I opened my mouth, but Jenks beat me to it, shouting, "I don't want a new wife! I love my old one. Do you have troll turds in your ears? Get this thing off me!" Jenks shook his wings, dusting heavily as the clip weighed him down.
Two more pixies, both in matching shades of sage green, had risen to flank the head pixy. "He did complain the entire way," the one with the length of steel said.
"Lifted his ass 150 miles, him bitching nonstop," the other with the bow said. This was weird. I'd swear they were the same age, but they didn't look like they were from the same clan. Pixies didn't cooperate like this. At least, pixies east of the Mississippi didn't. Maybe they had to band together in the desert to survive. That might explain why they thought Jenks should take a new wife, too.
"He can't even fly," the second one said, pointing at Jenks with his bow. "Even without the shackles. I say let him go. They want him, and for all his finery and height, he can't fly."
"He's from the east," the pixy in yellow said. "He'll adapt. He's not used to the air. Look at how water fat his flesh is. And his sword," he said, hoisting the one in his hand, and my eyes narrowed. It was Jenks's. "This is pixy steel. Pixy steel! Fifty-four kids he says he has. All living."
At that, the surrounding pixies rose up, gossiping in words too fast for me to understand.
"He lies!" a pixy said. "You can't keep that many children alive."
"Jenks can," I said.
"You're not helping," Ivy called out, and I winced.
"I bet he can!" The head pixy in yellow waved Jenks's sword around. "Look at him!"
Jenks stood with his hands tied before him and his gossamer wings dripping a black dust. Even I had to admit he looked good, especially compared to the gaunt, smaller pixies surrounding him. In another world, in another time, in another size...but he was Jenks, my friend, and my anger grew. I daren't move, though. Not with Ivy having a dozen poisoned arrows pointed at her.
Around us, the pixy women tittered, and I burned when one said loudly, "I don't care if he can fly or not. I'd just unwrap him and wear him like a fur."
"We stole you," the head pixy said to Jenks, gesturing for them to back off. "You belong to us."
"Jenks doesn't belong to anyone!" I shouted, but Ivy was silent. She was a vampire, and vampires were born to be treated like objects, given to others as favors for a day or a lifetime.
At my exclamation, the pixy flew to the bubble and poked at it with Jenks's sword. "You're not big enough to stop us. Get in your car and leave, or we'll kill the vampire."
I swallowed, feeling cold. "Please. I know this is weird, but Jenks has been working with us for over two years. He owns the church we live in. I pay him rent. You can't keep him. He has responsibilities. A job. A mortgage. He's got to get back to his kids because I'm not going to watch them!"
"He owns property?"
It had been the one with the bow, and I nodded as the pixies buzzed over that.
"His garden has so many flowers you can't step without crushing one," I said. "The grass grows so fast, I have to cut it every week. His children are so clever, they stay awake all winter. They play in snow."
"It sounds like paradise," a pixy wearing a flowing brown tunic said with a sigh.
"You aren't helping...," Ivy said softly, her voice rising and falling like music.
The pixy with the bow frowned, taking a higher position than the other two. "I told you we should have asked. They do things differently across the Mississippi."
"We caught him!" the leader insisted, but hope rose in me as I saw a crack in their resolve. "Dragged his sorry ass across six clans, and you want to give him up? His wife is dead, and he's on a quest to spread his seed to the wind. Why else would he be wearing all that red?"
Excuse me?
Ivy made a small sound of disbelief, and I turned to Jenks. He looked as mystified as me.
"Uh, that's what we do where I come from to get safe passage through another pixy's territory," Jenks said.
"You don't just let them cross?" a pixy woman asked, her brown silk furling as she darted up. "How do you find enough food to survive?"
A cultural difference? I thought. The entire mess was the result of a misunderstanding over the color red? "I'm sorry for the mistake," I said, for the first time thinking we might get out of here without a fight. "Can we have him back? He won't wear red anymore. We didn't know."
The pixies were flitting in the sun, the shadows of their wings flashing over Ivy as they argued in small knots. Slowly I began to relax.
"He's a proven provider!" the head pixy said. "We need new breath in our children!" But the bows had been eased and the sword tips had fallen.
"Look," I said, taking a half step forward and halting when the pixies bristled anew at me. "He didn't know wearing red meant that he was trying to spread his, uh, seed."
"Yeah, I didn't know!" Jenks said, flushing. "I can't stay. I gotta get back to my kids!"
