Pale Demon

“Yeah?” I spouted off. “They weren’t very good at it!”

Jenks was laughing, but I was mad and ready to throw Trent out. Throw them all out. Standing by the table, I dropped my forehead into my hands and rubbed at my temples. From the floor Jack sighed. “My old lady is going to be pissed. Her, I remember.”

I pulled my head up. “Get out,” I said bluntly. “Get up and get out. Both of you.”

For a moment, Jack and Jill stared at me, but when Jenks clattered his wings threateningly, they slowly got to their feet. Okay, I knew who’d sent them, and it only solidified in my mind that I wasn’t leaving Cincinnati on Trent’s private jet. He was still lying to me. Son of a bastard.

“I don’t feel so good,” the woman said as she held her stomach and limped forward.

Jenks laughed bitterly. “That’s because we beat you up. You cried like a baby.”

The two people shuffled toward the door, feeling body parts as they began to complain. Jill looked at the weapons on the counter, but when I shook my head, they filed out under a pixy escort. Ivy seemed surprised that I was simply letting them go, but I had to be on a plane tomorrow at eight. I didn’t have time for an extended smackdown.

“Jenks, you’d better tell your kids to leave them alone unless they come back,” I murmured, and he flew up on a column of silver dust.

“Yeah-h-h-h-h,” he drawled, his focus vacant as he imagined it. “I’ll be right back.”

He was gone in an instant, and from the front of the church, I could hear him shrill something, and then the door opening and closing. I turned to look at my kitchen, defiled by elven black magic. It wouldn’t leave a visible mark, but it left me uneasy just the same. Al might be able to smell it.

“You, too, Trent,” I said, listlessly picking up the roll of paper towels and trying to wipe the pixy footprints off the stainless steel. Trent’s curse lay assembled on the counter, but he could just suck my toes and die for all I cared.

“I’m not leaving until you untwist the curse,” he said stiffly. “It’s all there. Do it now.”

I hesitated in my motions to clean the counter. Ivy cleared her throat, and I felt more than saw her take up a stance. Still not looking up, I continued to clean the counter, picking up the scrying mirror and setting it down. Then the magnetic chalk, the five candles, the stick of redwood. He could go to hell. “Good-bye, Trent,” I muttered, my head starting to hurt.

“Excuse me?”

His voice was harsh, and I balled up the paper towel, standing with my fists on the counter so I wouldn’t jump over it and strangle him. “I don’t trust you,” I said softly, my knuckles going white from the pressure. “If I take that curse off now, you won’t want me for anything and will speak out against me at the coven’s meeting. You’re going to have to wait. I’ll do it after, not a moment sooner.”

From the street came a faint “Is that our car?”

Trent grimaced when his car alarm began beeping, and he looked ready to murder someone as he fished a key fob out of his pocket and pointed it at the street. The alarm cut off, and he turned back to me. “That wasn’t the deal,” he said. “Take the mark off. Now.”

“Neither was your coming over here trailing assassins,” I said, letting go of the balled-up paper towel. Behind him, Ivy went to her stash of chocolate on the counter, opening a box and leaning against the counter. She was behind Trent, between him and the door, and he shifted to keep us both in his sight.

“Rachel,” he warned, looking pissed.

“I’ll do it,” I said flippantly. “But you’re going to wait until I’m safe. You don’t like it?” I said, voice rising. “Then kill me. Right now. Go on!” I shouted. “Do it! Here I am!” I flung my arms wide to make a bigger target. “But if you do, you’ll never get the mark off you! You slimy little thug!”

Jenks buzzed in with worried wing chatter, seeing me screaming at Trent and Trent looking like he’d swallowed a bug. The pixy exchanged a look with Ivy, who was now leaning idly against the counter, completely unworried as she ate a chocolate-covered orange slice. Her apparent indifference seemed to make Trent only more pissed.

Trent took a breath and held it. Saying nothing, he turned to the door, his stance stiff. Jenks snickered, and the man spun back around, even with Ivy there. His face was white with anger, and his eyes almost seemed to glow. “You are the most … unprofessional, irritating, frustrating person I have ever had to deal with,” he said, and I shrugged. “I don’t need your help. I’ll get to California without you.”

“Like I care,” I said, and he turned on his heel and strode from the kitchen.

“Good riddance,” I said, then, in a wash of self-preservation, I followed him to the hallway, leaning out into it as I shouted after him, “Go on! Leave! I’ll get that mark of yours taken care of, but not until I get my freedom! You son-of-a-bitch elf!”

He never slowed, his dark silhouette flashing into a blinding whiteness when he found the sanctuary. More light poured in when he opened the church’s door. It boomed shut behind him, and I pulled myself back into the kitchen.

Ivy was still slumped at the counter. Her eyes were hooded, and she looked … rather sexy from the anger Trent and I had been giving off. Grimacing, I stalked across the kitchen to the window, shoving it high to let in the breeze. Birdsong drifted in, and my hair tickled my neck. From the fridge, Bis sighed, his wings shifting as he settled back to sleep. I hadn’t realized I’d woken him up. Peeved, I stared out at the bright afternoon, seeing the dark spot of the spell on a tree. I’d have to take care of that before the pixies got into it, even with Jenks’s admonishment.

Beside me, Ivy casually took another piece of chocolate, succinctly biting through it with a snap of chocolate and sugar crystals. Jenks hummed closer, landing next to the brandy snifter on the windowsill. It was turned upside down to keep his cat, Rex, from eating the chrysalis Al had given me last New Year’s Eve. Jenks’s wings were unmoving and his expression worried as he looked at me, not the garden.

