by Kim Harrison
The keening lifted and rose, and Ivy's jaw tightened. "You're not alone, pixy. Don't you dare go somewhere to die!"
Face riven, he stared blankly at her. "I am alone," he said simply. Getting up, he found Jax standing miserably, holding Jih as she cried into his shoulder. "Jax, the garden is yours," he said, and the younger pixy jerked. "Keep Rachel alive if you have an ounce of respect for your mother," he finished bitterly. And as Ivy and I stared, Jenks took Matalina and walked into a shadow that hid the back tunnel to their home.
A wailing grew, turning into harmony with no words, heartrending in its beauty. The pixies joined together, rising up with wings turned blue from sadness, the tears sifting from them to make them glow. All but Jax, his feet riveted to the wet earth.
"No! I don't want the garden!" he shouted at the small opening. "I don't want your dreams, old man! I have my own!"
I turned to Ivy, scared. "What does he mean, the garden is Jax's?"
Jax rose up, and I sat back on my heels to keep him in sight. "I'm to find a wife and keep the land," he said. Wings clattering, he flew to the empty tunnel but didn't enter. "I don't want it! You can't make me do this!" he raged into the darkness. "This isn't what's supposed to happen!"
"This is Jenks's land," I said, scared. "He's my backup, not you."
Ivy was crying, the tears slipping down her pale face with a slow misery. "He's gone to ground with her," she said. "He's not going to come out. Ever."
Fear pulled me straight. "What do you mean, ever?"
"He's going to kill himself to stay with her."
"Jenks!" I shouted in a panic, dropping down to put my face beside the hole and seeing for the first time the small black stones that lined the walls to hold back the earth and make the opening look like a shadow. "Jenks, I need you!" I shouted. "Come back!"
There was no answer, and I turned to Jax, shaking inside. "Go in and get him."
Jax bowed his head, his arms over his middle. "I can't," he said, turning away.
He can't, I thought, confused. Heart racing, I stood. The morning was just as beautiful, the trees just as green and the soft sounds of the city coming faintly as humans headed to work. But now it was different. Broken. There had to be a way to fix this. I wouldn't accept this end. Not by a long shot.
As if in a dream, I started back to the church, my shoes getting wet from yesterday's rain.
"Ceri?" I called, jerking to a halt when Pierce stepped from behind his own tombstone.
"Jenks?" he asked, eyes hopeful but his stance weary.
My mouth opened to tell him, and grief hit me, shocking my breath away. "Matalina," I choked out. I couldn't say the words. If I did, I would start to cry again and never stop. It was so awful.
Pierce took my arm to pull me close in comfort, and it didn't matter how brave I wanted to be as my next breath came out in a sob. "She's gone," I managed. "Jenks is going to kill himself to stay with her. I have to get small." Eyes wet, I looked up as Pierce pushed the hair from my eyes. "Do you know the curse for that?" I asked.
"No," he said, gently, the pain in his eyes echoing a loss from his past.
"That's okay," I said, head hurting as I struggled to stop my tears. "Ceri probably does." Disentangling myself from him, I started back across the graveyard, skin tingling as I passed through the ley line. I could hear Pierce behind me talking with Ivy. Desperation kept me moving forward, and finally I reached the knee-high wall separating the graveyard from the garden—the dead from the living. Miserable, I stepped over it, wondering if the spirits of the dead could watch us by crossing a barrier just that easily. Thoughts of my dad made the tears prick again, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "Ceri?"
It was obvious by the way she stood with her hands clasped before her middle that she knew what had happened. High above the garden, I could hear Jenks's children filling the world with their grief. Tears glistened in her eyes, and she held out her hands to pull me into a hug when I came close. "You'll miss him dearly," she said, smelling of cinnamon and earth.
Hands going to her shoulders, I pushed us apart. "I need your help," I said, heart breaking. "I need to get small. I have to save Jenks."
With my peripheral sight, I saw Sidereal turn, shushing the fairy woman he was talking to. Ceri's eyes widened, and dropping back a step she asked, "Why?"
Desperation turned to frustration. "Why? He won't come out, and I have to tell him it's going to be okay," I said. "Shrink me down so I can fit in his stump. Can you do it?"
