A Fistful of Charms (11 page)

There was a thump from my bathroom followed by Kisten's muffled exclamation. The door crashed open, and I stopped. Kisten was leaning against the washer, face contorted in pain as he tried to catch his breath. Jenks was holding the door frame, looking casual in Kisten's gray and black sweats, but his green eyes were stressed. “Sorry,” he said, sounding as if he meant it. “I, uh, slipped.” He ran his eyes up and down my haggard appearance. “Ready to go?”

I could feel Ivy behind me. “Here,” I said, extending my suitcase. “Make yourself useful and get this in the van.”

He blinked, then grinned to show even, very white teeth. “Yeah. I can carry that.”

I handed it over, and Jenks stumbled at the weight. His head thunked into the wall of the narrow hallway. “Bloody hell!” he exclaimed, crashing into the opposite wall when he overcompensated. “I'm all right!” he said quickly, waving off any help. “I'm all right. Sweet mother of Tink, the damn walls are so close! It's like walking in a freaking anthill.”

I watched to make sure he was going to be okay, reaching out when he started weaving once he lost the guidance of the walls and was in the open space of the sanctuary. His kids were with him, adding to the noise as they shouted encouragement and advice. Hoping he took the time to walk down the steps instead of trying to jump them, I headed for the kitchen. Ivy was hot on my heels, Kisten close behind, quiet and pensive.

“Rachel,” Ivy said, and I stood in my kitchen and stared at
Ceri, trying to remember why I had come in there. “I'm going with you.”

“No, you aren't.”
Oh yeah. My stuff.
I grabbed my shoulder bag, with its usual charms, then opened the pantry for one of the canvas carry bags Ivy used when she went shopping. “If you leave, Piscary will slip into your head.”

“Kisten, then,” she said, desperation creeping into her gray-silk voice. “You can't go alone.”

“I'm not going alone. Jenks is with me.”

I jammed the three demon books into the bag, then bent to get my splat gun from under the counter where I kept it at crawling height. I didn't know what I would need, but if I was going to use demon magic, I was going to use demon magic. My chest clenched and I held my breath to keep the tears from starting.
What in hell was wrong with me?

“Jenks can hardly stand up!” Ivy said as I ran a hand through my charm cupboard and scooped them all into my shoulder bag.

Pain amulets, generic disguise charms…Yeah, those would be good.
I pulled myself to a stop, heart pounding as I looked at her distress.

“You're not feeling right,” Ivy said. “I'm not letting you walk out of here alone.”

“I'm fine!” I said, trembling. “And I'm not alone. Jenks is with me!” My voice rose, and Kisten's eyes went round. “Jenks is all the backup I need. He is all the backup I
ever
needed. The only time I screw up royally is when he's not with me. And you have no right to question his competency!”

Ivy's mouth snapped shut. “That not what I meant,” she said, and I pushed past her and into the hall. I almost ran Jenks down, and realized that he'd heard the whole thing.

“I can carry that,” he said softly, and I handed the bag of demon texts to him. His balance bobbled, but his head didn't hit the wall like last time. He headed down the dark hall, limping.

Breath fast, I walked into Ivy's room, kneeling on the floor by her bed and pulling her sword out from where I'd seen her tuck it once. “Rachel,” she protested from the hallway as
I straightened up, gripping the wickedly sharp katana safe in its sheath.

“Can I take this?” I asked shortly, and she nodded. “Thanks.” Jenks needed a sword. So he couldn't walk without running into things. He'd get better, and then he'd need a sword.

Kisten and Ivy trailed behind me as I slung the sword over my shoulder to hang with my bag and stomped down the hall. I had to be angry. If I wasn't angry, I was going to fall apart. My soul was black. I was doing demon magic. I was turning into everything I feared and hated, and I was doing it to save someone who had lied and left me to make my partner's son a thief.

Leaning into my bathroom in passing, I snapped my vanity case shut. Jenks was going to need a toothbrush. Hell, he was going to need a wardrobe, but I had to get out of there. If I didn't keep moving, I was going to realize just how deep into the shit I had fallen.

