“Sugar and cream,” Jenks added faintly, and Becky sashayed away, loudly proclaiming to the three women at the bar that she had known it all along.
Ivy watched her go, then looked at me with a questioning scrutiny. I suddenly realized Becky must have talked to Terri from the grocery store. Feeling another one of my stellar, embarrassing moments coming on, I hunched forward and took another sip, hiding behind the glass. No wonder the entire bar was being nice to us. They thought I was a nympho who liked doing it with three people and pudding.
“Why am I allergic to butterscotch?” Ivy asked slowly.
My face flamed, and Jenks stammered, “Ah, Rachel and I are lovers with a thing for foursomes and pudding. Apparently she thinks you and Nick are Alexia and Tom. You’re allergic to butterscotch, and crap for brains likes pistachio.”
“Stop calling me that,” Nick muttered.
Ivy let her breath out. Her eyebrows were arched, and she looked bemused. “Okay…”
I set my drink down. “Can we get back to how we’re going to kill Nick? And what’s this about a dead body? You’d better start talking quick, Ivy, ’cause I’m not going to play hide-and-seek with a dead guy in my trunk. I did that in college, and I’m not going to do it again.”
A smile quirked Ivy’s mouth. “Really?” she asked, and I flushed.
“Well, he wasn’t dead,” I muttered. “But they told me he was. Scared the crap out of me when he kissed my ear when I tried to lug him into—” I stopped when I felt Becky at my elbow, a tray of coffee and pie in her hand.
Smirking, Becky gave everyone their coffee and set a piece of pie à la mode in front of Ivy. Humming “American Woman,” she took Jenks’s and Nick’s empty plates and left.
I eyed the ice cream and then my fork. “You going to eat all that?” I asked, knowing from experience Ivy rarely finished anything.
Glancing at me for permission, Ivy took my coffee cup off its saucer and put the ice cream in its place. I pulled it closer, feeling the tension start to ease. I didn’t have a spoon, but my fork worked, and I wasn’t going to ask Becky for one.
Ivy carefully cut the point from her pie and pushed it away to eat last. “I propose we pull a Kevorkian,” she said, and I went cold from more than the ice cream.
“That’s illegal,” Jenks said quickly.
“Only if you get caught,” Ivy said, eyes on her pie. “I have a friend of a friend—”
“No.” I set my fork down. “I’m not going to help a vampire cross over. I won’t. Ivy, you’re asking me to kill someone!”
My voice had risen, and Ivy tossed her hair from her eyes. “He’s twenty, and he’s in so much pain he can’t use the can without someone helping him.”
“No!” I said louder, not caring people were starting to look. “Absolutely not.” I turned to Jenks and Nick for support, appalled to see their acceptance of this. “You guys are sick!” I said. “I’m not going to do that!”
“Rachel,” Ivy said persuasively, brown eyes showing an unusual amount of emotion. “People do it all the time.”
“This people right here doesn’t.” Flustered, I pushed the ice cream away, wondering if it had been part of her plan to get me to accept. She knew I was a sucker for ice cream. I scowled at the laughter from the bar, turning to see Becky gossiping to the truck drivers, bent over with her rear in the air. It occurred to me they probably thought I had just been propositioned for something even a redheaded nympho would say no to. Crossing my arms in front of me, I glared at Ivy.
“He’d do it himself,” Ivy said softly. “God knows he has enough courage. But he needs his life insurance check to set himself up, and if he kills himself, he loses it. He’s been waiting a long time.”
“No.”
Ivy’s lips pressed together. Then her brow smoothed. “I’ll call him,” she said softly. “You talk to him, and if you still feel the same way, we’ll call it off. It will be up to you.”
My head hurt. If I didn’t say yes now, I would look meaner than Satan’s baby-sitter. “Alexia,” I said loud enough for the bar to hear. “You are one sick bitch.”
Her smile widened. “That’s my girl.” Clearly pleased, she picked up her fork and ate another bite of pie. “Can you make a charm to make someone look like little professor here?”
Nick stiffened, and Jenks chuckled, “Little professor…” as he dumped a fourth packet of sugar into his coffee. I felt like I was in my high school lunchroom, plotting a prank.
“Yeah, I can do that,” I said. Sullen, I pushed the melting ice cream around on my plate. Doppelganger charms were illegal, but not black. Why not? I was going to freaking kill someone.
