Traffic among Cincy's tight buildings was clogged, the night gloom making the oncoming car lights all the brighter. It was going to be stop-and-go all the way to the interstate, and I almost wished I'd taken the longer way through Old Newport, but the FIB building was right in downtown Cincy, and the Hollows were just over the bridge. Once I got on the expressway, I'd be home in ten minutes.
"Accident?" I guessed, glancing across the narrow front seat of my convertible to Ivy, chilling as she watched nothing, her expression blank as she dwelled on who knew what. Her long fingers spun a world-weary, holed coin laced on a faded purple ribbon around her neck like it was a rosary. She kept it as a reminder that she couldn't love without hurt, and it worried me.
Jenks buzzed his wings to warm himself as he sat on the rearview mirror and looked backward. "You want me to go look?"
I flicked my attention to the heater controls, cranked to warm the already hot car. If he'd offered, it wasn't too cold for him outside, but for him to risk his core temp dropping to satisfy my curiosity was not what our partnership was about. "Nahh. It's probably nightwalkers."
Jenks's heels drummed against the mirror. "Sun's been down for over two hours."
I nodded, inching forward another three car lengths and just missing the light. Sighing, I cracked the window. It smelled like hot strawberries in here.
It had been forty years since the Turn and all the various Inderland species had come out of hiding to save humanity from extinction. Night and graveyard shifts had taken on entirely new meanings. What I was stuck in now was the dark-loving parts of Inderland trying to get to work and the late-working humans trying to get home. Rush hour shifted with the sun, two hours before sunrise and two hours after sunset being the worst. We were at the tail end of it.
My elbow went onto the tiny lip of the closed window and my fist propped up my head. Between Trent's offer and the coven wanting my head, I wasn't in the best of moods. A sigh slipped from me as I counted the people passing with cell phones against their ears.
"I told you not to worry about it, Rache," Jenks said, mistaking my worry. "I owe you lots more than lousy bail money."
"Thanks, Jenks," I said, accelerating when the light changed. "I appreciate it. I'll pay you back when I can." I'm so sick of not being able to make it on my own.
Ivy reached for the chicken strap when I took the corner tight, only to stop short at another light. "It's a slump," she said, her gray voice seeming to ease out of the dark corner of my car. "We all have them. It's part of being an independent."
"Yeah." Jenks dropped to the steering wheel, grapevining on it as the light changed and I turned. "Did I ever tell you about the time I was working for the I.S. to help feed my family? Matalina had just had another set of quads and things were looking ugly. I had to take a job for hazard pay to babysit this witch no one else would touch."
I couldn't stop my smile. "Best backup I ever had, or ever will have."
The pixy's wings moved faster as I accelerated. "Thanks."
A soft, happy sound came from Ivy, and he turned at the unfamiliar noise. The living vamp wasn't always gloomy, but she was never obvious about her good moods. The pixy took flight, buzzing an irritating circle around her. "I love you, too, Ivy," he said with just the right amount of sarcasm to keep things light.
Her long fingers waved him away, slowly so there was no chance of hitting him. Two years ago, if anyone had told me that I'd abandon my I.S. job to go independent with a living vampire and a pixy, I would've said they were crazy. It wasn't that we didn't do well together. We did. We did fantastically together. But my decisions, which always seemed sound at the time, had a tendency to backfire - badly. And the coven trying to kidnap me was really bad. Signing that paper of Trent's to get out of it was even worse.
I inched forward, eyes on the red taillights of the cars stopped on the interstate/parking lot. I wasn't going to let Kalamack's offer get to me. "So, Ivy," I said, trying to shift my thoughts. "What's going on with you and Glenn?"
The living vampire's eyes glinted as she flicked her attention to Jenks. "You told her!" she exclaimed, and my lips parted. Told me? Jenks knew? Knew what?
Jenks's wings clattered, and he flitted to the far side of the car, well out of her reach. "I didn't tell her nothing!" he shouted, laughing. "Tink's contractual hell, Ivy, I didn't tell her! She must have figured it out. She's not stupid!"
