Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1 “That’s an unfortunate misconception that I’ve been working hard to correct,” Landon said, and I stared at the radio, not liking that the priest’s professional, tutored voice had lost none of its elven persuasion through my car’s speaker. I was parked at the curb outside the church, waiting for Ivy and Jenks—who were late. Late enough that my to-go coffee was gone and I was down to listening to the news to try to stay awake. Landon spouting his lies on Cincy’s radio circuit was better than a double espresso. “So you claim it wasn’t poor spell casting that sent the rescued souls of the undead back to the ever-after, but Mr. Kalamack?” the interviewer said, and I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, imagining Landon’s fair features and thin lips curving up in a reassuring and fake smile. “I do.” Landon’s confidence was absolute as he lied. “The spell to return the undead their souls was cast by the entire elven religious dewar and our political enclave. It fell due to Kalamack’s tampering. Which is why the witches joined us on our second attempt.” “Ha!” I exclaimed, my voice coming back hard in my tiny car. “Trent didn’t mess with your lousy charm. It was bad spell casting. Hack,” I added, then angrily changed the channel. “—possible food contamination being tied to the recent spate of domestic assaults in the greater Cincinnati and Hollows area, having just this morning taken its first human victim.” I turned the radio off. Food contamination did not lead to violence, unless it was the now-extinct T-4 Angel tomato. Leaning back, I stared at the car’s ceiling and tried to “let go,” as Jenks would say. Landon had been spouting his alternate version of reality for months. It was frustrating that no one—not Al, or Dali, or Trent—had come forward to say anything contrary. Every time I brought it up, Trent would pull me into a hug and tell me that things were being said behind closed doors and that to make the argument public would make me a scapegoat. Nervous, I tucked a tickling strand of my curly red hair behind an ear and fiddled with my empty coffee cup. A gentleman’s agreement between Trent and Landon to keep my name out of the news was more than likely. And my name had been suspiciously absent. Not that I was complaining. I didn’t know how much more collateral damage my life could take. Dropping the empty cup into the holder, I settled back to wait. The ticking of my shiny red MINI’s engine cooling in the sunny morning was a gently slowing rhythm, and I felt myself relax despite Landon’s lies. Walking into the silence that gripped the church without Ivy and Jenks had all the appeal of eating toasted butterfly wings. Besides, it was warm in my car, and I didn’t think the heat was on in the church yet. Late November was cold in Cincinnati, and I squinted up through the tinted band of windshield until I found Bis’s lumpy shape sleeping beside the steeple. New gray shingles covered the hole the elven Goddess had blown through the roof in frustration, but the kitchen and living room were still missing, and boards still covered the busted windows. The colored glass that Jenks had been so proud of glittered like jewels among the lengthening grass and fallen leaves. “Please bring coffee,” I whispered as my head thumped back against the headrest and I closed my eyes. I’d gotten up way too early for this, but Ivy was coming off of third shift at the I.S. and David had been available. Jenks, of course, was up. But my sleep had been restless, my dreams running the gamut from Ray grown-up and marrying a Rosewood baby to me in an insane asylum, being visited by Trent. I was tired, and almost immediately I felt myself begin to fall asleep, the familiar sounds of my street soothing after two months of living on Kisten’s boat, The Solar, now docked at the quay next to Piscary’s old restaurant. My eyes began to twitch, and I slipped into REM sleep eerily fast. Stray threads of memory sparked: Ivy and me having coffee in Piscary’s stripped-down kitchen, waking up beside Trent and seeing his smile as he watched me open my eyes, Jenks and me sharing a quiet moment, me in my robe and him sitting on my coffeepot, trying to get warm enough to fly. Snippets of conversation that never happened slowly evolved into actions that never occurred as I began to dream. “One of us isn’t going to make it off this boat,” my dream Jenks said, black sparkles falling from him as he drew his garden sword and flew at me. My body twitched as, in my dream, I flung myself back to hit the teak floorboards. Still dreaming, I tapped a