“Rachel, wait,” Ivy said after I reached the foyer, snatched my leather jacket from its hook, and opened the door. “Rachel,
stop!
”

I halted on the stoop, the spring breeze lifting my hair and the birds chirping, my bag and Ivy's sword hanging from my shoulder, my vanity case in one hand and my coat over an arm. At the curb, Jenks was fiddling with the van's sliding door, opening and closing it like a new toy. The sun glistened in his hair, and his kids flitted about his head. Heart pounding, I turned.

Framed in the open door, Ivy looked haunted, her usually placid face severe, with panic in her dilated eyes. “I bought a laptop for you,” she said, her eyes dropping as she extended it.

Oh God, she had given me a piece of her security.
“Thank you,” I whispered, unable to breathe as I accepted it. It was in a leather case, and probably weighed all of three pounds.

“It's registered to you,” she said, looking at it as I slung it over my free shoulder. “And I already added you onto my system, so all you have to do is plug in and click. I wrote
down a list of local numbers for the cities you're going to be passing through to dial up with.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.
She had given me a piece of what made her life sane.
“Ivy, I'll be back.” It was what Nick had said to me. But I'd come back. It wasn't a lie for me.

Impulsively I set my case on the stoop and leaned forward to give her a hug. She froze, and then hugged me back. The dusky scent of her filled my senses, and I stepped away.

Kisten waited quietly behind her. Only now, seeing Ivy standing there with one arm hanging down and the other clasped around her middle, did I understand what he'd been trying to tell me. She wasn't afraid for me, she was afraid for herself, that she might slip into old patterns without me there to remind her who she wanted to be.
Just how bad had it been?

Ire flashed through me. Damn it, this wasn't fair. Yeah, I was her friend, but she could take care of herself! “Ivy,” I said, “I don't want to go, but I have to.”

“Then go!” she exploded, her perfect face creasing in anger and her eyes flashing to black. “I never asked you to stay!”

Motions stiff, she spun with a vamp quickness and yanked open the door to the church. It boomed shut behind her, and left me blinking. I looked at it, thinking that this wasn't good. No, she hadn't asked me, but Kisten had.

Kisten picked up my case, and together we went down the stairs, my laces flapping. Nearing the van, I awkwardly dug in my shoulder bag for the keys, then hesitated by the driver's side door when I remembered Kisten hadn't yet given them to me. They jingled as he held them out. From inside the van came the excited shrieks of pixies. “You'll keep an eye on her?” I asked him.

“Scout's honor.” His blue eyes were pinched from more than the sun. “I'm taking some time off.”

Jenks came from around the front of the van, silently taking my coat, vanity bag, and the sword—the last bringing a growl of anticipation from him. I waited until I heard the sliding door shut, then slumped at the sound of Jenks's passenger-side door closing.

“Kisten,” I said, feeling a twinge of guilt. “She's a grown woman. Why are we treating her like an invalid?”

He reached out and took my shoulders. “Because she is. Because Piscary can drop into her mind and force her to do just about anything, and it kills a piece of her every time he does. Because he has filled her with his own blood lust, making her do things she doesn't want to do. Because she is trying to run his illegal businesses out of a sense of duty and maintain her share of your runner firm out of a sense of love.”

“Yeah. That's what I thought.” My lips pressed together and I straightened. “I never said I would stay in the church, much less Cincinnati. Keeping her together is not my job!”

“You're right,” he said calmly, “but it happened.”

“But it shouldn't have. Damn it, Kisten, all I wanted to do was help her!”

“You have,” he said, kissing my forehead. “She'll be fine. But Ivy making you her lodestone wouldn't have evolved if you hadn't let it, and you know it.”

My shoulders slumped. Swell, just what I needed: guilt. The breeze shifted his bangs, and I hesitated, looking at the oak door between Ivy and me. “How bad was it?” I whispered.