The car jerked as I hit the brakes before I needed to, but I wanted to look at Jenks. "Something is going on. I knew it!"
"There's no anything," Ivy protested, her face red in the light from the oncoming traffic. "Nothing is going on. Nothing!"
"Nothing?" Jenks blurted out, unable to keep quiet anymore. "You think - "
"Shut up, Jenks," Ivy snarled.
His wings humming, he hung in the middle of the car as if nailed to the air. He was holding his breath, and silver sparkles were drifting from him to make a light bright enough to read by. The pitch from his wings was starting to make my eyeballs hurt. Grinning, I looked across to Ivy. "You'd better tell me or he's going to explode."
"They've been on three dates," Jenks said, and Ivy snatched for him.
My smile widened as Jenks frantically darted about the car. "I can't!" he shouted. "Ivy, I can't! I can't not say anything!"
Sullen, Ivy slumped in her seat, giving up. "I can't believe you told her. You promised."
The pixy landed on the wheel as I put the car in motion and merged into "traffic" when a big SUV made some space. "He didn't tell me," I said as I waved thanks to the guy. "Glenn's coat smells like you." I made a face. "And honey. I don't want to know why. Really."
Jenks's wings halted. "Honey? Honey and gold?" he asked, and Ivy seemed to cringe.
"Yes," I said, able to identify the hot-metal smell now. "Sun-warmed gold. And honey."
Hands on his hips, Jenks turned to Ivy. "You told me Daryl was leaving."
Daryl? Who in hell is Daryl?
Ivy's expression became bothered. "She is. Soon as she finds a place." She?
"Like that's ever gonna happen!" Jenks exclaimed. "The woman is sex in sandals!"
"Glenn isn't going to kick her out!" Ivy said loudly. "She's not well. "
"No wonder with Glenn keeping her up all night doing the nasty! "
"Hey!" Ivy exclaimed, eyes going black. "That's uncalled for! He hasn't touched her."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I said, sneaking glances at them both. "Who is Daryl?" And why haven't I heard about her before?
Jenks's wings stopped moving, and I thought I saw a flash of panic in him as Ivy forced her expression to neutral. Both of them seemed to pull three steps back in their thinking, and after a moment, Ivy said, "Just a woman we met on a run when you were in the ever-after. She needed some help. A place to stay. Glenn is putting her up until she finds her feet."
Jenks was silent as he looked at the car's ceiling, so I turned to Ivy - waiting.
"It's not any different from you foisting Ceri off on Keasley," she muttered. "I couldn't bring her to the church. Glenn is helping her out is all."
"Helping her right out of her clothes, I bet," Jenks said loudly, then darted to my shoulder when Ivy flicked her finger at him.
"She is not having sex with Glenn," Ivy continued. "I'd know."
"Yeah, you'd know because you're dating him," Jenks said. "Did you give him the dating guide yet?"
"Jenks!" she said, dismayed now, and he darted away from her snatch for him.
"How about kissing him? Did you at least kiss him yet?" he asked, laughing.
A low noise came from Ivy, almost a growl, and she seemed to melt into the cars darkness. My breath slipped out, and I put my blinker on to get in the lane for the bridge traffic; someone would let me in. Yeah, she'd kissed him - within an inch of his life, I bet.
I curled in my lower lip and glanced at Jenks. The pixy gestured for me to go for it, and I did. "Have you bitten him?" I asked, needing to know. He was my friend, too.
Ivy said nothing, and Jenks hummed his wings. "Did'ja?" he needled. "Did he?"
Still she said nothing, telling me she had, and I wondered if this might be a big mistake or one of the best things in Ivy's life. Glenn was nothing if not solid. "He doesn't want to go vamp, does he?" I asked, half joking but afraid of her answer. I was the last person to advocate shunning vampires as friends, but if you didn't know what you were doing, or the vampire was a real predator, you were in trouble. Glenn and Ivy were all of the above.
"No."
