The Outlaw Demon Wails (The Hollows #6)

The Outlaw Demon Wails (The Hollows #6) Page 3

I set the stack of unopened desk organizers I'd bought last month on the scratched hardwood floor of the sanctuary, wincing at the high-pitched squeal of pixy children as they swarmed into the nook of my desk that I had just opened up. They weren't moving in for the winter yet, but Matalina was getting a jump on prepping my desk. I couldn't blame her for the fall cleaning. I didn't use my desk much, and there was more dust gathering than work done at it.

The urge to sneeze took me, and I held my breath, eyes watering until the feeling evaporated. Thank you, God. I glanced at Jenks at the front of the church, where he was keeping a fair number of his younger kids busy, and out of the way, with decorating the sanctuary for Halloween. He was a good dad, a part of him that was easy to overlook when he was out busting bad guys with me. I hoped I found half as good a man when I was ready to start a family.

The memory of Kisten - blue eyes smiling - swam up, and my heart seemed to clench. It had been months, but reminders of him still came fast and hard. And I didn't even know where the thought of children had come from. There wouldn't have been any with Kisten, unless we fell back on the age-old tradition of borrowing a girlfriend's brother or husband for a night, practices born long before the Turn, when to be a witch would sign your death warrant. But now even that hope was gone.

Jenks met my eyes, and a gentle dusting of gold contentment slipped from him as he watched Matalina. His pretty wife looked great. She had been fine all this summer, but I knew Jenks was watching her like the proverbial hawk with the onset of the cold. Matalina barely looked eighteen, but pixy life spans were a mere twenty years, and it made me heartsick that it was only a matter of time before we'd be doing this with Jenks as well. A secure territory and steady food supply could do only so much in lengthening their lives. We were hoping that by removing the need for them to hibernate they all would benefit, but there was a limit to what good living, willow bark, and fern seed could do.

Turning away before Jenks could see my misery, I put my hands on my hips and stared at my cluttered desk.

"'Scuse me," I said, pitching my voice high as I edged my hands among the darting shapes of Matalina's eldest daughters. They were chatting so fast that it sounded like they were speaking another language. "Let me get those magazines out of your way."

"Thank you, Ms. Morgan!" one hollered cheerfully, and I carefully pulled out the stack of Modern Witchcraft for Today's Young Woman out from under her as she rose up. I never read them, but I hadn't been able to turn down the kid on my doorstep. I hesitated with the stack in my arms, not knowing if I should throw them out or put them next to my bed to someday read, maybe, finally dumping them on the swivel chair to deal with later.

A fluttering of black paper rose up as Jenks flew into the rafters with a small paper bat trailing after him by a thin thread. The smell of rubber cement mixed with the spicy scent of chili slow-cooking in the Crock-Pot Ivy had bought at a yard sale, and Jenks taped the string to a beam before dropping down for another. The swirl of silk and four-part harmony pulled my attention back to my desk, now barren, making the tiny nooks and drawers a pixy paradise done in oak. "All set, Matalina?" I asked, and the tiny woman smiled with a duster made from the fluff of a dandelion in her hand.

"This is wonderful," she said, her wings a blur of nothing. "You are too generous, Rachel. I know how much of a bother we all are."

"I like you staying with us," I said, knowing I'd find pixy tea parties in my spice drawer before the week was through. "You make everything more alive."

"Noisy, rather," she said, sighing as she looked to the front of the church and the papers Ivy had spread to protect the hardwood floor from the arts and crafts. Pixies living in the church was a bloody nuisance, but I'd do anything to put off the inevitable another year. If there was a charm or spell, I'd use it in a heartbeat, regardless of its legality. But there wasn't. I had looked. Several times. Pixy life spans sucked.

I smiled wistfully at Matalina and her daughters as they set up housekeeping, and after rolling the top of the desk down to leave the now-traditional one-inch gap, I grabbed my clipboard and looked for somewhere to sit. On it was a growing list of ways to detect a demon summoning. In the margin was a short list of people who might want me dead. But there were safer ways to kill someone than sending a demon after them, and I was betting the first list would get me closer to who was summoning Al than the second. After I exhausted the local stuff, I'd look out of state.

The lights were high and the heat was on against the hint of chill in the air, turning the autumn night to a noon summer. The church's sanctuary wasn't much of a sanctuary anymore; the pews and altar had been removed even before I had moved in, leaving a wonderfully open space with narrow stained-glass windows stretching from knee height to the tall ceiling. My desk was atop the shallow stage up front, to the right of where the altar had been.

