“What the hell do you want?” she said virulently, brown eyes fixed on him.
“I want to help Rachel,” he shot back, stiff and a little afraid.
Jenks snorted, crumpling up the empty bag and throwing it away. “You can help Rachel by dropping dead.”
“That’s still an option,” said Ivy.
I didn’t have time or the energy to deal with this. “I need quiet,” I said, feeling my blood pressure rise. “That’s all I need. That’s it. Just quiet.”
Nick stepped back, his arms crossing over his faded shirt to make him look alone. “Okay. I’ll…” He hesitated, gaze flicking to Ivy and Jenks beside me, taking up all the room so he couldn’t come in. His held breath slowly escaped him, and not having finished his thought, he walked away, his movements full of frustration. Slumping into the chair Peter had been sitting in, he stretched his long legs out and ran his hand through his hair, staring at nothing.
I would not feel bad for him. He had sold me out. The only reason I hadn’t walked off from this was because the Weres would hound me forever if they didn’t see the thing destroyed, and for that I needed Nick. And I needed him cooperative.
Jenks pulled a chair from under the kitchen table and sat beside me. I blinked in surprise when I realized he had correctly put everything into three piles. “Do you need any help?” he asked, and Ivy snickered.
“Help from a pixy?” she scoffed, and Jenks bristled.
“Actually,” I said before he could start swearing at her, “could you get Nick out of here?” I didn’t want him to see the transference curse. God knows who he would sell it to. He couldn’t invoke it without my or demon blood, but he could probably get some from Al in exchange for my underwear size.
A nasty smile curved over Jenks, but it was Ivy who put her palm aggressively on the table and said, “I’m doing it. I want to talk to him.”
I looked up, wondering, but she had turned away. “Come on, crap for brains,” she said, grabbing her purse in passing and heading for the door. “Rachel forgot something, and since I don’t know anything about ley line magic, you’re coming with me to make sure I get the right thing. Anyone else want anything while I’m out?”
Nick’s face went defiant, and I simpered, knowing it was petty but unable to stop myself. “Watch out for the Weres,” I said. Maybe that had been mean, but I was mean. Just ask the kids I kept chasing out of my graveyard. They could play hide-and-seek somewhere else.
“I’m out of toothbrushes,” Jenks said, going to putter with the coffeemaker.
Ivy waited for Nick to shrug into the fabric coat that had been stashed in his truck. “You can use those more than once,” she said, as I’d already told him, and Jenks shuddered.
Clearly aware he was being gotten rid of, Nick yanked the door open and walked out. Ivy gave me a wicked, closed-lipped smile and followed him. “I’m not afraid of you,” Nick said as the door shut and my stress level dropped about six points.
“Here’s your coffee,” Jenks said, setting it down in front of me.
He poured me coffee? I looked at it, then up at him. “Is there Brimstone in it?”
Jenks plopped into the chair beside mine. “Ivy told me to put some in, but I thought you were well enough to decide.”
My blood pressure went right back up, and remembering my reflection in the store window, I hesitated, wondering if I was being wise or stupid. Brimstone would keep me alert for hours while I made whatever charms I needed, simultaneously increasing my blood count to pretty near normal. When I fell asleep, I’d wake refreshed, hungry, and feeling almost as well as before I was bitten. Without it, I’d be spelling while fatigued. My legs would shake every time I stood, and my sleep would end with me waking up feeling like crap.
But using black magic or illegal drugs to simply to make my life easier was a lie of convenience—one that would delude me into believing I had the right to flaunt the rules, that I lived above them. I will not turn into Trent.
I exhaled in a long puff. “I’m not going to do it,” I said, and he nodded, his green eyes creased with worry. Though he clearly disagreed, he accepted my decision, which made me feel better immediately. I was in charge of my life. Me. Ri-i-i-i-ight.
“Which spell first?” Jenks asked, extending a hand for Jax when the pixy flitted to us. His wing was bent and he was leaking dust from it, but neither Jenks nor I said anything. It was nice seeing the little pixy taking an interest in what his dad thought was important—even if he was out here only because Rex had scored on him.
I tapped the pages, nervous. “You didn’t lose the bone statue with your fudge, did you?”
