Every Which Way But Dead

“Pixies?” I prompted, remembering she was over a thousand years old. If she wasn’t an Inderlander, she wouldn’t have ever seen them before, believing they were, ah, fairy tales. “You know about pixies?” I asked, stomping the snow from my boots.

She nodded, closing the door behind her, and I felt better. The adjustment to modern life would be easier if she didn’t have to come to grips with witches, Weres, pixies, vampires, and the like being real on top of TVs and cell phones, but as her eyes ranged over Ivy’s expensive electronic equipment with only a mild interest, I was willing to bet that things on the other side of the ley lines were as technologically advanced as they were here.

“Jenks!” I shouted to the front of the church where he and his family were living out the duration of the cold months. “Can I see you for a minute?”

There was the tight hum of dragonfly wings faint over the warm air. “Hey, Rache,” the small pixy said as he buzzed in. “What’s this my kids are saying about an angel?” He jerked to a hovering halt, his eyes wide and his short blond hair swinging as he looked behind me.

Angel, huh? I thought as I turned to Ceri to introduce her. “Oh God, no,” I said, pulling her back upright. She had been picking up the snow I had knocked off my boots, holding it in her hand. The sight of her diminutive form dressed in that exquisite gown cleaning my mess was too much. “Please, Ceri,” I said, taking the snow from her and dropping it on the carpet. “Don’t.”

A wash of self-annoyance crossed the small woman’s smooth brow. Sighing, she made an apologetic face. I don’t think she had even realized what she was doing until I stopped her.

I turned back to Jenks, seeing his wings had taken on a faint red tint as his circulation increased. “What the hell?” he muttered, gaze dropping to her feet. Pixy dust sifted from him in his surprise to make a glittering spot of sun on the gray carpet. He was dressed in his casual gardening clothes of tight-fitting green silk and looked like a miniature Peter Pan minus the hat.

“Jenks,” I said as I put a hand on Ceri’s shoulder and pulled her forward. “This is Ceri. She’s going to be staying with us for a while. Ceri, this is Jenks, my partner.”

Jenks zipped forward, then back in agitation. An amazed look came over Ceri, and she glanced from me to him. “Partner?” she said, her attention going to my left hand.

Understanding crashed over me and I warmed. “My business partner,” I reiterated, realizing she thought we were married. How on earth could you marry a pixy? Why on earth would you want to? “We work together as runners.” Taking my hat off, I tossed the red wool to the hearth where it could dry on the stone and fluffed the pressure marks from my hair. I had left my coat outside, but I wasn’t going out to get it now.

She bit her lip in confusion. The warmth of the room had turned them red, and color was starting to come back into her cheeks.

In a dry clatter, Jenks flitted close so that my curls shifted in the breeze from his wings. “Not too bright, is she,” he pointed out, and when I waved him away in bother, he put his hands on his hips. Hovering before Ceri, he said loudly and slowly as if she were hard of hearing, “We—are—good—guys. We—stop—bad—guys.”

“Warriors,” Ceri said, not looking at him as her eyes touched on Ivy’s leather curtains, plush suede chairs, and sofa. The room was a salute to comfort, all of it from Ivy’s pocketbook and not mine.

Jenks laughed, sounding like wind chimes. “Warriors,” he said, grinning. “Yeah. We’re warriors. I’ll be right back. I gotta tell that one to Matalina.”

He zipped out of the room at head height, and my shoulders eased. “Sorry about that,” I apologized. “I asked Jenks to move his family in for the winter after he admitted he usually lost two children to hibernation sickness every spring. They’re driving Ivy and me insane, but I’d rather have no privacy for four months than Jenks starting his spring with tiny coffins.”

Ceri nodded. “Ivy,” she said softly. “Is she your partner?”

“Yup. Just like Jenks,” I said casually to make sure she really understood. Her shifting eyes were cataloging everything, and I slowly moved to the hallway. “Um, Ceri?” I said, hesitating until she started to follow. “Do you want me to call you Ceridwen instead?”

She peeked down the dark corridor to the dimly lit sanctuary, her gaze following the sounds of pixy children. They were supposed to stay in the front of the church, but they got into everything, and their squeals and shrieks had become commonplace. “Ceri, please.”

Her personality was thundering back into her faster than I would have believed possible, going from silence to short sentences in a matter of moments. There was a curious mix of modern and old-world charm in her speech that probably came from living with demons so long. She stopped in the threshold of my kitchen, wide-eyed as she took it all in. I didn’t think it was culture shock. Most people had a similar reaction when seeing my kitchen.

It was huge, with both a gas and an electric stove so I could cook on one and stir spells on the other. The fridge was stainless steel and large enough to put a cow in. There was one sliding window overlooking the snowy garden and graveyard, and my beta, Mr. Fish, swam happily in a brandy snifter on the sill. Fluorescent lights illuminated shiny chrome and expansive counter space that wouldn’t be out of place before the cameras of a cooking show.

A center island counter overhung with a rack of my spelling equipment and drying herbs gathered by Jenks and his family took up much of the space. Ivy’s massive antique table took up the rest. Half of it was meticulously arranged as her office, with her computer—faster and more powerful than an industrial-sized package of laxative—color-coded files, maps, and the markers she used to organize her runs. The other half of the table was mine and empty. I wish I could say it was neatness, but when I had a run, I ran it. I didn’t analyze it to death.

“Have a seat,” I said casually. “How about some coffee?” Coffee? I thought as I went to the coffeemaker and threw out the old grounds. What was I going to do with her? It wasn’t as if she was a stray kitten. She needed help. Professional help.

