A Fistfull of Charms(91)

I tried not to look at Peter, but it was hard not to. The vampire sat beside me, his arms resting on the table as if tired, the barest tremble in his fingers, which were a shade shorter than Nick’s, and thin, not swollen. The two men had exchanged clothes along with identities, and it was eerie how complete the change was. Only in the eyes could I see a clear difference. Peter had a haze from the painkiller he had taken so he could walk upright. Just as well I’d be driving.
“No wonder those things are illegal,” Ivy said, hiding her words behind her glass of juice.
My worry deepened when Jenks added, “His aura is the same.”
“Shit,” I whispered, my stomach knotting. “I forgot about that.”
Jenks finished the ice cream and pushed the plate away with a little sigh. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “Weres can’t use the ever-after. They can’t see auras.”
Embarrassed, I hunched over my drink. “You can. And you can’t use the ever-after.”
He grinned. “That’s because pixies are ever-after. We’re magic, baby. Just ask Matalina.”
Ivy snickered. She took a cherry, and Jenks put her sword with mine when she casually handed it to him.
“You know,” I said, “you can buy a box of those for a buck fifty in any grocery store.”
Jenks shrugged. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Watching the banter, Peter smiled, making my heart ache when I remembered Nick looking at me like that. “I wish I had the chance to know you before all this,” he said softly. “You fit well together. Like a vampire camarilla, but without the jealousy and politics. A real family.”My good mood died. Jenks played with his fork to get it to balance on its tines, and Ivy became very interested in the Weres at the bar.
Peter blinked rapidly, a nervous reaction I’d never seen in Nick. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did I say something—”
Ivy interrupted him. “Peter, we’ve got about an hour until Nick gets into place with that bridge traffic. Do you want something to eat?”
I gathered myself to look for Becky, yelping when Jenks kicked me under the table. I glared at him until he said, “You don’t like Nick. Nick can get his own food.”
Feeling stupid, I slumped in my chair. “Right.” So I tried not to fidget as Peter took the next five minutes to get Becky’s attention. From the corner of my sight I watched Nick leave the bathroom, looking like the ailing vampire who was sitting beside me, trying to attract anyone in an apron. Hell, Nick even walked like Peter, slow and pained. It was creepy. He was good at this.
Professional thief, I reminded myself as I gripped my bag to assure myself it was still in my possession. How I could have been so blind? But I knew my ignorance had been born out of my need for that damned acceptance I hungered after almost as badly as Ivy lusted after blood. We weren’t as unalike as it seemed when you got right down to it.
The jitters started when Nick passed out of my sight. I turned my attention to Ivy, reading his progress across the bar by where her eyes went. “He’s good,” Ivy said, sipping her juice. “Audrey didn’t recognize him until he opened his mouth and said hi.”
“Did the Weres smell him?” I asked, and she shook her head.
Beside me, Peter gritted his teeth, and I was glad he’d had the opportunity to say good-bye to Audrey properly. He was a good person. It wasn’t fair. Maybe he could bring the memory of suffering and compassion into his undead existence, but I doubted it. They never did.
Ivy tapped her fingers on the table, and Jenks heaved a sigh. “They’re gone,” Ivy said.
I put the flat of my arm on the table, forcing my foot to not jiggle. All that was left was waiting for Nick’s phone call that he was in place.
Check.
Thirty-three
S o this is what it feels like to be a murderer, I thought, taking a tighter grip of the wheel of Nick’s truck, squinting from the low sun. I was nervous, sweaty, shaky, and I wanted to throw up. Oh yeah. I can see why people get off on this.
Beside me in Nick’s jeans and cloth coat, Peter watched the passing view as we drove to the bridge, half of Nick’s inertia-dampening curse fixed to the bumper. Peter’s left hand cradled the defunct statue with DeLavine’s blood smear on it. His right hand, looking slightly smaller than Nick’s, was holding the handle of the door. I was pretty sure it was nerves since he didn’t know the door had a tendency to fly open when you went over a bump. 
Nick’s truck was old. It rattled when it shook. The shocks were bad but the brakes were excellent. And with the NOS, it could be startlingly fast. Just what every successful thief needs.
