A Fistfull of Charms(53)

His head went up and down, not knowing my thoughts but clearly glad I was talking. “So it isn’t like you’re a Were now in addition to being a witch.”
I shook my head, startled when my longer hair brushed my shoulders. He knew the only way to become a Were was to be born one; he was trying to keep the conversation going.Ivy came to the door, smelling of the fixative and wiping the gray from her fingers with a rag. “Here,” she said, handing the old plate through. “If you look in the console, there should be an altered registration taped to the top. Can you switch them out?”
“You bet.” Swell. Let’s add falsifying legal documents to the list, I thought, but I took the Kentucky plate and screwdriver, giving her two amulets in their place. “These are for you and Jenks. Make sure he puts it on. I don’t care what he says it makes him smell like.”
Ivy’s long fingers curved around them, shifting so they dangled from the cord and wouldn’t effect her. “Scent disguise? Good thinking—for you.” Showing the faintest blush of nervousness, she handed one of them back. “I’m not wearing one.”
“Ivy,” I protested, having no clue why she’d never accept any of my spells or charms.
“They don’t know what I smell like, and I’m not wearing it!” she said, and I put up a hand in surrender. Immediately her brow smoothed, and she dug in a pocket for the keys to the van, handing them to me through the window. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “If I’m not out in four minutes, go.” I took a breath to protest, and she added, “I mean it. Come rescue me by all means, but plan it out, don’t burst in with your hair flying and in flip-flops.”
A half smile came over me. “Four minutes,” I said, and she walked away. I watched her in the side mirror. Her shoulders were hunched and her head was down—and then she was gone.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said.
“What?” Nick said softly. “That she’s walking into a trap?”
I turned to him. “No. That she’s not going to leave until it’s over.”
Worry filled his eyes; he was going to say something I didn’t want to hear. “Rachel—”
“By the Turn, I’m hungry. I hope she hurries up,” I babbled.
“Rachel, please. Just listen?”
I closed the console and eased into the seat. This conversation would happen whether I wanted it to or not. Breath slipping from me, I looked at him, to find his haggard face determined.
“I didn’t know you were alive,” he said, panic in his eyes. “Al said he had you.”
“He did.”
“And you never answered your phone. I called. God knows I did.”
“It’s at the bottom of the Ohio River,” I said flatly, thinking he was a wimp for not calling the church. Then I wondered if he had and Ivy simply hung up on him.
“The paper said you died in a boat explosion saving Kalamack’s life.” 
“I almost did,” I said, remembering waking up in Trent’s limo, having passed out after I pulled the man’s freaking elf-ass out of the freezing water.
Nick stretched a swollen hand across the consol between us, and I jerked out of his reach. Making a frustrated sound, he put an elbow on his closed window and looked at the nearby semi. “Damn it, Ray-ray, I thought you were dead. I couldn’t stay in Cincinnati. And now that I find you’re alive, you won’t even let me touch you. Do you have any idea how I mourned?”
I swallowed, the memory of the budded red rose in the jelly jar vase with the pentagram of protection on it lifting through me. My throat tightened. Why did it have to be so confusing?
“I missed you,” he said, brown eyes thick with pain. “This isn’t what I had planned.”
“Me neither,” I said, miserable. “But you left me long before you left Cincinnati. It took me a long time to get over you lying to me about where you had been, and I’m not going back to the way things were. I don’t care that it wasn’t about another woman. Maybe that I could understand, but it was money. You’re a thief, and you let me believe you were something else.”
Nick slumped into a defeated stillness. “I’ve changed.”
I didn’t want to hear this. They never changed, they simply hid it better. “I’m seeing someone,” I said, my voice low so it wouldn’t shake. “He’s there when I need him, and I’m there for him. He makes me feel good. I don’t want to return to how things were, so don’t ask me to. You were gone, and he—” I wiped a hand under my eye, embarrassed that they were wet. “He was there,” I said. He helped me forget you, you bastard.
“You love him?”
“Whether I love him or not isn’t relevant,” I said, hands in my lap.
“He’s a vampire?” Nick asked, not moving one inch, and I nodded.
