Chapter Four
Traffic among Cincy's tight buildings was clogged, the night gloom making the oncoming car lights all the brighter. It was going to be stop-and-go all the way to the interstate, and I almost wished I'd taken the longer way through Old Newport, but the FIB building was right in downtown Cincy, and the Hollows were just over the bridge. Once I got on the expressway, I'd be home in ten minutes.
"Accident?" I guessed, glancing across the narrow front seat of my convertible to Ivy, chilling as she watched nothing, her expression blank as she dwelled on who knew what. Her long fingers spun a world-weary, holed coin laced on a faded purple ribbon around her neck like it was a rosary. She kept it as a reminder that she couldn't love without hurt, and it worried me.
Jenks buzzed his wings to warm himself as he sat on the rearview mirror and looked backward. "You want me to go look?"
I flicked my attention to the heater controls, cranked to warm the already hot car. If he'd offered, it wasn't too cold for him outside, but for him to risk his core temp dropping to satisfy my curiosity was not what our partnership was about. "Nahh. It's probably nightwalkers."
Jenks's heels drummed against the mirror. "Sun's been down for over two hours."
I nodded, inching forward another three car lengths and just missing the light. Sighing, I cracked the window. It smelled like hot strawberries in here.
It had been forty years since the Turn and all the various Inderland species had come out of hiding to save humanity from extinction. Night and graveyard shifts had taken on entirely new meanings. What I was stuck in now was the dark-loving parts of Inderland trying to get to work and the late-working humans trying to get home. Rush hour shifted with the sun, two hours before sunrise and two hours after sunset being the worst. We were at the tail end of it.
My elbow went onto the tiny lip of the closed window and my fist propped up my head. Between Trent's offer and the coven wanting my head, I wasn't in the best of moods. A sigh slipped from me as I counted the people passing with cell phones against their ears.
"I told you not to worry about it, Rache," Jenks said, mistaking my worry. "I owe you lots more than lousy bail money."
"Thanks, Jenks," I said, accelerating when the light changed. "I appreciate it. I'll pay you back when I can." I'm so sick of not being able to make it on my own.
Ivy reached for the chicken strap when I took the corner tight, only to stop short at another light. "It's a slump," she said, her gray voice seeming to ease out of the dark corner of my car. "We all have them. It's part of being an independent."
"Yeah." Jenks dropped to the steering wheel, grapevining on it as the light changed and I turned. "Did I ever tell you about the time I was working for the I.S. to help feed my family? Matalina had just had another set of quads and things were looking ugly. I had to take a job for hazard pay to babysit this witch no one else would touch."
I couldn't stop my smile. "Best backup I ever had, or ever will have."
The pixy's wings moved faster as I accelerated. "Thanks."
A soft, happy sound came from Ivy, and he turned at the unfamiliar noise. The living vamp wasn't always gloomy, but she was never obvious about her good moods. The pixy took flight, buzzing an irritating circle around her. "I love you, too, Ivy," he said with just the right amount of sarcasm to keep things light.
Her long fingers waved him away, slowly so there was no chance of hitting him. Two years ago, if anyone had told me that I'd abandon my I.S. job to go independent with a living vampire and a pixy, I would've said they were crazy. It wasn't that we didn't do well together. We did. We did fantastically together. But my decisions, which always seemed sound at the time, had a tendency to backfire - badly. And the coven trying to kidnap me was really bad. Signing that paper of Trent's to get out of it was even worse.
I inched forward, eyes on the red taillights of the cars stopped on the interstate/parking lot. I wasn't going to let Kalamack's offer get to me. "So, Ivy," I said, trying to shift my thoughts. "What's going on with you and Glenn?"
The living vampire's eyes glinted as she flicked her attention to Jenks. "You told her!" she exclaimed, and my lips parted. Told me? Jenks knew? Knew what?
Jenks's wings clattered, and he flitted to the far side of the car, well out of her reach. "I didn't tell her nothing!" he shouted, laughing. "Tink's contractual hell, Ivy, I didn't tell her! She must have figured it out. She's not stupid!"
The car jerked as I hit the brakes before I needed to, but I wanted to look at Jenks. "Something is going on. I knew it!"
"There's no anything," Ivy protested, her face red in the light from the oncoming traffic. "Nothing is going on. Nothing!"
"Nothing?" Jenks blurted out, unable to keep quiet anymore. "You think - "
"Shut up, Jenks," Ivy snarled.
His wings humming, he hung in the middle of the car as if nailed to the air. He was holding his breath, and silver sparkles were drifting from him to make a light bright enough to read by. The pitch from his wings was starting to make my eyeballs hurt. Grinning, I looked across to Ivy. "You'd better tell me or he's going to explode."
"They've been on three dates," Jenks said, and Ivy snatched for him.