line and blasted Jenks into a thousand spiders that rained down on me. Gasping, I snorted awake, heart pounding as my tingling hands brushed my legs to push off the imagined spiders. Jenks . . . , I thought, horrified that I’d hurt him, even in a dream. Jenks was my rock, the one I depended upon the most, the one who depended upon me to keep him alive through the winter. Why would I dream he’d try to hurt me, forcing me to hurt him? “Damn,” I whispered as I made fists of my tingling hands. Had I tapped a line in my sleep? Shaken, I reached for the door and got out to distance myself from the nightmare. The late-November morning was chill after the stuffy car, and I hunched deeper into my dark green leather coat. It was almost black, really, the oily sheen going well with my ofttimes frizzy red hair, pale complexion, and occasional kick-ass attitude. Still . . . I eased the door to my car shut, using my hip to close it with a soft click to preserve the quiet of the middle- to lower-class neighborhood. It was just before nine, which meant the few humans on the street were on their way to work or school and most Inderlanders were nowhere near thinking about getting up. Hands in my pockets, I followed the cracked sidewalk to the church’s wide steps. My vamp-made boots were nearly silent in the dappled sun showing through bare branches. A bedraggled, loose-feathered crow sat ominously among the flowers and plates of food that decked the cement steps, and I frowned. The offerings had been left by grateful ex-familiars, freed when the demons regained the ability to walk in reality. It had been two months, but the pile had grown, not diminished, and seeing them there reminded me of when Cincinnati thought I’d died in the blast that had torn off the back of the church and spread it over the garden and adjacent graveyard. It had been a hard September. “Shoo,” I said, waving at the bird, and the untidy thing flew onto the nearest tree, silent and unafraid, waiting for me to leave before it would come back down and take what it wanted. The door was unlocked, and a feeling of Camelot lost rose as I gazed up at the shiny metal plaque. TAMWOOD, JENKS, AND MORGAN, VAMPIRIC CHARMS LLC. Lip twitching, I pushed the door open and went in, boots scuffing in the dark vestibule as I shut the door and sealed out the morning light. I wasn’t ready to let this go, but even I was having a hard time ignoring the writing on the wall with the three of us being scattered while the church was repaired. I slowed as the peace of the place erased the lingering unease from my dream. On the table beside the door, letters and junk mail were stacked in an ever-higher mess. “Postal weeds,” Jenks called them, and as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the glow of the single unbroken window, I winnowed through the topmost envelopes to find the bills and tuck them in my back pocket. Even now I could smell the scent of vampire, pixy, and witch laced through the stronger scents of plywood, cut two-by-fours, and the sweaty Weres fixing the place. Kisten’s pool table sat against the wall where the Goddess had pushed it as if it had been made of cardboard. Ivy’s baby grand had fared better, but it was covered in construction dust, whereas Kisten’s pool table had a vinyl cover and a stenciled sign stating that whoever used it as a workbench would be eviscerated. I smiled, arms swinging as I headed for it. It was good to have friends. The scent of melting shoes and burning flesh tickled my nose, and I avoided the outlines of rubber glued to the floorboards where the Goddess had stood. The mystics who served as her uncountable eyes had been so thick that the corpse she’d been animating had been burning. A line of char showed where Al had circled us, the smut from a thousand years of curses serving as an unexpected protective filter from the Goddess’s rage. Plywood covered the hole in the floor, and my eyes rose to the thick cracked beams and, higher, past the false ceiling, to the glint of new nail tips. There’d been the reek of burned pixy dust, the feeling of hopeless odds, of no escape. My focus blurred as I remembered Ivy’s pure sob of joy when Nina saw her soul in the one she loved and knew it was safe: good things, too. Melancholy, I pulled the cover off the pool table in a sliding sound of vinyl. A muffled gasp of surprise spun me to the abandoned altar, where we’d shoved the couch, chairs, and coffee table. It was a kid, towheaded and gawky, maybe sixteen. He stared at me in wide-eyed surprise from the sawdust-laden couch. A plate of half-eaten food sat on the low table before him, but it