Ceri stared at me, her face returning to its numb state. “I …” she stammered, looking frightened and small in her gorgeous outfit. I glanced at my jeans and red sweater. I still had on my snow boots, and I felt like a slob.

“Here,” I said as I pulled out a chair. “I’ll make some tea.” Three steps forward, one back, I thought when she shunned the chair I offered and took the one before Ivy’s computer instead. Tea might be more appropriate, seeing as she was over a thousand years old. Did they even have coffee in the Dark Ages?

I was staring at my cupboards, trying to remember if we had a teapot, when Jenks and about fifteen of his kids came rolling in, all talking at once. Their voices were so high-pitched and rapid they made my head hurt. “Jenks,” I pleaded, glancing at Ceri. She looked overwhelmed enough as it was. “Please?”

“They aren’t going to do anything,” he protested belligerently. “Besides, I want them to get a good sniff of her. I can’t tell what she is, she stinks of burnt amber so badly. Who is she, anyway, and what was she doing in our garden in her bare feet?”

“Um,” I said, suddenly wary. Pixies had excellent noses, able to tell what species someone was just by smelling them. I had a bad suspicion that I knew what Ceri was, and I really didn’t want Jenks to figure it out.

Ceri raised her hand as a perch, smiling beatifically at the two pixy girls who promptly landed on it, their green and pink silk dresses moving from the breeze stirred by their dragonfly wings. They were chattering happily the way pixy girls do, seemingly brainless but aware of everything down to the mouse hiding behind the fridge. Clearly Ceri had seen pixies before. That would make her an Inderlander if she was a thousand years old. The Turn, when we all came out of hiding to live openly with humans, had only been forty years ago.

“Hey!” Jenks exclaimed, seeing his kids monopolizing her, and they whirled up and out of the kitchen in a kaleidoscope of color and noise. Immediately he took their place, beckoning his oldest son, Jax, down to perch on the computer screen before her.

“You smell like Trent Kalamack,” he said bluntly. “What are you?”

A wash of angst took me and I turned my back on them. Damn, I was right. She was an elf. If Jenks knew, he would blab it all over Cincinnati the moment the temperature got above freezing and he could leave the church. Trent didn’t want the world to know that elves had survived the Turn, and he would drop Agent Orange on the entire block to shut Jenks up.

Turning, I frantically waved my fingers at Ceri, pantomiming zipping my mouth. Realizing she wouldn’t have a clue what that meant, I put my finger to my lips. The woman eyed me in question, then looked at Jenks. “Ceri,” she said seriously.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jenks said impatiently, hands on his hips. “I know. You Ceri. Me Jenks. But what are you? Are you a witch? Rachel’s a witch.”

Ceri glanced at me and away. “I’m Ceri.”

Jenks’s wings blurred to nothing, the shimmer going from blue to red. “Yeah,” he repeated. “But what species? See, I’m a pixy, and Rachel is a witch. You are …” “Ceri,” she insisted.

“Ah, Jenks?” I said as the woman’s eyes narrowed. The question as to what the Kalamacks were had eluded pixies for the entirety of the family’s existence. Figuring that out would give Jenks more prestige in the pixy world than if he took out an entire fairy clan by himself. I could tell he was on the edge of his patience when he flitted up to hover before her.

“Damn it!” Jenks swore, frustrated. “What the hell are you, woman?”

“Jenks!” I shouted in alarm as Ceri’s hand flashed out, snagging him. Jax, his son, let out a yelp, leaving a cloud of pixy dust as he darted to the ceiling. Jenks’s eldest daughter, Jih peeked around the archway from the hall ceiling, her wings a pink blur.

“Hey! Lego!” Jenks exclaimed. His wings made a furious clatter, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Ceri had his pant leg between her thumb and forefinger. Her reflexes were better than even Ivy’s if she had enough control to be that precise.

“I’m Ceri,” she said, her thin lips tight as Jenks hovered, snared. “And even my demon captor had enough respect that he didn’t curse at me, little warrior.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jenks said meekly. “Can I go now?”

She raised one pale eyebrow—a skill I envied—then glanced at me for direction. I nodded emphatically, still shocked at how quick it had been. Not smiling, Ceri let him go.

“Guess you aren’t as slow as I thought,” Jenks said sullenly.

The ruffled pixy brought the scent of store-bought dirt to me as he retreated to my shoulder, and my brow furrowed when I turned my back on her to poke around under the counter for a teapot. I heard the soft familiar clink of pens, recognizing the sound of Ceri tidying Ivy’s desk. Her centuries of slavery were showing again. The woman’s mix of meek servitude and quick pride had me at a loss for how to treat her.

“Who is she?” Jenks whispered in my ear.

I crouched to reach into the cupboard, pulling out a copper teapot so badly tarnished that it was almost maroon. “She was Big Al’s familiar.”

“Big Al!” the pixy squeaked, rising up to land upon the tap. “Is that what you were doing out there? Tink’s panties, Rachel, you’re getting as bad as Nick! You know that’s not safe!”

I could tell him now. Now that it was over. Very aware of Ceri listening behind us, I ran the water into the teapot and swirled it around to clean it. “Big Al didn’t agree to testify against Piscary out of the goodness of its heart. I had to pay for it.”

With a dry rasp of wings, Jenks moved to hover before me. Surprise, shock, and then anger cascaded over his face. “What did you promise him?” he said coldly.

“It’s an it, not a him,” I said. “And it’s done.” I couldn’t look at him. “I promised to be its familiar if I was allowed to keep my soul.”