“Oh, hey,” Ivy said after bending to the portable radio and clicking it on. “Have you heard Takata’s latest?”
“Yup.” Glad the pixies were gone, I grabbed more nails as the song in question belted out. “I can’t wait until the winter solstice. Think he’ll ask us to work security again?”
“God, I hope so.”
She turned it up to sing with the refrain—her voice soft but clear. When I finished hammering in the last nail in the row, Ivy maneuvered the final piece of paneling in place, and I tacked in the corners without pause. We worked well together. We always had.
The sound of pixies laughing in the garden assured me everything was fine. Relaxing, I breathed in the distinctive scent of raw wood and insulation. It was a bright day. The heat wave had finally snapped. Jenks was doing dad stuff. Ivy and I were getting back to normal. And she was singing. It couldn’t get much better than that.
My expression softened when I realized she was singing words to a verse that I couldn’t hear. It was the vamp track that Takata put in his music, something special that only the undead and their scions could hear. Well, Trent had a pair of spelled headphones that let him hear it, but that didn’t count. He had offered me a set once. I had turned him down because of what he would have attached to his “gift.” Even so, while hearing Ivy harmonize to Takata’s voice, both rough and smooth, I wished I had a pair. The one time I had listened in with Trent’s headphones, the woman’s tortured, pure voice had been exquisite.
Ivy grabbed the broom and started sweeping. I finished one line of nails, bent upside down for the last few, then started on the next column. Intent on trying to catch what Ivy was singing, I missed a nail, grazing my thumb. I jerked, yelping when the sharp pain zinged through me. My thumb was in my mouth almost before I knew I had nicked it.
“You okay?” Ivy asked, and I nodded, eyeing the red mark on my thumb, then checked out the wall. Crap, I had dented the paneling.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ivy said. “We can put the couch there.”
Tired, I whacked the nail one more time. Tossing the hammer into the toolbox, I sat on the hearth, stretched out my legs, and eyed my thumbnail. It was going to turn purple. I knew it.
Ivy resumed sweeping, her motions slow and even—hypnotic, almost. The music changed from Takata to an obnoxious man screaming about cars, and I leaned to turn it off. My shoulders eased in the new silence. The hush of the broom was soothing, and the garden had gone silent, the pixies off doing pixy things at the far end of the graveyard, no doubt.
Bending sharply, Ivy swept the splinters and dust into the pan, her black hair flashing silver when it hit the sun. The rattle of plastic was soft as she dropped it into the contractor garbage bag. A wry smile came over my face when she began sweeping the entire floor again. I lurched to my feet and started rearranging the tools in the box so I could get the thing shut. I’d return them to my mom this Sunday when I went over for my post-birthday dinner. There was no getting out of it. I just hoped she hadn’t invited anyone else with the intent to play matchmaker. Maybe I should call and tell her Ivy was coming. That would put the curl in her eyelashes. And then she would set an extra place for Ivy, just glad I was with someone.
“How’s your thumb?” Ivy asked into the silence, and I started.
“Fine.” I glanced at it as I came up from snapping the latches on the toolbox. “I hate it when I do stuff like that.”
Ivy propped the broom against the wall by the door and came closer. “Let me see.”
Eager for some sympathy, I held it out, and she took my hand.
A shiver went through me, and, feeling it, Ivy glanced from under her short bangs, iced in gold. “Stop it,” she said darkly. Pissed almost.
“Why?” I said, pulling my hand away. “You did bite me. I know how it feels, and how it makes you feel. I want to find a blood balance. Why don’t you?”
Ivy’s face turned to a shocked surprise. Hell, I had surprised myself, and a stirring of adrenaline tingled under my skin as my pulse quickened.
“I bit you?” she said, anger coloring her words. “You practically seduced me. Played on every instinct I had.”
“Well…you gave me the book,” I shot back. “You expect me to believe you didn’t want me to?”
For a moment she said nothing, eyes slowly dilating as she stood in the sun. I held my breath, not knowing what might happen. If she had to be mad to talk to me, then she had to be mad. But instead of coming back with more anger, she retreated a step. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. I started to protest, and she turned, vanishing past the archway.