“Good.” Ivy speared the last of her pie, going still in thought before she ate the point, and I knew she was making a wish. And people thought I was superstitious? “Now all we have to do is find a way to destroy that thing,” she finished.At that, Nick stirred. “You’re not going to destroy it. It’s over five thousand years old.”
I sent my flip-flops popping. “I agree,” I said, and Nick shot me a grateful glance. “If we can substitute a fake Nick, then we can substitute a fake statue.”
Ivy leaned back in her chair with her coffee. “I don’t care,” she said. “But you…” She pointed a finger at Nick. “…aren’t going to get it. Rachel is going to put it into hiding, and you—get—nothing.”
Nick looked sullen, and I exchanged that same knowing look with Jenks. This was going to be a problem. Jenks stirred his coffee. “So…” he said, “how are we going to knack Nick?”
I thought his verbiage left something to be desired, but I let it pass, ignoring my melting bribe. “I don’t know. I’m usually on the saving-your-butt end of things.”
Blowing across his mug, Jenks shrugged. “I’m partial to crushing their chest until their ribs crack and their blood splatters like Jell-O in a blender without a top.” He took a sip, wincing. “That’s what I do to fairies.”
I frowned, appalled when he added two more packets of sugar.
“We could push him off a roof,” Ivy suggested. “Drown him, maybe? We’ve got lots of water around here.”
Jenks leaned conspiratorially toward Ivy, his green eyes darting merrily between mine and hers. “I’d suggest jamming a stick of dynamite up his ass and running away, but that might really hurt whoever is taking his place.”
Ivy laughed, and I frowned at both of them. The karaoke machine had started up again, and I felt ill when “Love Shack” began bouncing out. Oh my God. The skinny trucker was up on the stage with the three bimbos as backup.
I looked, then looked again. Finally I tore my eyes away. “Hey,” I said, feeling the weight of the last twenty-four hours fall on me. “I’ve been up since yesterday noon. Can we just find somewhere to crash for the day?”
Immediately Ivy grabbed her purse from under her chair. “Yeah, let’s go. I have to call Peter. It will take him, his scion, and his mentor a day to get up here. You sleep, Jenks and I will come up with a few plans, and you can pick the one that your magic will work the best with.” She glanced at Jenks, and he nodded. Both of them turned to me. “Sound okay?”
“Sure,” I said, taking a slow breath to steady myself. Inside I was shaking. I wasn’t too keen on picking any plan that involved killing someone. But the Weres wouldn’t give up on Nick unless he was dead; and unless there was a body, they would know it was a scam.
And I wanted to go home. I wanted to go home to my church and my life. They would hound me to the ends of the earth if they knew the focus was found and in my possession.
I stood, feeling as if I was slipping into places that I had once vowed I would never go. If we were caught, we would be tried for murder.
But what choice did I have?
Twenty-one
T he scent of cinnamon and cloves was thick in the motel room, making it smell like the solstice. Nick was making ginger drops, and the warmth of the tiny efficiency oven was pleasant at my back. It wasn’t unusual for him to bake, but I thought it more likely he was trying to bribe me into talking to him than a desire for homemade cookies. And since Jenks had the TV on a kids’ show for Jax, and Ivy wouldn’t let Nick plan his own demise, the human had little to do.
The Weres knew Jenks, so Ivy had gone shopping while I slept, laden down with a grocery list and my shoe size. All of us going out for food three times a day—or in Jenks’s case, six—didn’t seem prudent. We had found a suite five minutes from the bar, and after giving the low-ceilinged rooms done in brown and gold the once-over, I stated clearly that I had the van. Ivy took the bed in the tiny room off the main room, Nick got the bed in the main room, and Jenks wanted the sofa sleeper, happily opening it up and putting it away twice before Ivy and I finished unloading the van; she didn’t want Nick touching anything. The van was tight and cold, but it was quiet, and with the circle I’d put up while I slept, safer than the motel.
I had woken cranky and stiff that morning at an ungodly nine o’clock, unable to go back to sleep after my twelve-hour nap. And since Jenks and Jax were both up, and Nick, of course, was awake, I thought I’d take the opportunity to get a jump on the magic prep. Yeah. Right.