Back by the dark foyer was Ivy's seldom-played baby grand piano, and tucked into the front corner across from my desk was a new cluster of furniture to give us somewhere to interview prospective clients without dragging them all the way through the church to our private living room at the back. Ivy had a plate of crackers, cheese, and pickled herring arranged on the low coffee table, but it was the pool table my gaze lingered on. It had been Kisten's, and I knew that the reason I was drawn to it was because I missed him.

Ivy and Jenks had given the table to me on my birthday. It was the only piece of him Ivy had taken besides his ashes and her memories. I think she'd given it to me as an unspoken statement that he'd been important to both of us. He had been my boyfriend, but he had been Ivy's onetime live-in and confidant, and probably the only person who truly understood the warped hell that their master vampire, Piscary, had put them through with his version of love.

Things had changed radically in the three months since Ivy's former girlfriend, Skimmer, had killed Piscary and landed herself in jail under a wrongful-death charge. Instead of the expected turf war, with Cincy's secondary vampires struggling to assert their dominance, a new master vampire had stepped in from out of state, one so charismatic that no one rose to challenge him. I'd since learned that bringing in new blood was commonplace, and there were provisions set up in Cincinnati's charter to deal with the sudden absence of a city power.

What was unusual, though, was that the new master vampire had taken in every single one of Piscary's displaced vamps instead of bringing his own camarilla. The small bit of kindness cut short an ugly mess of vampire misery that would have put me and my roommate in serious jeopardy. That the incoming vampire was Rynn Cormel, the very man who had run the country during the Turn, probably had a lot to do with Ivy's quick acceptance. Respect usually came slowly from her, but it was hard not to admire someone who had written a vampire sex guide that sold more copies than a post-Turn bible, and had been president.

I had yet to actually meet the man, but Ivy said that he was quiet and formal, and that she was enjoying getting to know him better. If he was her master vampire, they were going to have a blood tryst at some point. Euwie. I didn't think they had yet, but Ivy was private about that sort of thing, despite her well-earned reputation. I suppose I should have been thankful he hadn't taken Ivy as his scion and made my life hell. Rynn had brought his own scion, and the woman was just about the only living vamp to come with him from Washington.

So after Kisten died, Ivy got a new master vampire, and I got a pool table in my front room. I'd known that a blood-chaste witch and a living vampire could never make it work in the long run. Regardless, I had loved him, and the day I found out who Piscary had given Kisten to like a thank-you card, I was going to sharpen my stakes and go for a visit. Ivy was working on it, but Piscary's hold on her had been so heavy the last few days of his existence that she didn't remember much. At least she no longer believed she had killed Kisten in a blind, jealous rage.

I eased myself up to sit on the edge of the table, smelling the scents of vampire incense and old cigarette smoke rise from the green felt like a balm. It mixed with the odor of tomato paste and the sound of melancholy jazz filtering in from the back of the church, bringing to mind my early mornings spent in the loft of Kisten's dance club, inexpertly knocking pool balls around while I waited for him to finish closing up.

Closing my eyes against the lump in my throat, I pulled my knees up to prop my heels against the bumper and wrapped my arms around my shins. The heat coming from the long Tiffany lamp Ivy had installed over the table beat on the top of my head, hot and close.

My eyes started to fill, and I pushed the pain down. I missed Kisten. His smile, his steady presence, just being with him. I didn't need a man to feel good about myself, but the shared feelings between two people were worth suffering for. Maybe it was time to stop saying no to every guy that tried to ask me out. It had been three months. Did Kisten mean that little to you? came an accusing thought, and I held my breath.

"Get off the felt," came Ivy's voice out of my swirl of emotions, and my eyes flashed open. I found her at the top of the hallway leading to the rest of the church, a plate of crackers and pickled herring in one hand, two bottled waters in the other.

"I'm not going to tear it," I said as I dropped my knees to sit cross-legged, loath to move since the only other place to sit was across from her. It was easier to keep our distance than deal with the building pressure of Ivy wanting to sink her teeth and my wanting her to, both of us knowing it would be a bad idea. We'd tried it once and it hadn't worked out well, but I was a get-back-on-the-horse kind of girl - even when I knew better.