“What?” I said as I edged toward Ivy, leaning close to take a chocolate and then retreating. I looked down, seeing the dirt and grass clippings on my feet. My robe had come undone, and I tightened it back up. So much for getting a tan.

Ivy licked her lips and stood upright. “Do you think calling his bluff was the smartest thing to do?”

I exhaled, shaking as I leaned against the center counter. “No,” I admitted sourly. “No, it wasn’t, but I’m not going to give him what he wants until I know he’s not going to give me to the coven.” I bit into the chocolate, feeling the sudden give and the crunch of crystallized orange on my tongue. From the front of the church, Trent’s car engine was racing harshly.

“It’s the first smart thing she’s done,” Jenks said, making the short flight to the chocolate and using his sword to cut off a slice the size of his hand.

“Maybe, but something isn’t right,” Ivy said, clearly not convinced, and I followed her gaze as she took in the assembled ingredients for Trent’s curse, next to the assassins’ splat guns and knives and my broken sunglasses. An unsettled feeling tightened around my chest, and I fidgeted. I was glad I’d said what I had, and I wasn’t going to “escort” Trent to the West Coast, but if truth be told, I agreed with Ivy. Something wasn’t right, and I didn’t think it was over yet.

Three

Hollows International wasn’t a huge airport, but it was busy with early-morning flights, even at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning. It was way too early for me to be up, and I felt numb, the lukewarm cup of blah coffee almost slipping from my grip. Our flight was boarding in half an hour; we had lots of time. The air smelled like floor polish and plastic, and I sat in the fake leather chairs across from the check-in counter and people-watched as Ivy bought a ticket and checked our luggage. After the incident with Trent, she had gotten leave from her master vampire to come with Jenks and me.

Trent’s prediction that I wouldn’t be allowed on the plane had convinced me that the less I interacted with the gods and goddesses of air travel in their polyester blazers and winged lapel pins the better. So I sat waiting, our carry-ons strewn around me. Nervous, I pushed myself to the back of the chair and slouched. Jenks, though, wasn’t fooled by my show of nonchalance.

“Trent’s an ass, but he’s right. We’re not getting through security,” he predicted, making his wings hum for some extra heat. It was chilly this morning, and all the warmth was escaping through the big plate-glass windows and the endless opening of the doors.

I didn’t look at him, watching Ivy’s slowly moving line. “Trent’s just trying to scare me,” I said, but when I realized I was spinning my wooden pinkie ring around and around on my finger, I stopped. I didn’t need it to hide my freckles anymore, but if I didn’t wear it, my brother, Robbie, would ask where my freckles had gone. What if we couldn’t get on the plane? I had to be there in three days or my shunning would become permanent.

“Is it working?” Jenks landed on my knee where he could lecture me better. He was wearing his garden best, convinced that he wasn’t even going to have to use the potion in my bag to go big to handle the air-pressure shifts. He hadn’t even arranged for anyone to watch his kids, thinking we’d be back in an hour. His confidence in me was breathtaking.

I cocked my eyebrows, and he put his hands on his hips, finally starting to dust a little as he warmed up. “Rache, even if Trent is telling the truth and the Withons are gunning for him, that doesn’t change that you being dead would make the coven’s life a lot easier. You are not getting through security,” he said, glancing nervously at a little girl in pink who had noticed him. “We should be thinking about how we’re going to get you two thousand miles in three days, not chilling at the airport.”

“I already have my ticket,” I said sourly, noticing that Ivy had reached the front of the line. “How are they going to stop me?”

“Rache …,” he coaxed, and I shifted my shoulders, acknowledging that he had a point.

“Look,” I said, slouching even lower. “If they don’t let me on the plane, we’ll take the train. Be there in no time.”

His sigh was tiny, but I heard it despite the loudspeaker paging someone.

Silence grew between us, and I took in his pulled-back hair and his sharp black-and-green outfit with bluebells on the hem. It was the last outfit that Matalina had made for him, and I knew he wore it to feel close to her. It had been a very hard two months, even if he now knew for sure that his biological clock had been reset and he had another twenty years ahead of him. I, too, had my first twenty-six years back, and I figured this was why demons lived so long. By next spring, Jenks would be the world’s oldest pixy. I didn’t care that it had taken a curse to do it—as long as he was happy. He was happy, wasn’t he?

Worry filled me as I watched him watch everyone else, his attention mainly on the cameras in the corners. “How you doing, Jenks?” I asked, the tone of my voice telling him I wasn’t asking about the temperature. He turned, his sharply angular face showing a neutral nothing until I added, “Don’t lie to me.”

Jenks looked away as the sun started to stain the sky. “Fine,” he said flatly.

Fine. I knew what fine was. I had been “fine” for the better part of a year after Kisten died. Since then I’d dated Marshal, had gotten shunned, and had sex with a nineteenth-century ghost named Gordian Pierce who’d been bricked into the ground alive in 1852 by the same group currently trying to give me a lobotomy and steal my ovaries.

Much as I hated to admit it, Pierce was everything I liked wrapped up in a package that might be able to stay alive through the crap my life dished out. He was Al’s familiar, and I saw him every week when doing my stint as a demon student in the ever-after. We’d not had a moment alone together since he’d helped me get a temporary reprieve on my shunning, and it was aggravating, even if I didn’t quite know what to think of Pierce anymore. He’d seen me through one of the most terrifying moments of my life, and we had opened up to each other in ways that left me wondering why I was still hesitant. He was a good man. But the same things that had once attracted me—power, tragic history, and a sexy body—now left me with a mild sense of unease. Ivy would say I was getting smarter, but I just felt … empty.

Twisting, I felt my back pocket for my phone, wondering what time it was.

“Seven thirty-two,” Jenks said, knowing me better than I did myself.