by Kim Harrison
New Year’s Eve was my best chance to find enough ambient energy to work the spell, and I wasn’t going to bet everything on one go. Not after the locator charms had failed to work. Yes, it had probably been my blood that had been the problem, seeing that Marshal’s worked and mine hadn’t, but the mere thought that I might do a spell wrong was enough for me to spend the time to stir a little insurance.
Oh God, Marshal, I thought, almost dropping the slippery storage bottle as I remembered my shunning. What was I going to tell him? Or better yet, how was I going to tell him? Hey, hi, I know we just had sex with our clothes on, but guess what I found out! Shunning was contagious. I didn’t want him to lose his job because of me. Actually, I didn’t want him to lose his job again because of me. I was the freaking black plague.
Mentally tired, I rinsed the bottles in salt water and reached for the dishcloth. And things had been going so well, too—apart from my latest mess, that is. I’d finally gotten the Weres off my case by returning the focus to them. Thanks to my saving Trent, the elves weren’t bothering me despite my potential demon, ah, liabilities. The vampires were edgy, but I think I had just taken care of that. Ivy was going to be okay, and our relationship was going to get a lot less chaotic. Just when everything was under control and I might be able to have something normal with a normal guy doing normal things, my own people had come down on me.
“Must have been Tom,” I muttered, shoving my sleeves back up and pulling out the drain plug.
Young, attractive guys who have a good job and don’t mind a girl who spends a night in the ever-after once a week were hard to find. It wasn’t as if Marshal and I had been planning a life together, but damn it, there’d been the chance that it might have gone that way. Eventually. Not anymore. What was wrong with me?
Standing at the black window, I closed my eyes and sighed. That power pull had been fantastic, though. What am I going to tell him?
Grimacing, I turned back to the center counter and the spells waiting to be put together, bottled, and stoppered for tomorrow. I’d take them out to Fountain Square, find an alley, and when the crowd started singing “Auld Lang Syne,” I’d invoke them all if I had to. And then Al and I would talk. Get a few things settled.
But even as I was looking forward to it, the thought of arguing with Al in the snow with a naked ghost and a square full of witnesses made me cringe. Maybe I could rent a van and do it in the parking garage. It wasn’t as if Al was giving me any choice. I’d tried to call him earlier, but all I’d gotten for my trouble was a lingering headache and a “go away” message. Fine. We could do it the hard way. I had agreed not to summon him, but he hadn’t said anything about stealing his latest chunk of meat out from under him.
The soft hum of pixy wings got my attention, and I gave Jenks a closed-lipped smile as he flew in. “Hi, Jenks,” I said as I shook the black bottle to get the water out and dried the exterior, impatient to get to the fun stuff on my counter. “I didn’t wake up your kids, did I?”
Jenks glanced over my spelling supplies, and a slip of silver dust sifted from him as he hovered over the table. “No. Have you heard from Cormel yet?”
“No.” The word was flat, carrying all my worry. “But she’ll be fine.” And if she isn’t, I’m taking up the new profession of master-vampire killer.
He landed on the open pizza box, making a face at the unused garlic dipping sauce. “Fine. Yeah. Going after a banshee is fine. You’re both lucky to be alive.”
I set the bottle upside down in the cold oven and turned it on low, letting the door shut with a hard thump. There was a clatter as the bottle fell over. “Don’t you think we know that?” I said, irritated. “Mia came after us, we did not go after her. What would you like us to have done? Roll over and play dead?”
“Ivy might be okay if you had,” he muttered, just within my hearing, and I shook the last drops of water out of the next bottle before giving it a cursory swipe with the towel. It went in beside the first, this time propped up against the wall, and I reached for the last black bottle.
“Ivy thinks it’s her fault that Mia learned how to kill without a trace,” I said. “She tried to bring her in. She tried, failed, and learned from it. Next time, we’ll do it together.” I looked at his drooping wings, and added, “All of us. It’s going to take all of us. That’s one wicked bitch.”
His wings blurred into nothing, and feeling better, I set the last bottle in the oven with the others and carefully shut the door. They’d be dry by the time I was ready for them.
