"I can get you your canvas," Nick said, his voice even. "All you have to do is get me into the main compound. The rest is easy."
That's all, eh? I found a finger stick in the silverware drawer and broke the safety seal with a sharp snap, slamming the drawer shut. "I can get you in," I said, poking my finger and massaging blood to the tip to invoke the demon doppelganger curses. "I have. I can do it again."
Nick sighed. "I'm not talking sneaking into the public areas with a landscaping truck. I'm talking high-tech security in the basement labs."
Ivy snorted, and I made a moot face at him. "I'm not playing tiddledy-winks in the ever-after, Nick. I can get us in." And out.
"It's getting out that I'm worried about," Pierce muttered.
I shrugged, counting three red drops as they plunked into the first vial. Like a wash, the scent of burnt amber oozed over the top. Crap! I thought, capping the vial before anyone other than Pierce noticed. Ivy would freak. But at least I knew I'd done it right.
"When have I ever not gotten out?" I said, perhaps a little too pride-fully. Sure, I always got out, and it cost me every single time.
Nick wouldn't look up from his blueprints. "There's a first time for everything."
"You got that right," Jenks said, his hum by my ear prompting me to move my hair out of his way. "I never thought I'd see your ass in our kitchen again. Least not outside ajar."
I couldn't help my smile as he landed, smelling of green things. "You doing okay?" I asked when Ivy went to argue with Nick about how fast a pixy had to fly to evade detection.
"I'm fine," he said, the draft he was making dying. "My stomach hurts, is all."
His stomach hurt. God, his wife wasn't gone even a day, and he was trying to work, trying to escape the pain in the garden, maybe. My heart seemed to darken as I quickly finished invoking the other two potions, capping them and setting them aside. It didn't seem right to be doing this when Matalina's ashes weren't even cold yet, but Jenks seemed eager for anything to distract himself. I wouldn't be doing this at all except that Trent was going to announce his candidacy for mayor tomorrow at Fountain Square. It was the perfect opportunity to return what we stole amid a media circus.
Jenks was frowning at the three vials, his gaze going to Ivy and Pierce as if wondering which one of them was going to be left behind.
"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 overreactingl 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 Love-land 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.