by Kim Harrison
"I don't like this," Jenks said softly from my shoulder as I fanned the faint burnt amber smell away. "Nick isn't getting anything out of this. Not even notoriety."
"I don't trust him either," I said, loud enough so everyone could hear. "That's why Ivy is going with us. She's going to babysit him."
Ivy smiled, tipping her glass in salute, but Nick sputtered. Pierce's expression became dark, a protest forming. Nick, though, was faster.
"Ivy is not coming," he said hotly. "It will increase the risk of getting caught by eighty percent."
Ivy bristled. "I won't be the one to get us caught, you infected blood clot."
"You're not going into the belly of Kalamack's fortress without me," Pierce said. "His father was a traitorous, untrustworthy worm and Trent is the same."
"She's coming," I said to Nick. "Make it work, genius." And then to Pierce, "Tell me something I don't know. You're just worried Al is going to be pissed, and Al is pissed at you already. You're staying. You reach too fast for the black magic, and though that has saved both Ivy and me, using it now will land me in an Inderland jail, or worse, in the ever-after."
"I opine I know how to keep my magic to myself!" Pierce said indignantly.
Striding across the kitchen, I put myself right in his face, making Jenks dart away when I put my hands on my hips and leaned in. "No," I said firmly. "I've put up with you for three days. Watched you for three very long days!" I said, then dropped my voice again. "You have saved my life. You have saved Ivy's. I owe you everything. But you keep overreacting! Tell me I'm wrong, Pierce, that you like using black magic? Tell me that."
"I do not overreact," he said, suddenly unsure.
"You do," I insisted, "you overreacted when you broke the church window, and you overreacted when you almost fried Lee in the university's philosophy building. But the reason you're not coming is because you have bad ideas, Pierce, and you act too fast on them."
Ivy was wide eyed, and even Nick had sat back, pencil almost falling out of his mouth.
"Do tell." Pierce's lips were tight, and his brow was furrowed.
"You said to keep quiet to Al about Alcatraz, but the coven wanting my ovaries had a lot to do with convincing him to give me my name back. You nearly dragged me onto that bus that Vivian crashed into a bridge. And what's with shooting at Al with my gun with my charms in the hopper? What if you had killed him? Who do you think the demons would blame for the death of one of their own? You, the familiar? Or me, the one whose gun was smoking? Now I'm down a splat gun until I can find someone who doesn't know I'm shunned and will sell me a new one! I can't trust you in a pinch, and because of that, you're watching Jenks's kids. Got it?"
"I can fix the window and I'll get you a new gun," he said, and I made my hands into fists, frustrated. He'd saved my life and I owed him, but half my problems this week were because of him.
"The gun isn't the problem," I said. "You keep telling me what to do. You don't ask. You don't suggest. You tell. And I don't like it. I have people to help me who I trust won't overreact and make things so out of control that it takes black magic to fix. You aren't coming."
I was out of breath, and I stopped, waiting for his reaction. By the frown on his face, it wasn't going to be nice. "You don't want me to help," he said, voice tight.
"No," I said, then added more gently, "Not today."
Pierce clenched his jaw, and without another word, he turned and strode from the kitchen. Jenks's eyes were wide, and I exhaled when I heard the back door slam. Shaking inside, I turned to Nick. "Did you have something to say about Ivy coming?"
Nick glanced at Ivy, his eyes dropping to her cast, then rising to me. "No, but her being there is going to increase the time to cross the main floor by at least three seconds. I don't know if the camera sweep can handle that. If you get caught, it's not my fault."
Jenks darted up, then down. "I'll worry about the cameras, rat boy. You worry about not tripping over your big fat wizard feet."
I took a deep breath to get rid of the adrenaline. Telling Pierce off had been something I'd been wanting to do all day, and now that it was done, I felt guilty. Glad I'd done it, regardless, I followed Jenks to the table to study the papers. I couldn't make heads or tails out of what they had scribbled. "Why can't we go downstairs from a low-security office, work through the underbelly in the lab where security will be light, then come up on the other side?" I asked, then tucked my hair behind my ear when it fell forward.