Almost of their own accord, my fingers rose to my neck and the nearly unnoticeable bumps of scar tissue marring my otherwise absolutely pristine skin. Seeing my hand where it was, Ivy folded herself gracefully into a chair behind the plate of crackers. She shook her head at me, making the gold tips of her short, sin-black, lusciously straight hair glimmer, frowning at me like a ticked-off cat.

I pulled my hand down and pretended to read the clipboard now propped in my lap. Despite her grimace Ivy seemed relaxed as she eased into the black leather, looking pleasantly exhausted from her workout this afternoon. She was wearing a long, gray, shapeless sweater over her tight exercise outfit, but it couldn't hide her trim, athletic build. Her oval face still carried the glow of exertion, and I could feel her brown eyes watching me as she worked to quell the mild blood lust stirred by the spike of surprise that I had given off when she had startled me.

Ivy was a living vampire, the last living heir of the Tamwood estate, admired by her living vampire kin and envied by her undead ones. Like all high-blood living vampires, she had a good portion of the undead's strengths but none of the drawbacks of light vulnerability or the inability to tolerate sanctified ground or artifacts - she lived in a church to irritate her undead mother. Conceived as a vampire, she'd become an undead in the blink of an eye if she died without any damage for the vampire virus to repair. Only the low-born, or ghouls, needed further attention to make the jump to a damned immortality.

Moved by scent and pheromones, it was an ongoing ballet between us of want and need, desire and will. But I needed protection from the undead who would take advantage of me and my unclaimed scar, and she needed someone who wasn't out for her blood and had the will to say no to the ecstasy a vampire bite could bring. Plus, we were friends. We had been since working together in the I.S., an experienced runner showing a newbie the ropes. I'd, um, been the newbie.

Ivy's blood lust was very real, but at least she didn't need blood to survive as the undead did. I was fine with her sating her urges with anyone she wanted, seeing as Piscary had warped her such that she couldn't separate love from blood or sex. Ivy was bi, so it wasn't a big deal to her. I was straight - last time I checked. But after getting a taste of how good a blood tryst felt, everything was doubly confusing.

It had taken a year, but I finally admitted that I not only respected Ivy but loved her, too - somehow. But I wasn't going to sleep with her just to have her sink her teeth in me unless I was truly attracted to her and not just to the way she could set my blood burning, aching to fill the hole Piscary had carved into her soul, year by year, bite by bite....

Our relationship had gotten complicated. Either I had to sleep with her to safely share blood, or we could try to keep it to a blood exchange alone and run the risk that she would lose control and I'd have to slam her against the wall to get her to stop before she killed me. In Ivy's words, we could share blood without hurt if there was love, or we could share blood without love if I hurt her. There was no middle ground. How nice was that?

Ivy cleared her throat. It was a small sound, but the pixies went silent. "You're going to damage the felt," she almost growled.

My eyebrows rose, and I turned to look at the table, already knowing its surface like the palm of my hand. "Like it's in such good shape?" I asked dryly. "I can't make it any worse. There's a dent in the slate the size of an elbow by the front left pocket, and it looks like someone stitched up nail gouges there in the middle."

Ivy reddened, picking up an old issue of Vamp Vixen that she had out for clients. "Oh, my God," I said, untwisting my legs and jumping off as I imagined just how gouges like that could get there. "I'll never be able to play on it again. Thanks a hell of a lot."

Jenks laughed to sound like wind chimes, and he joined me as I headed over for some of the pickled herring. The puff of leather was soothing as I flopped into the couch across from Ivy, dropping my clipboard beside me and reaching for the crackers.

"The blood came right out," she muttered.

"I don't want to know!" I shouted, and she hid behind her magazine. The cover story was SIX WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR SHADOW BEGGING AND BREATHING. Nice.

Silence slipped between us, but it was a comfortable one, which I filled by shoving pickled herring into my mouth. The tart vinegar reminded me of my dad - he had been the one who'd gotten me hooked on the stuff - and I settled back with a cracker and my clipboard.

"What have you come up with so far?" Ivy asked, clearly looking for a shift in topics.

I pulled the pencil from behind my ear. "The usual suspects. Mr. Ray, Mrs. Sarong. Trent." Beloved city's son, playboy, murdering slicker-than-a-frog-in-a-rainstorm bastard Trent. But I doubted it was him. Trent hated Al more than I did, having run into him once before to come away with a broken arm and probably a recurring nightmare. Besides, he had cheaper ways to knock me off, and if he did, his secret biolabs would hit the front page.