Kisten's face lost all emotion. “Piscary…” He exhaled. “Piscary worked her over so well those first few years that her parents sent her away for her last two years of high school, hoping he would lose interest. She came back even more confused, thanks to Skimmer.” His eyes narrowed in an old anger, still potent. “That woman could have saved Ivy with her love, but she was so driven by the urge for better blood, hotter sex, that she sent Ivy deeper.”

I felt cold, the breeze shifting my curls. I'd known this, but there was obviously more.

Seeing my unease, Kisten frowned. “When she returned, Piscary played on her new vulnerabilities, lapping up her misery when he rewarded her for behavior that went contrary to what she wanted to believe. Eventually she abandoned everything to keep from going insane, turning herself
off and letting Piscary make her into whatever he wanted. She started hurting people she loved when they were at their most vulnerable, and when they abandoned her, she started enticing innocents.”

Dropping his eyes, Kisten looked to his bare feet. I knew he was one of the people she had hurt, and I could tell he felt guilty for leaving her. “You couldn't do anything,” I said, and his head jerked up, anger in his eyes.

“It was bad, Rachel,” he said. “I should have done something. Instead, I turned my back on her and walked away. She won't tell me, but I think she killed people to satisfy her blood lust. God, I hope it was by accident.”

I swallowed hard, but he wasn't done yet. “For years she ran rampant,” he said, staring at the van but his eyes unfocused, as if looking into the past. “She was a living vampire functioning as an undead, walking under the sun as beautiful and seductive as death. Piscary made her that way, and her crimes were given amnesty.
The favored child.
”

He said the last with bitterness, and his gaze dropped to me. “I don't know what happened, but one day I found her on my kitchen floor, covered in blood and crying. I hadn't seen her in years, but I took her in. Piscary gave her some peace, and after a while she got better. I think it was so she wouldn't kill herself too soon for his liking. All I know is she found a way to deal with the blood lust, chaining it somehow by mixing it with love. And then she met you and found the strength to say no to it all.”

Kisten looked at me, his hand touching my hair. “She likes herself now. You're right that she isn't going to throw it all away just because you aren't here. It's just…” He squinted, his gaze going distant again. “It was bad, Rachel. It got better. And when she met you, she found a core of strength that Piscary hadn't been able to warp. I just don't want to see it break.”

I was shaking inside, and somehow my hands found his. “I'll be back.”

He nodded, looking at my fingers within his. “I know.”

I felt the need to move. I didn't care that it now came from the need to run from what I had just learned. My eyes dropped to the keys. “Thanks for letting me use your van.”

“No biggie,” he said, forcing a smile, but his eyes were worried, so terribly worried. “Just return it with a full tank of gas.” He reached forward, and I leaned against him, breathing in his scent one last time. My head tilted and our lips met, but it was an empty kiss, my worry having pushed any passion out.
This was for Jenks, not Nick. I didn't owe Nick anything.

“I slipped something in your suitcase for you,” Kisten said, and I pulled away.

“What is it?” I asked, but he didn't answer, giving me a smile before he reluctantly stepped back. His hand trailed down my arm and slipped away.

“Good-bye, Kist,” I whispered. “It's only for a few days.”

He nodded. “'Bye, love. Take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

Bare feet soundless, he turned and went back into the church. The door creaked shut, and he was gone.

Feeling numb, I turned and yanked open my door. Jenks's kids flowed out of his open window, and I got in, slamming the door behind me. The laptop slipped under the seat with my bag, and I jammed the keys into the ignition. The big engine turned over and settled into a slow, even rumble. Only now did I look across to Jenks, surprised again at seeing him there, sitting beside me in Kisten's sweats and his shockingly yellow hair.
This was really weird.

His seat belt was on, and his hands dropped from where he'd been fiddling with the visor. “You look small,” he finally said, looking both innocent and wise.

A smile quirked the corner of my lips. Shifting into gear, I accelerated down the street.

“F
or the love of Tink,” Jenks muttered, angling another one of the Cheetos into his mouth. He meticulously chewed and swallowed, adding, “Her hair looks like a dandelion. You think someone would have told her. There's enough there to make a quilt out of.”

