The crack of the balls broke the stillness, and I turned around when there was no accompanying thwap of a ball hitting the bottom of a pocket. “Nice of you to get your balls off the table so I have some room to play,” I said as I took the offered cue. Wayde smiled at the innuendo, Jenks snorted, and Ivy gave me a one-raised-eyebrow look. I shrugged, refusing to acknowledge the sexual banter that just seemed to flow out of my mouth when I got a cue stick in my hand. I knew it was from Kisten, and it sort of hurt.Wayde, though, took it in stride, looking cocky as he dropped back a few steps to watch. Nervous, I lined up an easy angle shot to a far corner pocket with the ten. I always had trouble with the ten ball. I didn’t know why. Sure enough, I hit it wrong, and the ball bounced off the tip of the pocket and rolled to the rail. “The Turn take it,” I swore softly, frowning as I held the stick out. I was going to get in three shots this game, max.
Wayde ignored the stick, instead moving both the ten and the cue ball back to their original places. “Try it again,” he said as the light over the table glistened like gold in his stubbly beard when he pulled back and smiled. “And angle it a little more.”
My eyes narrowed at the show of chivalry. “I don’t need your pity handicap,” I said, and Jenks flew to Ivy, his wings clattering loudly.
“This isn’t pity,” Wayde said as Ivy rattled a page to cover Jenks’s badly whispered comment. “You’re a good shot. You just need to slow down, pay attention.”
My hand closed around the cue ball, and I set it down hard where it had come to rest earlier. “Your turn.”
“Hey! Watch the slate!” Ivy exclaimed, and the slant to my shoulders shifted.
“Sorry,” I said, then turned to tell Wayde to take the stick before I jammed it somewhere, but my jaw dropped when I realized he had moved the cue ball again. “I said, it’s your turn!”
“Line it up.” Wayde’s eyes were on the table, not me. “Exhale on the down stroke.”
“Yeah, stroke it, baby!” Jenks said, his hips gyrating as he hovered over Ivy.
“Oh my God,” I muttered, but then, because I really should have made that shot, I tugged down my T-shirt and bent over the table. I exhaled, sending all the tension out of me, my thoughts about Kisten, my anger at HAPA, my worry over Winona—my new doubt that Trent was simply trying to get me to work for him . . . With a smooth motion, I hit the ball. It hummed over the felt as if pulling my aura with it, barely tapping the ten, shifting the momentum to it and sending it into the pocket with a satisfying little thump.
Pleasure sifted through me as I straightened and smiled while I handed the cue stick to him. “Nice, but it’s your turn,” he said, even as he took it.
“Nah, you gave me that one,” I said, appreciating the gesture. “Your go.”
Wayde nodded. Moving gracefully around the table, he lined up a shot that should have been easy—until he muffed it, sending the cue ball bouncing around to miss everything and come to a halt inches from where it had started.
Jenks whistled, impressed. I was, too, even if my smile had gone a little dry. He’d done it intentionally, but what could I do? Cry foul and not play anymore? “That was tighter than Tink’s . . . ah, he’s good,” Jenks said to Ivy, then darted up to rescue the chalk from where his kids had snatched it again.
I held my hand up, and the chalk dropped into it. He is good, I thought as I chalked my cue. Maybe a little too good. Feeling centered, I lined up the thirteen and easily tapped it in.
Wayde’s teeth showed and he ran a hand over his beard. “Anyone want some chips?” he asked as he headed for the kitchen, mistakenly thinking I would sink a few more before it was his turn again. Yeah, that was likely.
Ivy winced when Jenks’s kids began a high-pitched, shrilling demand. I knew they were speaking English, but it was so fast I couldn’t keep up. Wayde, too, looked pained, and in a noisy cloud of blue-faced pixies, they vanished into the hallway, Jenks trailing along behind. There was a crash from the hanging rack, and Wayde yelled that nothing broke.
I sighed, leaning on the stick as I looked over the sunlit table. From behind me came Ivy’s somewhat threatening “They’re going to get grease on everything.”
I sashayed to the table, deciding to try the trickier bank shot if Wayde wasn’t here to tell me how to do it. “You weren’t worried about it last week.”
“Last week, it was a crappy table.”
