A Fistfull of Charms(79)

“Ivy, I know you can hear me,” Kisten said loudly. “You have a big problem waiting for you when you get back from your vacation. Everyone knows you’re out of the city. You’re his scion, not me. I can’t go up against even the youngest undead. The only thing keeping a lid on this is that most of them are my patrons and they know if they act up, I’ll ban them.”
Ivy walked off, her boots loud against the hardwood floor. Her passive response surprised me. Something was really bothering her.
“She walked away,” I said, feeling guilty Ivy had come up there to help me.
Kisten’s sigh was heavy. “Will you tell her that there was a riot in the mall downtown last night? It was at four in the morning so it was mostly living vampires, thank God, and some Weres. The I.S. handled it, but it’s going to get worse. I don’t want a new master vampire in the city, and neither does anyone else.”
I stood before the rack of pixy dust and rifled through the hanging vials, reading the tiny cards attached to each. If Piscary lost control of Cincinnati, Trent would have free rein. But I didn’t think it was a power play by the undead vampires or Trent. It was more likely that the riot had been the Mackinaw Weres looking for me. No wonder Walter had agreed to a thirty-six-hour truce. He had to get his pack together.
Tired, I let the vials slip through my fingers. “I’m sorry, Kisten. We have a couple of days before we can call this done. It depends on how fast I can do the prep work.”
He silently took that in, and I could hear Ceri singing with the pixies in the background. “Can I help?” he asked, and my throat tightened at the concern in his voice, even as I heard his reluctance to leave Cincinnati. But there wasn’t anything he could do. It would be over one way or the other by tomorrow night.
“No,” I said softly. “But if we don’t call you by tomorrow midnight, we’re in trouble.”
“And I’ll fly up there in two hours,” he assured me. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do? Call someone? Anything?”
Shaking my head, I fingered a book on how to knot love charms from hair. These things were illegal. Small towns have very little in the way of policing witches, but then I saw that it was a fake, a novelty item. “We have it okay,” I said. “Will you feed Mr. Fish for me?”
“Sure. Ivy told me.”
“He only needs four grains,” I rushed. “Any more and you’ll kill him.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve had fish before.”“And stay out of my room,” I added.
He started making a fake radio hiss, whistling and popping. “Rachel? The connection is going bad,” he said, laughing. “I think I’m losing you.”
A smile, the first in days, touched me. “I love you too,” I said, and he stopped.
There was a suspicious hesitation. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Worry slid through me. He was starting to pay attention. “Why?” I said, realizing my hand had gone up to cover my neck. “Um, yeah,” I reiterated, thinking it had sounded guilty. “I’m just stressed. Nick…” I hesitated. I couldn’t tell him Nick had been playing kiss-and-tell. It was embarrassing to have been that stupid. “I told Nick to kiss off, and it bothered me,” I said. Not really a lie. Not really.
He was silent, then, “Okay. Can I talk to Ivy?”
Relieved, I exhaled into the mike. “Sure.”
I handed the phone to Ivy—who had come up behind me to listen, presumably—but she closed the top and handed it back. “He can handle it a few days more,” she said, then turned to the counter. “Do you have everything? It’s getting late.”
Tension edged her voice. She was trying to hide her mood, but not doing very well. Concerned, I took the basket from her. “Everything but the dust. Maybe she has some behind the counter. God, I’m tired,” I finished without thinking. Ivy didn’t say anything, and I put the basket on the counter, eyeing the aphrodisiac bottle Ivy set by her catnip.
“What?” Ivy said, seeing me look at it.
“Nothing. Why don’t you put your stuff in with mine?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to get something else too, but thanks.”
The woman behind the counter set her coffee on her stained hot plate, her fingers reaching to take my things out of the basket. “Will that be all then, ladies?” she asked, hiding her wariness of Ivy behind her professionalism.
“You don’t happen to have clock dust?” I asked, feeling it was a lost cause.
Immediately she lost her tinge of her nervousness. “From stopped clocks? Sure enough I do. How much do you need?”
“Thank the Turn,” I said, leaning against the counter as my muscles started to feel the weight of standing too long. “I didn’t want to have to go to Art Van and dust their floor samples. I just need a, uh, pinch.”
