A Fistfull of Charms(90)

The woman’s eyes darted between Ivy and me. Ivy’s lip quirked once, then steeled her features to a severe emptiness. Playing up to them, I cracked my knuckles in warning.
“Ooooh, hit me baby,” Jenks said, moving suggestively where he sat.
“That’s my job, sweetie,” Ivy purred, pulling him close and tucking her head into the hollow between his shoulder and ear. Her hand was a stiff claw upon his pristine neck, and I saw a flicker of concern in Jenks before he realized she was playing and was nowhere close to losing it. “I’m the bad vamp this time,” she purred. “She’s the good witch.”
Ivy drew her hand back to give him a tart slap on the face, but Jenks was faster, catching her wrist. Eyes sultry, he kissed her fingertips. 
“Mmmm,” Ivy said, her dark eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks and her lips parting. “You know what I like, pixy dust.”
Becky’s face reddened. “Just the cobbler?” she stammered. “And the drink?”
Ivy nodded, her free hand wrapping around Jenks’s and her tongue coming out to lick his fingertips. Jenks froze, truly surprised. The woman took a breath and walked away, her steps unheard over the noise. Great. Now I probably wouldn’t get my fries.
Jenks reclaimed his hand, a faint flush on his face. “Four spoons!” he shouted after her.
My breath escaped me in a hiss. “You two are awful!” I said, frowning at Ivy as she shifted away from Jenks, a satisfied-cat smile on her face.
“Maybe,” Ivy agreed, “but the Weres were watching us, not Audrey and Peter.”
I stiffened, seeing Ivy mentally tick item number two off her list. We had moved that much closer to the end of this, and the first of the butterflies rose in me.
“Jenks tastes like oak leaves smell,” Ivy said, ignoring his fluster as he tapped the table in rhythm with the karaoke machine.
Jenks squirmed, looking all of eighteen. “Don’t tell Matalina about that, okay?”
Ivy said nothing, and I forced myself to the back of my chair. What was keeping Nick? Maybe he’d seen the nice display of low-class Inderlander at our table and decided to stay at the bar. Or perhaps he didn’t want to cross the room and draw the Weres’ attention to himself. Regardless, I could use that water.
Slowly Ivy’s tension started to filter back, unusual for her. For all my nervousness, Jenks and I were handling this better than she was, and I could understand why. Every run was personal to me. Ivy, though, wasn’t used to having the outcome of a run mean this much to her. She didn’t have the patterns of behavior to cope, and it showed around her eyes.
“It’ll be okay,” I said, stifling the urge to reach across the table and pat her hand. The memory of her fingers gripping my waist, the rush of her teeth in me, lifted through my thoughts, and I stifled a shiver of adrenaline.
“What?” Ivy said belligerently, her eyes flashing black.
“It’ll work,” I said, putting my hand under the table so I wouldn’t touch my stitches.
She frowned, the rim of brown growing about her eyes. “A Mack truck driven by your ex-boyfriend is going to run over you, and you say everything is going to be okay?”
Well, when she put it like that…
Jenks snorted, shifting his chair a little farther from Ivy. “Crap for brains is back.”
I turned in my seat, almost glad to see Nick. He had a glass of water with a slice of lemon and two drinks of differing shades of orange. One had a carrot stick in it, and he put the other before Ivy as he eased into the chair beside me. I resettled my bag on my lap and tried to make it look like I wasn’t concerned about it.
Ivy curved her fingers about her drink. “That had better not have alcohol in it,” she said, looking at Nick’s drink. Jenks reached to take it, and Nick jerked it away, all but spilling it.
“You aren’t drinking anything if you’re aiming a truck at Rachel,” the large pixy said.
Bothered, I grabbed the glass and brought it to my nose. Before Nick could protest, I took a sip, almost spitting it out. “What in hell is that?” I exclaimed, running my tongue around the inside of my mouth. It was mealy, but sweet.
“It’s a Virgin Bloody Rabbit.” Sullen, Nick pulled it closer. “There’s no alcohol in it.”
Bloody Rabbit? It was a Virgin Bloody Mary made with carrot juice. “These are better made from tomato juice,” I said, and Nick blanched.Jenks tapped his fingers on the table, smiling when Becky stopped at our table and set down a plate of ice cream and pastry along with his four-cherry drink and the requested number of spoons. No fries. Big surprise. “Thanks, Becky,” Jenks called after her over the music, and her neck went red.
