by Ким Харрисон
Ivy was wiping her fingers off on her pants, and she quit when she saw my attention on them. I couldn't blame her. The thing gave me the willies.
Kisten added the last of the meat, pushing the pizza aside and putting his elbows on the counter, an odd look on him as he saw it for the first time. "That has got to be the ugliest thing in creation," he said, touching his torn earlobe in an unconscious show of unease.
Matalina nodded, a pensive look on her beautiful features. "It's not coming back in my house," she said, her clear voice determined. "It's not. Jenks, I love you, but if it comes back in my house, I'm moving into the desk and you can sleep with your dragonfly!"
Jenks hunched and made noises of placation, and I met the small woman's eyes with a smile. If all went well, David would be taking it off our hands.
"David," I said, pulling myself straight.
"Uh-huh…" he murmured, still staring at it.
"Have you ever heard of the focus?"
At that, a fearful expression flashed across his rugged features, worrying me. Taking a step forward, I slid the pizza stone off the counter. "I couldn't just give it to them," I said, opening the oven door and squinting in the heat that made my hair drift up. "The vampires would slaughter them. What kind of a runner would I be if I let them get wiped out like that?"
"So you brought it here?" he stammered. "The focus? To Cincinnati?"
I slid the stone into the oven and closed it, leaning back to take advantage of the heat slipping past the shut door. David's breath was shallow and the scent of musk rose.
"Rachel," he said, eyes riveted to it. "You know what this is, right? I mean…Oh my God, it's real." Tension pulling his small frame tight, he straightened. His attention went to Kisten, solemn behind the counter, to Jenks standing beside Matalina, to Ivy, snapping a fingernail on the rivet on her boot. "You hold it?" he said, looking panicked. "It's yours?"
Running my fingers through the hair at the back of my head, I nodded. "I, uh, guess."
Kisten jerked into motion. "Whoops," he said, reaching. "He's going down!"
"David!" I exclaimed, shocked when the small man's knees buckled.
I stretched for him, but Kisten had already slipped an arm under his shoulders. While Ivy fiddled with the rivet on her boot with a nail in feigned unconcern, Kisten lowered him into a chair. I edged the vampire out of the way, kneeling. "David?" I said, patting his cheeks. "David!"
Immediately his eyes fluttered. "I'm okay," he said, pushing me away before he was fully conscious. "I'm all right!" Taking a breath, he opened his eyes. His lips were pressed tightly together and he was clearly disgusted at himself. "Where…did you get it?" he said, his head down. "The stories say it's cursed. If it wasn't a gift, you're cursed."
"I don't believe in curses…like that," Ivy said.
Fear slid through me. I believed in curses; Nick had stolen it—Nick had fallen off the Mackinac Bridge. No, he had jumped. "Someone sent it to me," I said. "Everyone who knew I had it thinks it went over the bridge. No one knows I've got it."
At that, he pulled himself upright. "Just that loner out there," he said, shifting his feet but staying seated. He glanced at Kisten, who was at the sink, washing the topping bowls as if this was all normal.
"He doesn't know," I said, wincing when Ivy went to set the timer on the stove. Crap, I'd forgotten to again. "I think Kisten's right that he might be trying to get into our pack, seeing as I trounced him." I frowned, not believing that he was digging for information and would go back to Walter after the insult of being given to the street pack.
Nodding, David's gaze returned to the focus. "I got notification that you won another alpha contest," he said, clearly distracted. "Are you okay?"
Jenks lifted off the table, making glittering sparkles around me and bringing Rex to my feet when he landed on my shoulder. "She did great!" he said, ignoring the small cat. "You should have seen her. Rachel used the Were charm. She came out the size of a real wolf but had hair like a red setter." He flitted up, moving to Ivy. "Such a pretty puppy she was," he crooned, safely on Ivy's shoulder. "Soft fuzzy ears…little black paws."
"Shut up, Jenks."
"And the cutest little tail you've ever seen on a witch!"
"Put a cork in it!" I said, lunging for him. Fighting Pam hadn't been a fair contest, and I wondered who had credited me with the win at the Were registery. Brett maybe?
Laughing, Jenks zipped up and out of my reach. Ivy smiled softly, never moving except for putting her feet on the floor where they belonged. She looked proud of me, I think.
"Red wolf," David murmured, as if it was curious but not important. He had scooted his chair to the table and was reaching to the statue. Breath held, he touched it, and the carved bone gave way under his pressure like a balloon. He pulled back, an odd sound slipping from him.
Nervous, I sat down kitty-corner to him, the statue between us. "When I moved the curse to it, it looked like a totem pole, but every day it looked more like it did when we first got it, until now it looks like this. Again."
David licked his lips, dragging his attention from it for a brief second to meet my eyes, then back to the statue. Something had shifted in him. The fear was gone. It wasn't avarice in his gaze, but wonder. His fingers curled under, a mere inch from touching it, and he shuddered.
