by Kim Harrison
Robbie had been in a good mood because he’d paid for the moving van. Mom had been in a good mood because she had some excitement in her life. I was in a bad mood because she wouldn’t have had to do this if I hadn’t gotten shunned. It didn’t matter that my mother had been apartment hunting since getting back from visiting Takata. She was moving because of me. Robbie and my mom had probably landed by now, and all that remained of them in Cincinnati were six boxes, her new fridge in my kitchen, and her old Buick out front.
Melancholy, I pulled new tape off an old box, peeking inside to find my dad’s old ley line stuff. Making a pleased sound, I stood and hoisted the box onto a hip to take it to the kitchen.
The pixies were noisy up front in the sanctuary as I made my way to the back of the church, and I didn’t even bother to turn on the lights as I shoved the box on the center counter. In the corner, the little blue lights on my mom’s fridge glowed. It had a through-the-door ice dispenser, and Ivy and I had been thrilled when she gave it to us. The pixies had taken all of six seconds to discover that if three of them hit the ice dispenser together, they’d get a cube, which they then used like a surfboard to skate around the kitchen floor. Smiling at the memory, I left the box and went back to my room. I’d unpack it later.
The entire back part of the church had a chill air about it that couldn’t all be blamed on the late hour. Ivy being out might account for some of it, but most was because we had inherited my mom’s space heater along with half her attic. The electric heater was going full tilt up front, and the pixies were enjoying a hot summer evening in January, but since the thermostat for the entire church was in the sanctuary, the heat hadn’t clicked on in hours. It was cool away from the reach of the space heater, making me shiver in my still-tender skin. Coffee would be nice, but since having that grande latte…raspberry…thing, nothing seemed to taste good anymore.
Thoughts of cinnamon and raspberry dogged me back to my room, and I pulled the tape from the next box to find music I’d forgotten I ever had. Pleased, I shoved the box into the hall to go through with Ivy later.
Ivy was doing well, having borrowed my mom’s Buick after sundown to go talk to Rynn Cormel. I didn’t expect her back until after sunrise. She had told him about the oubliette last week, how Denon had been Art’s ghoul set to watch her until she quit the I.S., and how Art had died. I hoped she’d kept quiet about how her aura had protected me when I pulled on a line so hard that it melted stone, but I bet she’d told Rynn Cormel that, too. Not that I was embarrassed or anything, but why advertise to the city’s master vampire that you can do that sort of thing?
Had it surprised me that her aura could shield my soul? I’d never heard of such a thing before, and a search on the Internet and in my books yielded nothing, but since our auras had blended the last time she had bitten me…I wasn’t surprised—I was scared. There was the potential here to find a way to reunite her mind, body, and soul after her first death. I just didn’t see how yet. Kisten had his soul when he died that second time. I knew it. What I didn’t know was if it was me and our love for each other, or if it had been because he had died twice in quick succession, or if it had been something completely different. It wasn’t worth risking Ivy’s soul to find out. Just the thought of her dead terrified me.
A third unmarked box turned out to be more stuffed animals, and I sat back on my heels as my fingers went to pick one up. My smile became sad, and I brushed the unicorn’s mane. This one was special. It had graced my dresser for most of my high school years. “Maybe I’ll keep you, Jasmine,” I whispered, then I straightened at a zing of adrenaline.
Jasmine. That was her name! I thought, elated. That was the name of the black-haired girl I’d hung around with at Trent’s dad’s make-a-wish camp. “Jasmine!” I whispered, excited as I held the stuffed animal close and smiled with a bitter happiness. The toy made a small spot of warmth against me. I remembered it covering a much larger area when I was younger. Happy, I stretched to set it next to the giraffe on my dresser. I’d never forget again.
“Welcome home, Jasmine,” I whispered. Trent had wanted to know Jasmine’s name as much as I had, having had a crush on her and nothing to remember her by. Maybe if I told him her name, he might tell me if she’d survived—once he looked her up in his dad’s records.