Ivy took one of the spoons and delicately scooped a dollop of ice cream, placing it succinctly into her mouth. She pushed it away as if done, saying, “Peter is in the bathroom.”
My heart gave a thump. Check.
Nick took a shaky breath. I wouldn’t look at him, pretending interest in plucking the cherry with the longest stem out of Jenks’s drink. Nick stood, and Ivy reached across the table to grab his wrist. He froze, and my eyes went from his still swollen masculine fingers to Ivy’s face. Her eyes were black, a severe anger shining from behind them.
“If you don’t show up on that bridge,” she said, lips hardly moving. “I swear I’ll find you. And if you hurt her, I’ll make you a shadow, begging me to bleed you every night for the rest of your pathetic life.” Looking like a wraith, she inhaled, taking away the warmth of the room. “Believe it.”
I sent my eyes up the faded flannel of his shirt to find him ashen and afraid. For the first time, he was afraid. I was too. Hell, even Jenks had drawn away from her.
He jerked from her. Clearly shaken, he stepped out of her easy reach. “Rachel—”
“Good-bye, Nick,” I said flatly, feeling my blood pressure rise. I still didn’t understand how he could think that selling Al information about me, even harmless information, wasn’t a betrayal of everything we had shared.
I didn’t watch him leave. Eyes lowered, I took a sword-pierced cherry. The sweet mush was bland in my mouth. Swallowing, I set the red plastic sword beside Jenks for him to take home to his kids. “I’m tired of this,” I whispered, but I don’t think anyone heard me.
Jenks took a scoop of the cobbler, watching me with his intent green eyes. “You going to be okay?” he asked around his full mouth.
Picking up a spoon, I held the plate so I could wrangle an even bigger bite of ice cream. “Just dandy.” Why was I eating? I wasn’t hungry.
The music finally died, and in the renewed sound of chatter, Ivy held a napkin to her mouth and muttered, “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. I don’t like Nick. I don’t trust Nick. And if he doesn’t show up with that truck to do his part, I’m going to kill him.”
“I’ll help,” Jenks offered, carefully cutting the remaining ice cream in two and claiming the largest half.
“Okay, I made a mistake in trusting him. Can we move on to something else?” I said, scraping the lion’s share of caramel to my side of the plate. God help me, but I had been stupid. Stay with your own kind, Rachel. Not that your track record there is much better. “But I do trust his greed,” I added, and Jenks’s eyebrows rose. 
Shifting my shoulder, I touched my bag on my lap. “He wants the statue. He’s going to show, if only to try and steal it back after all is said and done.”
Ivy crossed her arms in front of her and seethed.
Jenks cocked his head in thought and ate another bite of cobbler. “You want me to have Jax shadow him?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“It might be too cold,” I said. “He can sit this one out.”
“He’s doing well with low-temp excursions,” Jenks said around his full mouth, then swallowed. “I’m proud of him.” A satisfied smile hovered in his eyes. “He can read now,” he added softly. “He’s been working hard at it. He’s serious about taking after his old man.”
My smile faltered at the reasons for the lessons. Jenks didn’t have many more battles left to fight. Ivy steadied herself, visibly forcing herself to be cheerful.
“That’s great,” she said, but I could hear her stress. “What grade level is he at?”
Jenks pushed his plate away. “Tink’s titties, I don’t know. Enough to get by.”
I sent my attention to the bathroom door when Nick came out, his head down, clearly worried. I exhaled in a slow puff, leaning back into my chair. “Oh that’s just swell,” I said sourly. “Something’s wrong with the charms.”
Triangular face worried, Jenks followed my gaze, saying nothing. Ivy didn’t look at all, and waited for it as Nick sat down before his Virgin Bloody Rabbit and took a gulp.
“My shoes are too tight,” he whispered, fingers shaking.
Mouth open, I stared. It hadn’t been Nick’s voice. “Peter?” I breathed, shocked. My eyes jerked from him to Ivy and Jenks. “My God. Can I cook, or can I cook!”
Ivy’s breath slipped from her in a slow sound. Check I thought, seeing her mentally cross off the next item on her list.
Grinning, Jenks started to eat again, this time working on my half of the ice cream.