Her magazine rustled, and I took my shot and missed. Standing, I looked over the table again, deciding to take another. It wasn’t a serious game, and if he said anything, I’d just play stupid. My lips curled up in a smile as I bent over the table.
“Jenks tells me the charms on the counter are Trent’s,” Ivy said, her tone rising in question. I could understand why. I hadn’t touched them: him making me a macaroni statue would have been better. If I used them, I’d feel like I owed him a favor. But to leave them there would be stupid if they would help. Damn it, why did I see ulterior motives in everything?
Disconcerted, I ignored her question, exhaling as I sent my cue gently forward. The balls cracked together, and one dropped in. It was Wayde’s. Sloppy. “Yup,” I said, avoiding her eyes as I maneuvered around the table. She was silent, and I looked up from where I was leaning over the table. Ivy was waiting for more. “He made them. In his spare time. Wild magic.” Which was another reason not to use them. Who knew how the magic had to be broken?
“Mmm,” she said, attention returning to her magazine.
“ ‘Mmm’?” I held the cue stick with both hands, hip cocked. “What does that mean?”
Ivy didn’t look up, still reading as she said, “Maybe I misjudged the little cookie maker. Most of your ex-boyfriends would have told you not to do it. He gave you a weapon.”
“Trent’s not my boyfriend,” I said quickly, and her eyes widened.
“Good God, no,” she said just as fast. “That’s not what I meant. I meant Nick would’ve told you to summon a demon to solve your problem. Marshal would’ve told you to not go at all. Pierce would probably have demanded to go with you, then gotten in the way and screwed it up. Trent, though, gave you a weapon. One you might use.”
I couldn’t help but notice that she’d left Kisten off the list. Lips pressed, I reached for the chalk. “Of course he gave me a weapon,” I said as I chalked the tip and blew the excess off. “He’s a murdering bastard, and he’s protecting his investment.” But it hadn’t looked like he was worried about money when he’d told Al I was going to be of sun and shadow both. What in hell did that mean anyway? Sun and shadow both.
“Turn-blasted businessman,” she said lightly, mockingly.
I leaned against the table, my focus becoming vacant. I was never going to call him that again.“So are you going to use them?” she said, and shifted uncomfortably.
“The charms?” I thought about the Pandora charm he’d made that almost killed me, him freeing Ku’Sox with the singular intent of giving the world something worse than me to deal with and to make me look harmless, and then the finesse he’d needed to first weave a charm that cut me off from the universe, and second bring me back into it as well. “I don’t think so.”
“Mmm.”
“Mmm” again? What is it with her and these one-word answers? “Thanks for taking my finding curses out to Glenn,” I said. “What area are they concentrating on?”
Ivy played with the ends of her hair as she turned a magazine page. “He didn’t tell me.”
Her attitude was stiff, and I frowned as I smacked the balls around, not paying attention. “Is it Nina?” I carefully asked as the balls bounced, most of them ending up on the bumper.
Ivy’s brow furrowed. “No. She’s coping. Felix is taking the situation seriously, and with the three of us together, we might all make it out alive.”
But her jaw was still tense, and I flicked a glance at the empty hallway, listening to pixies arguing over barbecue or ranch. “Daryl?” I asked, not knowing how much leeway I had when it came to her relationships—now that I wasn’t one of them.
“No.” She grimaced at her magazine. “Yes. But that’s not what’s bothering me.”
Tension furrowed my brow, and I forced it smooth as I took a shot and missed. I’d asked. She knew I wanted to know. If I pushed now, she’d shut down.
“Glenn’s not telling me something,” she said softly, and I turned, sitting against the edge of the table to give her my full attention.
“You think he wants to break up?” I asked, fishing for an answer.
Ivy let her magazine fall forward on her lap. “Rachel, listen to me. It’s this HAPA thing. He knows something, and he’s not telling me.”
“Oh.” Moving around the table, I pushed half the striped balls to the center for better play. I was relieved that it wasn’t anything to do with her, Daryl, and Glenn, but I didn’t like the idea that he was withholding information. I didn’t want to chalk it up to human/Inderland tensions, but what else could it be? David’s warning drifted through me, and I shoved it away—but still the thought lingered.