But Dr. Williams was squinting at his van and shaking his head. “Your financing came through fine. I simply can’t do it. I’m sorry. If you’ll excuse me…”
Crap. The first guy to come out here hadn’t been able to either.
The man tried to leave, but Ivy moved with a vampire quickness, surprising all of us. Giving me a tight-lipped look, she muttered to me, “We’re going to talk about this,” and then to Dr. Williams, blinking at her suddenly before him, “Your ad says—”
“I know what the ad says,” he interrupted. “I wrote it. I told you, we don’t have the experience for your situation.”
He got another step down before Ivy was in front of him again, a dangerous thinning of brown around her pupil. He stopped, angry as he took off his purple ribbon. His disregard for the danger she represented surprised me, until I decided that if he could sanctify ground, he could probably take care of himself. I ran my eyes over him again, new thoughts sifting through me.
“Look,” he said, dropping his head. When it came back up, there was an expression of warning in his gaze. “If it was just resanctifying it, I could do it, but your church has been blasphemed.”
My lips parted, and Ivy crossed her arms over her chest in an unusual show of worry. I twisted a demon curse on blasphemed ground without the protection of my aura? Great.
“Blasphemed!” Jenks exclaimed, silver sparkles sifting from him. In the bushes there was a high-pitched call from a winged eavesdropper, quickly hushed.
The man looked from the bush to me. “From the bedrooms up to the front door,” he said, clearly resigned he wasn’t leaving until I was satisfied. “The entire church is contaminated. I’d have to get the demon smut off first, and I don’t know how to do that.”
His lack of fear seemed to give Ivy something to tie her emotions to and bring them back under control, but Jenks clattered his wings aggressively. He was getting ready to pix the man, and their attitudes were starting to tick me off. If Dr. Williams couldn’t do it, he couldn’t do it.
“Jenks,” I admonished, “back off. If he can’t do it, it’s not his fault.”
The doctor’s grip on his tackle box tightened, his pride clearly feeling the sting. “It’s usually the coroner who is called in to clean up failed demon summonings, not me.”
Ivy stiffened, and before she could get all vampy, I interjected, “I didn’t call the demon. She showed up on her own.”
He laughed bitterly, as if he had caught me in a lie. “She?” he mocked. “Female demons can’t cross the lines.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
That made him pause, his expression taking on a hint of respect. Then he shook his head and his expression became hard. “Demon practitioners have a life expectancy of months, Ms. Morgan. I suggest you change your profession. Before your state-of-aliveness does it for you.”
Dr. Williams took a step down, and I shot after him, “I don’t deal in demons. She showed up on her own.”
“That’s my point.” His feet were on the sidewalk, and he stopped and turned. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Tamwood, Jenks…” His gaze lifted to me. “…Ms. Morgan, but this is outside my current abilities. If the ground hadn’t been cursed, there would be no problem, but as it is…?” Shaking his head again, he headed for his van.
I shifted the garment bags to my other arm. “What if we got the ground cleaned?”
He stopped at the back of his van to open it and set his toolbox in it. He slammed it shut, his purple ribbon still in his grip. “It would be cheaper to move the bodies out of the cemetery and build a new church on hallowed ground.” He hesitated, his attention flitting to the copper sign above the church door, proudly stating VAMPIRIC CHARMS. “I’m sorry. But you should count yourself lucky you even survived.”
Shoes scuffing the pavement, he disappeared around the side of the van. The sound of his driver’s-side door shutting seemed loud in the quiet street, drawing attention to the tinkling of an ice cream truck. As his van drove away, Ivy sat on the second step down. Saying nothing, I sat beside her, draping the bags over my knees. After a moment of hesitation, Jenks landed on my shoulder. Together we watched the ice cream truck trundle closer, its merry tune sounding especially irritating.
In an eyeball-hurting, shrill cloud, Jenks’s kids flocked over to it, diving in and out of the man’s windows until he stopped. He had been coming down here every day since the first of July to sell a two-dollar snow cone to a family of pixies.