For A Few Demons More

“I don’t remember.” I dunked the brush and started in again, but the hush of linen against paper brought me upright. “Hey!” I protested, wiping my hands dry on my robe to make the tie come undone. “You can’t do that. It’s illegal to open mail not addressed to you.”

Jenks had landed on Ivy’s shoulder, and they each gave me a long look over the invitation in her grip. “The seal was broken,” Ivy said, shaking to the floor the stupid little white tissue paper I had carefully replaced.

Trent Kalamack was the bane of my existence, one of Cincinnati’s most beloved councilmen, and the Northern Hemisphere’s most eligible bachelor. No one seemed to care he ran half of the city’s underworld and worked a good slice of the world’s illegal Brimstone trade. That wasn’t even considering his punishable-by-death dealings in genetic manipulation and outlawed medicines. My being alive because of them was a big part of my keeping quiet about it. I didn’t like the Antarctic any more than the next person, and that’s where I’d end up if it got out. That is, if they didn’t just kill me, burn me, and send my ashes to the sun.

Suddenly having a demon trash my living room didn’t seem so bad.

“Holy crap!” Jenks swore again. “Ellasbeth wants you to be a bridesmaid?”

Jerking my robe closed, I stalked across the sanctuary and snatched the invitation out of Ivy’s hand. “It’s not an invitation, it’s a badly worded request for me to work security. The woman hates me. Look, she didn’t even sign it. I bet she doesn’t even know it exists.”

I waved it in the air and shoved it into a drawer, slamming it shut. Trent’s fiancée was a bitch in all ways but the literal. Thin, elegant, rich, and bitingly polite. We had gotten along really well the night we had breakfast together, just her, me, and Trent caught between us. Course, part of that might have been from my letting her believe that Trent and I had been childhood sweethearts. But she was the one who decided I was a courtesan. Stupid Yellow Pages ad.

Ivy’s expression was wary. She knew better than to push me when it came to Trent, but Jenks wouldn’t let it go. “Yeah, but think of it, Rache. It’s going to be a hell of a party. The best of Cincinnati is going to be there. You never know who will show up.”

I lifted a plant and ran my hand under it—my version of dusting. “People who want to kill Trent,” I said lightly. “I like excitement, but I’m not insane.”

Ivy moved my bucket and mop to a dry part of the floor and sprayed a heavy layer of that unlabeled bottle. “You going to do it?” she asked, as if I hadn’t already said no.

“No.”

In one motion I swept all the papers off the desktop and into the uppermost drawer. Jenks landed on the clean surface, his wings stilling as he leaned against the pencil cup and crossed his ankles and arms to look surprisingly alluring for a four-inch-tall man. “Why not?” he accused. “You think he’s going to stiff you?”

Again, I added in my thoughts. “Because I already saved his freaking elf ass once,” I said. “You do it once, it’s a mistake. You do it twice and it’s not a mistake anymore.”

Mop and bucket in hand, Ivy walked out, snickering.

“It’s RSVP by tomorrow,” Jenks needled. “Rehearsal is Friday. You’re invited.”

“I know that.” It was my birthday, too, and I wasn’t going to spend it with Trent. Ticked, I headed into the kitchen after Ivy.

Flying backward, Jenks got in my face and preceded me down the hallway, slices of sunlight coming in from the living room. “I’ve got two reasons you should do it,” he said. “One, it will piss Ellasbeth off, and two, you could charge him enough to afford to resancitify the church.”

My steps slowed, and I tried to keep the ugly look off my face. That was unfair. By the sink, Ivy frowned, clearly thinking the same. “Jenks …”

“I’m just saying—”

“She’s not working for Kalamack,” Ivy threatened, and this time he shut his mouth.

I stood in the kitchen, not knowing why I was here. “I gotta shower,” I said.

“Go,” Ivy said, meticulously—and needlessly—washing the bucket with soapy water before putting it away. “I’ll wait up for the man coming over with an estimate.”

I didn’t like that. She’d probably fudge on the quote, knowing that her pockets were deeper than mine. She had told me she was nearly broke, but nearly broke for the last living member of the Tamwood vampires was not my broke, rather more of a down-to-six-figures-in-her-bank-account broke. If she wanted something, she got it. But I was too tired to fight her.

“I owe you,” I said as I grabbed the cooled tea Ceri had made for me and shuffled out.

“God, Jenks,” Ivy was saying as I avoided my room with my scattered clothes and just headed for my bathroom. “The last thing she needs is to be working for Kalamack.”

“I just thought—” the pixy said.

“No, you didn’t think,” Ivy accused. “Trent isn’t some pantywaist rich pushover, he’s a power-hungry, murdering drug lord who looks good in a suit. You don’t think he’s got some reason for inviting her to work security other than his welfare?”

“I wasn’t going to let her go alone,” he protested, and I shut the door. Sipping the tart tea, I dropped my pj’s into the washer and got the shower going so I wouldn’t have to listen to them. Sometimes I felt as if they thought I couldn’t hear at all just because I couldn’t hear a pixy belch across the graveyard. Yeah, they’d had a contest one night. Jenks won.

The water’s warmth was wonderful, and after the sharp scent of pine soap washed away the choking smell of burnt amber, I stepped from the shower feeling refreshed and almost awake. Purple towel wrapped around me, I rubbed the mist from the long mirror, leaning close to see if I had any new freckles. Nope. Not yet. Opening my mouth, I checked out my beautiful, pristine teeth. It was nice not having any fillings.

I may have coated my soul in blackness when I had twisted a demon curse to turn into a wolf this spring, but I wasn’t going to feel guilty over the beautiful unmarked skin I had when I turned back. The accumulated damage of twenty-five years of existence had been removed, and if I didn’t find a way to get rid of the demon smut from twisting the curse before I died, I was going to pay for it by burning in hell.