was obvious that he’d been sleeping. “Goddess guts,” he said, a scared but resolute look on him. “I didn’t hear you come in.” I dropped the vinyl cover, my feet placed wide on the floor of my church. “What are you doing here?” My gaze went to the plate, and he flushed, his fair features becoming red under his thin, transparent, almost white hair. He was an elf, and my stance eased. A little. “I, ah, thought this was your waiting room.” He stood. He was almost my height, but youth made him thinner, awkward in torn jeans and an olive green T-shirt. “I was waiting.” For me? “What do you want?” I asked, gaze flicking to the plate again. His sneakers shifted on the old oak floors, and I stifled a shiver at the sound. “I, ah . . . You know Mr. Kalamack. Can you get me in to talk to him? It’s important.” My eyebrows rose at the mix of fear and strength in his voice. Mr. Kalamack. I hadn’t thought of Trent as Mr. Kalamack in a long time. He was, as Jenks would say, my main squeeze, the sparkle in my dust, the flower in my garden, the sword in my . . . ah, yeah. We’d been dating. “You need some help? What’s your name?” I reached for my phone, but the sound of a car door slamming pulled my attention to the front of the church. He was gone when I turned back. Without a sound, I thought. “Kind of flighty, aren’t you?” I whispered as his lanky shadow passed outside the unbroken window, furtive and fast. He must have gone out Ivy’s window. God knew Ivy had used that particular egress on more than one occasion. But my frown eased when the familiar clatter of pixy wings fell like a balm over the battered church and Jenks flew in, gold dust trailing from him in contentment. Saluting me, the four-inch pixy flew into the exposed rafters on his dragonfly-like wings to inspect the roof repair. More dust sifted from him like a living sunbeam, pooling on the floor before vanishing in a faint draft. “Just ’cause we’re living on Kisten’s old boat doesn’t mean you can slack off on the yard work, Rache,” he said as he dropped down, hands on his hips in his best Peter Pan pose and hovered before me. “The lawn looks like hell.” My spider dream flashed through me, but my breath to answer hesitated when Ivy strode in, a plate of cookies from the front steps in hand. “Ease up, Jenks,” she said, her voice like living dust, gray, silky—and just as irritating when she spoke the truth. “She’s been busy. We all have.” Ivy hit the lights, and I squinted when they flickered on. I hadn’t even known power had been restored, but my flash of guilt vanished as I gave Ivy a quick one-armed hug and breathed deep, taking in the scent of oiled steel and orange juice. The distinctive smell of the I.S. tower was heavy on her, the multitude of vampires, witches, and Weres mixing together with the scent of paperwork and quick feet on the pavement. It told me as much as her professional attire and slightly dilated eyes that she’d come right from work. Under it all was a growing thread of Nina, as distinctive as a fingerprint. That they’d found a lasting happiness together made a lot of the crap my life dished out bearable. “Cookie?” she said, backing up and holding out the plate, and I shook my head. The risk of a casual assassination attempt was too real and I didn’t know who had made them. True, I’d been half responsible for getting the ley lines—and hence magic—working again, but no one but me was happy that the demons were living freely in reality. Elf magic wasn’t working well, the running theory behind closed doors being it was because their Goddess had been reborn from an off-balance demon. Again sort of my fault. I’d had only a smattering of jobs since, all from Trent. I was beginning to think he was finding events for me to escort him to so I’d have a paycheck. Boyfriend or not, I wasn’t going to work for him for free. If the danger was real—and it was—the paycheck should be, too. “Is David here?” Jenks asked, and I shook my head, dropping down to find the rack to set up a game. Seeing my intent, Ivy braced her back against the wall and, straining, pushed the table in an earsplitting shriek of wood. Jenks shuddered a sickly green dust, but at least we could play now. It wasn’t often I saw the strength her living-vampire status gave her. Thanks to having been born with the vampire virus instead of infected with it later, she had canines that were slightly longer than mine, and sharp. And yep, she had a liking for taking blood, but she didn’t need it to survive as Nina, her undead partner, did. “Watch the hole,” I said as the balls thumped into the rack. “When are they fixing that?” “My contractor is still