Pierce's voice rose over the distance, telling me that either he was using his magic to listen in, or Ivy was relaying the conversation. "Make me small as well!" he shouted, voice softening as he got closer. "I'm going with her."
I watched Pierce and Ivy step over the wall. From grave to garden in one movement. When I turned back, Ceri's eyes were a deep green with tears, but her face was resolute. "Rachel," she said, taking my hand and holding it. "I understand this is hard. For you especially, having lost so many already, but who are you doing this for?"
Doubt hit me, followed quickly by resolve. "What do you mean, who am I doing this for?" I said, imagining his heartache, alone in his stump with Matalina and thinking his life was over. "Jenks kept me alive for two years through two death threats, a crazy banshee, and at least two serial killers. It's about time I return the favor! And if I can't, then I can sit by his bed and hold his hand as he dies, 'cause I've had plenty of practice doing that, too!"
Crap, I was crying again, but Ceri shook her head, eyes downcast. "I understand your frustration, but he's lost, Rachel," she said. "I'm sorry." Her gaze shifted behind me to Ivy and Pierce. "There will be no others like them," she whispered.
"He's not dead yet!" I shouted in sudden anger, born of helplessness. "Matalina wanted him to live on, and you've already got him in the ground, you cold, unfeeling bitch!"
"Rachel!" Ivy exclaimed, and immediately I relented.
"Ceri, I'm sorry," I said with a bad grace. "I didn't mean that. But Jenks is alone." My eyes started to fill again, and I wiped a hand over them. "He shouldn't be."
"I understand," she said stiffly. "It's the grief speaking. You do realize, none of this would have happened if you had killed the fairies."
My jaw clenched, and I turned away. I suppose I deserved it after calling her a bitch. Depressed, I sat, slumped, at the picnic table, as far from the fairies as I could get. This was so wrong. Jenks thought he was alone, and unless I could get in there, he would be. Damn it, he couldn't die. He couldn't! And not alone.
Pierce put a hand on my shoulder, but I didn't look up. My heart was breaking, and I held my breath until my head started to hurt. Why? Why hadn't I just killed them? But what kind of monster would I be if I could choose who lived and who died?
Ivy stood with her arms crossed over her middle, her cast awkward and her eyes red. "Ceri, she's right. Whether we can convince Jenks to live or not, one of us should be there with him. His wife just died. Don't let him grieve alone."
"I never said I wouldn't do it," Ceri said tartly, and my head came up. "I just think it's time for Rachel to grow up. Face the facts. Pixies die young. That's why you befriend a family, not an individual."
I spun where I sat to look at her, aghast even as my chest hurt from trying not to cry. "You are a coldhearted bitch. You think it's time for me to grow up?" I said as I stood. "Accept everything that happens to me as fact? Jenks is not a life lesson to help me grow up. He's my friend, and he's hurting!"
I wasn't thinking clearly, but I didn't care. Jenks thought his life was over, and I couldn't get to him.
"He's a pixy, Rachel," Ceri said, eyes flicking over Ivy, probably calculating the odds that her next words might send the vamp after her. "This is what they do."
Emotions jumbled and numb, I looked over the garden for something, anything, seeing the fairies at the edge of their prison, listening. Jenks had let them live. Something no other pixy had ever done.
"Yeah," I said bluntly, not re
ady to let him go just yet. "Jenks is a pixy. And pixies die of heartache when their spouses die. But Jenks is more than a pixy. He went into partnership with Ivy and me; no other pixy has done that. He owns property. Has a credit card. Minutes left on his phone. He's probably going to live another twenty years because I reset his biological clock by accident last summer. He showed mercy and let those who attacked his garden live. What happened with Matalina is tragic. It's my fault she's dead. I can't sit here and just let him die as well, can't."
"People die, Rachel," Ceri said, her cheeks flushing.
"Not if I can help it," I snapped. "And not of a broken heart. If you could, I'd be dead already." I turned away, frustrated. "Please. At least let me be there so he doesn't die alone."
Ivy's breath caught. "I want to go, too," she said suddenly, and I turned to her, shocked. She would take a curse?
"Me as well," Pierce offered.
