“It won’t take long,” I said, slicing the last mushroom. “I’ve got something I want you to take a look at. Picked it up on vacation, and I want your opinion.”
His eyes went wondering, but he unbuttoned his long leather duster. “Now?”
“Full moon,” I said cryptically, sliding the sliced mushrooms into my smallest spell pot and quashing the faint worry that I was breaking rule number two by mixing food prep and spell prep, but they were just the right size to hold toppings. Ivy quietly went to the fridge, getting out the cheese, cooked hamburger, and the bacon left over from breakfast. I tried to meet her eyes to tell her we were okay, but she wouldn’t look at me.
Angry, I slammed the knife down, careful to keep my fingers out of the way. Silly little vamp, afraid of her feelings.
Kisten sighed, his eyes on the disk of dough he had tossed professionally into the air, “Someday, I’m going to get you two ladies together.”
“I don’t do threesomes,” I said snidely.
David jerked, but Kisten’s eyes went sultry and pensive, even as he caught the dough. “That’s not what I was talking about, but okay.”
Ivy’s cheeks were red, and David froze as he took in the sudden tension. “Uh,” the Were said, half out of his coat. “Maybe this isn’t a good time.”
I dredged up a smile. “No,” I said. “It’s just everyday normal crap. We’re used to it.”
David finished taking off his coat, frowning. “I’m not,” he muttered.
I went to the sink and leaned toward the window, thinking David was a bit of a prude. “Jenks!” I shouted into the dusky garden, alight with pixy children tormenting moths. It was beautiful, and I almost lost myself in the sifting bands of falling color.
A clatter of wings was my only warning, and I jerked away when Jenks vaulted through the pixy hole in the screen. “David!” he called out, looking great in his casual gardening clothes of green and black. Hovering at eye level, he brought the scent of damp earth into the kitchen. “Thank Tink’s little red shoes you’re here,” he said, pulling up two feet when Rex appeared in the doorway, her eyes big and her ears pricked. “Matalina is about ready to dewing me. You gotta get this thing out of my living room. My kids keep touching it. Making it move.”
I felt myself blanch. “It’s moving now?”
Ivy and Kisten exchanged worried looks, and David sighed, putting his hands into his pockets as if trying to divorce himself from what was coming. He wasn’t that much older than me, but at that moment he looked like the only adult in a room full of adolescents. “What is it, Rachel?” he said, sounding tired.
Suddenly nervous, I took a breath to tell him, then changed my mind. “Could you…could you just take a look at it?” I said, wincing.
Jenks landed on the windowsill and leaned casually against the frame. He looked like Brad Pitt gone sexy farmer, and I smiled. Two weeks ago he would have stood with his hands on his hips. This was better, and might explain Matalina’s blissful state lately.
“I’ll have the boys bring it up,” Jenks said, tossing his hair out of his eyes. “We’ve got a sling for it. Won’t take but a tick, David.”
He zipped back out the window, and while David looked at his watch and moved from foot to foot, I pushed the window all the way up, struggling with the rain-swollen frame. The screen popped out, and the air suddenly seemed a lot fresher.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with the Were sentry at the end of the block, does it?” David asked wryly.
Whoops. I turned, my eyes going immediately to Ivy, sitting before her computer. I hadn’t told her Brett was shadowing me, knowing she’d throw a hissy. Like I couldn’t handle one Were who was scared of me? Sure enough, she was frowning. “You saw him, huh?” I said, putting my back to her and moving the sauce to Kisten.
David shifted his weight and glanced at Kisten as he nonchalantly spread it thinly on the dough. “I saw him,” David said. “Smelled him, and nearly dropped my cell phone down the sewer calling you to ask if you wanted me to, ah, ask him to go away until he…mmmm.”
I waited in the new silence broken by shrill pixy whistles coming from the garden. David’s face was red when he swung his head back up and rubbed a hand across his stubble.
“What?” I said warily.
David looked discomfited. “He, ah…” A quick glance at Ivy, and he blurted, “He gave me a bunny kiss from across the street.”
Ivy’s lips parted. Eyes wide, her gaze touched on Kisten, then me. “Excuse me?”