She was down to one-word answers, but she was still talking. Jenks's relieved expression told me it was more than she'd told him - which made me feel good. "Good," I said, careful to keep my eyes on the passing traffic to give her some privacy. "I like him the way he is."
"You'd like him more as a vampire. I can tell. I've seen it before." She sounded wistful, and I looked across the dark car at her, trying to hide my alarm.
"Ivy..."
"He doesn't want to go vamp," she said, flicking her eyes at me and then away. "That's one of the things I like about him."
Jenks winced, wings flat against his back. He knew as well as I that what you wanted didn't mean crap if the vampire you were with wanted something else. She was alive, so she couldn't turn him - only dead vampires could do that - but she could bind him, make him a shadow. Not that she would mean to, but accidents happened in the throes of passion. Hell, I roomed with her, and that was hard enough. Adding sex or blood to the mix could be deadly, which was why I'd finally made our relationship strictly platonic - that it had taken almost two years of confusing emotions and two bites between us to do it was beside the point.
I darted a nervous look at Jenks. "And he's okay with you going somewhere else for blood?" I asked hesitantly. Ivy never talked to me about her boyfriends. Her girlfriends either.
Gazing out the window at the night, Ivy said softly, "Who said I was?"
"No fairy-assed way!" Jenks exclaimed, and I gave him a look telling him to shut up.
Turning to us, she shrugged in embarrassment. "I told you I didn't need much. It's the act, not the amount. I'm not going to make him a shadow. Piscary taught me to be careful, if nothing else." Her eyebrows were raised in challenge as a flush colored her usually pale face. "Jealous?" she asked as she took in my alarmed expression.
Oh. My. God. "No, I think it's great," I finally stammered. Ivy and I had a... balanced relationship. Adding blood to it, no matter how right it felt, would destroy exactly what we admired most in each other. Her dating Glenn was a very good thing. I think.
"Urn, you won't say anything to his dad, will you?" she asked. "Glenn wants to tell him. He's not embarrassed as much as not wanting to - "
"To deal with Edden telling him it's a bad idea to date your coworkers," I finished for her before she could even think to bring up the dangers of dating a vampire, even a living one.
Ivy pointed to a break I could slip into, and I hit the gas, eager to be moving again. "I'm being smart about this," she said as the car swung and we shifted from the momentum.
"I won't say anything unless Edden asks me first." Ivy and Glenn? Am I that blind, or was I just not looking for it? The bridge was ahead, and beyond that, the lights of the Hollows.
"Thank you," she said, her entire posture easing as she settled into the seat. "Glenn... I wasn't expecting this. He's not after my blood, and we like the same stuff."
From the rearview mirror, Jenks snickered. "Guns, violence, crime scene photos, leather, sex, and women. Yeah, I can see that."
"I think it's good," I said again, hoping he'd shut up, but it was pretty nearly the same list that had brought Ivy and me together.
Jenks laughed. "Has he let you hold his gun yet?"
I smiled as Ivy stiffened.
"The man has a big gun," the pixy continued, his words innocent, but his tone full of innuendo. "It's got shiny bullets. You like shiny, don't you, Ivy? I bet Daryl has seen his gun."
"God, Jenks! Grow up!" she exclaimed, and the pixy snorted.
We inched forward another car length, and Ivy swung her hair away from her face, the oncoming traffic lighting it. "You're okay with this?" she asked, as if she needed my approval, not because we'd almost been more than roommates, but because we had both loved Kisten and he was dead. I nodded, and she relaxed. My shoulders slumped at the reminder of his bright blue eyes, his lips curving up in a smile I'd never see again.
"Nice," Jenks said from the mirror. "Now she's thinking about Kisten. Way to go, Ivy."
I shrugged, eyes on the road. "And that's okay," I said, comfortable with the ache.
