Ivy.
Alarmed, Jenks darted up. Chunks of marble the size of apples and melons littered the sidewalk. A few pieces were embedded in the tree that Ivy had pinned Daryl against, and the scent of cracked rock pervaded. Vincet’s home and Daryl’s statue looked untouched. But no Ivy. No Daryl, either.
“Ivy!” Jenks shouted, realizing he was about to fall from exhaustion. Damn it, he’d let his sugar drop. Immediately he found a sweetball in his pocket and sucked on it. The sugar hit him fast, and his wings sped up. Across the street, people were starting to come out of their homes, aiming flashlights at the park. They had to get out of here.
“Ivy!” he shouted again. “You okay?”
Bis poked his head up from behind the rock, his ears pricked as he looked at the tree, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Daryl stumbled out from behind it. Ivy levered herself up from the ground, having found a dip to take shelter in. They both picked their way carefully to the sidewalk, taking in the damage with a numb acceptance.
“He’s free,” Daryl whispered, her smooth features bunching in distress.
A crack of noise made them all jump. It was the snap of breaking stone, and the sharp sound echoed off the town homes across the street. As they watched, a huge slab of broken rock slid from Sylvan’s statue, falling to crush the flowers.
“I didn’t do it, Papa!” Jumoke exclaimed, eyes wide as he darted close. “It wasn’t me!”
“It was me,” a new voice said, sly and wispy.
Startled, Jenks turned in the air even as Daryl caught her breath only to start coughing. Ivy held her back from attacking him, but her lips were pressed in anger. A thin figure was standing in the moonlight, his feet on the moss beside the dogwood tree. It looked like Sylvan’s statue. Moving as if it might be hurt, the shadowy figure edged out into the moonlight, drawing back as one bare foot touched the concrete. It was Sylvan. It had to be.
“You lied to me,” Jenks said, loosening his sword.
“I’m free!” the dryad exclaimed, and he leaped lightly onto the concrete, exuberant as his robes furled.
The glow of Vincet’s dust was a sickly yellow as he hovered beside Jenks, his broken sword in hand. The dryad probably didn’t know it, but it was a real threat.
“Is Vi okay?” Jenks asked, and Vincet nodded.
“But I fear we have let loose a demon.”
“You are trash, Sylvan!” Daryl shouted, sagging in Ivy’s arms as she wheezed. “I will not rest until you are dead!”
Sylvan stopped his twirling. Looking at Jenks as if seeing him for the first time, the dryad smiled, his gaze alighting briefly on Vincet, Jumoke, and finally Bis, all fronting him. “Daryl is a crazy bitch,” he said softly, pulling himself to a dignified stance. “I didn’t lie.” Glancing at the people coming across the park from the town homes, he added, almost as an afterthought, “Not much, anyway.”
“Now!” Ivy shouted, springing into action. Jenks darted forward, sword in hand.
“No, wait!” Bis exclaimed, but Ivy was already pinwheeling to a stop. The spot of air where Sylvan had been, was gone.
“Where did he go!” Ivy asked, turning back to them.
Bis shook himself, resettling his wings as he looked at the people coming closer. “Into the line,” he said, clearly unnerved. His ears were pinned and his tail was lashed about his feet. “He shouldn’t be able to do that,” he added, meeting Jenks’s gaze.
Daryl slumped on the bench to look totally undignified and out of character. “It’s why he was imprisoned in stone,” she said, pushing a chip of his statue off to clatter on the cement. “Now I’ll never find him.”
Jenks stifled a shiver as he met Ivy’s eyes. Tink’s contractual hell, he’d made a big mistake. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We can worry about Sylvan later.”
“Right behind you.” Bis flew to their satchel, ducking behind Daryl’s robes and coming out with it and the grimy, dented bowl. A bobbing flashlight across the grass caught his eyes, and they glowed red. Seeing it, someone called out. More lights angled their way.
“Jenks, I’m taking Daryl to the hospital,” Ivy said. “Can you get home from here okay?”
Jenks looked at Daryl, struggling to breathe, and he nodded. “See you there.”
Daryl was complaining she wasn’t going to go to the butchers and leechers when Vincet dropped down to him. “Thank you, Jenks,” he said, his expression solemn in the dim light. “You saved my family.”
Wincing, Jenks looked to Vincet’s front door where his wife and sons were silhouetted in the warm glow of a fire. “You’re welcome. I don’t think Sylvan will be back.”
“Tomorrow,” Vincet said, shaking his hand. “I’ll come tomorrow. Thank you. I can’t ever do enough.”
Jenks managed a smile as he thought of Vi. She’d be fine, now. “Just be nice to some pixy buck who needs it,” he said. “And build me an office.”
Vincet’s head was bobbing as he drifted back, but it was clear he wanted to return to his home. “Yes. Anything. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Jenks agreed, then darted up when a flashlight found him, bathing him in a bright white light. “Sorry about the mess!” he shouted.
Vincet went one way, Ivy and Daryl another, and in an instant, even their dust was gone. He waited until he heard the soft sound of Ivy’s muffled engine before he turned his back on the demolished grove and rose higher. Like a switch, the sounds of chaos went faint and the air turned chill. An uncomfortable mix of success and failure took him. And as Jenks quickly caught up to Jumoke and the slower-flying gargoyle winging his way back across the Ohio River, he had a bad feeling that this was far from over.
6
Hands on his hips, Jenks hovered a good five inches above the damp moss, newly transplanted from somewhere half across the Hollows. He gazed in satisfaction at the freshly scrubbed, upside-down flowerpot buried halfway into the soft soil. The sun was high, but here, under the shelter of an overgrown lilac, it was cool. It had taken almost a week working the four hours before the sun rose, but Vincet had finally called his office done.
While Jenks’s children watched, Vincet had chipped out a door in the upside-down flowerpot, built a hearth, and laid a circle of stone that said “welcome” in pixy culture. Seeds had been planted from Vincet’s own stash, and Jenks wasn’t sure how he felt about another man putting plants into his own soil. How was he to know what was going to come up?
Watching Vincet had been a good lesson to his own kids, who up to now had only seen their parents work, and when Jenks rubbed his wings together to signal the all-clear, his children swarmed down in a wave of silk and noise. The babble grew high, and he fled, darting to where Matalina was on the wall with Jrixibell, again refusing to eat her pollen, having stuffed herself with nectar. He hadn’t a clue where she was getting it. The little girl probably had a stash of flowers somewhere that even her mother didn’t know about.
“Go!” the woman relented as the little girl whined, her wings down in a pitiful display. “But you’re going to eat twice as much tonight!”
“Thank you, Mama!” she chimed out, and Jenks watched for birds until she reached her brothers and sisters, already buzzing in and out of his new office.
Happy, Jenks settled himself beside Matalina, thinking she was beautiful out here in the dappled sun. She handed him a sweetball, and he took it, pulling her close to make her giggle. “I’d rather have you,” he said, stealing a kiss.
“Jenks,” she fussed, clearly liking the attention. “I’m pleased it ended well.”
A flash of guilt darkened his wings. “Yeah, as long as Sylvan doesn’t come back and Rachel doesn’t find out,” he said, gaze going to his kids as they doused Jumoke in pollen from an early dandelion, temporally turning him blond until he shook himself.