Jenks was jabbing the point of his sword into the holes of the crackers to break them into pixy-size pieces. "What about the Withons? You did bust up their plans to marry off their daughter."

"Nah...," I said, not believing anyone could hold a grudge for that. Besides, they were elves. They wouldn't use a demon to kill me. They hated demons more than they hated me. Right?

Jenks's wings blurred and the table was cleared of the crumbs he had made. Eyebrows raised at my doubt, he started layering herring bits on his tiny crackers, each the size of a peppercorn. "How about Lee?" he said. "Minias said he didn't trust him."

I set the arches of my feet on the edge of the coffee table. "Which is why I do." I had gotten the man away from Al. One would think that would be worth something, especially when Lee had taken over Cincy's gambling when Piscary died. "Maybe I should talk to him."

Ivy frowned at me over her magazine. "I think it's the I.S. They'd love to see you dead."

My pencil scratched against the yellow tablet. "Inderland Security," I said, feeling a ping of fear drop through me as I added them to the list. Crap, if it was the I.S., I had a big problem.

Jenks's wings hummed as he exchanged a look with Ivy. "There's Nick."

I unclenched my jaw almost as fast as it tightened up.

"You know it's him," the pixy said, hands on his hips as Ivy peered at me over the magazine, her pupils slowly dilating. "Why didn't you tell Minias right there? You had him, Rachel. Minias would have taken care of it. And you didn't say a thing!"

Lips pressed tight, I calculated the odds of me hitting him with the pencil if I threw it at him. "I don't know it's Nick, and even if it was, I wouldn't give him to the demons. I'd take care of it myself," I said bitterly. Think with your head, Rachel, not your heart. "But maybe I'll give the cookie a call."

Ivy made a small noise and went back to her magazine. "Nick's not that smart. He'd be demon fodder by now."

He was that smart, but I wasn't going to start a witch hunt. Or stupid-human hunt, rather. My blood pressure, though, had gone back down at her low opinion of him, and I reluctantly added his name to the list. "It's not Nick," I said. "It's not his style. Demon summoning leaves traces, either in collecting the materials to do it, the damage done while he's there, or the increase in educated young witches dying of unnatural causes. I'm going to check with the FIB and see if they've found anything odd the last few days."

Ivy leaned forward, knees crossed as she took a cracker. "Don't forget the tabloids," she offered.

"Yeah, thanks," I said, adding that to the list. A "Demons Took My Baby" story could very well be true.

Propping the tip of his metal sword on the table, Jenks leaned against the wooden hilt and let out a piercing chirp by rubbing his wings together. His kids flew up in a noisy flurry by the door, and I held my breath, fearing they were all going to descend on us, but only three came to a swirling, wing-clattering stop, their fresh faces smiling and their innocence beguiling. They were capable of murder, all of them. Down to his youngest daughter.

"Here," he said, handing a cracker to one of his sons. "See that your mom gets this."

"'Kay, Papa," he said, and was gone, his feet never having touched the table. The other two ferried the rest of the portions out in a well-organized display of pixy efficiency. Ivy blinked at the normally nectarivorous pixies descending on the pickled herring like it was maple syrup. They'd eaten an entire fish last year for an extra boost of protein before their hibernation, and though they weren't going to hibernate again this year, the urge was still there.

Sourly contemplating my new and improved list, I cracked the bottled water Ivy had brought me. I thought about heading into the kitchen for a glass of wine, but after glancing at Ivy, I decided to make do with what I had. The pheromones she was kicking out were enough to relax me as much as a shot of whiskey, and if I added to it, I'd probably fall asleep before two in the morning. As it was, I was feeling pretty damn good, and I wasn't going to feel at all guilty that most of it stemmed from her. It was a thousand years of evolution to make finding prey easy, but I felt I deserved it for putting up with all the crap living with a vampire brought. Not that I was that easy to live with either.

I tapped the eraser against my teeth and looked at my list. The Weres were probably out, and Lee. I couldn't imagine the Withons would be that ticked, even if I had busted up their daughter's marriage to Trent. Trent might be angry, though, seeing as I'd gotten him jailed for all of three hours. A sigh lifted through me. I'd built up a lot of animosity with some pretty big people in a remarkably short time. My special talent. I should concentrate on finding traces of demon summoning and go from there, rather than investigating people who might hold a grudge.