trying to find an old house to scavenge floorboards from,” Jenks said, anxious until I rearranged the balls to put the one at the top and the eight in the middle. He didn’t care about the rest. “Apparently there’s been a lot of construction in Cincinnati lately, and they’re running out of materials,” he finished dryly. Again, not my fault, but the spontaneous offerings on the front steps notwithstanding, I was probably being blamed for that, too. Ivy rolled a cue stick across the table to make sure it wasn’t warped. “Any idea why we couldn’t do this at David’s office?” she asked, her low voice sounding right even if the sanctuary was all sawdust, silent power tools, and planking. “I can tell you why.” Jenks’s wings rasped in anger. “That Were-pup excuse of an insurance company he works for isn’t going to make good on my claim, and he doesn’t want us making a scene at his office—that’s why.” I lifted the rack, happy the slate was again smooth. “I’m sure that’s not it.” “He’s a claims adjuster!” Jenks zipped between Ivy and me, his dust a heavy red that temporarily turned the green felt black. “That’s what they do! Take your money, and then when you need it, they adjust it from your pocket to theirs!” Ivy bent low over the far end of the table, looking svelte in her upscale leather. “Relax, pixy,” she said as she lined up her break shot. “If they deny the claim, we’ll find the money.” Jenks lost altitude, but he wasn’t alighting on my shoulder as usual. It wasn’t a snub, but it worried me. “It took all I had to put on the roof,” he said, clearly depressed, and I wished he was bigger so I could give him a hug and tell him it was going to be okay. “I said I’d help with the repair. The church wouldn’t be like this if not for me,” I offered. His wings hummed when Ivy took her shot and the rack scattered, one ball dropping in. Guilt made me look down. If the church wasn’t in pieces, it wouldn’t feel as if it was ending. “I can pay my own bills, witch.” Jenks rose up and out of the way as Ivy circled to take a shot at the three and missed. “But even if we do get it fixed, then what?” Jeez, Jenks. Couldn’t you let sleeping vampires sleep? “Then we move back in.” I scanned the table to avoid his foul mood. “Kisten’s boat is just for the winter,” I said as Ivy handed me the stick, but my eyes jerked to hers when she didn’t let go. Her regret and guilt laced through me, pulling tight against my soul. For the winter, I had said, but we all knew the three of us moving back in wasn’t going to happen. Not with Nina in the picture. For all the trials we’d been through in the last three years, the church had been a spot of safety—even when it was being blown up. Now it felt as if we were trying to fit back into a too-small skin. Seeing my understanding, Ivy let go of the stick. Heart heavy, I turned to the table. “How’s the new job going?” I asked to change the subject. “Pretty much how I remember it,” she said, but she was smiling when I rose from missing my shot. Jenks was hovering over that plate the teenage elf had left behind, his hands on his hips as he tried to figure it out. “You knew Nina hired in as a temp?” Ivy continued, her voice becoming animated. “Since I’m a consultant instead of a contracted employee, I can mimic her dusk-to-dawn schedule. Everyone leaves me alone since I’m her scion, and no one knows how to deal with her. She’s undead, but the soul covering her is hers, and it’s confusing the hell out of them.” And somehow, though everything felt wrong, I found a way to be at peace with it. Seeing Ivy love herself and someone else . . . it had been worth every burned synapse, every busted arm, every bruised heart and dream. “I’m, ah, glad you’re both here,” Ivy said, and I froze when she took the offered stick and set it on the table, effectively ending the game. “Jenks? Nina and I have been giving this a lot of thought, and I don’t want you digging out day quarters under the church.” Jenks rose from the plate of food, his dust a scared blue. “The Tink-blasted hell I’m not.” But Ivy smiled, the pain showing only at the corners of her eyes. “Nina and I are doing fine at Piscary’s old digs,” she said, and I knew the truth of that. “Cormel has his own place, and it feels like home. Especially now that Nina’s redecorating.” “Rache,” Jenks pleaded, begging me to say something, but I shook my head, having known this was coming. Jenks and I had moved into Kisten’s big power yacht after the church had been declared unfit for habitation. Parking it at Piscary’s quay had helped ease the coming heartache, but moving into Piscary’s, even the upstairs apartments, had been