My gaze was fixed on the car ahead of us, going an aggravating fifty-six miles an hour on the two-lane, double-yellow-lined road. The woman in question had white hair frizzed out worse than mine. He was right. “Jenks,” I said, “you're getting crumbs all over Kisten's van.”

The crackle of cellophane was faint over the music—happy, happy music that didn't fit my mood at all. “Sorry,” he said, rolling the bag down and shoving it in the back. Licking the orange from his fingers, he started messing with Kist's CDs.
Again
. Then he'd fiddle with the glove box, or spend five minutes getting his window at ju-u-u-u-ust the right height, or fuss with his seat belt, or any of the half a dozen things he'd been doing since getting in the van, all the while making a soft commentary that I think he didn't know I could hear. It had been a long day.

I sighed, adjusting my grip on the wheel. We had been off the interstate for the last 150 miles or so, taking a two-lane road instead of the interstate up to Mackinaw. The pine forest pressed close on either side, making the sun an occasional flash. It was nearing the horizon, and the wind coming in my
window was chill, carrying the scent of earth and growing things. It soothed me where the music couldn't.

The National Forestry sign caught my eye, and I smoothly braked. I had to get out from behind this woman. And if I heard that song one more time, I was going to jam Daddy's T-Bird down Jenks's throat. Not to mention “Mr. Bladder the size of a walnut” might need to use the can again, which was why we were on the back roads instead of the faster interstate. Jenks got frantic if he couldn't pee when he wanted to.

He looked up from rifling through the glove box as I slowed to bump over the wooden bridge spanning a drainage ditch. He'd been through it three times, but who knows? Maybe something had changed since the last time he had arranged the old napkins, registration, insurance, and the broken pencil. I had to remind myself that he was a pixy, not a human, despite what he looked like, and therefore had a pixy's curiosity.

“A rest stop?” he questioned, his green eyes innocently wide. “What for?”

I didn't look at him, pulling in between two faded white lines and shifting into park. Lake Huron lay before us, but I was too tired to enjoy it. “To rest.” The music cut off with the engine. Reaching under the seat, my healing knuckles grazed my new laptop when I shifted the seat rearward. Closing my eyes, I took a slow breath and leaned back, my hands still on the wheel.
Please get out and take a walk, Jenks.

Jenks was silent. There was the crackle of cellophane as he gathered up the trash. The man never stopped eating. I was going to introduce him to a mighty burger tonight. Maybe three-quarters of a pound of meat would slow him down.

“You want me to drive?” he asked, and I cracked an eyelid, looking askance at him.

Oh, there's a good idea. If we were stopped, it'd be me getting the points, not him.
“Nah,” I said, my hands falling from the wheel and into my lap. “We're almost there, I just need to move around a little.”

With a wisdom far beyond his apparent age, Jenks ran his eyes over me. His shoulders slumped, and I wondered if he
knew he was getting on my nerves. Maybe there was a reason pixies were only four inches tall. “Me too,” he said meekly, opening his door to let in a gust of sunset-cooled wind smelling of pine and water. “Do you have any change for the machine?”

Relieved, I tugged my bag onto my lap and handed him a fiver. I'd have given him more, but he had nowhere to put it. He needed a wallet. And a pair of pants to put it in. I had hustled him out of the church so fast that all he had was his phone, clipped proudly to his elastic waistband, which had since been depressingly silent. We'd been hoping Jax would call again, but no such luck.

“Thanks,” he said, getting out and tripping on the flip-flops I'd bought him at the first gas station we stopped at. The van shifted when he shut the door, and he made his way to a rusted trash can set about fifty feet from the parking lot, chained to a tree. His balance was markedly better, with only the usual trouble most people had walking with slabs of orange plastic attached to their feet.

He dumped the trash and headed for a tree, an alarming intentness to his pace. I took a breath to call out, and he jerked to a stop. Slumped, he scanned the park, making his way to a clapboard restroom instead. Such were the trials in a day of the life of a six-foot-four pixy.

