Marsha cradled his head to herself and rocked him. I wondered how many scars were hidden behind Marsha’s expensive clothes. This sucked. Vampires looked as if they had everything, but it was a lie. My eyes shifted to Ivy, seeing her inner struggle. A big fat ugly lie.
The clatter of Jenks’s wings was a short warning as he landed on my shoulder. “He looked like a dog to me,” he grumped.
“That’s because he was one.” I plucked at my wet shirt, sticking uncomfortably to me. The question wasn’t how, but why. Why had two minor vampire camarillas spent this much on a double-whammy spell like this on a simple Romeo and Juliet? It was expens-s-s-sive.
Ivy was in the hall to convince the neighbors nothing was going on. It didn’t take much. Clearly they were familiar with the situation. Not happy, Ivy shut the door and stomped into the kitchen to turn the faucet off.
“I’m sorry, Marsha,” Luke was saying, and the crying woman stretched for a blanket to cover him. “When they told me I couldn’t see you again, I went to a witch. She said she could turn me into a dog so I could be with you. No one would know it was me.”
I watched as Ivy pulled the living room blinds. Her expression was empty, hearing far past what the man was saying. Closing the last, she sat across from me in the shadow light, worried.
“I didn’t care if I was a dog,” Luke continued, his eyes still not open as his hand gripped hers. “I knew you wouldn’t leave Buddy.” His eyes opened, and I stared. They were the clearest shade of blue I’d ever seen. “I love you, Marsha. I’d do anything for you. Anything!” Crying, he pulled himself into a ball in her arms. “I’m so sorry.”
My God, they’d tricked him into buying the charm that would’ve killed them both. Ivy and I exchanged a worried look. This was bad, but we couldn’t just walk away. Jenks, too, was looking ill, and he moved to the decorative bowl of pinecones on the coffee table. He’d loved and lost more than Ivy and me combined, and this wasn’t sitting well with him either. But it wasn’t one master vampire we’d have to outwit, but two.
Ivy was still silent, and I sourly thought of my bank account. “You think we should help them?” I said softly, and Jenks’s dust shifted to a hopeful yellowish pink.
Ivy didn’t look at me. The couple on the floor was silent.
“You think we should help them,” I said again, this time making it a statement.
Ivy’s eyes flicked up. I could see her tremendous need to give, to make it right. She’d done so much wrong, and it chewed on her in the small hours. My heart ached for her skewed view of herself, and I wished she could see herself as I did. This would rub the guilt out—for a time.
“Okay, we’ll help them,” I said, and Marsha gasped, her tear-wet eyes suddenly full of hope where there’d been only despair. Jenks’s wings hummed his approval, and I sat up, gesturing weakly. “But I don’t know what we can do.”
“You can’t,” Marsha said, voice harsh as she held Luke. “They know everything.”
Unfortunately, she was right. We couldn’t simply set them up in a nice house out of state and hope that they wouldn’t be found and made into an even bigger example. Ivy had been trying to wiggle out from her master her entire life only to become more entangled, so much so that they’d ensnared me, too. Trent, maybe? I thought, but as it was, he was struggling to keep his head above the political sharks.
“Maybe,” I said as Luke sat up, muscles beginning to work again. “Changing into a dog was a great idea.” Actually, it had been a lousy idea, but unless you practiced magic, you wouldn’t know how easy it was to circumvent it. My gaze went to the soggy carpet. Obviously.
“We’ll run,” Marsha said, tensing as if ready to walk out that exact second.
Ivy shook her head. “You won’t get past the city limits.”
“Marsha, sweetheart,” Luke whispered. “You know that won’t work.”
But I’d given her hope, and the woman wouldn’t let go. “We can use the tunnels!”
Ivy looked toward the shuttered windows at the sound of a horn. “They built the tunnels.”
“I can’t live without you. I won’t!” the distressed woman cried out, and I wondered if the place had been bugged. But if it had, Jenks would have heard the electronic whine and disabled them. We had a moment to catch our breath, and then we’d have to move.
