A Fistfull of Charms(80)

“You just need some air.”
Ivy guided me across the store and took my bag from me. There was the jingle of the door, and a flush of cool air. It was dark and cold on the street, matching my mood. Behind us came the sliding sound of an oiled lock, and the CLOSED sign flickered on. The store’s posted hours were from noon to midnight, but after a sale like that, you deserved to go home early.
Fumbling, I put a hand on the bench under a blue and white trolley-stop sign and sat down. I didn’t want to chance spewing in Kisten’s Corvette. It was the only thing we could drive around town in now that the truck had been seen fleeing a crash and neither Ivy nor I wanted to get in the van.
Shit. My roommates were turning me into a Brimstone addict.
Ivy gracefully folded herself to sit beside me, all the while scanning the street. “Medicinal grade is processed six times,” she said, “to pull out the endorphin stimulants, hallucinogenic compounds, and most of the neuron stimulators, to leave only the metabolism upper. Technically speaking, the chemical structure is so different, it’s not Brimstone.”
“That’s not helping,” I said, putting my head between my knees. There was gum stuck to the sidewalk, and I nudged it with my toe, finding it hardened to an immovable lump from the cold. Breathe: one, two, three. Exhale: one, two, three, four.
“Then how about if you hadn’t taken it, you’d be laying in bed needing Jenks’s help to use the bathroom?”
I pulled my head up and took a breath. “That helps. But I’m still not taking any more.”
She gave me a short-lived close-lipped smile, and I watched her face go as empty as the dark street. I didn’t want to get up yet. I was tired, and it was the first time we had been together alone since—since the bite. Returning to the motel room with Jenks, Jax, the kitten, and Nick to make my peachy-keen illegal charms and black curses had all the appeal of eating cold lima beans.
A station wagon passed us, the muffler spewing a blue smoke that would have earned the driver a ticket in Cincinnati. I was cold, and I hunched into my coat. It was only eleven-thirty, but it looked like four in the morning. “You okay?” Ivy said, obviously having seen me shiver. 
“Cold,” I said, feeling like a hypochondriac.
Ivy crossed her legs at her knees. “Sorry,” she whispered.
I lifted my gaze, finding her expression lost in the shadow from the streetlight behind her. “It’s not your fault I didn’t bring my winter coat.”
“For biting you,” she said, her voice low. Her attention touched upon my stitches, then dropped to the pavement.
Surprised, I scrambled to put my thoughts in order. I’d thought I was going to be the one to bring this up. Our pattern had always been: Ivy does something to scare me, Ivy tells me what I did wrong, I promise Ivy not to do it, we never bring it up again. Now she wanted to talk?
“Well, I’m not,” I finally said.
Ivy’s head came up. Shock shone from her dark eyes, raw and unhidden. “You said on the phone that you’d done some thinking,” she stammered. “That you were going to make smarter decisions. You’re leaving the firm, aren’t you? As soon as this run is over?”
Suddenly I saw her depression in an entirely new light, and I almost laughed in relief for my misunderstanding. “I’m not leaving the firm!” I said. “I meant smarter decisions on who I trusted. I don’t want to leave. I want to try to find a blood balance with you.”
Ivy’s lips parted. Turned as she was to me, the streetlight glinted on her perfect teeth, and then she snapped her mouth shut.
“Surprise,” I said weakly, my pulse fast. This was the scariest thing I’d done in a while—including standing down three Were packs.
For six heartbeats Ivy stared at me. Then she shook her head. “No,” she said firmly, resettling herself to face forward and put herself in shadow. “You don’t understand. I lost control. If Jenks hadn’t interfered, I would have killed you. Jenks is right. I’m a danger to everyone I care about. You have no idea how hard it is to find and maintain a blood relationship. Especially if I leave you unbound.” Her voice was calm but I could hear panic in it. “And I’m by God not going to bind you to me to make it easier. If I do, everything would be what I want, not what we want.”
