Chapter Twenty-four
I winced at the clatter of the three black potion storage bottles in the sink. Looking up at the night-darkened window, I listened for the whine of adolescent pixy wings. It was just after midnight; Jenks's kids were asleep, and I wanted to keep it that way. Hearing nothing, I shoved my sleeves up higher and dipped my hands into the warm suds. I wouldn't be able to invoke Pierce's charm until tomorrow night, but I had to do something to distract myself from my worry over Ivy, and prepping the charms would help. I still hadn't heard from Cormel, and if no one called me soon, I was calling them.
A box of cold pizza with one piece gone lay open atop Ivy's papers, and a two-liter bottle of pop sat, barely touched. The fridge was gone, leaving an empty space; our food was outside on the picnic table. Behind me on the center counter were the partially prepared bits and pieces of my spell, making a wide semicircle around the open university textbook. There was enough stuff to make three substance charms, and I was going to use it all.
New Year's Eve was my best chance to find enough ambient energy to work the spell, and I wasn't going to bet everything on one go. Not after the locator charms had failed to work. Yes, it had probably been my blood that had been the problem, seeing that Marshal's worked and mine hadn't, but the mere thought that I might do a spell wrong was enough for me to spend the time to stir a little insurance.
Oh God, Marshal, I thought, almost dropping the slippery storage bottle as I remembered my shunning. What was I going to tell him? Or better yet, how was I going to tell him? Hey, hi, I know we just had sex with our clothes on, but guess what I found out! Shunning was contagious. I didn't want him to lose his job because of me. Actually, I didn't want him to lose his job again because of me. I was the freaking black plague.
Mentally tired, I rinsed the bottles in salt water and reached for the dishcloth. And things had been going so well, too-apart from my latest mess, that is. I'd finally gotten the Weres off my case by returning the focus to them. Thanks to my saving Trent, the elves weren't bothering me despite my potential demon, ah, liabilities. The vampires were edgy, but I think I had just taken care of that. Ivy was going to be okay, and our relationship was going to get a lot less chaotic. Just when everything was under control and I might be able to have something normal with a normal guy doing normal things, my own people had come down on me.
"Must have been Tom," I muttered, shoving my sleeves back up and pulling out the drain plug.
Young, attractive guys who have a good job and don't mind a girl who spends a night in the ever-after once a week were hard to find. It wasn't as if Marshal and I had been planning a life together, but damn it, there'd been the chance that it might have gone that way. Eventually. Not anymore. What was wrong with me?
Standing at the black window, I closed my eyes and sighed. That power pull had been fantastic, though. What am I going to tell him?
Grimacing, I turned back to the center counter and the spells waiting to be put together, bottled, and stoppered for tomorrow. I'd take them out to Fountain Square, find an alley, and when the crowd started singing "Auld Lang Syne," I'd invoke them all if I had to. And then Al and I would talk. Get a few things settled.
But even as I was looking forward to it, the thought of arguing with Al in the snow with a naked ghost and a square full of witnesses made me cringe. Maybe I could rent a van and do it in the parking garage. It wasn't as if Al was giving me any choice. I'd tried to call him earlier, but all I'd gotten for my trouble was a lingering headache and a "go away" message. Fine. We could do it the hard way. I had agreed not to summon him, but he hadn't said anything about stealing his latest chunk of meat out from under him.
The soft hum of pixy wings got my attention, and I gave Jenks a closed-lipped smile as he flew in. "Hi, Jenks," I said as I shook the black bottle to get the water out and dried the exterior, impatient to get to the fun stuff on my counter. "I didn't wake up your kids, did I?"
Jenks glanced over my spelling supplies, and a slip of silver dust sifted from him as he hovered over the table. "No. Have you heard from Cormel yet?"
"No." The word was flat, carrying all my worry. "But she'll be fine." And if she isn't, I'm taking up the new profession of master-vampire killer.
He landed on the open pizza box, making a face at the unused garlic dipping sauce. "Fine. Yeah. Going after a banshee is fine. You're both lucky to be alive."
I set the bottle upside down in the cold oven and turned it on low, letting the door shut with a hard thump. There was a clatter as the bottle fell over. "Don't you think we know that?" I said, irritated. "Mia came after us, we did not go after her. What would you like us to have done? Roll over and play dead?"