"I'm sure we can work out an exchange for your efforts in kidnapping him and bringing him here," I added. "Honey or something. What do you want?"
I held my breath as the three leaders looked at one another and then at their surrounding people as if considering it. I'd buy them an entire tanker of honey if that's what it took.
"Can you get us...maple syrup?" the pixy in yellow said. "A gallon, maybe? The real stuff, not that lizard shit with the corn syrup in it."
I exhaled, my breath shaking in my lungs. "Yes," I said, seeing the lines in Ivy's face ease.
The head pixy's wings became a neutral silver, and he turned to the other two leaders. "For each of us," he added, wanting more after I'd given in so quickly, and I nodded, smiling.
"Three gallons. But Jenks gets his sword back."
"Done!" the three pixies said simultaneously, raising their weapons in salute, and the pixy standing beside Jenks cut his bonds. Jenks gave the buck a nasty look, letting the cut rope fall to his feet. His wings still flat to his back, he raised his hand to catch his thrown sword. Clearly not happy, Jenks jammed his sword away.
It was over, and the pixies by the far rock slide rose up in a whirlwind of sound and color, shouting, "Ku'Sox! The Ku'Sox Sha-Ku'Ru!"
A party? I thought as the air around Jenks and Ivy was suddenly empty of pixy wings. In celebration of a peaceful resolution and three gallons of maple syrup? Smiling, I strode to Jenks, still perched atop the wall. "Are you okay?" I asked, falling to kneel before him, hands curling around him but unable to touch. Never able to touch.
"I'm fine," he muttered, looking embarrassed as he wedged that clip off his wing and wobbled three inches into the air and back down. "Bought for the price of a gallon of syrup."
Ivy's shadow covered us, and I looked up at her as she chuckled. "It was three," she said. "And better that than my life."
Jenks nodded ruefully. "I'm never going to wear red again. Can we just write them a voucher and go?"
I stood, pushing my nasty hair from my shoulder in invitation. "One of us will run into town for it, and then we'll get out of here. Trent will just have to suck it up."
Jenks rose unsteadily and laboriously flew to my shoulder, and my earring pulled as he fell against it. I looked up the path to the unseen car, taking Ivy's arm to be sure she was okay, too.
"You didn't get hit by anything, did you?" I demanded, but she wasn't listening, her eyes riveted to the outcrop of stone behind me. The pixies were shrilling at the piercing croak of a bird, and I turned.
A bird? I thought, and then everything shifted. The Ku'Sox Sha-Ku'Ru wasn't a party; it was a bird. A big-ass bird, like a stork. And it was..."It's eating them," I whispered, horror filling me. "Oh my God, that bird is eating them!"
I stood frozen in disbelief, not comprehending it. The second and third leaders were shouting directions, so fast and high-pitched that I couldn't understand them, but it was clear enough as the arrows and spears once pointed at us now fell on the bird. It cawed, the harsh sound crawling through my mind and making me shudder as it echoed off the stone.
"Oh my God," Ivy gasped.
I spun, blinking when a new shadow fell over us. "You!" I exclaimed stupidly as Trent half-slid to a halt beside us, breathing hard and looking tired. "I told you to wait in the car! We've got this!"
"I can see that." His words clipped, Trent eyed the battle, his lips pressed tight. "Shouldn't we be going?"
Pixies were screaming, the sound becoming panicked. "What, now?" I exclaimed. "We have to help them!"
"The pixies who kidnapped your partner?" Trent said, frowning. "Why?"
"Why?" I echoed him. "Because it was a misunderstanding! We got it worked out. I just need three gallons of maple syrup!"
Trent's face became white. "Oh." He licked his lips and shifted from foot to foot. "Um, maybe we should leave anyway," he said, taking my arm and pulling me a step up the path.
"Rache?" Jenks warbled. "I can't fly."
"Do you not see what's going on here?" I said as I yanked out of Trent's grip and pointed, my finger dropping when a pixy screamed, trying to free itself from the bird's long beak, even as it vanished in a toss and a sharp snap. The pixy's clansmen and women were stabbing at the gray, storklike bird, firing arrows and throwing spears, but it simply jerked its head to catch another warrior who got too close, wings flapping as it hopped to a rock where its footing was better. Feathers gave it protection, and it seemed immune to the poison.