The dinner bell Ivy and I used as a doorbell bonged, startling us. A jolt of adrenaline pulsed through me, and Ivy's eyes dilated to a thin rim of brown.

"I'll get it," Jenks said as he flew up from the coffee table, his voice almost lost in the commotion his kids were making from the front corner of the newspaper-plastered sanctuary.

As Ivy went to turn down the music coming in from the back room, I wiped my mouth of cracker crumbs and did a quick tidy at the table. Ivy might take a job two days before Halloween, but if they were looking for me, they were going to be sadly disappointed.

Jenks worked the elaborate pulley system we'd rigged for him, and as soon as the door cracked, an orange cat streaked in. "Cat!" the pixy shrilled as the tabby headed right for his kids.

I bolted upright, breath catching as every pixy in the sanctuary was abruptly eight feet higher. Shrieks and calls echoed, and suddenly the air was full of little black paper bats dangling enticingly from thin strings.

"Rex!" Jenks shouted, darting to land right before the black-eyed animal, which was entranced and frozen by the overwhelming sensory input of twenty-plus dangling bits of paper. "Bad cat! You scared the fairy-loving crap out of me!" His gaze went to the rafters. "Everyone up there?"

A shrill round of "Yes, Dad," made my eyeballs hurt, and Matalina came out of the desk. Hands on her hips, she whistled sharply. A chorus of disappointed complaints rose and the bats fell. A flow of pixies vanished inside the desk, leaving three older kids to sit and dangle their feet from the rafters as casual sentries. One of them had Jenks's straightened paper clip, and I smiled. Jenks's cat patted one of the fallen paper bats and ignored her tiny master.

"Jenks...," Matalina said in warning. "We had an agreement."

"Ho-o-o-oney," Jenks whined. "It's cold out. She's been an inside cat since we got her. It's not fair to make her stay outside just because we're inside now."

Her tiny, angelic face tight, Matalina disappeared into the desk. Jenks streaked in after her, a mix of young man and mature father. Grinning, I snagged Rex on my way to the door and the two shadows standing hesitantly in my threshold. I had no idea how we were going to handle this new wrinkle. Maybe I could learn how to make a ward to let people through but keep felines out. It was just a modified ley line circle. I'd seen someone do it by memory once, and Lee had put a ward up across Trent's great window. How hard could it be?

My smile widened when the light from the sign over the door illuminated who was there. It wasn't a potential client. "David!" I exclaimed when I saw him next to a vaguely familiar man. "I told you I was okay earlier. You didn't have to come over."

"I know how you downplay things," the younger of the two men said, his face easing into a few smile wrinkles as Rex struggled to get away from me. "'Fine' can be anything from a bruise to almost comatose. And when I get a call from the I.S. about my alpha female, I'm not going to take that at face value."

His eyes lingered on the faint mark on my neck where Al had gripped me. Dropping the wildly wiggling cat, I gave him a quick hug. The complicated scent of Were filled my senses, wild, rich, and full of exotic undertones of earth and moon that most Weres lacked. I drew back, my hands still on his upper arms, peering into his eyes to evaluate his state of being. David had taken a curse for me, and though he said he liked the focus, I worried that one day, the sentient spell would risk my anger and take him over.

David's jaw clenched as he reigned in an urge to flee that stemmed from the curse, not himself, then smiled. The thing was terrified of me.

"Still got it?" I said, letting him go, and he nodded.

"Still loving it," he said, dropping his head briefly to hide the need to run shimmering behind his dark eyes. He turned to the man beside him. "You remember Howard?"

My head bobbed. "Oh, yes! From last year's winter solstice," I said, wiggling my foot at Rex so she wouldn't come in and reaching to shake the older man's hand. His grip was cold from the night and probably poor circulation. "How you been doing?"

"I'm trying to stay busy," he said, the tips of his gray hair moving as he exhaled heavily. "I never should have taken that early retirement."

David scuffed his boots, muttering a quiet "I told you."

"Well, come on in," I said, waving my foot at the disgusted cat so she'd go away. "Quick, before Rex follows you."

"We can't stay." David hotfooted it inside, his old business partner quick on his heels despite his accumulated years. "We're on our way to pick up Serena and Kally. Howard is driving us out to Bowman Park and we're going to run the Licking River trail. Can I leave my car here until morning?"