At least I’m not going to feel too guilty about it, I thought as I reached for my lotion, heavy on the SPF protection. And I certainly wasn’t going to waste it. My mother’s family had come from Ireland long before the Turn, and from her I got my red hair, my green eyes, and my pale skin, now as satisfyingly soft and supple as a newborn’s. From my dad I got my height, my lean athletic build, and my attitude. From both of them I got a rare genetic condition that would have killed me before my first birthday if Trent’s father hadn’t set himself above the law and fixed it in his illegal genetic lab.

Our fathers had been friends before they’d died a week apart under suspicious circumstances. At least they were suspicious to me. And that was the reason I distrusted Trent, if his being a drug lord, a murderer, and nastily adept at manipulating me weren’t enough.

Suddenly overcome with missing my dad, I shuffled through the cabinet behind the mirror until I found the wooden ring he’d given me on my thirteenth birthday. It had been the last one we’d shared before he died. I looked at it, small and perfect in my palm, and on impulse I put it on. I hadn’t worn it since the charm it once held to hide my freckles had been broken, and I hadn’t needed it since twisting that demon curse. But I missed him, and after being attacked by a demon this morning, I could use some serious emotional security.

I smiled at it circling my pinkie, feeling better already. The ring had come with a lifetime charm reinstatement, and I had an appointment every fourth Friday in July. Maybe I’d take the madam out for coffee instead. Ask her about maybe changing it to a sunscreen charm—if there was such a thing.

The give-and-take of masculine and feminine voices from the kitchen became obvious as I toweled my hair. “He’s here already?” I grumbled, finding a pair of underwear, jeans, and a red camisole in the dryer. Slipping them on, I dabbed some perfume behind each ear to help block my scent and Ivy’s from mixing, combed my damp hair back with my fingers, and headed out.

But it wasn’t a holy man I found in the kitchen covered in pixy children, it was Glenn.

Chapter Three (#u604fd459-5204-5605-b71e-4189cce5081e)

“Hi, Glenn,” I said as I slumped barefoot into my chair. “Who’s pinching your ass today?”

The clearly uncomfortable, rather tall FIB detective was in a suit, which didn’t bode well. He had Jenks’s kids all over him, which was really weird. And Ivy was glaring at him from her computer, which was mildly troubling. But considering that the first time she met him, she almost bit him in anger and he almost shot her, I guessed we were doing okay.

Jenks scraped his wings, and his kids scattered, rising up through my rack of spelling supplies and herbs in a swirl of silk and shouts that hurt my eyeballs before flowing into the hall and probably out the chimney in the living room. I hadn’t seen him on the sill until now, standing by his pet sea monkeys. How come a pixy has more pets than I do?

I smiled tiredly at Glenn across the table, trying to make up for my roommate’s stellar attitude. There was a paperboard tray with two cups steaming between us, and the warm breeze coming in from the garden was pushing the heavenly aroma of freshly brewed coffee right to me. I wanted one in the worst way.

Ivy’s fingers hit her keyboard aggressively as she weeded out her spam. “Detective Glenn was just leaving. Weren’t you?”

The tall black man silently clenched his jaw. Since I’d seen him last, he had gotten rid of his goatee and mustache and replaced them with stud earrings. I wondered what his dad thought about that, but personally, I thought it added to his carefully maintained, polished image of young and capable law enforcer.

His suit was still off-the-rack, but it fit his very nice physique as if made for him. The tips of his dress shoes poking out from under the hems looked comfortable enough to run in if he had to. His trim body certainly seemed up to it, with that wide chest and narrow waist. The butt of a weapon glinted from a holster on his belt to give him a nice hint of danger.

Not that I’m in the market for a new boyfriend, I thought. I had a damn fine boyfriend, Kisten, and Glenn wasn’t interested, though I’m sure if he “tried a witch, he’d never switch.” And since I knew that his lack of interest wasn’t born of prejudice, that was cool.

I exhaled, my fingers shaking from fatigue. My eyes went from his expressive brown ones pinched in worry and annoyance to the coffee. “Is one of these mine, by chance?” I asked, and when he nodded, I reached forward, saying, “Bless you back to the Turn.” Pulling off the plastic lid, I took a gulp. My eyes closed, and I held the second swallow in my mouth for a moment. It was a double shot: hot, black, and oh so what I needed right now.

Ivy kept typing, and while Jenks excused himself to help the forgotten toddler crying in the ladle back to the stump in the garden, I took the time to wonder what Glenn was doing here. And so obscenely early. It was seven in the freakin’ morning. I hadn’t done anything to tick off the FIB—had I?

Glenn worked for the Federal Inderland Bureau, the human-run institution that functioned on a local and national level. The F.I.B. was way outclassed by the I.S., the Interlander-run side of the coin, when it came to enforcing the law, but during a previous investigation on which I’d helped Glenn, I’d found that the F.I.B. had a scary amount of information on us Inderlanders, making me wish I hadn’t written up those species summaries for his dad last fall. Glenn was Cincy’s F.I.B. Inderland specialist, which meant that he had enough guts to try working both sides of the street. It had been his dad’s idea, and since I owed his dad big time, I helped when he asked.

No one was talking, though, and I figured I’d better say something before I fell asleep at the table. “What’s the run, Glenn?” I asked, taking a sip and wishing the caffeine would kick in.

Glenn stood, his thick hands adjusting his ID badge on his belt. Square jaw tightening, he gave Ivy a wary glance. “I left a message last night. Didn’t you get it?”