"There is a bird," I said, "eating pixies. Do you have any idea how wrong that is?"
"We need to get out of here," he insisted, and my attention snapped back to him. He tossed the hair from his eyes, and my heart seemed to stop. His ears were bleeding. Again.
"What did you do...," I whispered, scared. Trent began walking away, and I glanced at Ivy, seeing her closed expression. Pushing into motion, I followed him, my heart pounding. He stank like cinnamon and spoiled wine. "What did you do?" I demanded, and he ignored me, not slowing down.
"I thought you needed help," he said, and I yanked at his arm, pulling him to a stop at the top of the hill. Frightened, I grabbed his chin and shifted his head. He let me do it. There was a handprint on his neck, but it was the blood dripping from his ears and nose that struck fear in me. The arch. He had bled at the arch, too, and he smelled like elven magic. Thought we needed help?
"Tell me what you did!" I said as I looked down the hill to the car. The trunk was open, and my scrying mirror was out, glinting in the sun. Vivian was slumbering in the back as if immune to the noise. Sleeping or out cold? "Oh my God!" I exclaimed as I pieced it together. "Did you use my mirror to make a deal with a demon?"
The bird cawed. Ivy stood next to me, and Jenks started swearing. Trent's jaw clenched, jerking as a horrible croaking came from over the hill. "Yes," he said.
The single word hit me like a slap. "That was you under the arch?" I stammered, being drawn forward as Trent doggedly paced downhill to the car. "You put yourself in a ley line and called on a demon under the arch!" I accused. "That force I shoved into those assassins wasn't from you, and it wasn't from the assassins. It was from a demon! And when I pushed the energy back into him, he tried to bury us all under the arch. You asked a demon for help and it almost killed you. And now you go and ask for his help again? Are you insane?"
Jenks had taken to the air, hovering backward and watching our backs as well as our faces. He looked as scared as I felt.
"It can't kill me now," Trent said, his jaw clenched. "You'll be fine. Trust me."
"Trust you!" I shouted, and Ivy grabbed my arm as I went to shove him. Feeling it, Trent stopped, looking angry and unrepentant as he turned to me.
"It can't snatch you because of me!" I exclaimed, shaking off Ivy's hold and pushing him in the chest. Trent stumbled back, but I was moving forward, getting in his face. "You used me! I freed you as a familiar, and you used me!"
Trent became more grim looking, his gaze darting behind me as the sound of fighting pixies grew loud and the harsh cawing of the stork echoed. Ivy was at my shoulder, a hand on her hip. "The coven might be interested in that. Trent Kalamack dabbling in demonology."
"If you tell her, then Rachel doesn't have a chance," he said, and I realized it was true.
"Uh, Rache?" Jenks said nervously, perched on Ivy's shoulder. "They're coming this way."
"You are an idiot," I said softly, shaking inside. "You have no idea what you've done."
Trent tugged his clothes straight as if he were wearing a three-piece suit and not a black T-shirt and a pair of jeans. "I suggest we leave before it finishes eating them."
I dropped back a step, almost laughing, as disgusted as I was. Ivy was staring at him in disbelief. "I'm not going to walk away from this. It's eating them!"
"Rachel, no!" Trent shouted, but I was beyond listening, and I leaned back as he came forward, bringing my foot up just in time for him to run right into it. He hit with a jarring that shifted me, and he fell backward holding his middle, taking Ivy with him. They sprawled on the paved footpath, and as Jenks darted to my shoulder, I turned to the bird.
"Celero inanio!" I shouted, throwing a ball of glowing ever-after at the harshly croaking stork, its ugly neck skin flapping. Yes, it was a black curse, but it was a bird eating pixies-pixies I had found a way to deal with peacefully. I was already mumbling, "I take the smut," as the curse to boil the blood in a living creature sped across the short distance, slamming into the bird to destroy it in a ball of curse-ridden magic.
Except it didn't.
My ball of death exploded inches from the bird, breaking against a flash of black that had enveloped the large bird, protecting it. Sparkles lit the afternoon, falling like a cascade over the protection bubble. The pixies darted back with frightened cries, gathering in a hazing cloud as the bird shook itself and the protection circle vanished.
Cawing, the ugly black stork turned a red eye to me. My gut clenched as I noticed it was slitted like a goat's.
"You stupid fool," Trent gasped from the ground, his eyes tearing as he tried to catch his breath. "It's not a bird. It's a demon."