"Ra-a-a-achel-l-l-l," sang a tiny, irritating voice. It cut clearly through the shifting gears and choking gurgle of the bus's diesel engine. Jenks's voice grated on my inner ear worse than chalk on a blackboard, and my hand trembled in the effort to not make a grab for him. I'd never touch him. The little twit was too fast.
"I'm not asleep," I said before he could do it again. "I'm resting my eyes."
"You're going to rest your eyes right past your stop - Hot Stuff." He nailed the nickname last night's cabbie had given me hard, and I slit an eyelid.
"Don't call me that." The bus went around a corner, and my grip tightened on the box balanced on my lap. "I've got two more blocks," I said through gritted teeth. I'd kicked the nausea, but the headache lingered. And I knew it was two blocks because of the sound of Little League practice in the park just down from my apartment. There'd be another after the sun went down for the nightwalkers.
There was a thrum of wings as Jenks dropped from my earring and into the box. "Sweet mother of Tink! Is that all they pay you?" he exclaimed.
My eyes flashed open. "Get out of my stuff!" I snatched my damp check and crammed it into a jacket pocket. Jenks made a mocking face, and I rubbed my thumb and finger together as if squishing something. He got the idea and moved his purple and yellow silk pantaloons out of my reach, settling on the top of the seat in front of me. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" I asked. "Like helping your family move?"
Jenks gave a yelp of laughter. "Help them move? No freaking way." His wings quivered. "Besides, I should sniff around your place and make sure everything is okay before you blow yourself up when you try to use the john." He laughed hysterically, and several people looked at me. I shrugged as if to say, "Pixies."
"Thanks," I said sourly. A pixy bodyguard. Denon would laugh himself to death. I was indebted to Jenks for finding the spell on my check, but the I.S. hadn't time to rig anything else. I figured I had a few days if he was really serious about this. More likely it was a "don't let the spell kill you on the way out" kind of a thing.
I stood as the bus came to a halt. Struggling down the steps, I landed in the late afternoon sun. Jenks made more annoying circles around me. He was worse than a mosquito. "Nice place," he said sarcastically as I waited for traffic to clear before crossing the street to my apartment house. I silently agreed. I lived uptown in Cincinnati in what was a good neighborhood twenty years ago. The building was a four-story brick, originally built for university upperclass-men. It had seen its last finals party years ago and was now reduced to this.
The black letterboxes attached to the porch were dented and ugly, some having obviously been broken into. I got my mail from the landlady. I had a suspicion she was the one who broke the boxes so she could sort through her tenants' mail at her leisure. There was a thin strip of lawn and two bedraggled shrubs to either side of the wide steps. Last year, I had planted the yarrow seeds I had gotten in a Spell Weekly mail promotion, but Mr. Dinky, the landlady's Chihuahua, had dug them up - along with most of the yard. Little divots were everywhere, making it look like a fairy battlefield.
"And I thought my place was bad," Jenks whispered as I skipped the step with dry rot.
My keys jingled as I balanced the box and unlocked the door at the same time. A little voice in my head had been saying the same thing for years. The odor of fried food assaulted me as I entered the foyer, and my nose wrinkled. Green indoor/outdoor carpet ran up the stairs, threadbare and fraying. Mrs. Baker had unscrewed the lightbulb in the stairway again, but the sun spilling in the landing window to fall on the rosebud wallpaper was enough to find my way.
"Hey," Jenks said as I went upstairs. "That stain on the ceiling is in the shape of a pizza."
I glanced up. He was right. Funny, I never noticed it before.
"And that dent in the wall?" he said as we reached the first floor. "It's just the right size for someone's head. Man... if these walls could talk..."
I found I could still smile. Wait until he got to my apartment. There was a dip in the living room floor where someone had burned out a hearth.
My smile faded as I rounded the second landing. All my things were in the hall.
"What the devil?" I whispered. Shocked, I set my box on the floor and looked down the hall to Mrs. Talbu's door. "I paid my rent!"
"Hey, Rache?" Jenks said from the ceiling. "Where's your cat?"
Anger growing, I stared at my furniture. It seemed to take up a lot more space when it was jammed into a hallway on her lousy plastic carpeting. "Where does she get off - "
"Rachel!" Jenks shouted. "Where's your cat?"
"I don't have a cat," I all but snarled. It was a sore spot with me.
"I thought all witches had a cat."
Lips pursed, I strode down the hall. "Cats make Mr. Dinky sneeze."
Jenks flew alongside my ear. "Who is Mr. Dinky?"
"Him," I said, pointing to the framed, oversized picture of a white Chihuahua hanging across from my landlady's door. The butt-ugly, bug-eyed dog wore one of those bows parents put on a baby so you know it's a girl. I pounded on the door. "Mrs. Talbu? Mrs. Talbu!"
There were the muffled yaps of Mr. Dinky and the sound of nails on the backside of the door, shortly followed by my landlady screeching to try and get the thing to shut up. Mr. Dinky redoubled his noise, scrabbling at the floor to dig his way to me.
"Mrs. Talbu!" I shouted. "Why is my stuff in the hall?"
"Word's out on you, Hot Stuff," Jenks said from the ceiling. "You're damaged goods."
"I told you not to call me that!" I shouted, hitting her door with my last word.
I heard the slamming of a door from inside, and Mr. Dinky's barking grew muffled and more frenzied. "Go away," came a thin, reedy voice. "You can't live here anymore."
