For a Few Demons More(204)

If a pixy could hover guiltily, Jenks was. “Nothing much,” he said, darting past Ivy and me into the sanctuary. “Nothing that wouldn’t have happened anyway.”

My eyes narrowing, I followed him back to the party, setting Ceri’s hat on the piano in passing. Ivy was right behind me. “What did you do, Jenks?”

“Nothing that wouldn’t have happened on its own,” he whined, shedding green sparkles onto the pool table. “I like where I live,” he said, landing behind the side pocket in his best Peter Pan pose. “You two women are too flaky to put my family in your hands. Just ask anyone here. They’d agree with me!”

Ivy huffed and turned her back on him, muttering under her breath, but I could tell she was relieved her new landlord wasn’t her mom.

“What did you do, Jenks?” I demanded.

Ivy’s eyes narrowed in a sudden thought. Faster than I would have believed possible, she snatched up a pool cue and slammed it down inches from Jenks. The pixy shot up into the air, almost hitting the ceiling. “You little bug!” she exclaimed, and Ceri grabbed Keasley and the cake and headed toward the kitchen. “The paper says Trent’s been released.”

“What!” Appalled, I gazed at Jenks up near the ceiling. Keasley jerked to a brief halt in the hallway, then continued on. David had dropped his head into his hands, but I think he was trying not to laugh.

“The fingerprint they lifted from Brett and the paperwork was lost,” Ivy said, smacking a beam with the cue to make Jenks dart to the next one over. “They dropped the charges. You stupid pixy! He murdered Brett. She had him, and you helped Quen get him off?”

“Wha-a-a-at,” he griped, moving to my shoulder for protection. “I had to do something to save your pretty little ass, Rache. Trent was thi-i-i-i-is close to taking you out.” His voice went high in exaggeration. “Arresting him at his own wedding was stupid, and you know it!”

My anger evaporated as I remembered Trent’s expression when the cuffs ratcheted shut. God, that had felt good. “Okay, I’ll give you that,” I said, trying to see him on my shoulder. “But it was fun. Did you see the look on Ellasbeth’s face?”

Jenks laughed, doubling up. “You should have seen her dad’s,” he said. “Oooooh, doggies, that man was more upset than a pixy papa with eight sets of girls.”

Ivy set the pool cue on the table and relaxed. “I don’t remember it,” she said softly.

Her lack of memory was disturbing, and trying to ignore that I was missing chunks of my week, too, I looked up as Ceri and Keasley came back in, the cake almost on fire from all the candles they’d stuck into it.

I couldn’t very well stay mad when they started singing “Happy Birthday,” and I felt the tears prick again that I had people in my life who cared enough to go through the misery of trying to pretend everything was normal when it wasn’t. Ceri settled the cake on the coffee table, and I hesitated only briefly at my wish. It had been the same every year since my father had died. My eyes closed against the smoke as I blew the candles out. They smarted, and I wiped them with no one saying anything as they clapped, teasing to find out what the wish was.

Taking up the big knife, I started slicing the cake, layering perfectly triangular pieces on paper plates decorated with spring flowers. The chatter became overly loud and forced, and with Jenks’s kids everywhere it was a madhouse. Ivy wouldn’t look at me as she took her plate, and seeing as she was the last, I settled myself across from her.

David followed Ceri and the cat to the piano, where she started playing some complicated tune that was probably older than the Constitution. Keasley was trying to keep the pixies occupied and out of the frosting, entertaining them with the way his wrinkles disappeared when he puffed his cheeks out. And I was sitting with a plate of cake on my lap, absolutely miserable and having no cause for it. Or not really.

The awful feeling of loss I had felt in the FIB conference room rose from nowhere, pulled into existence by the reminder of Kisten’s death. I’d thought Ivy and Jenks were dead. I’d thought everyone I cared about had been severed from me. And that I had given up and accepted the damage of a demon curse when I thought I’d nothing left to lose had opened my eyes really fast. Either I was an emotional wimp and had to learn to handle the potential loss of everyone I loved without caving or—and this was the one that scared me the most—I had to come to grips and accept that my black-and-white outlook on demon curses wasn’t so black and white anymore.

I had a sick feeling that it was the latter. I was going bad. The lure of demon magic and power was too much to best. But damn it, when she’s fighting demons and nasty elves with the strength of the world’s economics on their side, a girl has to get a little dirty.