I nodded. The long stretch of railroad track between Cincy and Bowman Park had been converted to a safe running surface shortly after the Turn. This time of year, you'd only find Weres on it at night, and the rails-to-trails path ran fairly close to the church before it crossed the river into Cincinnati. David had used the church as an endpoint before, but this was the first time he had the ladies with him. I wondered if it was their first long fall run. If so, they were in for a treat. To run full out and not get hot was exquisite.

I shut the door and ushered the men from the unlit foyer into the sanctuary. David's duster brushed his worn boot tops, and he took off his hat as he entered, clearly uncomfortable on the holy ground. As a witch, Howard didn't care, and he smiled and waved at the tiny hellos from the ceiling. I probably owed Howard a big thank-you - it had been his idea that David should take me as his new business partner.

David set his worn leather hat on the piano and rocked from heel to toe, looking every inch the alpha male, albeit an uncomfortable one. The faint hint of musk rose from the sturdy but graceful man, and his hand nervously ran across the hint of stubble the almost-full moon was causing. He wasn't tall for a man, standing almost eye to eye with me, but he made up for it in sheer presence. "Sinewy" would be the word I'd use to describe him. Or maybe "yummy," if he were in his running tights. But like Minias, David had a problem with the different-species thing.

He'd been forced to assume the title of alpha male for real when he accidentally turned two human women into Weres. It wasn't supposed to be possible, but he had been in possession of a very powerful Were artifact at the time. Watching David accept his responsibility left me both proud and guilty, since it was partly my fault. Okay, mostly my fault.

It would be a year come the winter solstice since David had started a pack with me, pressured into it by his boss and obstinately choosing a witch instead of a Were female so he wouldn't have to take on any new responsibilities. It was a win-win situation: David got to keep his job, I got my insurance cheap. But now he was an alpha for real, and I was proud of him for accepting it with so much grace. He went out of his way to make the two women he had turned with the focus feel wanted, needed, and welcome, taking every chance he could to help them explore their new situation with joyous abandonment.

But I was most proud of his refusal to show the guilt he lived with, knowing that if they knew how bad he felt for changing their lives without their consent, they might feel that what they had become was wrong. He had gone on to prove his nobility by taking the Were curse from me to save my sanity. The curse would have killed me by the first full moon. David said he liked it. I believed him, though it worried me. I appreciated David for everything he was and who he was becoming.

"Hi, David, Howard," Ivy said from the top of the hall, her hair freshly brushed and shoes now on her feet. "Can you stay for dinner? We have a slow cooker full of chili, so there's plenty." Ivy, however, just wanted to get in David's pants.

David had started at her voice. Shifting his long coat closed, he took a step back as he turned. "Thanks, but no," he said, eyes down. "I'm going for a run with the ladies. Howard might want to come back after dropping us off, though."

Howard mumbled something about a meeting, and Ivy turned to the stained-glass window and the moon, just shy of full but hidden behind clouds. Weres could change anytime, but the three days of a full moon were the only time it was legal to roam the city's streets on four paws, tradition turned to law by paranoid humans. What Weres did in their own houses, though, was their own business. The moonlit trail would be busy tonight.

Ivy's foot twitched like a cat's tail as she sat, turning her magazine over to hide the headline. I had to work to keep a straight face. It wasn't often that she was smitten enough by anyone to look like a high schooler with a crush. And it wasn't that she was obvious about it, but she was so closed with her emotions that any indication of attraction was as clear as finding love notes strewn on her bedroom floor. She'd probably recognized the sound of his car and had gone to tidy up, using the excuse of lowering the music.

"You should have called me when the demon showed," David said, edging to the door.

Jenks's wings clattered as he darted from the desk to the center of the room. "I was there to save her ass," he said belligerently, then added a belated, "Hi, David. Who's your friend?"

"This is Howard, my old partner," David said, and Jenks's head bobbed up and down.

"Oh, yeah. You stink for a witch. Whatcha been doing?"

Howard laughed, the sound echoing into the rafters and setting the pixies giggling. "Some freelance work. Thank you, Mr. Jenks. I'll take that as a compliment."

"It's just Jenks," the pixy muttered, giving Howard an unusual, cautious look as he landed on my shoulder.

Ivy was making eyes at David from over the crackers, and the small man started edging toward the door in earnest. "Do you want me to stay until sunup? Just in case?"

"Good God, no!" I exclaimed. "I'm on holy ground. I'm as safe here as if I was in my mother's arms."