Whether from the pixies being asleep, or Ivy being gone—or maybe because Pierce was in the ever-after—the church felt empty. Turning to the center counter, I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked at the clock. Spelling on the back side of the night wasn’t the best of times, but it would be okay. “Wine,” I said as I reached for the cheap bottle and unscrewed the top. Not one of the finest wines to have graced our kitchen, but it was local, the grapes grown in the soil where Pierce had lived and died.
Squinting, I crouched to put my eyes level with the graduated cylinder and filled it until the meniscus settled right where it should, and as Jenks watched, I dribbled in a little extra.
“You overfilled it,” he said dryly, wings clattering as he looked from it to the recipe.
“I know.” Not bothering to explain, I picked up the cylinder and made the big no-no of putting it to my lips and doing my impression of “The Drunken Chef.” The hint of warmth slipped down my throat as I sipped the level back to where it should be. My mom had said to do the spell exactly the same, and being stupid at eighteen, that’s how I had leveled it. Who knew? It might be why it had worked. Arcane earth spells were notoriously difficult to reproduce. It might be something that nebulous that had made it possible the first time.
Three separate batches of the yew and lemon mix were already waiting, and leaving them where they sat, I dumped the wine into the mortar already holding the snipped bits of holly leaf I’d taken from Ivy’s Christmas centerpiece earlier. “Don’t get your dust in that,” I said, waving Jenks off from the top of the open bottle, and the pixy shifted to alight on the overhead rack of spelling utensils instead. Ivy had replaced the tacked-together rack with a solid redwood mesh, and my spelling supplies were again where they should be instead of shoved in cupboards.
“So-o-o-orry,” he muttered, and I nodded, more concerned with the spell than his pique.
“Ivy roots,” I murmured, reaching for the little measuring cup full of the tiny little rhizomes from one of Jenks’s plants in the sanctuary. It had to be airborne roots, not underground, and Jenks’s kids had been delighted to harvest them for me. The knobby roots went in, and with a few twists, the scent of chlorophyll mixed with the cheap wine.
It was a lot easier to crush everything this time, not being sick now like I’d been at eighteen. My thoughts went back to Pierce as the soft sounds of rock against rock filled the kitchen, and a whisper of worry lifted through me that tomorrow might be too late. I didn’t think Al would give Pierce a body until he had a buyer, enabling him to work the cost of the expensive curse into the deal. Not to mention that Pierce couldn’t tap a line given the state he was in. Why would Al make him stronger if he didn’t have to? I knew Al wouldn’t sell to the first buyer, wanting to up the going price as far as he could. It would take a few days at least.
A curl drifted between me and the mix, and remembering something, I carefully drew a single hair into the mortar and gave the pestle two twists, grinding it before I pulled the hair out. My hair had been to my waist the first time I had done this charm, and it had gotten caught. It might be important. I was betting it was. With this and my spit, I might be investing part of myself in the spell. It was going to be hard enough getting this to work.
I straightened to crack my back. “Holy dust,” I murmured, looking for it among the clutter. Jenks’s wings hummed and he dropped to hover over the envelope that I’d gathered from the slats under my bed, the only place the pixies didn
’t clean. It was on sanctified ground, so I figured it was holy enough. And God knew my bed hadn’t seen any action lately.
“Thanks,” I said absently as I pulled the flap to open it. I wiped the pans of my scales with a tissue, then frowned. A thin smear of lotion showed in the bright overhead lights. Not only would it add aloe, but the dust would stick to it and I wouldn’t get enough in the mix.
Sighing, I took the pans to the sink to give them a quick wash. Jenks moved back to the overhead rack, and in the black mirror the window had become, I could see a sifting of dust falling from him. He was worried.
“Ivy is going to be fine,” I said over the chatter of running water. “I’ll call before I go to bed, to find out how she is, okay?”
“I’m not worried about Ivy, I’m worried about you.”
