Her gaze tracked Jax flitting madly from Nick to Jenks. “So what?” she said, fingers fidgeting with her new earrings. “He knows I’ll be back. It’s only a six-hour drive.”
“Yes, but you’re out of his influence, and he doesn’t—” My words cut off when she rolled her fingertips across the table in a soft threat. “He doesn’t like that,” I boldly finished, pulse quickening. Here, surrounded by humans, was probably the only place I’d dare push her like this. She was on her best behavior, and I was going to use it for all it was worth.
Ivy bowed her head, the black sheet of her shorter hair not hiding her face. The dusky scent of incense became obvious, and a soft tickle shivered through me. “It will be okay,” she said, but I wasn’t convinced. She lifted her head, and a faint blush of worry, or perhaps fear, colored her. “Kisten is there,” she said. “If I leave, no one cares but the higher-ups—who aren’t going to do anything anyway. Kisten is the one who can’t leave. If he does, it will be noticed, talked about, and acted upon by idiots who haven’t had their fangs for a month. We’re fine.”This really wasn’t what I had been worried about. Part of me wanted to take her explanation at face value and drop it, but the other part, the wiser, stupider half of me, wanted her to be honest so there would be no surprises. I turned when the front door opened and a woman came in, talking loudly to Becky as she shrugged out of her coat and headed for the back.
“Ivy,” I said softly, “what about your hunger? You don’t have your usual…” I stopped, not sure what to call the people she tapped for blood. Donors? Special friends? Significant others? I settled on, “Support net?”
Ivy froze, sending a jolt of adrenaline through me. Crap. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut. “Sorry,” I said, meaning it. “It’s not my business.”
“Your timing sucks,” she said, and the tension eased. I hadn’t overstepped the friendship boundaries.
“Well…” I said, wincing. “I don’t know what you do.”
“I can’t go out and knock up a streetwalker,” she said bitterly. Her eyes were hard, and I could tell she wasn’t responding to me but to a deeper guilt. “If I let it be a savage act that I can satisfy with anyone, I’ll be a monster. What kind of a person do you think I am?”
“That’s not what I said,” I protested. “Cut me some slack, will you? I don’t know how you take care of yourself, and I was too afraid to ask until now. All I know is you go out anxious and jittery and come home calm and hating yourself.”
My admission of fear seemed to penetrate, and the creases in her forehead smoothed. She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them under the table. “Sorry. It surprised me you asked. I should be good for a few days more, but the stress—” Ivy cut her thought short and took a breath. “I have a few people. We help each other and go our separate ways. I don’t ask anything from them, and they don’t ask anything from me. They’re vamps, in case you’re interested. I don’t make ties with anyone else…anymore.”
Single, bi vamp looking for same for blood tryst, not relationship, I thought, hearing her unspoken desire in her last sentence, but I wasn’t ready to deal with it.
“I don’t like living like this,” Ivy said, her words unaccusing and her eyes a deep, honest brown. “But it’s where I am right now. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be okay. And as far as Piscary is concerned, he can burn in hell—if his soul hadn’t already evaporated.”
Her face was expressionless again, but I knew it was a front. “So you’re going to stay?” I asked, both embarrassed and proud that I had learned I could ask for help when I needed it, and boy did I need it.
She nodded, and I exhaled, reaching for my drink. “Thank you,” I said softly.
The idea of leaving everything to play dead the rest of my life scared the crap out of me the way a death threat couldn’t. I liked my life, and I didn’t want to have to leave it and start over. It had taken me too long to find friends who would stick with me when I did something stupid. Like turning a simple snag and drag into an interspecies power struggle.
Shifting one shoulder up and down in a half shrug, Ivy reached under her chair for that paper bag. “Do you want your mail,” she asked, “seeing as I brought it all this way?”
She was changing the subject, but that was fine by me. “I thought you were kidding,” I said as Ivy set the sack on the table and I dragged it closer. Jenks and Jax were excited about something they had found on the list, and people had given up watching them in glances and were blatantly staring. At least they weren’t looking at us.
“It’s the package I’m curious about,” Ivy said, glancing at Nick and Jenks while they pointed at the screen.