"We've met your mother," Ivy said lightly. "That doesn't instill any confidence."

"What is this, pick-on-Rachel night?" I said, tired of it. "I can take care of myself."

No one said anything, the silence broken by a stifled laugh from the rafters. I looked up, but the pixies had hidden themselves.

"Guess what she's doing tonight?" Jenks said, leaving me to escort a quickly retreating David and Howard to the door. "Making a list of people who want to kill her, followed by ways to detect demon summoning."

"She told me." David retied his coat closed and headed for the door. "Don't forget to put Nick on there."

"Got him," I said, flopping into my chair and scowling at Ivy. She chased David away almost every time. "Thanks, Jenks," I shot at the pixy, but he wasn't listening as he opened the door for David and rose up out of the cold draft.

David turned at the threshold. Behind him, Howard was heading down the steps to an unfamiliar station wagon. Parked by the curb was David's gray sports car. "'Bye, Rachel," David said, the light over the door glinting on his black hair. "Call me tomorrow if I don't see you. Summoning demons usually results in a claim or two being filed. When I get back to the office, I'll see if anything unusual has come in."

My eyebrows rose, and I made a mental note to add insurance claims to the list. David worked at one of the largest on-paper insurance companies in the United States and had access to just about everything, given time. Actually, maybe I'd call Glenn at the FIB to see if they had any complaints recently. They kept great records to compensate for their utter lack of Inderlander talents.

"Thanks, I'll do that," I said as David followed his old partner out and shut the door.

Ivy frowned at the dark foyer, sipping her drink as one foot bobbed up and down. Seeing me track the motion, she forced it still. I jumped at the high-pitched burst of noise from my desk, eyes widening as four streaks of silver raced out from it and into the back of the church. A crash brought me around in my seat, and I wondered what had just fallen off the overhead rack in the kitchen.

And so it begins....

"Jack!" came Matalina's shrill cry, and she zipped out of the desk after them. Jenks intercepted her, and the two had a rapid high-pitched discussion in the hallway punctuated by bursts of ultrasonic sound that made my head hurt.

"Honey," Jenks coaxed when she slowed enough that we could hear them again. "Boys will be boys. I'll talk to them and make them apologize."

"What if they had done that when your cat came in!" she shrilled. "What then?"

"But they didn't," he soothed. "They waited until she was secure."

Hand shaking as she pointed to the back of the church, she took a breath to start in again, gulping it back when Jenks kissed her soundly, wrapping her slim form in his arms and body, their wings somehow not tangling as they hovered in the hallway.

"I'll take care of it, love," he said when they parted, his emotion so earnest that I dropped my eyes, embarrassed. Matalina fled to the desk in a dusting of mortified red, and after grinning at us in some masculine display of...masculinity, Jenks flew to the back of the church.

"Jack!" he shouted, the dust slipping from him a brilliant gold. "You know better than that. Get your brothers and get out here. If I have to dig you out, I'm going to clip your wings!"

"Huh." Ivy's long fingers carefully picked up a cracker. "I'll have to try that."

"What?" I asked, shifting to prop my clipboard up on my knees.

Ivy blinked slowly. "Kissing someone from agitation into bliss."

Her smile widened to show a slip of teeth, and a sliver of ice dropped down my spine. Fear mixed with anticipation, as unstoppable as jerking my hand from a flame. And Ivy could sense it as easily as she could see my embarrassed flush.

Pulling herself upright, she stood. I blinked up at her as she stretched, and brushing past me in a wave of vampire incense, she headed for the door as the doorbell rang.

"I got it," she said, her pace provocative. "David left his hat."

My exhaled breath was slow and long. Damn it, I was not an adrenaline junkie. And Ivy knew we weren't going to shift our relationship in either direction. Still...the potential was there, and I hated that she could flip switches in me as easily as I could flip them in her. Just 'cause you can do something, doesn't mean you should, right?

Exasperated with myself, I grabbed the empty cracker plate and headed for the kitchen. Maybe I needed a midnight run myself to clear my head of all the vamp pheromones in there.

"Cat in the house!" came Ivy's call, and then a different voice filtered in, stopping me cold.

"Hi, I'm Marshal."

If the mellow, attractive voice hadn't jerked me to a halt, the name would have, and I spun in the hallway.

"You must be Ivy," the man added. "Is Rachel in?"