Both Ivy and Nick looked at me like I'd just said we should take a train to the moon. "You mean, like in the air ducts?" Nick finally offered.
"Yes," I said, wondering why Jax was smirking. "We can all go mink or something."
Ivy looked at Nick, and I swear... I saw them bond. "No," Nick said, white faced.
"I'm not going to turn into a rodent," Ivy said, her voice low and throaty.
"A mink is not a rodent," I snapped. "God! Everyone but Trent knows that."
Taking the pencil from behind her ear, Ivy circled a camera and drew a cone around its scanned area. "I'm not turning into anything," she said, glancing at the potions on the counter.
This might make our getaway more complicated. "You're afraid!" I accused, putting a hand on my hip. "Both of you. I know how to do this! I'm not going to leave you that way! You just have to think the word to break the curse."
Nick cleared his throat, and I got more ticked yet. It would be so easy if they weren't afraid. Maybe I should just do this by myself, just Jenks and me.
Ivy looked up, her gaze distant. "There's a delivery truck at the door," she said, and the doorbell rang. "If you don't hurry, they'll take it back to the depot."
Unfortunately she was right, and I spun away, almost running in my sock feet down the hall, shouting that I was coming. They wouldn't leave packages since I'd been shunned.
Behind me, I could hear Jenks saying, "Tink's panties, Ivy. She's right. If you got small, it would be a snap. You're both chicken shit. Rachel doesn't mind. She looks good small."
"I'm not going to turn into anything," Ivy growled, followed shortly by Nick's fervent agreement.
I ran through the church as the hefty revving of a diesel truck shook the windows—apart from the one Pierce broke that was covered with plywood. Flinging the door open, I shouted and waved, snatching up my lethal amulet from my bag by the door as I ran down the steps in my sock feet. Looking almost disappointed, the guy in brown got out, coming to meet me with a package.
"Thank you," I said as he handed it to me, and I half expected him to ask for some ID. He was a witch. I could tell from his disdainful look. My amulet was a healthy green, and snatching the small package from him, I turned and went back into my church. What did I care what some guy in brown shorts thought? Even if he wore the uniform very well. Damn, where did they go to hire these guys? The gym?
The church felt empty when I came back in, absent of pixies after the long winter. Feet silent, I padded to my abandoned desk, turning at the last moment to sit in one of the leather chairs around the coffee table. The return address was from a shipping place downtown, and tearing open the gummy label, I shook the hard plastic of my phone out onto the table.
"Oh," I said, drawing my hand back as it spun and settled. Eyebrows raised, I cautiously looked inside the package for a note, not finding one. The coven had returned my phone? I eyed my lethal-spell amulet again, still not wanting to touch it. Hell, I'd seen Vivian almost kill Ivy with two white charms. I wasn't about to take anything at face value.
"Hey! The coven sent me my phone!" I shouted, waiting for someone to come look. But no one did. "Jenks!" I shouted, scowling, and the hum of pixy wings sounded loud over Nick's argument from the kitchen.
"What?" the pixy complained. "We're kind of in the middle of something."
I looked up at him, hovering five feet above the floor, his hands on his hips and spilling a lavender dust. "The coven sent my phone back to me. Is it bugged?"
He flew a sweeping arc over it
and back to his original position. "Yeah. Can I get it later? They've almost agreed on something."
My mouth opened to protest, but he was already gone, yelling at Nick to shut the hell up and that Ivy was right before he even reached the kitchen.
Slumping into the soft leather, I got brave and thumbed the phone open. It was on and charged... and I had a message.
Curious, I hit the button and listened to the prerecorded preamble. But when a high-pitched, familiar voice came through the earpiece, I sat up, heart pounding. Vivian.
"Rachel Morgan," Vivian said formally, and I pressed the phone to my ear to catch every nuance. "As of last night, and the... incident at Loveland Castle, we are reassessing the threat you represent. I told them that Brooke was trying to circumvent coven mandates and had summoned a demon after you warned her not to, and that you tried to stop him from taking her, but they think I'm lying."