Silent, we endured the stop-and-go traffic to get onto the bridge, my attention on Ivy and Jenks behind us as much as on the cars ahead of me jockeying to get on the bridge. It had been Ivy’s idea to do this on the bridge. The stiff wind would hamper the Weres’ sense of smell, and the bridge itself would prevent a helicopter ambulance and slow things down. But most of all, we needed a stretch of several miles without a shoulder to minimize Were interference after the crash. The five-mile bridge gave us that along with a nice margin to actually run into each other. The goal was the bridge apex, but a mile either way would work.
My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, but I didn’t feel any better seeing Ivy and Jenks in Kisten’s Corvette running as a buffer between us and the Weres from the bar. “Put your seat belt on,” I said. I thought it was stupid, like dragging the saddle behind you when you went looking for your horse fleeing the burning barn, but I didn’t want to get pulled over for failure to wear a belt and have it all come crashing down when the cop realized Nick’s newly flash-painted truck was the same one that had fled the scene of a crash yesterday.
The click was loud when Peter fastened his belt. We were going to be run over by a Mack truck. I didn’t think it would make a difference if he had on his seat belt or not.
Oh God. What was I doing?
The traffic light finally turned green, and I pulled onto the bridge, headed for St. Ignace on the other side of the straits. I gripped the wheel tighter, stomach knotting. The bridge was a mess. The two northbound lanes were closed off, making traffic two-way on the southbound. Midway down the span there were big machines and powerful lights to turn the coming night to day as the workers tried to meet their pretourist-season deadline. They had missed it. Red cones separated the two lanes, allowing traffic to easily switch to the other side when needed. The bridge was an incredible five miles long, and every foot of it had needed repair.
Peter exhaled as we accelerated to a steady forty miles an hour, the opposing traffic doing the same an unnerving three feet away. Past the vacant northbound lane and thick girders, I could see the islands, gray and smudged from the distance. We were really high up, and I felt a moment of quickly stifled fear. Despite the stories, witches couldn’t fly. ’Least not without a staff of charmed redwood that cost more than the Concord.
“Peter?” I said, not liking the silence.
“I’m fine,” he said, his grip tensing on the statue. His voice was cross, sounding nothing like Nick. I couldn’t help my awkward smile of understanding, remembering Ivy bothering me with the same question. My stomach gave a lurch.
“I wasn’t going to ask how you were doing,” I said, fiddling with the two charms about my neck. One was for pain that wouldn’t cover the hurt caused by being hit, the other was to keep my head from meeting the dash. Peter had refused both.
My eyes lifted to the rearview mirror to see that Ivy and Jenks were still behind us. “Do you want me to turn the lights on?” I asked. It was our agreed upon signal to abort the plan. I wanted him to say yes. I didn’t want to do this. The statue didn’t matter right now. Peter did. We could find another way.
“No.”
The sun was setting past him, and I squinted at him. “Peter…”
“I’ve heard it all,” he said, his voice rough as he kept his stiff position. “Please don’t. It comes down to one thing. I’m dying. I’ve been doing it for a long time, and it hurts. I stopped living three years ago when the medicine and charms quit working and the pain took everything away. There’s nothing left of me but hurting. I fought for two years with the thought that I was a coward for wanting to end the pain, but there is nothing left.”I snuck a glance at him, shocking myself when I saw Nick sitting there, his jaw clenched and his brown eyes hard. It sounded like it was a story he had told too many times. As I watched, his shoulders slumped and he let go of the door. “This lingering isn’t fair to Audrey,” he said. “She deserves someone strong, able to stand beside her and meet her bite for bite in the passion she’s aching to show me.”
I couldn’t let that go without saying something. “And becoming an undead is fair to her?” I said, making his jaw clench again. “Peter, I’ve seen the undead. That won’t be you!”
“I know!” he exclaimed, then softer, “I know, but it’s all I’ve got left to give her.”
The whirl of air under the tires rose above the sound of the engine as we went over the first of the grates designed to lighten the bridge’s load.