That was enough for me. I glanced at Ivy, and when she nodded, I turned to Jenks. He stood beside Mr. Fish and his tank of sea monkeys on the windowsill, his ankles crossed and his arms over his chest, but I still saw him as six-foot-four. Feeling my gaze on him, he nodded.
"Will you hold it for me?" I asked.
David jerked his hand away and spun in his chair. "Me? Why me?"
Jenks lifted smoothly into the air in a clatter of wings and landed next to it. "Because if I don't get that freaky thing out of my living room, Matalina is going to leave me."
My eyebrows rose, and Ivy snickered. Matalina had almost pinned Jenks to the flour canister when we had walked in, crying and laughing to have him home again. It had been hard on her, so hard. I'd never ask him to leave again.
"You're the only Were I trust to hold it," I said. "For crying out loud, David, I'm your alpha. Who else am I going to give it to?"
He looked at it, then back to me. "Rachel, I can't. This is too much."
Flustered, I moved my chair beside him. "It's not a gift. It's a burden." Steeling myself, I pulled the statue closer. "Something this powerful can't go back into hiding once it's in the open," I said, looking at its ugly curves. I thought I saw a tear in its eye—I wasn't sure. "Even if accepting it might cause everything I care about to go down the crapper. If we ignore it, it's going to bite us on our asses, but if we meet it head on, maybe we can come out better than when we went in."
Kisten laughed, and in front of her computer, Ivy froze. By her suddenly closed expression, I realized that what I had said could also be applied to her and myself. I tried to catch her gaze, but she wouldn't look up, fiddling with the same rivet on her boot. From the corner of my sight Jenks's wings drooped as he watched us.
Oblivious, David stared at the statue. "Okay," he said, not reaching for it. "I'll…I'll take it, but it's yours." His brown eyes were wide and his shoulders were tense. "It's not mine."
"Deal." Pleased to have gotten rid of it, I took a happy breath. Jenks, too, puffed out his air. Matalina hadn't been happy with it being in their living room. It was sort of like bringing a marlin home from vacation. Or maybe a moose head.
The pizza had a bubble starting to rise, and Kisten opened the oven to stick a toothpick through the dough to release the hot air under it. The odor of tomato sauce and pepperoni billowed out, the scent of security and contentment. My tension eased, and David picked the focus up.
"I, ah, I think I'll take this home before I finish my appointments," he said, hefting it. "It feels…Damn, I could do anything with it."
Ivy put her feet on the floor and stood. "Just don't go starting a war," she grumbled, heading out to
the hall. "I've got a box you can put that in."
David set it back on the table. "Thanks." Face creasing in worry, he edged it closer in a show of possession—not greed, but of protection. A smile came over Kisten as he saw it too.
"You, ah, sure the vampires won't be after it?" the small man said, and Kisten pulled out a chair and sat in it backward.
"No one knows you have it, and as long as you don't start rallying the Weres to you, they won't," he said, draping his arms over the top of his chair. "The only one that might know about it would be Piscary." He glanced at the empty hallway. "By way of Ivy," he said softly. "But she's very closed with her thoughts. He would have to dig for it." Kisten's look went worried. "He doesn't have any reason to think it's surfaced, but word gets around."
David put his hands into his pockets. "Maybe I should hide it in my cat box."
"You have a cat?" I asked. "I'd put you as a dog person."
His gaze darted over the kitchen when Ivy came in and put a small cardboard box on the table. Jenks landed on it and started tugging at the tape holding it. "It belonged to an old girlfriend," David said. "You want it?"
Ivy went to flick Jenks away to open the box herself, then changed her mind. "No," she said as she sat and forced her hands into her lap. "Do you want ours?"
"Hey!" Jenks shouted as the tape gave way and he flew back from the momentum. "Rex is my cat. Stop trying to give her away."
"Yours?" David said, surprised. "I thought she was Rachel's."
Embarrassed, I shrugged with one shoulder. "She doesn't like me," I said, pretending to check on the pizza.
Jenks landed on my shoulder in a soft show of support. "I think she's waiting for you to turn back into a wolf, Rache," he teased.
I went to brush him off, then stopped. A ribbon of memory pulled through me—of how he had treated me when he was big—and I made a soft "Mmmm" instead. "Have you seen her stare at me?" I turned, seeing her doing it now. "See?" I said, pointing at her in the middle of the threshold, her ears pricked and a curious, unafraid look on her sweet, kitten face.
David pulled the scarf from the collar of his duster and wrapped the focus up. "You should make her your familiar," he said. "She'd like you then."
"No fairy crap way!" Jenks shouted, wings a blur as he went to hold the box open for David. "Rachel isn't going to draw any ever-after through Rex. She'll fry her little kitty brain."
Might be an improvement, I thought sourly. "It doesn't work that way. She has to choose me. And he's right. I'd probably fry her little kitty brain. I fried Nick's."