Ivy was silent as we moved forward and stopped, moved forward and stopped, lost in her own thoughts, probably tinged with guilt. I'd already had my rebound relationship. Solid, dependable, fun Marshal, who could scuba dive and roller-skate. It could have been a really great friendship, seeing that he liked complex relationships and I was nothing if not that, but then I got shunned and he left. I didn't blame him. I'd actually seen him a few weeks ago at the Old Newport Theater with a woman who had red hair longer than mine. He hadn't even waved, just looked at me and walked away with his arm around her waist.
A space opened before me, and I hit the accelerator as my lane started to move. I picked up speed, turning onto the bridge and bumping over the bad pavement. As I had expected, traffic eased, and I let up on my death grip on the wheel. Ahead of us, the Hollows was beautiful with light, and I sneezed, jerking unexpectedly. "Bless you," Ivy said and Jenks chuckled.
"That's funny," he said. "A vampire blessing."
I would have agreed with him, but my gut cramped up, stopping my words. "Ow," I said, putting a hand to my middle. Ivy turned to me. "You okay? You look green."
"I feel green." Twisting, I took a quick look behind me to see if I could shift into the exit lane. "My gut cramped up is all. I'm fine." But I wasn't. I was dizzy, too. It was almost like the time - Shocked, I looked at Jenks. He was looking at me with the same horrified expression. Crap. It was after sunset. Someone was summoning Al, and since I had his summoning name, they were going to get me instead.
"Rachel?" Ivy questioned, clueless.
No! I thought, scared. I wasn't a demon. I could not be summoned like this!
But I'd been summoned before by black-arts witches trying for Al, and this was exactly what it had felt like.
My breath hissed in as another wave of pain hit me. A horn blew behind us, and I yanked the car back into my lane. "No," I panted through my teeth. "I won't go. You can't make me."
"She's being summoned!" Jenks shrilled, and Ivy's face, now close to mine, became terrified. "Ivy, she's being summoned!"
"Pull over!" Ivy exclaimed. "Rachel, stop the car!"
I couldn't think, it hurt that bad. My hands gripped the wheel and I seized, the engine racing until I jerked my foot off the gas. The car lurched, and my head hit the wheel. Tears pricked, and I held my breath, trying to make the world stop spinning. Damn it, I should have insisted that Al give me my password back. But as long as I had his, he couldn't abduct anyone.
"Ivy! Do something!" Jenks yelled as another pain ripped through me. I let go of the wheel to clutch my middle. Ivy grabbed the wheel as the car swerved. Vampiric incense rolled over me, and the car jerked as it hit the curb and swung back.
My head hit the wheel again, and a horn blew. "Ow," I moaned, trying to open my eyes. I could smell ashes. I wouldn't go. I was not a demon!
Vertigo hit, and I reached out, grasping anything as the ground was jerked from me, hands digging into the door, the seat... anything.
"Get out, Jenks!" Ivy screamed. "We're going to hit!"
There was a quick hum of wings, and then a terrifying jerk. The sound of plastic splintering and the screaming of wheels was loud. My face hit something that felt like a wall and smelled like plastic. The hold on my will cracked, and with the suddenness of a drop of water leaving a faucet, I felt my body suck inward, pulling my soul and aura with it.
And I wasn't in the car anymore.
The sudden cessation of pain was a shock. I tried to take a breath, but I didn't have lungs. I was in the ley lines, the warmth and tingling sensation familiar as I was pulled who knew where. Somewhere between my car hitting something and now, I had accepted the smut of the demon curse and the pain had vanished. It hurt only when you resisted.
Oh my God, Ivy and Jenks. They had to be okay. I think the airbag had deployed. We'd hit something, and I was okay, but Ivy and Jenks...
Anger replaced my fear. Someone had pulled me out of existence, causing an accident that I'd live through but that my friends might not. Jenks, I thought, imagining his fragile body against the glass, slowly going cold in the night air as no one looked for him. Damn it, someone was going to pay for this!
I'd traveled ley lines enough to know how to keep my soul together, and once I relaxed, it was absurdly easy. Al refused to teach me how to jump the lines by myself, but I could ride them. A tingling whispering through my thoughts gave me warning, and I stiffened as my aura rose through my mind, tapping into the demon archive to find out what I looked like, then turning the energy of the ley line into a body. At least, that's what Al said that itchy feeling was.
