Jenks buzzed out of the fireplace with a cloud of soot and an irritating whine. I wondered how long he had been listening in the flue. He landed on a box of tissue and cleaned a spot off his wing, looking like a cross between a dragonfly and a miniature cat. "My, aren't we obsessed," he said, answering my question as to whether he had been eavesdropping.
"You have the I.S. trying to nack you with black magic and see if you aren't a little paranoid." Anxious, I thwacked the box he was sitting on until he took to the air.
He hovered between me and Ivy. "Haven't seen the garden yet, have you, Sherlock?"
I threw the pillow at him, which he easily dodged. It knocked the lamp beside Ivy, and she casually reached out and caught it before it hit the floor. She never looked up from her magazine, never spilled a drop of her coffee perched on her knee. The hair on my neck prickled. "Don't call me that, either," I said to cover my unease. He looked positively smug as he hovered before me. "What?" I said snidery. "The garden has more than weeds and dead people?"
"Maybe."
"Really?" This would be the first good thing to happen to me today, and I got up to look out the back door. "Coming?" I asked Ivy as I reached for the handle.
Her head was bent over a page of leather curtains. "No," she said, clearly uninterested.
So it was Jenks who accompanied me out the back door and into the garden. The lowering sun was heady and strong, making the scents clear as it pulled moisture from the damp ground. There was a rowan somewhere. I sniffed deeply. And a birch and oak. What had to be Jenks's kids were darting noisily about, chasing a yellow butterfly over the rising mounds of vegetation. Banks of plants lined the walls of the church and surrounding stone fence. The man-high wall went completely around the property, to tactfully isolate the church from the neighbors.
Another wall low enough to step over separated the garden from the small graveyard. I squinted, seeing a few plants out among the tall grass and headstones, but only those that became more potent growing among the dead. The closer I looked, the more awestruck I became. The garden was complete. Even the rarities were there.
"It's perfect," I whispered, running my fingers through a patch of lemongrass. "Everything I could ever need. How did it all get here?"
Ivy's voice came from right behind me. "According to the old lady—"
"Ivy!" I said, spinning around to see her standing still and quiet on the path in a shaft of late amber sun. "Don't do that!" Creepy vamp, I thought. I ought to put a bell on her.
She squinted from under her hand, raised against the fading light. "She said their last minister was a witch. He put in the garden. I can get fifty taken off the rent if one of us keeps it up the way it is."
I looked over the treasure trove. "I'll do it."
Jenks flew up from a patch of violets. His purple trousers had pollen stains on them matching his yellow shirt. "Manual labor?" he questioned. "With those nails of yours?"
I glanced at the perfect red ovals my nails made. "This isn't work, this is—therapy."
"Whatever." His attention went to his kids, and he zoomed across the garden to rescue the butterfly they were fighting over.
"Do you think everything you need is here?" Ivy asked as she turned to go inside.
"Just about. You can't spell salt, so my stash is probably okay, but I'll need my good spell pot and all my books."
Ivy paused on the path. "I thought you had to know how to stir a brew by heart to get your witch license."
Now I was embarrassed, and I bent to tug a weed free from beside a rosemary plant. Nobody made their own charms if they could afford to buy them. "Yeah," I said as I dropped the weed, flicking the dirt from under my nails. "But I'm out of practice." I sighed. This was going to be harder than it looked.
Ivy shrugged. "Can you get them off the net? The recipes, I mean."
I looked askance at her. "Trust anything off the net? Oh, there's a good idea."
"There're some books in the attic."
"Sure," I said sarcastically. "One hundred spells for the beginner. Every church has a copy of that."
Ivy stiffened. "Don't get snotty," she said, the brown of her eyes disappearing behind her dilating pupils. "I just thought if one of the clergy was a witch, and the right plants were here, he might have left his books. The old lady said he ran off with one of the younger parishioners. That's probably his stuff in the attic in case he had the guts to come back."
The last thing I wanted was an angry vamp sleeping across the hall. "Sorry," I apologized. "I'll go look. And if I'm lucky, when I go out to the shed to find a saw to cut my amulets, there'll be a bag of salt for when the front steps get icy."