It wasn’t as if we could stake their two master vampires; there were laws against that kind of thing. Unless Marsha and Luke could come up with ironclad blackmail, they were stuck.
“Okay,” I said, feeling the need to get moving. We’d been here too long. “There might be some law or something you can tap into. Ivy’s going to need access to every document your names are on. Birth certificates, property deeds, insurance, parking tickets, tax returns, everything.”
Marsha nodded, that same glow of hope back in her eyes hurting me. This wasn’t going to work, but we had to try something.
Ivy rose to look out through a crack in the blinds. “Do either of you have a safe house?”
“None we trust anymore,” Luke said, and Ivy let the blind fall.
“I’ve got one,” Ivy said, coming back to help Luke stand. “You should be okay for a few days. Especially if you help out a little with the other guests coming in.”
Wrapped in the blanket, Luke awkwardly got to his feet, pale and shaking. “Anything. Yes. Thank you.”
Jenks took to the air, humming out under the crack in the door to check the hallway. Almost immediately he darted back in with a big thumbs-up.
“We can’t just walk out with them,” I said, and Ivy gave me a glum smile.
“They won’t try anything new until sundown,” Ivy said, catching Marsha’s arm before the woman went into the bedroom and shaking her head to leave everything. “They’ll want to be present the next time.”
God help me. I hated vampires. “Okay, let’s move out.”
“But he needs his clothes,” Marsha was saying as I collected my splat gun from the counter. Ivy was almost carrying Luke to the door, and tears began to slip again from Marsha. I totally understood. The entire place was a perfect blending of their love. It was sucky when happiness became this costly. But if they’d fought this hard for it, then it would last their entire lifetime. I just hoped that lifetime would be longer than a week.
The hallway was quiet, smelling of dust and old carpet. Eyes were watching through peepholes, and it made me edgy. Marsha took Luke’s elbow to help him shuffle down the stairs in his blanket, and Ivy dropped back to talk to me.
“Jenks, you’re going with Ivy, right?” I asked, knowing she wouldn’t tell me the address of her safe house, much less take me there. Jenks, though . . .
Jenks’s wings hummed into invisibility, and he rose up a hand width. “Yeah.”
“No,” Ivy said, frowning, and he made a face at her. “You’re not coming, pixy.”
“Tink’s a Disney whore, like you could stop me!” he shot back.
Smiling, I edged around Ivy to keep Marsha and Luke from heading out without us. “I’ve got my phone on,” I said, pushing them back to the mailboxes until I could look at the street.
“I’ll be fine. See you at home,” Ivy said, ignoring Jenks and his sword pointed at her nose. “Hey, you doing anything tonight?”
“Listen to me, you broken-fanged, moss-wiped excuse for a back-drafted blood bag!” Jenks said, a silver-edged red dust slipping from him.
I looked back inside from the street, thinking this had been nice, even with the near miss. I liked working with Ivy. Always had. We did well together—even when it had gone wrong. “I’m working security for Trent,” I said, lips quirking as I saw her mentally smack her forehead. “You want me to bring you back something? It’s probably going to end somewhere with food.”
“Sure. That’d be good,” she said, turning to give Marsha and Luke some last-minute instructions on how to get from here to there alive. “I’ll call if I need help.”
I touched her arm, and her eyes met mine in farewell. Smiling, I turned away remembering something Kisten had once said: I was there when she had her morning coffee, I was there when she turned out the light. I was her friend, and to Ivy, that was everything.
“Jenks, I’ve got this!” I heard, and then I shut the door, my steps light as I headed for my car. Ivy would get home okay. She was right that the masters would want to be there when they brought their children in line. Besides, everyone in Cincinnati with fangs knew Ivy Tamwood.