The fiat of my hand hurt, and I massaged it. "You think I can't pay my rent?" I said, not caring that the entire floor could hear me. "I've got money, Mrs. Talbu. You can't kick me out. I've got next month's rent right here." I pulled out my soggy check and waved it at the door.
"I changed your lock," Mrs. Talbu quavered. "Go away before you get killed."
I stared at the door in disbelief. She had found out about the I.S.'s threat? And the old lady act was a sham. She shouted clear enough through my wall when she thought I played my music too loud. "You can't evict me!" I said desperately. "I've got rights."
"Dead witches have no rights," Jenks said from the light fixture.
"Damn it, Mrs. Talbu!" I shouted at the door. "I'm not dead yet!"
There was no answer. I stood there, thinking. I didn't have much recourse, and she knew it. I supposed I could stay at my new office until I found something. Moving back in with my mother was not an option, and I hadn't talked to my brother since I joined the I.S.
"What about my security deposit?" I asked, and the door remained silent. My temper shifted to a slow, steady burn, one that could last for days. "Mrs. Talbu," I said quietly. "If you don't give me the balance of this month's rent and my security deposit, I'm going to sit right in front of your door." I paused, listening. "I'm going to sit here until they spell me. I'll probably explode right here. Make a big bloody stain on your carpet that won't come out. And you're going to have to look at that big bloody stain everyday. Hear me, Mrs. Talbu?" I quietly threatened. "Pieces of me will be on your hall ceiling."
There was a gasp. "Oh my, Dinky," Mrs. Talbu quavered. "Where's my checkbook?"
I looked at Jenks and smiled bitterly. He gave me a thumbs-up.
There was a rustle, followed by a moment of silence and the distinctive sound of paper tearing. I wondered why she bothered with the old lady act. Everyone knew she was tougher than petrified dinosaur dung and would probably outlive us all. Even Death didn't want her.
"I'm putting the word out on you, hussy," Mrs. Talbu shouted through the door. "You won't find a place to rent in the entire city."
Jenks darted down as a slip of white was shoved under the door. After hovering over it for a moment, he nodded it was okay. I picked it up and read the amount. "What about my security deposit?" I asked. "You want to come with me to my apartment and look it over? Make sure there're no nail holes in the walls or runes under the carpet?"
There was a muffled curse, shortly followed by more scratching, and another white slip appeared. "Get out of my building," Mrs. Talbu yelled, "before I set Mr. Dinky on you!"
"I love you, too, old bat." I took my key from my key ring and dropped it. Angry but satisfied, I snatched up the second check.
I went back to my things, slowing at the telltale scent of sulfur emanating from them. My shoulders tightened in worry as I stared at my life heaped against the walls. Everything was spelled. I could touch nothing. God help me. I was under an I.S. death threat.
"I can't douse everything in salt," I said as there was a click of a closing door.
"I know this guy who has storage." Jenks sounded unusually sympathetic, and I looked up as I gripped my elbows. "If I ask him, he'll come get it, put everything away for you. You can dissolution the spells later." He hesitated, looking over my music discs carelessly dumped into my largest copper spell bowl.
I nodded, slumping against the wall and sliding down until my rear hit the floor. My clothes, my shoes, my music, my books ...my life!
"Oh no," Jenks said softly. "They spelled your disc of The Best of Takata."
"It's autographed," I whispered, and the hum from his wings dropped in pitch. The plastic would survive a dip in saltwater, but the paper folder would be ruined. I wondered if I wrote to Takata if he would send me another. He might remember me. We did spend a wild night chasing shadows over the ruins of Cincinnati's old biolabs. I think he made a song about it. "New moon rising, sight unseen, Shadows of faith make a risky vaccine." It hit the top twenty for sixteen weeks straight. My brow furrowed. "Is there anything they didn't spell?" I asked.
Jenks landed on the phone book and shrugged. It had been left open to coroners.
"Swell." Stomach knotting, I got to my feet. My thoughts swung to what Ivy had said last night about Leon Bairn. Little bits of witch splattered all over his porch. I swallowed hard. I couldn't go home. How the hell was I going to pay Denon off?
My head started hurting again. Jenks alighted on my earring, keeping his big mouth shut as I picked up my card-board box and went downstairs. First things first. "What's the name of that guy you know?" I asked when I reached the foyer. "The one with storage? If I give him something extra, will he dissolution my things?"
"If you tell him how. He's not a witch."
I thought, struggling to regroup. My cell phone was in my bag, but the battery was dead. The charger was somewhere in my spelled stuff. "I can call him from the office," I said.
"He doesn't have a phone." Jenks slipped off my earring, flying backward at eye level. His wing tape had frayed, and I wondered if I should offer to fix it. "He lives in the Hollows," Jenks added. "I'll ask him for you. He's shy."
I reached for the doorknob, then hesitated. Putting my back to the wall, I pushed aside the sun-faded, yellow curtain to peek out the window. The tatty yard lay quiet in the afternoon sun, empty and still. The drone of a lawn mower and the whoosh from passing cars was muffled through the glass. Lips pressed tight, I decided I'd wait there until I heard the bus coming.
"He likes cash," Jenks said, dropping down to stand on the sill. "I'll bring him by the office after he's locked up your stuff."
"You mean everything that hasn't walked off by itself in the meantime," I said, but knew everything was reasonably safe. Spells, especially black ones, were supposed to be target specific, but you never know. No one would risk extinction for my cheap stuff. "Thanks, Jenks." That was twice now he had saved my butt. It made me uneasy. And a little bit guilty.
"Hey, that's what partners do," he said, not helping at all.
Smiling thinly at his enthusiasm, I set my box down to wait.