I sighed, watching him slow at the bed of straggly daylilies to talk to the pixies. They buzzed about him in a swirl of gold and silver sparkles, coming from all over the park like fireflies on a mission. Within moments a cloud of glowing dust hovered over him in the darkening air.

I turned at the hush of a car pulling in a few slots down. Three boys like stair steps exploded out, arguing about who switched whose dead batteries in their handheld games. Mom said nothing, wearily popping the trunk and settling it all with a twelve-pack of double A's. Money was offered by Dad, and the three ran to the vending machines under a rustic shelter, shoving each other to get there first. Jenks caught the smallest before he fell into the flowers. I had a feeling
Jenks was more worried about the plants than the boy. I smiled when the couple leaned against the car and watched them, exhaling loudly. I knew the feeling.

My smile slowly faded into melancholy. I had always planned on children, but with a hundred years of fertility facing me, I was in no hurry. My thoughts drifted to Kisten, and I pulled my eyes from the boys at the vending machines.

Witches married outside their species all the time, especially before the Turn. There were perfectly acceptable options: adoption, artificial insemination, borrowing your best friend's boyfriend for a night. Issues of what was morally right and wrong tended not to matter when you found yourself in love with a man you couldn't tell you weren't human. It sort of went with the whole hiding-among-humans-for-the-last-five-thousand-years thing. We weren't hiding now, but why limit oneself simply because there wasn't a safety issue anymore? It was way too soon for me to think about kids, but with Kisten, any children would have to be engendered by someone else.

Frustrated, I got out of the van, my body aching from my first day without a pain amulet since my beating. The couple drifted away, talking between themselves.
There wouldn't be any children with Nick either,
I reminded myself,
so it isn't like this is anything new.

Painfully stretching to touch my toes, I froze, realizing I had put him in present tense. Damn. This was not a choice between them.
Oh God,
I thought.
Tell me I'm only doing this to help Jenks. That nothing is left in me to rekindle.
But the wedge of doubt wiggled itself between me and my logic, settling in to make me feel stupid.

Angry with myself, I did a few more stretches, and then, wondering if the black on my aura had soaked in, I tapped a line and set a circle. My lips curled in revulsion. The shimmering sheet of energy rose black and ugly, the reddish light of sunset coming in from around the trees adding an ominous cast to the black sheen. The gold tint of my aura was entirely lost. Disgusted, I dropped the line, and the circle
vanished, leaving me depressed. Even better, Mom and Dad Cleaver called to their kids and, with an unusual hushed haste at their loud questions, jammed everyone into the car to drive away with a little squeak of tire on pavement.

“Yeah,” I muttered, watching their brake lights flash red as they settled into traffic. “Run from the black witch.” I felt like a leper, and leaned against the warm van and crossed my arms over my chest, remembering why my folks always took us to big cities or places like Disney World on vacation. Small towns generally didn't have much of an Inderland population, and those who did live in them usually played their differences down. Way down.

The
snick-slap-snick
of Jenks's flip-flops grew louder as he returned down the cracked sidewalk, the swirl of pixies dropping back one by one until he was alone. Behind him were the outlines of two islands, both so big they looked like the opposite shore. Far off to the left was the bridge that had clued me in that this was where Jax was. It was starting to glitter in the dimming light as night fell. The bridge was huge, even from this distance.

“They haven't seen Jax,” Jenks said, handing me a candy bar. “But they promise to take him in if they do.”

My eyes widened. “Really?” Pixies were very territorial, even among themselves, so the offer was somewhat of a shock.

He nodded, the half smile glimmering under his mop of hair turning him guileless. “I think I impressed them.”

“Jenks, king of the pixies,” I said, and he laughed. The wonderful sound struck through me, lifting my spirits. It slowly died to leave an unhappy silence. “We'll find him, Jenks,” I said, touching his shoulder. He jumped, then flashed me a nervous smile. My hand fell away, and I remembered his anger at me for having lied to him. No wonder he didn't want me to touch him. “I'm sure they're in Mackinaw,” I added, miserable.