I shuddered, tasting the disjointedness of what felt like a broken ley line slice raw across my awareness, tasting of salt and cracked stone. The uncomfortable feeling ran through me like water in a saltshaker, and I squirmed as I felt myself take shape with an unusual slowness, as if everything was being checked twice.
My lungs were filling with air that was just a shade more substantial than I was, and I stumbled, not quite solid yet. I was standing, though, which was a lot better than showing up facedown. Not yet visible to my summoner, I sniffed deeply. There was no scent of burnt amber - I was in reality, and that was a relief. I'd be dealing with people. A demon might be a problem, but I could convince people to let me out, and then I could do some damage. I knew how to play this game. When summoned, demons couldn't lie except by omission, but I wasn't a demon.
There was a faint hum of chanting. I was in a high-ceilinged, round room, dimly lit with a white floor etched in black to make circles intersecting circles. Granite, I thought, thinking it was almost the inverse of Al's kitchen floor. I was trapped in the center of a huge six-pointed star that took up most of the room. The protection circle holding me was actually a shallow ditch made to contain salt, blood... whatever. It glowed faintly, the thick haze fading to a soft shimmer a mere three inches above the floor. The sound of gulls turned my attention upward to the open round skylight high above. No clouds, but the clear transparency of dusk told me it was sunset.
Holy crap! Was I on the West Coast? How in hell was I supposed to get home?
With a soft shiver, my aura finished rising through me, carrying the thought of my body with it and coalescing around my mind to leave a nasty taste of ash on my tongue. I had arrived.
Squinting, I brought a hand up to shade my eyes to better see the five people standing at equal intervals around the six-pointed star. I didn't look like Al, but he could appear as anything he wanted. Any demon summoner worth his salt would know that.
Abruptly I realized where the soot taste was coming from, and horror filled me. I was covered in ash. The faint white haze on my clothes was some dead person's ashes!
"Oh my God!" I shouted, smacking at myself to get it off. The chanting abruptly stopped as I danced about the interior of the circle, beating the chunky dust off me. It only made things worse, and I began coughing on someone's dead grandmother. My eyes watered, and I finally gave up, glaring at them from around my hair, now all over the place. Damn it, I was covered in strawberries and human remains. This was really gross, but the more I brushed at it, the more it stuck to my leather coat, like pixy dust on wet leaves.
Disgusted, I slowly turned in a circle to look at them. Jaw clenched, I tapped the nearest ley line, feeling that same disjointed cracked sensation again, and I wondered if this was why the U.S.-wide coven meetings were held here. If you weren't born to it, trying to use the ley lines on the West Coast would be like Russian roulette. Earth magic wouldn't work at all within a hundred miles of the ocean, a fact that led ley-line witches to think that they were superior to earth witches, but earth magic functioned on fresh water, and put a ley-line witch on a boat - any boat - and they were in trouble without a familiar. I was on the West Coast? Al would laugh his ass off.
Between us, the opalescent sheet of the ever-after showed a hint of all their collective auras, not a shade of black among them. My pulse quickened. This might be harder than I thought. These people looked professional, not like the laughable excuse for black-arts witches dressed in hokey black robes who had once summoned me into a basement. The summoning pattern was odd, too. Not that I'd been in the middle of many, but usually it was a five-pointed star, not six-. This was an old configuration. If it had been a friendly spell, I'd be at the position of power where I could draw from the other six. Here, I was their prisoner.
Two women, three men, varying ages. They were dressed professionally in pastels and dark colors - all solid, with no patterns that could disguise a written charm or symbol of power. The tallest had a laptop open on the high stool next to her. Their manner was subdued and confident, not excited, as I'd imagined, seeing as they were summoning a demon. All were looking expectantly at me. And outside the formal circle, standing submissively, like a dog, behind the woman with a laptop, was Nick.