Chapter Twenty-nine
Itook a deep breath, pulling the garden-damp air deep into me and feeling as if the golden haze of afternoon pooled inside me, all yellow and swirly. There was a hint of chill in the air this early in the spring, and the tang of Jenks's stump, still burning, reminded me of fall. It might burn for months, the roots smoldering underground as it slowly erased Jenks's heartache. Even so, it felt good to be home and in the garden.
There was only the faint hissing of cars to remind me that I was in the suburbs of Cincinnati; all else was quiet. Jenks's family was in mourning, and the garden seemed empty. In my hand was a handful of hickory twigs, still green and sporting new leaves. I'd used the last of the bark scrapings this morning making up a new batch of pain amulets. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to need for tonight's escapade, but pain amulets were a good bet. Especially if I didn't have a splat gun - thanks to Pierce.
Motions slow and provocative, I went up the worn back-porch steps, daring the coven to take a potshot at me, but it was probable that Vivian was at the coven, relating how I'd given Brooke to a demon. They had to have heard about the fairies by now, too. Ceri had taken the survivors with her when she'd left in the same cab I'd pulled up in this morning with Nick. All but one fairy, apparently, which I had yet to see and Jenks didn't know about.
My hand on the screen door, I looked over my shoulder at the garden, remembering how dangerous it had been when I was four inches tall. Fairies and pixies were the Arnolds of the Inderland world as far as I was concerned. Suddenly uneasy, I looked to the invisible ley line, feeling like someone was watching. My eyes rose to see Bis sleeping on the steeple. Creeped out, I darted inside as if the monster under the bed had taken up residence under my porch.
The screen door smacked behind me, making me jump, and I kicked my running sneakers off, leaving chunks of dirt that Ivy would eventually yell at me about. I shut the main door by leaning back against the thick wood, and my gaze fell on the tiny arrows still in Ivy's couch. Had it been only yesterday?
Ivy and Nick's soft bickering in the kitchen was soothing. They'd been at it since downloading and printing out the blueprints of Trent's outbuildings from the city's public files. Ivy insisted that she'd gone through a secure server and that the download would be undetected, but I was sure we were on someone's list now.
Twigs in hand, I went into the kitchen, my peace growing as I found them reasonably calm at Ivy's big table, construction blueprints between them. Nick and Ivy had been modifying them, changing what was on file at the city to match what had actually happened at the construction site. The taped-together pages covered the table, and most of Ivy's stuff had been stacked on the floor to make more room.
Only Pierce looked up as I entered, standing at the fridge with a glass and playing with the water dispenser. At the table, the argument over some small placement of a camera continued. Ivy was edging into a vampy state, her eyes dark and motions quick, but she wasn't sultry, which was her big tell for losing it. Her black mood wasn't bothering Nick, and he was strenuously arguing a point, erasing her marks and penciling in his own. The white flash of her new cast had been covered with a black stretchy fabric that might have been a sock with the toe cut off. I had no doubts that being in a cast wasn't going to slow her down at all.
Standing on the paper, Jenks watched. I was surprised he was here, but the garden was probably too painful. His classic Peter Pan pose had slumped into a depressed hunch with his arms over his middle, and his wings were against his back. Jax, back again and sitting on Nick's shoulder, didn't look much better.
Jenks looked up when I dropped my twigs on the center counter, a flash of guilt crossing him in that he hadn't gotten them for me. I smiled, and a black dust sifted down. Reaching for the last dirty spell pot, I dunked it in the warm sudsy water.
"What about the security at that level?" Ivy said, tapping the paper. "You know they have more than cameras down there. Spell detectors, too."
"Tink's titties, Ivy," Jenks complained, his wings perking up. "That's what I'm for! Uh, we're for," he amended, looking at his son when Jax scraped his wings.
"The pixies have this," Nick said dryly as he tossed his pencil down and leaned back, scowling. "You've really got a problem with trust, vampire."
Ivy's eyes narrowed, and my neck tingled. "I trust the pixies. You, I don't."