Her last words sounded accusing, and I sat on the edge of the couch. "We know you used a curse to kill the fairy clan. I'll be honest with you. A reassessment is not necessarily a good thing, but you'll be given a chance to come in peacefully before we take action again. If you force this from a quiet acquisition to a public one, we'll bring your family into it."
Son of a bitch. I stiffened as I thought of my mother in Portland.
"I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she said, "except maybe to thank you for trying. With Brooke, I mean. I may be a lot of things, but a liar isn't among them, and I wanted you to know that I'm not behind that accusation. Brooke did it to herself."
The message clicked off, and I scrambled to save it, exhaling when I hit the right button. Snapping the phone closed, I slumped back to stare at the empty rafters with not a speck of dust or cobweb on them. Frustrated, I tossed the phone to the table for Jenks to debug later. I'm glad she believed me, but what good was it going to do?
Sighing, I levered myself up and headed back to the kitchen to finish up the plans. I wasn't keen on testing Trent's security, but I didn't have much of a choice. I had to get my shunning removed. To do that, I had to survive the coven. They weren't going to back down unless I got Trent to vouch for me without signing that lame-ass paper of his. Which meant blackmail at the worst, and uneasy truce at the best. I was hoping for the truce, but after that Pandora charm had gone deadly, I didn't have a problem with the blackmail.
Getting into Trent's fortress was going to be the easy part. Getting out would be the kicker. But having Ivy and Jenks with me would make this as easy as falling off a log.
Right into the pit of snakes.
Thirty
I'd never been to Trent's primary stables, just his foaling stables a stone's throw away. But the rough-cut boards and smell of hay still felt familiar after the Pandora charm, even if the memory had almost killed me. It made stealing from Trent really easy on my conscience. Stupid elf. I waited in the glow of the security light, feeling exposed with my back pressed against the vertical boards. There was no moon, but there was nowhere to hide either, and I listened to a sitcom come down from an open window on the second floor. Breeding racehorses, Trent forced an early April foaling, so the staff on hand here would be correspondingly small.
Ivy was a shadow at the corner of the building. Jenks, Jax, and Nick were at the window beside me, more of a door, really, where they tossed the hay in. It was locked, of course, with sensor pads. The pixies were trying to find the right amount of electricity to keep the circuit closed even when it was open. They'd been at it long enough to make me nervous. It never took Jenks this long. The entire job was being run like it was a damn committee, and I hated it.
"Are we there yet?" I whispered, and Jax's wings spilled a silver dust. Sighing, I leaned back and fingered my belt pack, holding a couple of pain amulets, the three potion vials—and Trent's dad's hoof pick. I was hoping that if I gave it back, Trent would realize that it was a game and not kill me outright. Even if Pierce hadn't melted my splat gun, I wouldn't have brought it. If I got caught, it wasn't going to be with a potentially lethal weapon on my person. Using my splat gun without the backing of a warrant would put me in jail faster than Bis could hit Pierce's tombstone with a wad of spit, game or no. Any charm I used would leave a trace that the I.S. could track right back to me. I was going in almost naked, and not happy about it.
It was almost three, right when pixies and elves were about to wake up and witches about ready to crash. Crashing sounded good. I was tired. Evading Vivian this afternoon had been harder than I'd thought it would be. We'd finally resorted to jumping stores in the mall until we all went out different delivery entrances to take the bus to one of Ivy's friends. His car had gotten us to the interstate, and from there, we'd walked in across the pastures where they couldn't use motion detectors because of the horses. Everyone had an Achilles' heel, and apparently Trent's was his horses.
"Got it," Jenks said, making a quick circle around me before darting off to get Ivy. Nick gave me a toothy smile as he carefully opened the wooden door, hesitating to allow Jax to oil the hinges with pixy dust when they squeaked. A horse nickered at the new draft, and we froze, listening as the muted conversation from upstairs continued and the laugh track exploded. The pixies vanished inside, and Nick leapt easily to the sill, disappearing soundlessly.
Alone with Ivy, I exhaled in worry. I didn't like how many people it was taking to do this, but I wasn't going to miss out, and Ivy wouldn't let Nick and me do this alone.
