“I’m hoping it doesn’t come down to that.” Worried, I rubbed the tension from my fingers. Sure, I could drive them away with a charm, but Jenks and Belle were in there.
The dulcimers cut off and I scrambled for the phone. “One hour,” Cormel said tightly.
“An hour!” I exclaimed, not bothering to take him off speaker. “Mr. Cormel, I have to wait until sunset before the surface demons even come out! I cannot, nor will I, go any further with this if I have to guard Ivy against your assassins.”
My heart pounded, and Trent and I waited, breath held.
“Ivy is safe until sunrise,” Cormel said. “I’m leaving a chaperone.”
“No chaperone,” I countered. Maybe that was asking a lot, but the last thing I wanted was an amorous vampire lurking in the corner, filling the air with sexy pheromones and innuendo.
“Then you have until midnight.” Cormel waited as I silently protested, but when I kept my mouth shut, he ended the conversation by hanging up. Midnight. I had until midnight to show real progress, or it would all start up again.
Exhaling, I ended the call. Trent took the keys out of the ignition; we could walk from here. “You think I should have gone with the chaperone and the extra time?”
“No.”
“Me either. Good thing I work well under a deadline.” Feeling sour, I reached for the door. Getting them to leave was going to be a treat, but with Cormel’s word, I had the clout.
“That was fast,” Trent said, and my head snapped up.
Surprised, I got out as the church’s double door banged open and a steady stream of thin bodies staggered to their cars and vans. There were a lot, and I hoped Jenks was okay. Our phone conversation this morning hadn’t instilled much confidence.
Motions graceful with a slow deliberation, Trent got out, his book on how to put souls in baby bottles tucked under an arm. It was an elven charm, so in theory I shouldn’t have much trouble with it.
A flash of guilt took me, and I looked back at the church—anywhere but at that book.
Doors thumped and engines raced. My neighbors watched behind twitching curtains. It was obvious by their unkempt state and untied shoes that my visitors weren’t assassins per se, but they could still kill someone—and with Cormel running the city, there’d be no inquiry, no notice. Ivy would be a warning, or worse.
“Hey!” I shouted as a woman with a bad case of bed hair shuffled to the last car. “That’s my coat!”
Head hanging, the woman stopped right in the middle of the street, took off my red jacket, and dropped it with a tired indifference. The rest of them were complaining and wanting her to hurry up, and not bothering to open the door to the car, she dove in headfirst through a back window. The car accelerated in a noisy squeal of tires.
I slammed Trent’s door, stalking to my jacket. It reeked of vampire, even worse of her perfume scented heavily with pine. I’d have to air it out for weeks, maybe send it to the cleaners. Vampire incense stuck to leather worse than burnt amber in my hair.
Trent scuffed to a halt beside me, one hand in a pocket, the other holding that book. “I think I just turned a profit on this one party alone,” he said, squinting up at the steeple, and I gave him a dry look. But my mood improved dramatically when a familiar glint of pixy dust arrowed out from the fireplace’s flue.
“Rache!” Jenks shouted as he came to a dust-laden halt before us, his sparkles continuing forward on momentum, making me sneeze. “Tink loves a duck, how did you get them to leave?”
I held my jacket like a dead rat. “Cormel gave us until midnight.”
Jenks flew backward as Trent and I started for the open front door. “And then what?”
My steps slowed. “He gets serious about killing Ivy.”
“Yesterday wasn’t serious?” Jenks said as he alighted on Trent’s shoulder, but it was obvious we were on borrowed time. My stomach clenched as Trent and I took the shallow steps, and I blanched at the smell wafting out the door.
“Nice.” Holding my breath, I went in. “What did they do? Have an orgy?”
The whine of Jenks’s wings increased as I propped the door open. “Uh, something like that. But no one died. Hey, I tried to keep them out of your stuff. I’m sorry. It was just Belle and me after the sun came up and we had to pick our battles.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not your . . . fault . . .” I stopped just inside the sanctuary, lips parting as I took in the empty bowls, smeared glasses, crushed beer cans, and chips bags. The furniture had been rearranged, and someone had drawn a mustache and beard on the TV, presumably on someone’s face at the time. Kisten’s pool table had a cooler on it, and a dark stain spread under it as water dripped from the long crack running the width of the plastic. It was worse than the time my high school boyfriend had volunteered my house for the homecoming party because he knew my mom was working.
“Is Belle okay?” I said as Trent made a sorrowful noise. “Jumoke and Izzy?”
I could re-felt the table, but I knew I never would. I’d have to look at that stain on Kisten’s memory for the rest of my life.
“They’re okay.” Jenks hovered by my ear, a depressed bluish-orange dust slipping from him. “Jumoke and Izzyanna kept to the garden, but Belle was with me. I couldn’t have saved the kitchen without her. That fairy is something else.”
A faint smile found me, and I started to think again. It was a God-awful mess, but I almost didn’t care if it meant Jenks and Belle had attained a deeper level of respect. “Ah, sorry about your room,” Jenks said as I ran a hand down the smooth finish of the pool table’s bumper. “I figured you’d rather I save your kitchen, and ah, they really wanted the bed.”
Oh God. My bed. “Don’t worry about it. You saved the kitchen?” Tired, I started for the hallway. I’d send Cormel the cleanup bill if I thought he’d pay it.
Sure enough, the bathrooms were trashed. I think every vampire in the Hollows had used my shower. I’d probably just throw what was left of my soap away. Even so, it wasn’t as bad as my bedroom.
“I’m really sorry, Rache,” Jenks said as I peeked in, nose wrinkled as I hustled to prop the stained-glass window open. I couldn’t deal with this just yet, and Trent went across the hall to make sure Ivy’s window was open as well. Someone had been through my closet and my clothes were everywhere. My perfumes, too, were knocked over, most of them empty. More clothes spilled from my open drawers, and I began to get mad. Multiple someones had had sex in my bed by the look of it. There were nasty scratches in the headboard and the top of the footboard had been snapped off as if someone had kicked it in the throes of passion.
“Oh, Rachel,” Trent breathed, his words making a warm spot on my shoulder. “This was totally uncalled for. I am so sorry.”
Angry, I turned to the kitchen. “Not half as sorry as Cormel is going to be.”
Belle, looking small without Rex beside her, stood at the threshold to the kitchen. She slumped, clearly fatigued as she leaned on her six-inch bow. “Rachel.” Her lisping, raspy voice, too, lacked its usual flair. “Is-s-ss Ivy well?”
Damn it, Cormel, if your people have hurt my cat . . . “Yes,” I said, again finding a drop of good in the ugly. “Your sister and brothers are keeping her safe.”
Jenks’s wings cut out for a brief second. “Holy pixy piss, really?”
Trent nodded, a faint smile on his face as he put a hand on the small of my back and almost shoved me into the untouched kitchen. “I’ve let most of my security go, and at Quen’s urging, I’ve come to an agreement with the clan that’s been living in my gardens. I’ve been told that pixies would have been better—”