Metal pans swathed in a dish towel, I turned. “Me? Why?” He made an exasperated gesture that encompassed my spelling, and I huffed. “You want Al popping over anytime with the excuse of checking on me and then snagging whoever he wants? Can you imagine the trouble I’d be in if Al showed up and took, say, Trent, when I’m telling the little shoemaker to get lost?”
Jenks’s small angular features pulled into a tight grimace. “Al is going to be more pissed than a fairy who finds acorns in his spider sack.”
That was a new one, and I frowned as I replaced the pans and weighed out the dust, carefully tapping the envelope until the delicate balance started to shift. “He left a loophole, and I’m going to use it,” I said as the instrument leveled. “Al’s not taking my calls, and this is the only way I can think of to get his attention. Not to mention, this will save Pierce, too. Two birds with one stone. He’ll probably treat me to dinner for outsmarting him.” After he smacks me around. I looked up, seeing an unsure look on his tiny features. “What’s the worst he’s going to do to me? Ground me? Cancel our weekly sessions?” A private smile curved across my face and I tapped the dust from the pan into the wine medium. “Bully for him.”
“Rachel, he’s a demon. He might just pull you into the ever-after and not let you back.”
The fear in Jenks’s voice broke through my nonchalance, and I turned to him. “Which is why I told you and Ivy my summoning name,” I said, surprised that this was bothering him so much. “He can’t hold me even with charmed silver, and he knows it. Jenks, what’s the matter? You’re acting like there is more to this than there is.”
“Nothing.”
But he was lying, and I knew it.
The dust turned black when it hit the wine and sank. Jenks flew to the sill and looked out into the snowy garden, only a small patch lit by the back-porch light. All that was left besides invoking the charm was adding the identifying agent—in this case, metal shavings from the back of my dad’s watch.
I drew the old pocket watch from my back jeans pocket, hefting the weight and feeling the warmth of my body in the metal. It had belonged to my dad, but it had been Pierce’s before that, hence his being pulled from purgatory the night I had tried to make contact with my dad. I turned the watch over to find that the scratches I’d made eight years ago were now tarnished. I tried to remember what I had used to scrape the tiny bits into the spell pot the last time, guessing it had been my mom’s scissors.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said as I reached for Ivy’s pair, jammed into her pencil cup, and scraped a new three marks into the old silver. The almost-unseen shavings made dimples on the wine half of the brew, and I stirred it until they settled. Almost done, and I pulled a warm, and now dry, bottle from the oven and dumped in both the lemon-yew mix and the wine, dust, roots, and holly.
Jenks hovered over it, his expression blank. “It didn’t work,” he said, and I waved him off before his dust could get in it.
“It’s not done yet. I have to add my blood to invoke it, and I can’t do that until tomorrow night,” I said as I wedged a glass stopper into it and set it aside. Fortunately it was an earth charm and I could do it without tapping a line. He was frowning, and tired of his mood, I asked, “What’s your problem, Jenks?”
His face tightened, and he flew to land on the book. Standing sideways to me, he crossed his arms and fumed, wings drooping. Silently I waited. “This isn’t going to work,” Jenks finally said.
My breath slipped from me, and I turned away, brow furrowed. “Gee, thanks, Jenks.”
“I meant with Pierce.”
Understanding him now, I straightened after carefully pouring a second portion of wine into the graduated cylinder. “You think I’m cooking up a boyfriend in my kitchen? Grow up.”
“You grow up!” Jenks said. “Let’s just say he’s a nice ghost who needs a little help and is not spying on us for some demon. I know you, Rache. He is a ghost. You’re a witch. He needs help, and I’d be willing to bet the first time you met him, he did something strong and powerful. And now he needs help, which turns him into freaking Rachel candy.”
I couldn’t help a flush from creeping up my face. Okay, maybe once, but I was smarter now. But seeing it, Jenks rose an inch.
“He’s Rachel candy. And I don’t want to see you hurt when you realize you can’t have him.”
“You think I’m doing this because I like him?” I said, mentally backpedaling. “It’s not always about sex!”
“Then it’s a good thing you didn’t sleep with Marshal, isn’t it.”
Silently I reddened, eyes fixed on the wine level. Damn it!