Her hair in a black scrunchy, Ivy vaulted easily through the black window. Her hand without the cast came out, and I took it, using it to find my way inside.
I felt like a thief as I landed, my dew-wet running shoes quiet on the swept concrete. The fragrant hay made towers around us, and the soft, inset lighting of the stables was enough to see by. Jax was gone or not moving, but Jenks came close, landing on my shoulder to whisper, "We've got the alarms disabled and the cameras on a loop. Ivy's going to take care of the two guys and the vet upstairs. Hang tight."
I nodded as I took the cloth that Ivy had used to wipe her shoes. Calm and confident, she headed into the aisle and to the heavily polished stairway to the living quarters. There were inlaid lights on each step, and it looked far too fine to be in a stable. Arm swinging, Ivy looked more like she was crossing a bar to get a drink than going to knock out three men without raising an alarm. But having Jenks with her meant it wasn't going to be an issue.
A horse blew at us, and after handing Nick the cloth to wipe down the floor where we'd come in, I went to calm the animal, finding he was free in a nice-size box stall. The horse wouldn't come to me, but at least his ears pricked.
For no reason I could see, the hair on the back of my neck rose, and the horse's ears went back. "How you doing?" Nick whispered, right freaking behind me.
I tried not to jump, but I figured he knew he'd startled me by his smile when I turned. "I have done this before. Nic-k," I said tightly.
He went to say something, but our attention went to the ceiling at a soft thump. I tensed, relaxing when Jenks flew downstairs, dusting a soft gold. "Remind me never to piss off Ivy," he said as he hovered before me. "She dropped them faster than a slug takes a crap."
Ivy sauntered downstairs, her silhouette confident and slim as she tugged her sleeves down and pocketed something in her belt pack. "We've got ten minutes," she said sounding loud as she broke the hush. "They'll wake up in fifteen minutes thinking they fell asleep. Which they did." She patted her belt pouch and smiled, her fangs making me shiver. "I could have made it longer, but they check in with security every half hour."
Nick was eying her belt. "What is it?"
"It's mine," she said, shooing Jax away before the smaller pixy could get a good sniff.
Nervousness seeped up through me as if rising like fog from the earth. Whatever it was, it had been illegal. We were sliding into this criminal thing far too easily. Did it matter if our motives were good if the means were bad? Or was the real question, did I want to go to Alcatraz and g
et my ovaries taken out and wind up lobotomized? This was survival against illegal action, and Trent was at the root of it. Guilt could take a long walk in a short shadow.
"Okay. Spread out," I said. "We've got ten minutes to find the door to the tunnel."
Immediately Jenks took off, his wings a slow, depressed hum. Jax was hot in the other direction. It was obvious that Jax was trying to impress his dad with his backup abilities. Jenks didn't seem to care, still hurting about Matalina. I hadn't even wanted him to come, but he needed to be needed right now, not alone in a church.
Ivy started for the front of the stables, and Nick followed Jax to the back. I poked about after Jenks, checking out the opposite row of stalls. Somewhere in here was a passage under the road and back to the main compound. It wasn't on any of the plans, but if you brought up the public record of who got paid during the construction of the stables, it was obvious that there was one here. You don't write a check for the materials and equipment to make a tunnel just for grins. I only hoped it didn't go right to Trent's private quarters.
The lights were low as we searched, and the horses were getting nervous. Nick wasn't comfortable with the big animals, and Ivy was like having a panther among the herd. Me, they ignored as I tapped the walls for an echo and looked for unexplained worn spots on the floor.
"What's the time, Jenks?" I asked as I rapped my knuckle against the wall holding a dozen different saddles.
"Five minutes, twenty-six seconds," he said, skimming the floor where it met the wall.
"I've got it!" shrilled a high-pitched voice, and the horse across the way snorted, her ears objecting to Jax's exuberant call as much as mine. "I think I've got it!"
Jenks was gone in a burst of dust. Breath held as I walked through it, I followed his sparkles to the end of the stables. Ivy came even with me, smelling of vampire incense. She was enjoying this. It had been a while since we'd done anything together, and I'd missed seeing her happy.