My smile widened as Jenks frantically darted about the car. "I can't!" he shouted. "Ivy, I can't! I can't not say anything!"
Sullen, Ivy slumped in her seat, giving up. "I can't believe you told her. You promised."
The pixy landed on the wheel as I put the car in motion and merged into "traffic" when a big SUV made some space. "He didn't tell me," I said as I waved thanks to the guy. "Glenn's coat smells like you." I made a face. "And honey. I don't want to know why. Really."
Jenks's wings halted. "Honey? Honey and gold?" he asked, and Ivy seemed to cringe.
"Yes," I said, able to identify the hot-metal smell now. "Sun-warmed gold. And honey."
Hands on his hips, Jenks turned to Ivy. "You told me Daryl was leaving."
Daryl? Who in hell is Daryl?
Ivy's expression became bothered. "She is. Soon as she finds a place." She?
"Like that's ever gonna happen!" Jenks exclaimed. "The woman is sex in sandals!"
"Glenn isn't going to kick her out!" Ivy said loudly. "She's not well. "
"No wonder with Glenn keeping her up all night doing the nasty! "
"Hey!" Ivy exclaimed, eyes going black. "That's uncalled for! He hasn't touched her."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I said, sneaking glances at them both. "Who is Daryl?" And why haven't I heard about her before?
Jenks's wings stopped moving, and I thought I saw a flash of panic in him as Ivy forced her expression to neutral. Both of them seemed to pull three steps back in their thinking, and after a moment, Ivy said, "Just a woman we met on a run when you were in the ever-after. She needed some help. A place to stay. Glenn is putting her up until she finds her feet."
Jenks was silent as he looked at the car's ceiling, so I turned to Ivy - waiting.
"It's not any different from you foisting Ceri off on Keasley," she muttered. "I couldn't bring her to the church. Glenn is helping her out is all."
"Helping her right out of her clothes, I bet," Jenks said loudly, then darted to my shoulder when Ivy flicked her finger at him.
"She is not having sex with Glenn," Ivy continued. "I'd know."
"Yeah, you'd know because you're dating him," Jenks said. "Did you give him the dating guide yet?"
"Jenks!" she said, dismayed now, and he darted away from her snatch for him.
"How about kissing him? Did you at least kiss him yet?" he asked, laughing.
A low noise came from Ivy, almost a growl, and she seemed to melt into the cars darkness. My breath slipped out, and I put my blinker on to get in the lane for the bridge traffic; someone would let me in. Yeah, she'd kissed him - within an inch of his life, I bet.
I curled in my lower lip and glanced at Jenks. The pixy gestured for me to go for it, and I did. "Have you bitten him?" I asked, needing to know. He was my friend, too.
Ivy said nothing, and Jenks hummed his wings. "Did'ja?" he needled. "Did he?"
Still she said nothing, telling me she had, and I wondered if this might be a big mistake or one of the best things in Ivy's life. Glenn was nothing if not solid. "He doesn't want to go vamp, does he?" I asked, half joking but afraid of her answer. I was the last person to advocate shunning vampires as friends, but if you didn't know what you were doing, or the vampire was a real predator, you were in trouble. Glenn and Ivy were all of the above.
"No."
She was down to one-word answers, but she was still talking. Jenks's relieved expression told me it was more than she'd told him - which made me feel good. "Good," I said, careful to keep my eyes on the passing traffic to give her some privacy. "I like him the way he is."
"You'd like him more as a vampire. I can tell. I've seen it before." She sounded wistful, and I looked across the dark car at her, trying to hide my alarm.
"Ivy..."
"He doesn't want to go vamp," she said, flicking her eyes at me and then away. "That's one of the things I like about him."
Jenks winced, wings flat against his back. He knew as well as I that what you wanted didn't mean crap if the vampire you were with wanted something else. She was alive, so she couldn't turn him - only dead vampires could do that - but she could bind him, make him a shadow. Not that she would mean to, but accidents happened in the throes of passion. Hell, I roomed with her, and that was hard enough. Adding sex or blood to the mix could be deadly, which was why I'd finally made our relationship strictly platonic - that it had taken almost two years of confusing emotions and two bites between us to do it was beside the point.
I darted a nervous look at Jenks. "And he's okay with you going somewhere else for blood?" I asked hesitantly. Ivy never talked to me about her boyfriends. Her girlfriends either.
Gazing out the window at the night, Ivy said softly, "Who said I was?"
"No fairy-assed way!" Jenks exclaimed, and I gave him a look telling him to shut up.
Turning to us, she shrugged in embarrassment. "I told you I didn't need much. It's the act, not the amount. I'm not going to make him a shadow. Piscary taught me to be careful, if nothing else." Her eyebrows were raised in challenge as a flush colored her usually pale face. "Jealous?" she asked as she took in my alarmed expression.