Ivy gave a little start, turning to look at the closet-sized shed. I passed her, pausing on the sill. "Coming? I said, determined not to let her think popping in and out of vamp mode was shaking me. "Or will your owls leave me alone?"
"No, I mean yes." Ivy bit her lip. It was decidedly a human gesture, and my eyebrows rose. "They'll let you up there, just don't go making a lot of noise. I'll—I'll be right there."
"Whatever…" I muttered, turning to find my way up to the belfry.
As Ivy had promised, the owls left me alone. It turned out the attic had a copy of everything I had lost in my apartment, and then some. Several of the books were so old they were falling apart. The kitchen had a nest of copper pots, probably used, Ivy had claimed, for chili cook-offs. They were perfect for spell casting, since they hadn't been sealed to reduce tarnish. Finding everything I needed was eerie, so much so that when I went out to look for a saw in the shed, I was relieved to not find any salt. No, that was on the floor of the pantry.
Everything was going too well. Something had to be wrong.
Six
Ankles crossed, I sat atop Ivy's antique kitchen table and swung my feet in their fuzzy pink slippers. The sliced vegetables were cooked to perfection, still crisp and crunchy, and I pushed them around in the little white cardboard box with my chopsticks, looking for more chicken. "This is fantastic," I mumbled around my full mouth. Red tangy spice burned my tongue. My eyes watered. Grabbing the waiting glass of milk, I downed a third of it. "Hot," I said as Ivy glanced up from the box cradled in her long hands. "Cripes, it's really hot."Ivy arched her thin black eyebrows. "Glad you approve." She was sitting at the table at the spot she had cleared before her computer. Looking into her own take-out box, her wave of black hair fell to make a curtain over her face. She tucked it behind an ear, and I watched the line of her jaw slowly move as she ate.
I had just enough experience with chopsticks to not look like an idiot, but Ivy moved the twin sticks with a slow precision, placing bits of food into her mouth with a rhythmic, somehow erotic, pace. I looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.
"What's it called?" I asked, digging into my paper box.
"Chicken in red curry."
"That's it?" I questioned, and she nodded. I made a small noise. I could remember that. I found another piece of meat. Curry exploded in my mouth, and I washed it down with a gulp of milk. "Where did you get it?"
"Piscary's."
My eyes widened. Piscary's was a combination pizza den and vamp hangout. Very good food in a rather unique atmosphere. "This came from Piscary's?" I said as I crunched through a bamboo shoot. "I didn't know they delivered anything but pizza."
"They don't—generally."
The throaty pitch of her voice pulled my attention up, to find that she was absorbed in her food. She raised her head at my lack of movement and blinked her almond-shaped eyes at me. "My mother gave him the recipe," she said. "Piscary makes it special for me. It's no big deal."
She went back to eating. A feeling of unease drifted through me, and I listened to the crickets over the twin soft scraping of our sticks. Mr. Fish swam in his bowl on the windowsill. The soft, muted noise of the Hollows at night was almost unheard over the rhythmic thumps of my clothes in the dryer.
I couldn't bear the thought of wearing the same clothes again tomorrow, but Jenks told me it wouldn't be until Sunday that his friend could have my clothes despelled. The best I could do was wash what I had and hope I didn't run into anyone I knew. Right now I was in the nightgown and robe Ivy had lent me. They were black, obviously, but Ivy said the color suited me fine. The faint scent of wood ash on them wasn't unpleasant, but it seemed to cling to me.
My gaze went to the empty spot above the sink where a clock should be. "What time do you think it is?"
"A little after three," Ivy said, not glancing at her watch.
I dug around, sighing when I realized I had eaten all the pineapple. "I wish my clothes would get done. I am so tired."
Ivy crossed her legs and leaned over her dinner. "Go ahead. I'll get them out for you. I'll be up until five or so."
"No, I'll stay up." I yawned, covering my mouth with the back of my hand. "It isn't like I have to get up and go to work tomorrow," I finished sourly. A small noise of agreement came from Ivy, and my digging about in my dinner slowed. "Ivy, you can tell me to back off if it's none of my business, but why did you join the I.S. if you didn't want to work for them?"