“Tink’s titties, Rache!” he exclaimed. “You slept with the guy? When?”
“I didn’t sleep with him,” I protested, but I couldn’t look at him as I sipped the wine to the right amount. “It was just a really involved kiss.” In a broad sort of way. Crap, Ford had said Pierce spent a lot of time in the belfry. I sure hoped he hadn’t been up there when Marshal and I had—No, Al had abducted him before that.
Jenks landed on the bottle I’d just capped, and with his hands on his hips, he stared disapprovingly at me. “I thought you were going to leave it at friends,” he said, then he slumped. “Crap, Rache, can’t you just have a guy friend?”
“I did have a guy friend,” I snapped, my hair swinging as I dropped the ivy roots and a holly leaf into the mortar and started grinding. “I spent two months doing friend stuff because I thought my life was too dangerous, and I found out that yeah, I can keep it friendly, but I also found out he was a really nice person. Maybe someone I might want to spend my life with. Maybe not. I didn’t know I was going to get shunned. Excuse me if I thought I might finally have my freaking life together enough that I could share it with someone other than just you and Ivy!”
Jenks’s wings buzzed, then went guiltily silent. Feeling bad for yelling at him, I set the pestle down and crouched to put us on the same level. “I thought I had my life together,” I whispered. “I really liked him, Jenks.”
“Me, too.” In a soft hum, he landed by my hand. “Don’t put him in the past tense.”
My focus sharpened on him and I stood. “He is,” I whispered. “Ever since I became shunned.” Depressed, I straightened and looked to the holy dust. Ashes and dust. It sort of fit.
Jenks watched as I shook the envelope over the weighing pan, then rose up on a column of amber-tinted sparkles. “The phone is going to ring. You want to get it before it wakes up my kids?”
I looked up, not sure I believed him. The trill of the phone broke the silence, and I reached for the receiver, adrenaline jumping through me. Cormel? “God, I hate it when you do that,” I said, as I hit the button to open the line.
“Hello, yes?” I blurted as Jenks darted from the kitchen to check on his kids. Then remembering we were a business, I cleared my throat. “Vampiric Charms,” I said politely. “This is Rachel. We can help, dead or alive.”
“Alive would be better,” came Edden’s voice, and disappointment that it wasn’t Cormel slumped my shoulders. Tucking the phone between my shoulder and my ear, I went back to my set of scales.
“Hi, Edden. How is Glenn doi
ng?” I asked, trying not to breathe on the scales as I tapped a little more dust out.
“Great. They released him this afternoon. The massage worked, though it raised a few eyebrows. It’s going into the SOP for aura trauma.”
“That’s fantastic!” I said as I stood and dumped the dust in with the wine mix. Wine to give life, dust to give substance, ivy to bind, and holly to be sure nothing bad came in on the souls of the dead. “Thanks for calling me.” I looked at the clock, wanting to keep the line open, but clearly Edden didn’t get the hint.
“It was only right, seeing as you helped get him out.” He hesitated, and when I didn’t say anything, he added, “I’m sorry about Ivy. Is she okay?”
My motions to scrape the metal shavings into the mix were harsher than I had intended, and I warmed, gaze flicking to Jenks as he flew in. Oh yeah. He would have heard about that. “Ah, she’s okay.” I winced, adjusting the phone and remembering to grind a strand of my hair in with everything. “Um, how much trouble am I in over that?”
He laughed. “Just come in tomorrow and fill out a statement. I told them you were working for me, and they cut you a lot of slack.”
I sighed in relief. “Thanks, Edden. I owe you.”
“Yeah, you do…,” he said, and my tension ratcheted up again at his sly tone.
“What,” I said flatly. My eyes flicked to Jenks, listening to the entire conversation from across the room, and the pixy shrugged.
“I’d like your help on the next step in bringing Mia in,” he said. “We can go over it tomorrow. See you at my office at eight.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Edden,” I said, holding the phone tight to my ear. “There is no next step. Until my entire team is functioning, none of us is going after her.”
“Our three best profilers say Ms. Harbor will be at a party tomorrow,” Edden said as if not having heard me. “I want you there.”