“You can’t trust that,” he protested, long hands gesturing weakly. “He’s just trying to bind you to him. You know that. God, you can’t be that naive! Didn’t you just see what happened with your scar? With Ivy?”
I stared at him, my feelings of betrayal rising anew, both angry and frightened. “You told me once that if I wanted to be Ivy’s scion, that you would drive me back to the church and walk away. That you loved me enough to leave if it meant I would be happy.” My heart was pounding and I forced my clenched hands apart. “Well, what’s the difference, Nick?”
He bowed his head. When he looked up, his face was tight with emotion. “I hadn’t lost you then. I didn’t know what you meant to me. I do now. Ray-ray, please. It’s not you making decisions anymore, but vampire pheromones. You’ve got to get out before you make a mistake you can’t walk away from!”
A movement in the mirror caught my eye. Ivy. Thank God. I reached for the door handle. “Don’t talk to me about making mistakes,” I said, grabbing my bag and getting out.
I slammed the door, glad to see Ivy for the distraction if nothing else. The van was now gray at the bottom, shading to white at the top and plastered with professional-looking decals. The cloying scent of fixative was a fading hint. Ivy was watching the nearby road as she approached, her subtle finger motions telling me to stay between the shelter of the dirty trucks.
Rocking to a halt, I crossed my arms and waited by the back bumper, lips pressed while Nick shut his door and shuffled forward. “All clear inside?” I said brightly when Ivy joined us. “Good. I’m starved.”
“Just a minute, I want my stuff.” Slipping past me, she yanked the driver’s side door open and retrieved a rolled-down paper bag from under the front seat. She shut the door hard before pushing past Nick and pulling me into her wake. A pause at the head of the shelter the two semis made, and we started for the restaurant, my flip-flops noisy next to her vamp-soft steps. Behind us, I could hear Nick. By all rights, as the most vulnerable member of the group, he should have been between us, but I didn’t feel like protecting him, and the danger was minimal.“Your hair is longer,” Ivy said as we crossed the paved lot to the low wood-slatted building snuggled in among the pines. Squirrel’s End? How…redneck.
“You aren’t kidding,” I said, wincing at the memory of my legs. “You didn’t happen to bring a razor with you, did you?”
Her eyes widened. “A razor?”
“Never mind.” Like I was going to tell her I looked like an orangutan?
“Are you okay?” she asked again, her voice heavy with concern.
I didn’t look at her. I didn’t need to. She could read my emotions on the wind easier than I could read a billboard at sixty miles an hour. “Yeah,” I said, knowing she wasn’t asking about the run, but about Nick.
“What did he do?” she said, her arms moving stiffly. “Did he make a pass at you?”
I glanced askance at her, then back to the nearing door. “Not yet.”
She snorted, sounding angry. “He will. And then I’ll kill him.”
Annoyance sifted through me, the jolts from my steps going all the way up my spine. “I can take care of myself,” I said, not caring that Nick was listening.
“I can take care of myself too,” she said. “But if I’m making an ass out of myself, I’d hope you’d stop me.”
“I am handling this,” I said, forcing my voice to be pleasant. “How about you?” I asked, turning the tables. “I didn’t think you could leave Cincinnati.”
Her expression went guarded. “It’s only for a day. Piscary will get over it.” I was silent, and she added, “What, like the city will fall apart because I’m not there? Get real, Rachel.”
My head nodded, but I was still worried. I needed her help planning how to get out of my latest fix, but she could do it by e-mail or phone if she had to.
“We should be safe enough here for a while,” she said, her eyes canvassing the building as we slowed at the door and Nick came even with us. “It’s all humans.”
“Good,” I replied faintly, feeling out of place and vulnerable. Paper sack crinkling, Ivy opened the door for me with her free hand, leaving Nick to handle the swinging, blurred-glass door by himself. I had shifted back to witch with absolutely nothing in my stomach at all, and starved, I breathed deeply of the smell of grilled meat. It was nice in there: not too bright, not too dim, no smoky smell to ruin it. There were animal parts on the walls and few people, seeing as it was Tuesday afternoon. Maybe a tad too cold, but not bad.