out of the question. Not with Nina as twitchy as she was. Trying to move all of us back to the church was an even worse idea. We had too many frightened people knocking on our door. Besides, a witch living with two vampires in love wasn’t smart, even if I wasn’t a witch, but a demon. Jenks slowed his wings until their hum vanished when he saw me side with Ivy. “Son of a fairy-farting whore,” he muttered, adding a bitter, “Excuse me. David is here.” My shoulders slumped as he flew a blue-dusted path to the front door and worked the pulley system we’d put in place so he could open it. David’s warm greeting was muffled, and Ivy turned her back to the door, her eyes pinched with heartache. “This is harder than I thought it was going to be,” she whispered. “Even if David comes through, there’s no way the church will be livable before the snow flies. It’s airtight and the ductwork has been fixed so we’re not heating the outside, but the city won’t give an occupation permit without a kitchen. Is the boat warm enough for him?” I shook my head as I remembered how slow he’d been this morning, sitting on my steaming coffeemaker, trying to warm up. A sustained temperature below forty-three degrees would drop him into hibernation, and without having properly prepared for it, his life would be at risk. “He’s managing so far, but it’s going to get colder.” Ivy leaned closer. “He should move in with me and Nina.” “Yeah, but he won’t,” I said, and she nodded in understanding. “If it helps, I’m meeting Trent after this,” I added. “Ray and Lucy have a playdate with Ellasbeth.” “Sorry?” Ivy said with a closed-lipped smile, clearly not knowing how a structured lunch with Lucy’s admittedly prickly mother related to Jenks. “It’s Friday,” I said, relishing the thought that I’d made it through another week without pissing off any world power. “I’m going to spend the weekend with Trent. As usual. I’m hoping if I can get Jenks to come with me, he might move in with Jumoke and Izzy for the winter. Which will be both unusual and a miracle in pixy culture. He’ll be okay in Trent’s conservatory.” The sound of Jenks’s wings pushed our heads apart, and I felt myself flush. “Spend the winter with my kids?” Jenks said as David’s small silhouette eased into the church and shut the door. “Tink’s a Disney whore. Talk about a fifth wheel.” “I think it’s a good idea,” Ivy said, nodding her hello to David, now cautiously entering the sanctuary, his shoulders hunched in mild unease and looking like a young Van Helsing with his long, wavy black hair, casual jeans and shirt, and short cashmere scarf. Weres could enter holy ground as much as anyone else, but they clearly felt off. “They need all the help they can get to keep their newlings alive through the winter. Izzy had what, five?” Ivy added. Jenks’s frown vanished. “Five,” he said, hands on his hips. “They’re already thinking up names.” But they wouldn’t get them until spring and the new parents were sure they’d survive, and I hid a smile when he sat down cross-legged atop the eight ball. I would have said he looked cute, but he’d have given me a lobotomy with the garden sword strapped to his hip. My thoughts jerked back to my dream about turning Jenks into spiders, and I shoved the fear away, smile fading. David’s rugged, slightly stubbled face was beaming. “You have no idea how good it is to see you three together,” he said, and Ivy rolled her eyes to hide her pain that it was ending—because I had screwed up, and she had found love. “Hi, David.” Boots clunking, I crossed the room to give him a long, earnest hug, breathing in the scent of green and growing things that lingered about him. “There’s a pack run this Sunday. You’re invited,” David said as we parted. “Maybe this winter,” I said, and he nodded, accepting the new distance I’d put between us since his girlfriend had become pregnant. It wasn’t because he was now taken goods, but because I wouldn’t risk endangering him further than I already had. “How’s Serena?” David’s smile widened. “Ornery. She’s not allowed to shift anymore.” I nodded, imagining it. “You’re going to be a great dad,” I added, and Jenks hummed close, almost dripping attitude as he spilled a gold wash of pixy dust. “All right, Mr. Peabody,” Jenks said, surprising me with the nickname Kisten had given David. “You going to piss in the pot or play with yourself? You’ve had my claim for six weeks.” “Jenks!” I exclaimed, but then froze when David winced. “I tried,” David said, and Jenks made a rude sound. “Every last trick and loophole. But the kitchen and living room were lost in a city power struggle—which we’re under no obligation