Head up, I stomped along, eyeing the few pedestrians. Slowly my good mood was tarnished. Love died in the shadows, and it shouldn’t cost so much to keep it in the sun. But as Trent would say, anything gotten cheap wouldn’t last, so do what you need to do to be happy and deal with the consequences. That if love was easy, everyone would find it.
I turned the corner, my head coming up at the clatter of pixy wings. “She said no, huh?” I said as Jenks landed on my shoulder, his wings tickling my neck as he settled himself.
“Tink’s little pink rosebuds,” he muttered. “She threatened to dump insecticide on my summer hut. Besides, she’s got it okay. God! Vampires in love. The only thing worse is you mooning over Trent.”
My smile widened. Maybe I’d make cookies. The man loved cookies.
He made a rude sound, his silence telling me he was unhappy. “Sorry about the dog.”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You didn’t know.”
“I should have.”
I didn’t answer, thinking about my date tonight with Trent. Well, not a date exactly, but I had to get dressed up as if it were one. I was still trying to decide whether to put my hair up or wear it down. Chocolate chip is his favorite.
“Oh God,” Jenks moaned. “You’re thinking about him. I can tell. Your aura shifted.”
Embarrassed, I halted at the crosswalk, waiting for the light. “It did not.”
“It did,” he complained, but I knew he crabbed because he couldn’t say he was happy for me lest he jinx it somehow. “So it’s been like what, three months? Does he still curl your toes?”
“Totally,” I said, and he made a rude noise at my blissful smile. “He’s a total toe curler.”
“Awww, this is sweeter than pixy piss,” he said with false sarcasm. “All my girls happy. I can’t tell you the last time that happened.”
My smile widened, and I pushed the walk button as if that might hurry it along. “I think it was when—”
The unmistakable sound of tires screaming on pavement iced through me. My breath caught, and I turned. Jenks was gone, his white-hot sparkles seeming to burn an airborne trail back the way we’d come. A woman screamed for help, and I jumped back when a black sedan roared past me, the front fender dented. Somehow I knew, like when a picture falls off the wall, or the clock stops ticking.
“Ivy,” I whispered, then turned and ran.
Chapter 2
The thumps of my feet on the pavement jarred up my spine. Dodging people turning to look, I followed Jenks’s fading dust. My heart seemed to stop when I turned the corner and saw Ivy crumpled in the street. Marsha and Luke were standing looking down at her, dazed. A car stopped even as I watched, and a man got out, white faced, his phone in hand.
“Call 911!” I shouted as I slid to the pavement beside Ivy. Shit. Ivy. She had to be alive. I shouldn’t have left you.
Jenks was a frantic, darting shape as he dusted the blood from a scalp wound. She’d hit her head. Her chest moved shallowly, and her legs were twisted. I was afraid to touch her, and my hands hovered over her, reminding me of Marsha standing over Luke.
Pain charm! I thought frantically as I searched my bag. Fingers fumbling, I dropped the charm over her head. I was putting a Band-Aid on a concussion, when she took a clean breath.
“Did you call 911?” I exclaimed as a pair of Meris dress shoes scuffed before us.
“No hospital.”
Her voice was soft, almost not there, and both Jenks and I looked at Ivy. She was pale, and pain pinched her still-closed eyes. That was good, right? She wasn’t unconscious, even if her eyes were closed. Damn it, I should have learned how to make a healing curse! But Al was gone and it was too late.
“Ivy.” I brushed her hair back, my fingers trembling. They came away warm and red, and my fear redoubled. She’d hit her head badly enough that Jenks’s dust wasn’t stopping it. “Ivy!” I called when her eyes didn’t open. More people were ringing us. “Look at me, damn it! Look at me! Can you move your fingers and toes?”
“I think so.”
Her eyes opened as I took her cold hand. The pupils were fully dilated, scaring me. I wasn’t sure if it was from head trauma or my fear. The circle of people around us whispered, and when a smile of satisfaction edged over her pain, panic took me. “Ivy?”
Her hand squeezed mine, and she moved her legs, wincing as she straightened them. She could move, and I remembered how to breathe.