I ought to try to mend that fence, I thought, rummaging to find a toy that didn’t have a name or face associated with it that I could take to Ford and Holly. I knew he’d appreciate something to distract and help socialize the young banshee. The two of them were doing great the last time I’d called, though Edden wasn’t happy about Ford taking sick days or setting up a nursery in the corner of his office. Not to mention the potty chair in the men’s room.
I grinned. Edden had ranted for an entire fifteen minutes about that.
Pulling out the elephant named Raymond and the blue bear named Gummie that had nothing but happy memories associated with them, I set them aside, folding the box closed and setting it atop the other box to take to the hospital. My aura was just about back to normal, and I really wanted to see the kids. The girl in the red pajamas, especially. I needed to talk to her. Tell her the chance was real. If her parents would let me, that is.
I held my breath against the dust as I hoisted the two light boxes, nudging my door open with a foot and taking them to the foyer. The pixies chorused a cheerful hello as I entered the sanctuary, and Rex darted through the cat door to the belfry stairway, spooked when I dropped the boxes on top of the one already there. Her head poked back through the door, and I crouched and extended my hand.
“What’s up, Rex?” I crooned, and she came out, tail high as she sedately made her way to me for a little scritch under her chin. She’d been in the foyer when I brought the first box in, too.
The hum of pixy wings pulled our attention up. “Toys for the kids?” Jenks said, his wings a bright red from sitting under the full-spectrum light I had put in my desk lamp.
“Yup, you want to come with me and Ivy when we take them?”
“Sure,” he drawled. “I might raid the witch’s floor for some fern seed, though.”
I harrumphed as I stood. “Be my guest.” It was harder to get stuff now that I was shunned, and Jenks was already planning out a third more garden space to compensate for it. There was the black market, but I wasn’t going there. If I did, then I’d be saying I agreed with what they’d labeled me as, and I didn’t.
Rex went to stand under my coat, and I hesitated when she stood on her hind legs to pat the pocket. My eyebrows rose, and I looked at Jenks. I’d chased her out of the foyer twice now.
“Is one of your kids in there?” I asked Jenks, then jumped for the cat when her nails hooked the felt and started to pull. Her claw disengaged when I scooped her up, but I had to drop her when her back claw dug into my arm. Tail bristled, she ran for the back of the church. There was a brief shout from Jenks’s kids, and then disappointment. Having the sanctuary warmer than the rest of the church was better than putting them in a bubble.
Jenks was laughing, but when I pushed my sleeve up, I found a long scratch. “Jenks,” I complained. “Your cat needs her nails trimmed. I said I’d do it.”
“Rache, look at this.”
I tugged my sleeve down, head coming up to find Jenks hovering before me with a blue something in his hands. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was a little bambino, wrapped up in a blue blanket by the way Jenks was carrying it. “What is it?” I asked, and he dropped it into my waiting hand.
“It was in your pocket,” he said, landing on my palm, and we looked at it together in the light coming from the sanctuary. “It’s a chrysalis, but I don’t know what species,” he added, nudging it with his booted toe.
My confusion cleared, and I took a breath, remembered Al curling my fingers around it on New Year’s Eve. “Can you tell if it’s alive?” I asked.
Hands on his hips, he nodded. “Yup. Where did you get it?”
Jenks flew up as my
fingers closed over it and I started for the kitchen to wash my scratch. “Uh, Al gave it to me,” I said as we passed through the sanctuary and into the cooler hall. “He was making little blue butterflies out of snow, and this was the only thing that survived.”
“Tink’s a Disney whore, that is the creepiest thing I’ve seen since Bis got stuck in the downspout,” he said softly, his wings a soft hum in the dark.
I thunked the lights on in the kitchen with my elbow, and not knowing what to do with it, I set it on the windowsill. “Didn’t see Ivy’s last date, huh?” I asked as I turned on the taps and grabbed the soap. The window was black, throwing back a skewed vision of myself and Jenks.
Rex jumped up onto the counter, and I splashed her when she reached for the chrysalis.
“No! Bad kitty!” Jenks shouted to make the cat leap for the floor, and arm dripping, I set one of Mr. Fish’s oversize brandy snifters upside down over it. Mr. Fish was still in the ever-after, and if he was dead when I got back there, I was going to be pissed. It had been a week now because of my thin aura. At least that’s what Al was saying. Personally, I think he was breaking in Pierce and didn’t want me around, mucking things up.