to cover—and the damage to the sanctuary was caused by a demon.” “It was a Goddess,” I said, and David brought his gaze back down from the roof. “Granted, but Newt was originally a demon. And since demon damage isn’t covered—” “Newt wasn’t part of the Goddess when the Goddess did the damage,” I interrupted. Jenks was hovering beside me, but Ivy had given up by the looks of it and was dropping balls one by one into the pockets as if they were her choices, gone forever. “And I didn’t summon her.” “Regardless.” David hesitated as he noticed the charred circle for the first time. Frustrated, I crossed my arms over my middle as Ivy propped the stick against a window frame. I’d find the money somewhere. Maybe if I changed my name, someone would hire me. “Well, thanks for trying,” I finally said, and David’s expression eased. “Son of a fairy-farting whore,” Jenks swore, shunning my hand when I held it out for him. “We’ll find the money,” I insisted, but even if we did and we moved back in, Ivy wouldn’t be at the big oak farm table with her maps and laptop, drinking orange juice and scowling as she told Jenks to keep his dust off her screen. It would be just me, Jenks, and Bis, knocking around in a big, empty church. Even his kids were gone. “I’m sorry,” David said into the stretching silence. “Everything ends.” The sickly yellow dust spilling from Jenks nearly broke my heart. “Yeah,” the small pixy said. “But I thought I’d be dead before it was over.” Head low, Ivy stood beside the table. “Me too,” she said, breathing the words. Panic iced through me. It would be so easy to move in with Trent, become part of his world, twining our lives in equal measures. But I enjoyed my independence too much, and bringing my chaotic life that close to his girls wasn’t going to happen. Besides, who would go all the way out to the Kalamack estate to hire me? But Jenks looked as if he was going to throw up. I had to do something to get that look off his face. Fingers cold, I touched the pool table, feeling as if Kisten were here reminding me that love sometimes hurt when it was real. “Well, there’s no help for it,” I said with a forced cheerfulness. “We’re going to have to get that sign changed, Jenks.” Ivy’s head snapped up, her eyes flashing pupil black in alarm. David, too, looked surprised, and I stiffened, steeling myself for what was going to come out of my mouth next. “What for?” Jenks clattered his wings, probably thinking I was abandoning Ivy. “New business cards, maybe,” I added with a fake nonchalance. “With just your and my name on them.” I tore my gaze from Jenks’s shock. “I’m not giving up the firm,” I said, voice soft so it wouldn’t crack. “And I need your help, Jenks, if you’re still willing to work with me. Ivy’s not dead, and even if she was, she’d still be in Cincinnati. If we get in a jam, she’ll bail us out.” Ivy’s shoulders lost their stiffness, and Jenks’s wing hum lessened. I exhaled, the tight band about my chest easing. “Besides,” I said, nose wrinkling at the ugly smell of decay suddenly drifting through the church, “with Ivy and Nina working for the I.S., they might throw a few jobs our way. You know, the stuff they can’t figure out.” Ivy, too, had noticed the rank smell, her face showing her distaste even as she relaxed. Beside her, David turned to the back of the church in question. My thoughts went to the teenage elf I’d chased off, but he’d wanted to meet Trent. Making a magic stink wouldn’t help his case. “You don’t mind Ivy being gone?” Jenks asked, reminding me that even though he’d loved and lost, raised children and buried them, he was still only twenty. “Of course I mind,” I said, and Ivy bowed her head so her hair hid her eyes. “It’s going to be as hard as hell to wake up without her across the hall, crabbing about me using all the hot water and snarling if I ate her cookies, but what choice do we have? She’s in love, Jenks.” Jenks dropped to me, and my hand came up for him to land on. My throat caught when he stood there, a chance to find a new way spreading before us. “Yeah?” Jenks said, looking relieved. “How about taking the hooker silhouette off the ad Ivy put in the Yellow Pages.” I nodded, throat tight, and Jenks lovingly flipped off Ivy at her annoyed growl. “We’ll design something,” I said. “And what is that stench?” “It smells like something that died two weeks ago,” David said as he tried to peer through the cracks of a boarded-up window. “It wasn’t there when we got here,” Jenks said, then darted to him. Jenks was gone, but his dust lay warm upon me. I couldn’t bring myself to brush it away, and slowly it vanished in the heat from