His back to the water and his face empty of emotion, Jenks watched the sporadic traffic.

“Where else could they be?” I tore open my candy bar
and took a bite of caramel and chocolate, more for something to do than hunger. The van was radiating heat, and it felt good to lean against the side of the engine. “Jax said they were in Michigan,” I said, chewing. “Big green bridge held up by cables. Lots of fresh water. Fudge. Putt-putt golf. We'll find him.”

Pain, hard and deep, crossed Jenks's face. “Jax was the first child Mattie and I were able to keep alive through the winter,” he whispered, and the sweetness left the wad of sugar and nuts in my mouth. “He was so small, I held him in my hands to keep him warm for four months while I slept. I've got to find him, Rache.”

Oh God,
I thought as I swallowed, wondering if I had ever loved anyone that deeply. “We'll find him,” I said. Feeling totally inadequate, I reached to touch him, pulling away at the last moment. He realized it, and the silence grew uncomfortable.

“Ready to go?” I said, folding the wrapper over the rest of the candy and reaching for the door handle. “We're almost there. We'll get a room, grab something to eat, and then I'm taking you shopping.”

“Shopping?” His thin eyebrows rose, and he walked to the front of the van.

Our doors shut simultaneously, and I buckled myself in, refreshed, and my resolve strengthened. “You don't think I'm going to be seen with a six-foot piece of dessert dressed in a nasty pair of sweats, do you?”

Jenks brushed the hair from his eyes, his angular face showing a surprising amount of sly amusement. “Some underwear would be nice.”

Snorting, I started the van and put it into reverse, snapping off the CD player before it started up again. “Sorry about that. I had to get out of there.”

“Me too,” he said, surprising me. “And I wasn't about to wear any of Kisten's. The guy is nice and all, but he stinks.” He hesitated, plucking at his collar. “Hey, uh, thanks for what you said back there.”

My brow furrowed. Checking both ways, I pulled onto the road. “At the rest stop?”

Sheepish, he shifted his shoulders in embarrassment. “No, in the kitchen about me being the only backup you ever needed.”

“Oh.” I warmed, keeping my eyes on the car ahead of us, a black, salt-rusted Corvette that reminded me of Kisten's other vehicle. “I meant it, Jenks. I missed you the past five months. And if you don't come back to the firm, I swear I'm going to leave you like this.”

His panicked expression eased when he saw I was joking. “For the love of Tink, don't you dare,” he muttered. “I can't even pix anyone. I sweat now instead of dusting, did you know that? I've got water coming off me instead of dust. What the hell can I do with sweat? Rub up against someone and make them puke in disgust? I've seen you sweat, and it's not pretty. I don't even want to think about sex, two sweaty bodies pressed against each other like that? Disgusting. Talk about birth control—it's no wonder you only have a handful of kids.”

He shuddered and I smiled.
Same old Jenks.

I couldn't keep myself from stiffening when he began rummaging in the music, and apparently sensing it, he stopped, putting his hands in his lap to stare out the front window at the darkening sky. We had come out of the woods and were starting to see homes and businesses strung out along the road in a thin strip. Behind them was the flat blue of the lake, gray in the fading light.

“Rachel,” he said, his voice soft with regret. “I don't know if I can come back.”

Alarmed, I looked at him, then the road, then at him again. “What do you mean you don't know. If it's about Trent—”

He held up a hand, his brow pinched. “It's not Trent. I figured out he's an elf after helping Ceri last night.”

I jerked and the van crossed the yellow line. A horn blew, and I yanked the wheel back. “You figured it out?” I stammered, feeling my heart pound. “Jenks, I wanted to tell you. Really. But I was afraid you would blab, and—”

“I'm not going to tell anyone,” he said, and I could see it was killing him. It would have brought him a huge amount of prestige in the pixy world. “If I do, then it means you were right in not telling me, and you weren't.”

His voice was hard, and I felt a stab of guilt. “Then why?” I asked, wishing he had brought this up when we were parked, not when I was trying to navigate the outskirts of an unfamiliar town, bright with neon lights.