I thought of Jenks’s warning and had a doubt, then remembered Kisten telling me of her past and felt a stab of fear. But the memory of her heavy sobs as she lay crumpled on the pavement filled me, the despair in her eyes when Jenks said she ruined everything she cared about. No, he had said she ruined everything she loved. And seeing that same despair hiding in her fierce words, determination filled me. I couldn’t let her believe that.
“You said I needed to trust the right people,” I said softly. Heart pounding, I hesitated. “I trust you.”
Ivy threw her hands in the air in exasperation and turned to face me. “God, Rachel, I could have killed you! As in dead! You know what that means? Dead? I do!”
My own ire flared, and I sat up. “Yeah? Well…I can be a little more savvy,” I said belligerently. “I can take some responsibility for keeping things under control, be a little more aware of what’s going on and not let you lose yourself…like that. We’ll do better next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.” Stoic and unmoving, Ivy sat deathly still. The streetlight glinted on her short hair, and she stared at the shadowy pavement, intermittently lit from yellow bulbs. Abruptly she turned to look at me. “You say you want to find a blood balance, but you just refused to take more Brimstone. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, witch. You want the blood ecstasy? You need the Brimstone to stay alive.”
She thought this was about the ecstasy? Insulted she thought me that shallow, my lips pressed together. “This isn’t about you being Ms. Good Feeling and filling me with that…that euphoria,” I said angrily. “I can get that from any vamp on the riverfront. This is about me being your friend!”Emotion poured over her face. “You made it very clear you don’t want to be that kind of a friend!” she said loudly. “And if you aren’t, then there’s no way I can do this! I tried to fix myself, but I can’t. The only way I can keep from killing people now is if I shackle the hunger with love, damn it! And you don’t want me to touch you that way!”
I’d never seen her show her feelings like this, but I wasn’t going to back down—even though she was starting to scare me. “Oh, get off it, Ivy,” I said, sliding a few inches from her. “It’s obvious from yesterday that you can share blood without sleeping with someone.” She gaped at me, and I flushed. “Okay, I admit it—it didn’t turn out all that well, but God! It kind of surprised both of us. We just need to go slow. You don’t have to have sex to find a feeling of closeness and understanding. Lord knows I feel that way about you. Use that to shackle your hunger.” My face flushed hot in the cool night air. “Isn’t that what love is?”
She continued to look at me, hiding her emotions again behind her black eyes.
“So you almost killed me,” I said. “I let you do it! The point is, I saw you. For one instant you were the person you want to be, strong and comfortable with who she is and what she needs, with no guilt and at peace with herself!”
Ivy went pale in the streetlight. Terrified. Embarrassed, I looked away to give her time to cover her raw emotions.
“I liked being able to put you there,” I said softly. “It’s a hell of a good feeling. Better than the euphoria. I want to put you there again. I…liked seeing you like that.”
Ivy stared at me, her hope so fragile, it hurt to see it. There was a sheen of moisture to her eyes, and she didn’t say anything, just sat with a stiff, frightened posture.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I admitted, talking because she wasn’t. “But I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen. Can we just agree that it did and play it day by day?”
Taking a breath, Ivy broke out of her stance. “It happened,” she said, voice shaking. “It’s not going to happen again.” I leaned forward to protest, but she interrupted me with a quick, “Why didn’t you use your magic to stop me?”
Surprised, I sat back. “I—I didn’t want to hurt you.”
She blinked fast, and I knew she was trying not to cry. “You trusted that I wouldn’t kill you, even by accident?” she asked. Her perfect face was again blank of emotion, but I knew it was the only way she had to protect herself.
Remembering what Kisten had once said about living vampires craving trust nearly as much as they craved blood, I nodded. But the memory was followed by fear. He also said Piscary had warped her into something capable of mindlessly killing what she loved so he could lap up her despair when she came to him, shamed and broken. But she was not that same person. Not anymore. “I trusted you,” I whispered. “I still do.” 
A truck was approaching, the headlights shining on her face to show a shiny track of moisture. “That’s why we can’t do this, Rachel,” she said, and I was afraid that Piscary might own her still.