Pinch, dash, smidgen. Yeah, real exact measurements. Ley line magic sucked.
The woman glanced at the front door. “Be but a sec,” she said, then, with the fixative in her hand, she went into a back room. I stared at Ivy.
“She took my stuff,” I said, bewildered. 
Ivy shrugged. “Maybe she thinks you’re going to run out the door with it.”
It seemed like forever, but the woman came back, her loud steps warning us. “Here you go,” she said, carefully setting a tiny black envelope down with the fixative. The bottle now had a string tag around it with an expiration date. I picked it up, feeling a different weight to it.
“This isn’t the same bottle,” I said suspiciously, and the woman smiled.
“That’s the real product,” she explained. “There aren’t enough witches up here to support a charm shop, so I mix tourist trinkets with the real stuff. Why sell real fixative to a fudgie when they’re just going to put it on a shelf and pretend they know what to do with it?”
I nodded, now realizing what had been bothering me. “It’s all fake? None of it is real?”
“Most of it’s real,” she said, her ringed fingers punching the register with a stiff firmness. “But not the rare items.” She looked at my pile. “Let me see, you’re making an earth magic disguise charm, a ley line inertia joke spell, and…” She hesitated. “What on earth are you going to use the fixative for? I don’t sell much of that.”
“I’m fixing something,” I said guardedly. Crap, what if the Weres found out? They might realize I was going to move the power of the artifact before we blew it up. If I asked her to keep quiet about it, she would likely blab it all over the place. “It’s for a joke,” I added.
Her eyes flicked to Ivy and she grinned. “Mum’s the word,” she said. “Is it for that gorgeous hunk of man with you? Saints preserve us, he’s beautiful. I’d love to trick him.”
She laughed, and I managed a weak smile. Did the entire city know Jenks? Ivy rocked back a step in irritation, and the woman finished wrapping my black candle in matching tissue paper and bundled everything into a paper sack. Still smiling, she totaled it up.
“It’ll be $85.33 with tax,” she said, clearly satisfied.
I stifled my sigh and swung my shoulder bag forward to get my wallet. This was why I had a witch’s garden—and a clan of pixies to maintain it. Not only was ley line magic stupid, but it was expensive if you didn’t render your own fetal pigs for making candles. Just this once.
Ivy pushed her two things forward, and looking the proprietor in the eye, said clearly, “Just put it on my bill. I need three ounces of Special K. Medicinal grade, please.”
My lips parted and I flushed. Special K? That was Cincy slang for Brimstone, K of course said to stand for Kalamack.
But the woman hesitated only briefly. “Not from the I.S., are you?” she asked warily.
“Not anymore,” Ivy muttered, and flustered, I turned my back on them. Ivy saw nothing wrong with an illegal drug that had kept vampire society healthy and intact for untold years, but buying in front of me made me feel all warm and fuzzy.
“Ivy,” I protested when the woman disappeared into the back room again. “Trent’s?”
Ivy gave me a sidelong glance, eyebrows high. “It’s the only brand I’ll buy. And I need to restock my cache. You used it all.”
“I’m not taking any more,” I hissed, then straightened when the woman returned, holding a palm-sized package wrapped in masking tape.
“Medicinal?” she said, glancing at the aphrodisiac bottle. “You store it in that, lucky duck, and you’ll be the one that’s going to need medical attention.”
Ivy’s face blanked in surprise, and I dragged my bag from the counter, ready to flee. “It’s an aphrodisiac bottle,” I said. “Don’t pick things up unless you know what they are—Alexia.”Ivy looked as guiltless as a puppy as she dropped the package into her open purse.
The woman smiled at us, and Ivy counted out thirteen hundred-dollar bills and coolly handed them over.
I blinked. Holy shit. Kalamack’s medicinal stuff was five times as expensive as the street variety.
“Keep the change,” Ivy said, taking my elbow and moving me to the door.
Twelve hundred dollars? I had sucked down Twelve hundred dollars of drugs in less than twenty-four hours? And that wasn’t counting Jenks’s contribution. “I don’t feel well,” I said, putting a hand to my stomach.