A shudder rippled over David. The entire kitchen seemed to go still, and I looked worriedly at Ivy and Kisten. "You okay?" I said when they met my blank stare with my own.
"Moon just rose," David said, wiping a hand across his dark stubble. "It's full. Sorry. Sometimes it hits hard. I'm cool."
I gave him a once-over, thinking he looked different. There was a smoother grace, a new tension to him—like he could hear the clock before it ticked. I yanked open the drawer for the pizza cutter, shuffling around. "You sure you can't stay for some lunch?" I asked.
There was the skitter of cat claws on the linoleum, then David gasped. "Oh my God," he breathed on the exhale. "Look at it."
"Holy crap!" Jenks exclaimed, and Ivy took an audible breath.
I turned, pizza cutter in hand. My eyebrows rose and I blinked. "Whoa."
The cursed thing had turned completely silver, malleable like liquid. It looked entirely like a wolf now too, lips pulled from her muzzle and silver saliva dripping down to melt into the fur at the base. And it was her. Somehow I knew it. A shudder went through me as I thought I might hear something but wasn't sure. "You know what?" I said, my voice shaky as I looked at it in its box, cushioned by David's scarf. "You can have it. I don't want it back. Really."
David swallowed. "Rachel, we're friends and everything, but no. There is no way in hell I'm taking that thing into my apartment."
"It's not going back into my house!" Jenks said. "No freakin' way! Listen to it! It's making my teeth hurt. I already get misery once a month from twenty-three females, and I'm not putting up with it from some weird-ass Were statue on the full moon. Rachel, cover it up or something. Tink's tampons, can't you all hear that?"
I picked the box up, and the hair on my arms rose. Stifling a shudder, I opened the freezer and shoved it between the cold-burned waffles and the banana bread that tasted like asparagus that my mom had brought over. The fridge was stainless steel. It might help.
The phone rang and Ivy jumped up, heading for the living room as Jenks hovered over the sink and shed golden sparkles. "Better?" I said when I closed the freezer, and he sneezed, nodding as the last glitters fell.
Ivy appeared in the archway with the phone, her eyes black, and clearly ticked, to judge by her wire-tight stance. "What do you want, crap for brains?"
Nick.
Jenks jerked three feet into the air. I was sure my eyes were full of pity, but Jenks shook his head, not wanting to talk to his son. That Nick had romanced his son from him for a life of crime was far worse than anything Nick had ever done to me.
Not knowing what I was feeling, I held my hand out. Ivy hesitated, and my eyes narrowed. Grimacing, she slapped the phone into my palm. "If he comes here, I'll kill him," she muttered. "I mean it. I'll drive him up to Mackinaw and throw him over for real."
"Take a number," I said when she sat in her spot before her computer. Clearing my throat, I put the receiver to my ear. "Hello-o-o-o-o, Nick," I said, hitting the k hard. "You're the world's biggest jerk for what you did to Jax. You ever show your scrawny face in Cincinnati again, and I'm going to shove a broomstick up your ass and set it on fire. You got that?"
"Rachel," he said, sounding frantic. "It's not real!"
I glanced at the fridge, putting my hand over the receiver. "He says he's got the fake one," I said, simpering. Kisten snorted, and suddenly smug, I turned back to Nick. "What?" I said, my voice light and flowery. "Didn't your statue go silvery, Nickie da-a-a-a-arling?"
"You know damn well it didn't," he said, voice harsh. "Don't mess with me, Rachel. I need it. I earned it. I promised—"
"Nick," I soothed, but he was still talking. "Nick!" I said louder. "Listen to me."
Finally there was silence but for the hiss and buzz of the line. I looked over the kitchen, warm with the scent of pizza and the companionship of my friends. The new picture of Jenks and me that I'd stuck to the fridge caught my eye. His arm was over my shoulder, and we were both squinting from the sun. Ivy wasn't in it, but she had taken it, and her presence was as strong as the bridge behind us. The picture seemed to say it all.
So I lived in a church with pixies and a vampire who wanted to bite me but was afraid to. So I dated her old boyfriend who was likely going to spend his free time convincing me he was a better choice, when he wasn't angling for a threesome. And yeah, I was alpha of a pack and the only curse I could Were with was black, but that didn't mean I was going to. No one knew I had a Were artifact in my freezer that could set off a vamp/Were power struggle. My soul was coated with darkness from saving the world, but I had a hundred years to get rid of it. And so what if Nick might be smarter than me? I had friends. Good ones.
"Tag, darling," I said into the receiver. "You lose."
I hit the off button mid-protest. Tossing the phone to Ivy, I smiled.
Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank Gwen Hunter for helping me with the med stuff on the bridge, and TB, who read through my diving sequences. If anything doesn't jive, it wasn't from these two ladies but me pushing the envelope. And of course, a very large thank you to my agent, Richard Curtis, and to my editor, Diana Gill, without whom the Hollows would have stayed in my imagination alone.
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