"Ivy might be okay if you had," he muttered, just within my hearing, and I shook the last drops of water out of the next bottle before giving it a cursory swipe with the towel. It went in beside the first, this time propped up against the wall, and I reached for the last black bottle.
"Ivy thinks it's her fault that Mia learned how to kill without a trace," I said. "She tried to bring her in. She tried, failed, and learned from it. Next time, we'll do it together." I looked at his drooping wings, and added, "All of us. It's going to take all of us. That's one wicked bitch."
His wings blurred into nothing, and feeling better, I set the last bottle in the oven with the others and carefully shut the door. They'd be dry by the time I was ready for them.
Whether from the pixies being asleep, or Ivy being gone-or maybe because Pierce was in the ever-after-the church felt empty. Turning to the center counter, I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked at the clock. Spelling on the back side of the night wasn't the best of times, but it would be okay. "Wine," I said as I reached for the cheap bottle and unscrewed the top. Not one of the finest wines to have graced our kitchen, but it was local, the grapes grown in the soil where Pierce had lived and died.
Squinting, I crouched to put my eyes level with the graduated cylinder and filled it until the meniscus settled right where it should, and as Jenks watched, I dribbled in a little extra.
"You overfilled it," he said dryly, wings clattering as he looked from it to the recipe.
"I know." Not bothering to explain, I picked up the cylinder and made the big no-no of putting it to my lips and doing my impression of "The Drunken Chef." The hint of warmth slipped down my throat as I sipped the level back to where it should be. My mom had said to do the spell exactly the same, and being stupid at eighteen, that's how I had leveled it. Who knew? It might be why it had worked. Arcane earth spells were notoriously difficult to reproduce. It might be something that nebulous that had made it possible the first time.
Three separate batches of the yew and lemon mix were already waiting, and leaving them where they sat, I dumped the wine into the mortar already holding the snipped bits of holly leaf I'd taken from Ivy's Christmas centerpiece earlier. "Don't get your dust in that," I said, waving Jenks off from the top of the open bottle, and the pixy shifted to alight on the overhead rack of spelling utensils instead. Ivy had replaced the tacked-together rack with a solid redwood mesh, and my spelling supplies were again where they should be instead of shoved in cupboards.
"So-o-o-orry," he muttered, and I nodded, more concerned with the spell than his pique.
"Ivy roots," I murmured, reaching for the little measuring cup full of the tiny little rhizomes from one of Jenks's plants in the sanctuary. It had to be airborne roots, not underground, and Jenks's kids had been delighted to harvest them for me. The knobby roots went in, and with a few twists, the scent of chlorophyll mixed with the cheap wine.
It was a lot easier to crush everything this time, not being sick now like I'd been at eighteen. My thoughts went back to Pierce as the soft sounds of rock against rock filled the kitchen, and a whisper of worry lifted through me that tomorrow might be too late. I didn't think Al would give Pierce a body until he had a buyer, enabling him to work the cost of the expensive curse into the deal. Not to mention that Pierce couldn't tap a line given the state he was in. Why would Al make him stronger if he didn't have to? I knew Al wouldn't sell to the first buyer, wanting to up the going price as far as he could. It would take a few days at least.
A curl drifted between me and the mix, and remembering something, I carefully drew a single hair into the mortar and gave the pestle two twists, grinding it before I pulled the hair out. My hair had been to my waist the first time I had done this charm, and it had gotten caught. It might be important. I was betting it was. With this and my spit, I might be investing part of myself in the spell. It was going to be hard enough getting this to work.
I straightened to crack my back. "Holy dust," I murmured, looking for it among the clutter. Jenks's wings hummed and he dropped to hover over the envelope that I'd gathered from the slats under my bed, the only place the pixies didn't clean. It was on sanctified ground, so I figured it was holy enough. And God knew my bed hadn't seen any action lately.
"Thanks," I said absently as I pulled the flap to open it. I wiped the pans of my scales with a tissue, then frowned. A thin smear of lotion showed in the bright overhead lights. Not only would it add aloe, but the dust would stick to it and I wouldn't get enough in the mix.
Sighing, I took the pans to the sink to give them a quick wash. Jenks moved back to the overhead rack, and in the black mirror the window had become, I could see a sifting of dust falling from him. He was worried.
"Ivy is going to be fine," I said over the chatter of running water. "I'll call before I go to bed, to find out how she is, okay?"
"I'm not worried about Ivy, I'm worried about you."