I gave the spell pot a quick rinse in my saltwater vat, then ran it under the cold tap. The copper needed a good polishing, but not today. Pierce silently took it from me before I could set it to dry, yanking the dish towel from the rack and making good with it. I gave him a quick smile. He'd been a big help today, and I'd gained a deeper respect for his skills. It was a lot like when I worked with Al, but Pierce wasn't as quick to play teacher - which I appreciated.
Behind me on the center counter were three disguise potions. Okay, they were curses, but the twisting of them had been exactly like a standard disguise potion, except instead of ingredient X to give Y result, I had used a focusing object from the person I wanted to look like. For any other witch, the result would be a potion that would do nothing, but if I tapped a line and said the magic word, my blood - my demon-enzyme blood - would make it work.
By all appearances, Ivy, Jenks, and Nick had forgotten we had to get out again, too, so while they fussed and fumed about how to get in, I'd made up the curses to escape under fire. Soon as we were discovered - and we would be discovered - the codes to the locked doors would change, so I picked three people who wouldn't need any freaking codes. Even with Ivy planning this, something would go wrong. As Al always said, the demon s in the details.
The first potion in the tiny vial had been sensitized from a page of one of my newer ley-line textbooks, written by Dr. Anders. The second had a chunk of Ceri's smashed teacup, and the third, a strand of hair from the Pandora charm that Trent sent me. The rope had been made from his horse's tail, and it was probably the best focusing object of the lot. Getting Ivy to take hers wasn't going to be fun.
That there were only three curses hadn't escaped Pierce's notice. He wasn't coming. We had too many people running this job to begin with, and someone needed to stay home and watch Jenks's kids. And he was a babysitter.
Pierce hung the dry spell pot up over the center counter, and Ivy stood, a hint of sexual dominance in her as she went to the fridge. "Trent's compound isn't one of your pantywaist museums," she said as she yanked open the door. "You've never been in there. He has redundant systems on his redundant systems. Quen's been studying pixies for at least six months. He's got something for them by now."
I crouched at the center counter to put my books away, not feeling at all guilty that most of them were demon texts. Quen probably had something for doppelganger charms now, too, since I'd shown him my skill last Halloween, but what was on the counter now weren't charms, but curses. Na-na. Na-na. Na-a-a-a-a, na.
Nick cleared his throat, and I could almost feel the tension spike, but it was Jenks who took offense. "You telling me I can't do this?" he said with a shadow of expected indignation.
Orange juice in hand, Ivy softened as she nudged the fridge shut. "No. I'm saying I want a plan for when it goes wrong. This is Trent. I know you're good." She looked at Jax and exhaled softly. "But you don't get second chances with Kalamack." Leaning back against the counter, she drank right from the container, her cast making it awkward. "Right, Rachel?"
I stood from putting my spell books away, not happy about the reminder of my stint as a mink in Trent's office. I shrugged, and Nick said, "Just because your plans are inherently flawed doesn't mean mine won't work."
"Flawed?" Ivy's fingers tightened until I thought the container would cave.
"Guys!" I said, setting three caps by the open vials. Demon magic. I was going to pay for this in spades, but if I was going to use black magic to save my friends, then I was going to use it to save my own ass. "Can we find a plan you both like? It's almost dark."
Nick made an innocent face, then focused on the blueprints. Pierce was a shadow, silently putting things away exactly where they were supposed to go. It was eerie, and I didn't know if it was because he'd been in the church for over a year before gaining a body, or if he was a quick study from having watched me get everything out. I appreciated the help, though.
Ankles crossed, Ivy kept her distance, allowing herself the space she needed to calm down. "I want a second plan if something goes wrong," she said softly. "Rachel can't use offensive magic or she'll end up in worse trouble than she is now. I don't even like the target. A painting? Sounds to me like you're funding your own retirement island - Nick."
Nick flipped through the blueprints, shifting only the corners. "If I take something from Trent's cache, it won't be a cheap, poorly done canvas," he muttered.
"Then why are we stealing it?" Jenks flew up when Nick flipped to the page he wanted.