“Jenks, she’s just being a cat,” I said as the pixy scolded the orange ball of unrepentant fur. She stared lovingly up at her pixy master, licking her chops and twitching the tip of her tail.
“I don’t want her to eat it!” he said, rising to be even with me. “She might turn into a frog or something. Tink’s knickers, it’s probably full of black magic.”
“It’s just a butterfly,” I said, drying my arm and pulling the sleeve back down.
“Yeah, with fangs and a thirst for blood, for all you know,” he muttered.
I scooped up the cat and fondled her ears, wanting to be sure that we were still friends. Rex hadn’t been watching me from doorways all week, and I kind of missed it. The more I thought about it, the more I believed I had played right into Al’s plans. Pierce would want a body, and Al could give it to him. I could easily imagine that the two had come to an agreement, body for servitude. Win-win all the way around. Al got a useful familiar, Pierce got a body and a chance to see me once a week. And knowing Pierce, he thought he’d find a way to slip Al’s leash eventually, leaving me in the middle to suffer the fallout. I’d be willing to bet most of Al’s bluster and anger at me for snatching Pierce had been an act. I had freaking made the charm that he corrupted to make the curse work.
That Pierce was now in Tom Bansen’s body was just squeamy. Even worse, he’d done it to himself. No wonder his plight wasn’t hitting any of my rescue impulses. Stupid man. I’d find out what happened come Saturday and my stint with Al.
The faint tingling of Rex’s bell caught my interest, and I looked at the pretty thing before letting her slip to the floor. My eyes widened at the pattern of loops and swirls that made up its shape. It looked exactly like the bell Trent had found in the ever-after. I’d never noticed before. “Ah, Jenks?” I questioned, not believing it. “Where did you get this bell?”
He was on top of my dad’s box of stuff, trying to wedge it open. “Ceri gave it to me,” he said, puffing. “Why?”
I took a breath to tell him where it had come from, then changed my mind. “No reason,” I said, letting Rex slip from me. “It’s really unique, is all.”
“So, what’s in the box?” he asked, giving up and putting his hands on his hips.
I smiled and crossed the kitchen. “My dad’s charms. You should see some of this stuff.”
As Jenks and I talked, I brought out wrapped gadgets and utensils, laying them down for him to unwrap. Jenks buzzed around in the cupboards to find nooks and crannies, his wings slowly losing their red tint to become their normal grayish hue. He was better than a flashlight for seeing what was at the back of a cupboard.
“Hey, Jenks,” I said as I set a box of uncharmed ley line amulets and pins at the back of my silverware drawer. “I’m, uh, really sorry about pasting you against my bathroom mirror with sticky silk.”
The pixy flashed red, the dust slipping from him mirroring his embarrassed color. “You remember that, huh?” he said. “It sure made the decision easy to down you with that forget charm.” He hesitated, then added softly, “Sorry about that. I was only trying to help.”
The box was empty, and not seeing Ivy’s scissors, I ran my ceremonial knife along the tape lines to collapse the box so the rani of recycling wouldn’t yell at me. “It’s okay,” I said as I wrestled the thing flat. “I’ve forgotten about it already. See?” I quipped.
Tired, I tucked the box in the pantry and began sorting the remaining charms. Jenks landed beside me, watching. The sound of his kids was nice. “I’m sorry about Kisten,” Jenks said, surprising me. “I don’t think I said that yet.”
“Thanks,” I said, grabbing a handful of spent charms. “I still miss him.” But the pain was gone, burned to ash under the city, and I could move on.
The old spells went into my dissolution vat of salt water, making a soft splash. I missed Marshal, too. I understood why he’d left. He hadn’t been my boyfriend, but something more—my friend, one I’d really messed up with. Doing a power pull with him made the entire situation look worse than it really was.
I held nothing against him for leaving. He hadn’t betrayed me by walking away, and he wasn’t a coward for not sticking around. I’d made a very large mistake by getting shunned, and it wasn’t his responsibility to fix it. I didn’t expect him to wait for me until I did. He hadn’t said he would. He was rightfully ticked at me for screwing up. If anything, I’d betrayed him, breaking his trust when I told him I could keep everything under control.