Ceri's lips pressed as she saw our united front. "Fine," she finally said, and the sudden relief almost collapsed my knees. "I don't agree with this," she added. "You are all only going to hurt Jenks. Pierce, you're familiar with twisting curses. I'll need help to make three quick enough to do some good. You can help."
Pierce's expression was a mix of relief and heartache. "Of course," he said, gesturing for Ceri to accompany him inside. But the elf would have none of his courtesy, and with her head high, she stalked up the stairs and into the house with a loud bang of the screen door.
Ivy exhaled long and slow. Pierce seemed to relax as well, arid he touched my arm and smiled. "It's a curse," he said, startling me when he leaned in and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek, leaving me with the scent of redwood swirling in my brain. His steps confident, he rose up the stairs as well, closing the door behind him without a sound. A moment later, the kitchen window slammed shut, feminine fingers on the sill.
The hint was obvious. Stay out.
Shaking, I sat back down. With a sigh, Ivy slipped in to sit across from me. We exchanged a long look, both of us knowing that Ceri and Pierce had the easy part. It was going to be up to us to find a way to convince Jenks that life was worth living when his reason for living was gone. Deciding what to do with the fairies could wait.
Twenty-three
It was almost noon, and I was still sitting at the picnic table, my upper body slumped against the damp wood and my head down, staring at Jenks's stump. I'd be dead if Brooke knew the fairy attack had failed and decided to come after me twice in one morning, but I didn't care. I was waiting for a sign of life from Jenks's stump, and I wasn't going inside and possibly miss it. Ivy had gone in to find out how much longer it would be, but that had been, like, five minutes ago.
The spring breeze shifted a curl into my eyes, and I brushed it away, staring, still staring, at the stump as my hip ached from hitting the floor too many times, my arm hurt where the fairy dart had found me, and my fingernails stank of burnt amber. At the end of the table, the fairies were moving around, recovering from their wounds and learning how to walk without their wings, still waiting to learn their fate. The garden was almost silent. Not a bird or insect, not a clatter of wing or pixy wail of mourning. It was eerie, and I sat up, feeling my back crack. "Where is everyone?" I whispered, not expecting an answer.
"Scattered," a fairy said, and I looked at Sidereal standing at the edge of the bubble. "When parents die, the young scatter. They die, or find mates and probably die. None return."
"Jenks isn't dead," I said quickly, feeling the hurt to the bone, and he grinned to show me his sharp teeth. Stifling a shudder, I looked back to the stump. Jenks's kids were going to leave? "Why leave?" I asked. "The garden isn't going anywhere."
Sidereal shrugged, his wicked grin turning to a grimace of pain when the skin on his back pulled. "It prevents inbreeding. They're only animals. We drift on the currents far above, listening for funeral songs like wolves listen for the ailing elk. The mourning pixies abandon their garden, and new ones won't move in until all evidence of habitation is gone. That's what we do. Wipe the slate clean. And they call us animals."
I was sure they scattered from heartache, not to prevent inbreeding, but I said nothing.
"There isn't even a fight unless another fairy clan claims it, too." Sidereal reached over his shoulder with disjointed arms to fix his clothing, rubbing the stumps of his wings. "That the pixy told his eldest to maintain the garden was unusual. Disgusting, when you think about it."
"It's not disgusting," I said, insulted. "Jenks told Jax to maintain the garden because he thinks I need pixy backup." But Jax was gone again, abandoning his father's dreams to follow his own. It was hard to find fault with him, though.
Sidereal was silent for a moment. "Your magic can make you as small as this?" he said doubtfully, looking down at his white, robelike clothes.
It hurt to talk about Jenks, but I said, "Yes. I made Jenks big once."
The fairy made a dry hiss I was starting to identify as disbelief. "He wouldn't be able to fly that size. The weight would be too much."
"He didn't have wings." I looked at the porch, then back to Jenks's stump. "He didn't need them when he was that big." I was struck by a sudden thought, and my eyes flicked to Sidereal. I could make them big, then small again to give them their wings back.