“You know.” He made a peace sign and bent his fingers twice in quick succession. “Kiss, kiss? Isn’t that a vampire…thing?”
Kisten laughed, the warm sound making me feel good. “Rachel,” he said, sifting the cheese over the red sauce. “What did you do to make him leave his pack and follow you all the way down here? By the looks of it, I’d say he’s trying to insinuate himself into your pack.”
“Brett didn’t leave. I think they kicked him out,” I said, then hesitated. “You knew he was there, too?” I asked, and he shrugged, eating a piece of bacon. I ate one too, considering for the first time that perhaps Brett was looking for a new pack. I had saved his life. Sort of.
Jenks came in the open window, making circles around Rex until the cat chittered in distress. Laughing, Jenks led her into the hall as five of his kids wafted over the sill, toting what looked like a pair of black lace panties cradling the statue.
“Those are mine!” Ivy shrieked, standing up and darting to the sink. “Jenks!”
The pixies scattered. The statue wrapped in the black silk fell into her hand.“These are mine!” she said again, red with anger and embarrassment as she pulled them off the statue and shoved them in her pocket. “Damn it, Jenks! Stay out of my room!”
Jenks flew in just under the ceiling. Rex padded in under him, her steps light and her eyes bright. “Holy crap!” he exclaimed, making circles around Ivy, wreathing her in a glittering band of gold. “How did your panties end up in my living room?”
Matalina zipped in, her green silk dress furling and her eyes apologetic. Immediately, Jenks joined her. I don’t know if it was his joy of reuniting with Matalina or his stint at being human-sized, but he was a lot faster. With her was Jhan, a solemn, serious-minded pixy who had recently been excused from sentry duties in order to learn how to read. I didn’t want to think about why.
Ivy dropped the new focus onto the counter beside the pizza, clearly in a huff as she backed away and sat sullenly in her chair, her boots on the table and her ankles crossed. David came closer, and this time I couldn’t stop my shudder. Jenks was right. It had shifted again.
“Good God,” David said, hunched to put it at eye level. “What is it?”
I bent my knees, crouching to come even with him, the focus between us. It didn’t look like the same totem that I had put in Jenks’s suitcase. The closer we had gotten to the full moon, the more it looked like the original statue, until now it was identical except for a quicksilver sheen hovering just above the surface like an aura.
Ivy was wiping her fingers off on her pants, and she quit when she saw my attention on them. I couldn’t blame her. The thing gave me the willies.
Kisten added the last of the meat, pushing the pizza aside and putting his elbows on the counter, an odd look on him as he saw it for the first time. “That has got to be the ugliest thing in creation,” he said, touching his torn earlobe in an unconscious show of unease.
Matalina nodded, a pensive look on her beautiful features. “It’s not coming back in my house,” she said, her clear voice determined. “It’s not. Jenks, I love you, but if it comes back in my house, I’m moving into the desk and you can sleep with your dragonfly!”
Jenks hunched and made noises of placation, and I met the small woman’s eyes with a smile. If all went well, David would be taking it off our hands.
“David,” I said, pulling myself straight.
“Uh-huh…” he murmured, still staring at it.
“Have you ever heard of the focus?”
At that, a fearful expression flashed across his rugged features, worrying me. Taking a step forward, I slid the pizza stone off the counter. “I couldn’t just give it to them,” I said, opening the oven door and squinting in the heat that made my hair drift up. “The vampires would slaughter them. What kind of a runner would I be if I let them get wiped out like that?”
“So you brought it here?” he stammered. “The focus? To Cincinnati?”
I slid the stone into the oven and closed it, leaning back to take advantage of the heat slipping past the shut door. David’s breath was shallow and the scent of musk rose.
“Rachel,” he said, eyes riveted to it. “You know what this is, right? I mean…Oh my God, it’s real.” Tension pulling his small frame tight, he straightened. His attention went to Kisten, solemn behind the counter, to Jenks standing beside Matalina, to Ivy, snapping a fingernail on the rivet on her boot. “You hold it?” he said, looking panicked. “It’s yours?”
Running my fingers through the hair at the back of my head, I nodded. “I, uh, guess.”