“Rache, what does this one do?” Jenks said as he messed around with the last charm I’d left on the counter.
Finding my keys in my bag, I came closer. “That one detects strong magic,” I said, pointing out the rune scratched on it.
“I thought that’s what that one does,” he said as I wedged it on my key ring beside my original bad-mojo, or rather, lethal-amulet, detector.
“This one detects lethal magic,” I explained, flipping the original earth-magic amulet and letting it drop. “The one from my dad detects strong magic, and since all lethal magic is strong, it will do the same thing. I’m hoping it won’t set off the security systems at the mall, like the lethal amulet does, since they’re both ley line based. I’m going to take them shopping and see which works best.”
“Gotcha,” he said, nodding.
“My dad made it,” I said, feeling closer to him as I dropped my keys back in my bag. The charm was over twelve years old, but because it had never been used, it was still good. Better than batteries. “You want some coffee?” I asked.
Jenks nodded, and a chorus of pixy shouts pulled him into the air. I wasn’t surprised when the front bell rang. The pixies were better than a security system.
“I’ll get it,” Jenks said, darting away, but before I could do more than get the coffee grounds out, he was back. “It’s a delivery service,” he said, slipping a thin trace of silver pixy dust as he came back in. “You need to sign for something. I can’t do it. It’s for you.”
A pang of fear slipped into me, and vanished. I’d been shunned. It could be anything.
“Don’t be a baby,” Jenks said, instinctively knowing my warning flags had been tripped. “Do you have any idea of the penalty for sending a bad charm through the mail? Besides, it’s from Trent.”
“Really?” Interested now, I flicked on the coffeemaker and followed him out. A bewildered human was standing on my doorstep in the light from the sign overhead. The door, gaping open, was letting out the heat, and pixies were darting in and out on dares.
“Stop it! Enough!” I called, waving them back inside. “What’s wrong with you?” I said loudly as I took the pen and signed for a thickly padded envelope. “You all act like you were born in a stump.”
“It was a flower box, Ms. Morgan,” one of Jenks’s kids said merrily, pe
rched on my shoulder, out of the cold night and nestled in my hair.
“Whatever,” I muttered, smiling at the confused man and taking the package. “Everyone inside?” I asked, and when I got off a round of counting up to fifty-something, I shut the door.
A good dozen of Jenks’s kids braved the chill of the kitchen, curiosity winning out over comfort, and they all wove in and out before me in a nightmare of silk and high-pitched voices that scraped along the inside of my eyelids. It wasn’t until Jenks made that awful screech with his wings that they quit. Nervousness hit me as I tossed the manila-wrapped package on my spot at the table to deal with later. I’d wait until Ivy got home so she could pick me up off the floor when the joke charm Trent had sent me exploded in my face.
Arm around my middle, I got my Vampiric Charms mug out of the cupboard. I hadn’t had a good cup of coffee in a week. Not since the last one at Junior’s. I wanted another one, but was afraid to go back. Not that I remembered what it was, anyway. Cinnamon something.
Jenks buzzed close, then away. “You going to open it?” he prompted as he hovered over the table. “It’s got bumps inside.”
I licked my lips and looked askance at him. “You open it.”
“And get blasted by whatever nasty elf charm he put in there?” he said. “No way!”
“Elf charm?” I turned around, curious. Crossing the kitchen, I dug my keys out of my bag, watching the heavy-magic amulet glow a faint red. The lethal one was quiet, though. Interested, I waved the pixies off it. It wasn’t lethal…but still.
“Open it, Rache! Tink’s tampons!”
The coffeemaker finished with a hissing gurgle, and enduring the complaints of twenty-some pixies, I smiled and poured myself a cup. I took a careful sip as I brought it to the table, frowning. Maybe I could get some raspberry syrup to put in it the next time I was at the store.
Pixies clustered on my shoulders, shoving each other as I used my ceremonial knife, still out on the counter, to cut the brown envelope open. Not looking inside, I angled the envelope and cautiously shook whatever it was out and away from me.