my hand. It would be hard without Ivy, not just for her expertise but because she was our friend. But like I’d said, she wasn’t dead, and I had to stop feeling as if she was simply because she wasn’t sleeping across the hall. “Thanks,” Ivy said, and I smiled when she gave my hand a tight squeeze. “Don’t thank me,” I said as I turned her touch into a full hug. “I’m serious. We’re going to miss you like the undead miss the sun, but this is where we are.” “Yeah, Ivy.” Jenks flew circles around us until Ivy and I parted. “Just you wait,” he said as he landed on my shoulder to feel right. “You’ll be begging to come back after six months in the tower.” “Back to this? Not a chance,” Ivy said over her shoulder as she headed for the back, giving the plywood-covered hole in the floor a wide berth. But it was obvious how hard it was for her to let go. Nina needed her, and Jenks and I . . . did not. And Ivy needed to be needed. “I think the smell is coming from the graveyard,” Ivy said, her movements edging into vampire quickness as she went down the hall to the plywood nailed over the raw opening that once led to the kitchen and back living room. I could see her frustration that she couldn’t be what Nina needed and still keep things the same, but Ivy and Nina shouldn’t have had to put up with any roommates, much less a pixy and a witch-born demon with more baggage than an entire rock band. David’s hands clasped uneasily. “Er, I should leave if you have a body out there.” “If we do, it’s not ours.” I started for the back, wincing at the screech of a nail pulling out. “Ivy, be careful!” I exclaimed. “There’s a six-foot drop past that plywood.” Jenks was on my shoulder, and for the first time in weeks, I felt good. “You okay with the temp, Jenks?” “Don’t turn into my mom, Rache,” he muttered, but he didn’t leave my warmth. David’s shoulders jostled mine in the tight confines of the hall, and, grinning, he tried to beat me to where Ivy was working on the makeshift door. Giving up, she backed up three steps and gave it a solid kick. Nails screeching, the plywood was knocked clear into the burned foundation of what had once been the kitchen and back living room. Cool air and sun poured in. I squinted, my hand going over my nose in disgust. Past the burned foundation stones and weedy garden was a zombie stumbling about in the leaf-coated, long-grassed graveyard. “Oh, yuck.” David dropped back with his hand over his nose. “Dude.” Jenks hovered beside Ivy and me, a weird silver-purple dust spilling from him. “The news said they got the last one three days ago.” “Apparently not.” David leaned against the hall’s wall, pale behind his stubble. “He looks like an old one. He smells too bad for it to be just what he’s been eating. That’s decay.” “You think?” My jaw clenched in revulsion. It was a zombie. Animated dead. A handful of them had been found in Cincinnati over the last few months, all in various stages of decay and age. No one was sure where they’d come from, but the timing made me think they’d been tucked in an I.S. quarantine somewhere and had escaped when the ley lines had gone down. That the I.S. was claiming innocence made it seem more than likely. “How did it get past the graveyard’s gates?” Ivy asked, seeming to handle the stench better than David, who had slumped back down the wall until he was sitting with his knees to his chest, his head low as he took shallow breaths. “No idea,” I said, but knowing from experience that a person could slip through the chain holding the car gates shut. “You know, seeing him careening from stone to stone out there looks both somehow really right and really disturbing.” “Tink’s titties, he smells worse than the wrong end of a Were’s outhouse.” Jenks’s wings rasped as he landed on Ivy’s shoulder. “Get him to leave, Rache.” My God, he stinks. “Why is this my problem?” I said as the zombie made a lonely, guttural, social caw. Arms over my middle, I watched Mr. Z stumble into a headstone to leave a black smear. Nice. Someone’s experiment had gone free-range and was leaving chunks in my graveyard. “Awwwww, Rache. He’s dropping parts. Do something!” “I’ll call it in,” David said from behind us, and the beeps of his phone rose faintly. “This is going to make me late getting home,” Ivy said with a sigh. One hand on the broken wall, I leaned out, almost gagging on the smell. “How did he get across the river? Weren’t most of them found in Cincy?” “I think everyone is ignoring them now so they don’t have to deal with them,” David said, clearly on hold. “I can’t imagine why,” Ivy said, a hand over her face and voice muffled. “Rache,” Jenks