“Marsha and Luke are gone,” Jenks whispered as he hovered by my ear.
Like I freaking cared?
She was trying to sit up, and I gingerly helped her as the heat from the stopped car bathed us. “Little fish,” Ivy said, hair coming out of the bun as she held her middle. “They weren’t after them. Oh God, I think I cracked a rib.”
“Don’t move,” I said, stiffening as a siren lifted into the air. “The ambulance is coming.”
“No hospital.” Her black eyes fixed on mine, and she went whiter still as she tried to take a deep breath. “No safe house. I’ve been marked.”
Marked? Her gaze went to the pain charm around her neck, and she gripped it tight, shocking me. She never used my magic. Avoided it. “You need a hospital,” I said, and she hissed in pain as she tried to turn her head.
“No.”
“Ivy, you were hit by a car!” Jenks had dusted her cuts until they were only a slow seep, but her eyes were dilated and she hadn’t taken her other hand off her middle.
“Cormel,” she said softly, hatred temporarily overriding her pain. “I told you Marsha and Luke weren’t worth all of this. I wasn’t supposed to walk out of that apartment alive. That charm was aimed at me, too. He wants me dead . . . so you . . . will figure out how to save the souls of the undead. The car was a last effort to salvage their plan before going back with failure.”
My heart seemed to catch, then it raced as I looked at the surrounding faces for anyone watching too closely—their eyes holding fear. Ivy moaned as she breathed in my alarm, but I couldn’t let go of it. I couldn’t distance myself. The lethal charm had been aimed at all three of them. If I hadn’t been there to break it, Ivy would be dead and I’d be getting a call from the second-rising morgue.
“I don’t want to become a dead thing,” she whispered, then clenched in pain. “Rachel?”
I closed my eyes. Ivy groaned, her pain doubling as my panic pulsed through her, bringing her alive even as she struggled to stave off death. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t be her scio
n. But I knew I would if it came to that. Cormel had grown tired of waiting for his soul. If Ivy was dead, me finding out how to return the undead their souls would move way up on my to-do list.
We had to get out of here. Even the safe houses held death, and the hospitals would only make her passing smell of antiseptic. Why had I worked so hard to save their miserable existences? I wondered as I found my bag and looped it over my head. But it hadn’t been just the undead in the balance when I’d freed the mystics last July, it had been the entire source of magic.
Jenks dropped down as I gathered my resolve. “They’re everywhere, Rache,” he whispered, his fear easy to read on his narrow, pinched features, and Ivy nodded. Surrounded by onlookers, we had a small space to breathe, but we couldn’t stay here.
Slowly I began to think. Trent. He had a surgery suite, one that wasn’t staffed by people who could be bought. I wasn’t sure where he was, but I could text him. Ivy was sitting. Maybe she could move. “Ivy,” I said, blanching at the blackness in her eyes when she looked at me from around a stray strand of hair. “Can you move?”
Her boots scraped as she shifted them under her. “If I can’t, I’m dead.”
A few in the crowd protested, but they backed up when Jenks rose, his fast, darting shape and the sharp sword in his grip making him a threat. My stomach turned when every hold I tried to help Ivy with only brought more pain. Teeth clenched, I tucked my shoulder under her arm and rose, staggering until we found our balance. Ivy’s eyes closed. We hung for a moment, waiting to see if she was going to pass out. In the nearby distance, a siren rose—but it brought death, not life.
“Okay, nice and easy,” I said, and Jenks kept everyone back as we started for the curb. Ivy’s head was down, and she moved in sudden, painful limps. Step, pause. Step, pause. Her weight on me was solid, and her scent was tinged with sour acid. Tears threatened, and I ignored them. I couldn’t live with Ivy if she was dead. I couldn’t be her scion, but I knew I’d do it, even as it would destroy me. I’d try to keep Ivy sane, knowing it was a bitter fallacy. I couldn’t kill her a second time as she would want me to. I was a bad friend.