A smile curved over Jenks. “Nope.” Jax rose to the overhanging light as his dad went to his growing pile of bags beside the TV. I’d never seen a man who could outshop me, but Jenks was a master. I tried not to watch when he bent to shuffle about, striding quickly back to the kitchen with the twin boxes. He set them on the table, and pixy dust sifted over us while he opened them up. The first one was that god-awful carved totem, and leaving it to stare at me, he opened the second. “Not a scratch,” he said, green eyes giving away his satisfaction.I picked up the wolf statue, feeling the weight and coldness of bone. It wasn’t a bad choice for moving the Were curse to. Focus going distant, I remembered Nick’s greed, and my eyes went to Jenks’s totem. “Hey, uh, has Nick seen this?” I said, indicating the wolf statue.
Jenks sniffed in disgust, leaning to balance his chair on two legs. “I haven’t shown it to him, but he’s probably pawed through my stuff.”
An idea was sifting through my mind, but I refused to feel guilty for not trusting Nick. “Hey, this is a really neat statue,” I said, setting down the wolf and picking up the totem. “Matalina is going to love it. I should have gotten one. It’d look great in Mr. Fish’s bowl.”
Jenks let the chair fall to four legs. “Mr. Fish’s bowl?” he said quizzically, and I darted a glance at the motel room door. Jenks’s expression went knowing, then angry; he might be interior-decorating challenged, but he was not a stupid man. “You’re worried about…”
I made a small noise, not wanting him to say aloud I was worried about Nick stealing the little wolf statue, so clearly the better choice for a demon curse. But they were both made out of bone, so…
“Yeah,” Jenks said suddenly, taking the totem from me and setting it in the middle of the table. “I’ll pick one up for you the next time I go out.”
There had only been the one in the case, but seeing his understanding, I took a slow breath and reached for my recipe. Pencil in hand, I bowed my head over it and tucked a curl behind an ear. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and you can kiss your ass good-bye.
Thirty
M otions steady, I massaged my stuck index finger for the blood needed to invoke the last inertia-dampening spell. My finger was starting to hurt after all the charms I’d invoked. It wasn’t as if I could draw a vial of my blood and dole it out by eyedropper. If the blood didn’t come right from the body, the enzymes that quickened the spell would break down and the spell wouldn’t invoke. There were a lot of charms on the table, this second pair of inertia-dampening spells being a quick, guilty addition.
The blood wasn’t coming, so I painfully squeezed until a beaded drop of red formed. It plopped onto the first half of the charm, then I squeezed again until the next plop hit the second amulet. The blood soaked in with an eerie swiftness, sending the scent of burnt amber to stain the stale motel room air. What I would have given for a window that opened.
Burnt amber, not redwood, proof it was demon magic. God, what was I doing?
I glanced over the quiet, dusky room, the light leaking in around the closed curtains telling me it was nearing noon. Apart from a nap around midnight, I’d been up all morning. Someone had obviously slipped me some Brimstone. Damn roommates, anyway.
Rubbing my thumb and finger together, I smeared the remnants of blood into nothing, then stretched to put the matched, invoked charms with the rest, beside Jenks. He was sitting across from me, his head slumped onto the table while he slept. Doppelganger charm for Peter, doppelganger charm for Nick, regular disguise charm for Jenks. And two sets of inertia-dampening amulets, I thought, gentling the newest in with the rest. After meeting Peter, I was changing the plan. No one knew it but me.
The clatter of the amulets didn’t wake Jenks, and I sat back, exhaling long and slow. I was weary from fatigue, but I wasn’t done yet. I still had a curse to twist.
Pulling myself upright, I reached for my bag, moving carefully so I wouldn’t disturb Jenks. He’d sat watch over me while I slept, forgoing his usual midnight nap, and was exhausted. Rex was purring on his lap under the table, and Jenks’s smooth, outstretched hand nearly touched the cup-sized minitank of saltwater containing the sea monkeys he’d bought somewhere along the way. “They’re the perfect pets, Rache,” he had said, eyes bright with anticipation with what his kids would say, and I hoped we all lived long enough to worry about how we were going to get them home.
I smiled at his youthful face looking roguishly innocent while he slept. He was such an odd mix, young, but a tried-and-true father, provider, protector—and almost at the end of his life.