begged, “he’s dropping chunks. How am I going to get rid of that?” I shrugged, my eyes lifting to a sudden commotion in the trees as a murder of crows began a raucous cawing, hounding something in the scorched oak tree in the back. Jenks touched his sword hilt, his eyes on the bare branches, but then they all flew off with harsh calls. “Why is this my problem?” I said again, and then I sneezed, the unexpectedness of it making it loud and obnoxious. “That did it,” Jenks said as Mr. Z turned, his filthy lab coat fluttering as he focused on our voices with an odd concentration. At my feet, David shuddered. “Fantabulous,” I said as Mr. Z began shambling our way. “You think someone lured him in here, hoping we’d take care of it?” Crap on toast, I didn’t want to have to stop at the boat and change before meeting Trent and the girls at the top of Carew Tower for his lunch and my breakfast, but that’s what I’d be doing if I touched it. “Probably.” Ivy jumped from the open hallway to land on the plywood with an attention-getting thump. “You got anything on you for this?” Jenks looked at me and shrugged, and sighing, I awkwardly followed her. “I should have worn more leather,” I muttered, then louder, “Anything that works on a zombie?” I hefted a charred two-by-four the cleanup crew had missed. “Sure. Jenks, some distraction?” Jenks darted off, and Ivy lifted a crowbar, wiping the colorful wet leaves from it and taking a few practice swings. “You look nice today,” she said. “I’ll take the bottom.” “Thanks,” I said in relief. “I dressed up for David. He always makes me feel like a slob.” “I know what you mean,” she said, glancing back at the trim man. Yes, he had some scruff, and his long hair was escaping the clip at the back of his neck, but he carried himself with enough grace that he looked like a million bucks in jeans and a leather coat. “The I.S. won’t send anyone,” David said loudly, standing to lean against the interior wall. “They want you to take him to the zoo.” “The zoo?” I said in disbelief. Weapons in hand, Ivy and I paced forward as Jenks buzzed the slow zombie, easily staying away from his confused swipes. “Are they serious?” “They put in an exhibit last week.” Ivy pointed for me to go right while she took the left. My God, the stench was a thousand times worse this close. “They’re putting these things on display?” I muttered, breath shallow as I wove through the tombstones and tall grass. Jenks zipped to us as Mr. Z whimpered, his back to us as he tried to find the pixy. A flat circle of grass detailed his circular path, making a nice place to down him. “They’re probably the only people who have a strong enough air filter,” Jenks said as he settled in my hair, clearly cold. “Fairy farts, he stinks. I think I burned my wings on his stench.” “The kids love them!” David shouted from the raw opening to the church. “Watching them bang into things. Lose parts. You know!” The zombie was between me and Ivy, and I hefted my two-by-four. “That’s not getting in my car,” I said, and Ivy jerked. “You’re the one with the convertible,” she said, and Mr. Z groaned in indecision, relying on our voices to find us, as his eyes were a hazed opaque. “So?” I adjusted my grip as Mr. Z decided on me. “You telling me your trunk hasn’t had a dead man in it before?” “Not one that smelled like that.” “Ladies?” Jenks said from my hair. “Can we finish this before the sun goes nova? I have to talk to Trent tonight about renting out a tree in his conservatory.” A real smile came over my face, and I suddenly felt invincible. Jenks would survive the winter at Trent’s, and there was no way in hell that decaying piece of animated magic was getting in my car. I nodded to Ivy, and we both jogged forward. Eight steps was all it took, and Ivy cut his feet out from behind him as I smacked him on the forehead. Mr. Z collapsed backward with a startled whimper, his face to the sky and blubbering as his orientation was lost. It would be at least ten minutes before he realized he was on the ground. “Sweet as pixy piss,” Jenks said, and I dropped the two-by-four. Ivy met my grin with her own. It was always a pleasure to work with her, even this little. Slowly my smile fell, but no one noticed, as David had finally gotten over his heebie-jeebies and was striding through the long grass and tombstones with the pool table cover to wrap Mr. Z in. I didn’t want Ivy to stay at Piscary’s when we moved back into the church, but with Nina . . . It was better this way. Ivy had been drifting away for a long time. And as I’d told Jenks, it wasn’t as if she was dead.
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