Then what? I thought. Pat them on the head and tell them to be good? If I gave them their wings back, they'd have a renewed life as well, with no promise that they wouldn't turn around and murder me in my sleep. They had already tried to kill me with that dart. Ivy, too. No, I wasn't going to make them big even for a second.
Sidereal's lips were pulled back in a long-toothed grimace, and his expression was cross. I wondered if he'd had the same thought when he turned away, hissing. "Schhhhsssss. The coven is right. You're a black witch. Cursing yourself to save a pixy."
"The coven is a bunch of jealous hacks," I said, not believing it but enjoying hearing the words come out of my mouth. "What's the point of being able to do all this if you don't do anything to help your friends? I'm not hurting anyone but myself by getting small. His wife just died, and he needs someone to hold him. And how can you call them animals when they pine to death when the other one dies?" Oh God. Jenks, we need you. Don't follow Matalina just yet. She wanted you to live.
"Your kindness hurts, witch," Sidereal said bitterly, stretching a hand behind him to hold a new pain. "It hurt my people when you saved us from death, and it will hurt the pixy. You are truly a demon."
My face warmed, and I barked, "Who asked you?" I wasn't hurting Jenks, was I? Should I just let him die with Matalina? Was I being selfish? Maybe... maybe a pixy loved so deeply that to continue on would be hell?
Sidereal's black eyes squinted at me as my face went cold, but the creak of the back door turned me around. Adrenaline pulsed as Pierce came out. Ivy was behind him, and then Ceri. Anxious, I stood and wiped my hands off on my jeans. "Where's the other one?" I asked, seeing only two potion vials in Pierce's hand. Ivy winced, and I got it. "You aren't going?"
Ivy took a vial from Pierce and handed it to me. "I saw what went into it," she said as she gave me a hug. My eyes closed and I felt the tears prick again. There was worry for me in her touch. "I can't do this," she whispered, sounding ashamed. "You can."
Why wasn't I surprised? "Am I making a mistake?" I asked her, miserable about Matalina, but wanting to keep Jenks alive.
Ivy shook her head. Seeing it, Ceri cleared her throat for my attention. "The curses need to be invoked," she said, and I took the finger stick she was extending.
Invoked with demon blood since they were curses. Numb, I snapped the top off the finger stick with my thumb and pricked it in one smooth motion, practice making it easy. The wind ruffled my hair as I massaged the digit, three drops plopping first into my vial, then Pierce's. The scent of redwood blossomed, but my face went cold in the slight breeze when I thought I smelled a hint of burnt amber. No one else seemed to notice it.
Damn it, how much more proof do I need?
Shaking, I looked at Pierce. His expression was empty, and he downed it with no hesitation. "It tastes like the fall," he said as he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth.
"Dried leaves," I whispered, remembering Jenks saying the same thing. The fairies at the end of the table were all watching, and I wondered, if I freed them would they go back to the coven and tell them everything they had witnessed? Did I even care?
Gathering my courage, I raised the vial... then paused. "Clothes," I blurted out. "I can't walk into Jenks's house naked."
"Jih is bringing them," Ceri said patiently. "For you and Pierce both."
Satisfied, I downed the vial, waiting for Jenks's snide comment about naked witches in his Garden of Eden, but of course it never came. My heart clenched. The dusty taste of the potion seemed to dry my mouth, and I swallowed, tongue running over my teeth to try to get it off. "That's awful," I said as I made a face and tapped a line. All that was left were the magic words. "What's the word to turn back?" I asked.
Ceri shrugged. "The same to invoke it."
I thought back to the size charm for Jenks last summer. "Non sum qualis eram?"
The woman's eyes widened, and I had one gasp of air before it was shoved out of me.
Just that fast, it took hold. There was no pain, but I could feel the rush of the ley line spill into me, vibrating every cell until I felt overly full. A sheet of smut-tainted ever-after enveloped me, making my hearing muzzy, but there was a clicking like a trillion abacuses as my cells prepared to shift, turning things on, turning other things off. Then the flow of energy hesitated.
I got another breath in before it was shoved out again. I felt as if I was being squeezed like a tube of toothpaste. Energy flowed out of me as I shrank. My eyes quit working, and I panicked. There was the shattering of something: a hard crack followed by the tinkling of shards. I thought it might be my soul.