Ivy was silent, and Nick stuck a pencil between his teeth. "Ask Rachel," he said. "She wanted something embarrassing but not priceless. That's exactly what it is." The pencil came out, and he looked at me, turning slightly in his chair. "It was painted in the fifteenth century by a nobody, and Ivy, before you go off on a nut, the reason we're targeting it is because the subject looks like Trent but is actually a savage prince in the mountains of Carpathia."
Jenks landed on my shoulder as I put my new pain amulets away. His wings were a depressed blue, cold when they brushed me. "If it were me, I'd burn it," he said.
"I think he's proud of it," Nick said. "Lets him think he comes from evil kings." Looking up, he shook his head as if I was making a mistake. "Rachel, he's just going to put you in jail - if you're lucky. Prison does not equal safety from the coven or him."
Dont I know it. Confident, I shut the cupboard door with a thump. "Trent won't press charges. It's a game, Nick. Like for fun? We've been stealing things from each other and giving them back since before you hot-wired your first car." Oh God, what if I was wrong?
Jenks's wings hummed to life, sending the scent of burning leaves over me. "Like when he took your ring and mailed it back! I still don't know how he did that."
"Or me stealing his hoof pick," I said, feeling a flash of guilt quickly followed by a surge of anxiety. "It's the same thing, and as long as I give it back... " He wouldn't press charges, but it would get his attention, and that's what I wanted.
Ivy poured the last of the juice into a glass and rinsed out the container. "All this aside, I've never heard of it," she muttered suspiciously.
"It's been in his basement." Nick turned back to the blueprints. "Passed down."
Pierce and I exchanged knowing looks. But you ve heard of it? I questioned silently. "Sounds like you've had your eye on it for a while," I said, brushing the used bits of herbs off the counter and into my hand.
Nick gave me a familiar smile that used only half his face. "I have. It's worth a fortune."
Glass in hand, Ivy was the picture of tense belligerence. "You just said it was worthless."
"It is worthless, but public image is worth a lot more than money to Trent," Nick said.
Pierce leaned forward, breathing into my ear, "I don't set much store by his story."
I stifled a shiver at his breath on my skin and Jenks's warning wing draft on my other side. Unfortunately I agreed with him, and after muttering to Jenks that I had this, I turned to dampen a washcloth. My back to Nick, I asked, "So... if it's been in Trent's basement for generations, how did you find out about it?"
Nick was silent. I turned, jaw tightening as he looked at me innocently. Far too innocently. His eyes dropped, and my pulse quickened as Jenks pointedly cleared his throat. "It's amazing what you hear when you ask the right questions," Nick finally muttered, rattling the papers. "Will you get out from behind me, Ivy? You're giving me the creeps."
My expression wry, I exchanged a look with Ivy as I ran the cloth over the center counter. Moving slowly, she shifted to stand in front of him, setting her glass down right on the sum he was figuring in the margin. "If you even think about crossing us... ," she threatened, and Jax spilled a frightened green dust.
Using two fingers and a thumb, Nick moved her glass, letting it drop the last quarter-inch, hitting with a thunk that almost spilled it. "You can have the painting," he said, tossing his hair from his eyes as he looked up. "That's not what I'm after."
Pulse fast, I stood with the center counter between us, the damp cloth in my hand. "What are you after?" I asked, and Jenks hummed his wings in agreement.
Nick's eyes were placidly blue as he looked at me. "A clean slate."
Pierce grimaced, but I only laughed as Jenks darted from my shoulder, his dust shifting to silver. "Dream on, rat boy," he barked. "You think we've been eating fairy farts for breakfast?"
Ivy sat before her computer. She was scowling, making me feel even more uneasy. Shaking the towel over the sink, I draped it over the spigot and turned. I knew Nick. Pierce might believe Nick was doing this to get back in my good graces, but once we were in Trent's compound, Nick was going to add a little to his own personal agenda and steal something that was going to move this stunt from teenage double-dog dare you to grand larceny. I knew it. Jenks knew it. Ivy knew it. And if we knew it, we could plan accordingly. Stupid ass of an ex-boyfriend.
I had to get Trent and the coven together and threaten them both with going public with their dirty laundry unless they backed off. Trent wouldn't agree to a meeting unless I had a door prize, one sensational enough to get his attention, and innocent enough that he wouldn't try to kill me.