I dumped everything out, putting the obvious thank-you-for-saving-my-ass note from a previous run back in the bag along with the insurance bill from David’s company and a late season seed catalog. What was left was a paper-wrapped parcel the size of my two fists. I looked closer at the handwriting, my eyes jerking to Nick in the corner. “It’s from Nick,” I said, reaching for a table knife. “What is he sending me when he thinks I’m dead?”
Ivy’s face held a silent distain clearly directed at Nick. “I’d be willing to bet it’s whatever the Weres are after. I thought it was his handwriting, but I wasn’t sure.”
Very conscious of Nick slurping his shake and reading track titles over Jenks’s shoulder, I pulled the package off the table and put it in my lap. My pulse quickened and I made short work of the outer wrapping. Fingers cold, I opened the box and pulled out the heavy drawstring bag. “It’s got lead in it,” I said, feeling the supple weight of the fabric. “It’s wrapped in lead, Ivy. I don’t like this.”
She casually leaned forward to block Nick’s view. “Well, what is it?”
Licking my lips, I tugged the opening wider and peered down, deciding it was a figurine. I gingerly touched it, finding it cold. More confident, I drew it out and set it on the table between us. Staring at it, I wiped my hands off on my jeans.
“That is…really ugly,” Ivy said. “I think it’s ugly.” Her brown eyes flicked to me. “Is it ugly, or just weird?”
Goose bumps rose, and I stifled a shiver. “I don’t know.”
The statue was a yellowish color with stained striations running through it. Bone, I guessed. Very old bone; it had left the cold feeling on my hands that bone does. It stood about four inches high and was about as deep. And it felt alive, like a tree or a plate of moldy cheese.
I furrowed my brow as I tried to figure out what it was a statue of. Touching only the base, I turned it with two fingers. A noise of disgust slipped from me; the other side had a long muzzle twisted as if in pain. “Is it a head?” I guessed.
Ivy put her elbow on the table. “I think so. But the teeth…Those are teeth, right?”
I shivered, feeling like someone had walked over my grave. “Oh,” I whispered, realizing what it reminded me of. “It looks like Pam when she was in the middle of Wereing.”
Ivy flicked her eyes to mine and back to the statue. As I watched, her face went paler and her eyes went frightened. “Damn,” she muttered. “I think I know what it is. Cover it up. We are in deep shit.”
TwentyI jerked when Nick suddenly appeared at the table. His long face was flushed, angry and frightened all at the same time—a dangerous mix. “What are you doing?” he hissed at Ivy, snatching the statue up and holding it close. “You brought it here? I sent it to her so no one would find it. I thought she was dead. They couldn’t make me tell who had it if I sent it to a dead woman, and you brought it here? You damned fool vampire!”
“Sit,” Ivy said, her jaw clenched and her eyes shifting to black. “Give it to me.”
“No.” Nick’s grip tensed to a white-knuckled strength. “Save the aura shit for someone it works on. I’m not afraid of you.”
He was, and Ivy’s hand trembled. “Nicholas. I’m hungry. I’m tired. I don’t give a crap about your stupid ass. My partner is in deep shit because of you. Give it to me.”
Adrenaline pulsed, hurting my head. Nick was near panic. The karaoke machine started up with something sad and melancholy. Jenks was watching us, but the rest of the bar hadn’t a clue that Ivy was about ready to lose it, pushed to the edge from stress and being far from home.
“Nick,” I soothed. “It’ll be okay. Give it to me. I’ll put it away.”
Nick shifted and Ivy jerked, almost reaching for him. Licking his cracked lips, Nick said, “You’ll hold it for me?”
“I’ll keep it,” I assured him, fumbling for the lead-lined bag and extending it. “Here.”
Hollow-cheeked face frightened, he carefully placed it into the pouch. His swollen fingers started curving around it, and I pulled it to me, tightening the drawstrings. It wasn’t any magical hold it had on him; it was greed.
Hand shaking, Ivy grabbed her drink and downed it to ice. I kept an eye on her while I put the statue in my bag, then put the bag on my lap. It felt heavy, like a dead thing. From the corner came Jenks singing “Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The skinny guy at the bar was watching him, having turned completely from the game recap. Jenks could sing?