A witch, a vampire, and a pixy walk into a bar, I thought as I led the way into the Squirrel's End. It was early, and the sun had yet to set when the door swung shut behind Jenks, sealing us in the warm air smelling faintly of smoke. Immediately Nick yanked it open to come in behind us. And there's the punch line.
Ivy's lips were pressed tight as she took in the low-ceilinged room, scanning it for Audrey and Peter. It was Friday night, and already busy. From across the room, Becky, our waitress from before, recognized us and waved. Ivy responded with an empty look, making the woman go uncertain. "There," Ivy said, nodding to an empty table in the darkest corner.
I unzipped my coat and shook my new bracelet from Kisten down. "You're an Inderland ambassador," I said. "Make an effort."
Ivy turned to me, her sharply defined eyebrows high. Jenks snickered as she forced the edges of her lips to curl upward. She had put on some makeup, seeing as we were out here for a last supper kind a thing, and she looked more predatorial than usual in her leather pants, clingy shirt, and boots. She and Jenks had ridden over in Kisten's Corvette since she would not get in the van with me, and she smoothed a hand over her short hair to make sure every strand was in place. Drops of gold glittered from her lobes, and I wondered why she was wearing them.
It was obvious she wasn't happy about Nick driving the truck into me, but her logic told her my emotionally charged modifications wouldn't only make it more believable, but logistically easier. Relying on Nick had us both worried, but sometimes intuition had to take a backseat. That was when I usually got in trouble.
"They aren't here yet," she said, showing how worried she was by stating the obvious.
Jenks adjusted the collar of his jacket to hide his tension with a smooth casualness. "We're early," he said. Unlike Ivy, he was handling the stress well. He smiled at the women turning to look at him, and there were quite a few jostling their tablemates' elbows and pointing him out. Running my eyes over Jenks, I could see why.
He was still an eyeful at six-foot-four, especially now that he was acting his size. He had on his aviator jacket, and with his sunglasses and one of the Were's caps turned inside out, he looked good - damn good in an individualistic, innocent sort of way.
"Ah, why don't we go sit?" I suggested, becoming uncomfortable at the giggles. Whoo-hoo! The Inderland nymphos are here! Who brought the pistachio pudding?
We pushed into motion, and Ivy snagged Nick's elbow. "Get some water for Rachel and an orange juice for me," she said, her white fingers gripping him tighter than was polite or necessary. "Just orange juice. I don't want anything in it. Understand?"
Nick jerked out of her hold. He never would have managed it if she hadn't let him. Frowning, he shook his cloth coat out and went to the bar. He knew he was being gotten rid of.
Nick fit in well here, and it wasn't just the human/Inderland thing. The bar was replete with skinny women in skimpy outfits, chunky women in skimpy outfits, women who never let their glass hit the table and looked old before they should in skimpy outfits, and men in fleece shirts and jeans who looked desperate. Facial hair optional. Oh yeah, this was a great place to eat before I bit the big one.
Maybe I was a little depressed.
A woman in a red dress cut too low for her hips waved to Jenks. She was standing by the karaoke machine, and I rolled my eyes when it started playing "American Woman." Jenks grinned, heading off in that direction until Ivy dragged him backward to the table.
The woman at the machine pouted. Ivy fixed a look on her, whereupon the woman went ashen. Her girlfriend got scared and pulled her to the bar as if Ivy was going to drain the both of them. Irritated at their ignorance, I hiked my bag higher and plodded after Ivy and Jenks.
My fingers were starting to sweat, but I couldn't let go of my shoulder bag. Inside it was the defunct focus and the wolf statue. The real focus was sandwiched between Jenks's silk boxers at the motel, though only Jenks and I knew it. I'd have told Ivy, but leaving it unattended didn't fit in with her plan, and I wasn't up to arguing with her. Nick wanted the focus. I had to believe he'd steal anything I was protecting. God, please prove me wrong?
In my bag with the two fakes was half of my inertia-dampening curse. Nick had the other half and would be putting it on the grille of the Mack truck. When they got close, they would take effect and muffle my motions. Nick had his own inertia-dampening curse along with a normal disguise charm and the two illegal charms to make him into Peter's doppelganger and vice versa. I wouldn't dare use them in Cincinnati, where bouncers wore spell-check amulets as a matter of course, but I could get away with it here. Small-town life clearly had advantages, but having to educate the locals would get tedious.
Ivy was the first to the table, predictably taking the chair with her back to the wall. Jenks took the one next to her, and I reluctantly sat with my back to the room, scooting my chair in with a thump that was unheard over the music. Depressed, I gazed at the wall behind Ivy. Swell. I was going to have to look at a stuffed mink nailed to the wall all night.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I turned when Ivy's eyes jerked to the door. Our Were escort had arrived, looking more out of place than we did. I wondered how long Walter would be able to hold all three packs together once the "focus" was destroyed. Seconds, maybe? Brett was with them, bruised and moving slow. Walter must have farmed him out to the street pack as punishment. Clearly he was at the bottom of their social ladder and taking a lot of abuse. Not my fault, I thought. At least he was alive.
They settled at the bar, and I gave Brett a sarcastic "kiss-kiss" bunny ear gesture before I turned to sit properly. Watching the humans around them stiffen and mutter, I was glad my little party of freethinking sexual gamers had already been accepted.
Jenks's casual tracking of someone behind me gave me warning, and I leaned away when Becky bustled forward. She stood a step farther back than usual, but after Ivy's stellar welcome, I didn't blame her. It was noisy, and I wished they'd turn the music down. I couldn't hear a thing over the electronic pop music. Must have been retros night at the old Squirrel's End.
"Welcome back," she said, looking sincere though nervous. "What can I get you? Twenty-five bucks gets you a wristband and all the beer on tap you can drink."
Damn. Either it was really good beer or the locals could slam it.
Ivy wasn't listening and Jenks was making eyes at one of the women playing pool. She looked like Matalina with the cue in her hand and her little filmy skirt that barely covered her butt when she leaned over to take a shot. Disgusted, I tapped his shin. What was it with men?
Jenks jumped, and I smiled sweetly at him. "Could we have a plate of fries?" I asked, thinking that to ask them to put chili on it would get us thrown out.
"You betcha. Anything else?"
Eyeing her over his sunglasses, Jenks became sex incarnate. "What's on the desert menu, Becky? I need something...sweet."
Ivy raised one eyebrow and slowly turned her attention to him. We exchanged looks as the matronly woman grew flustered, not at what he said, but at how he'd said it.
"Peach cobbler?" Becky encouraged. "Made it yesterday, so the top is still crunchy."
Jenks carefully slid an arm behind Ivy. Without a show of emotion, she grabbed his wrist and set it on the table. "Put some ice cream and caramel on that, and you've got a deal," he offered, and Ivy gave him an irritated look. "What?" he said with a shit-eating grin. "I'm going to need all the sugar I can get to keep up with you two ladies tonight."
Becky's plucked eyebrows rose higher. "Anything else?"
"How about one of those drinks with the cherries on little swords?" Jenks asked. "I like those swords. Can you put a cherry on a sword for each of us?" His smile grew seductive, and he bent toward Becky, hiding his wrist. I think Ivy had bruised it. "I like to share," he said. "And if these two aren't happy when the sun comes up, I'm going to be a dead man."
The woman's eyes darted between Ivy and me. Ivy's lip quirked once, then steeled her features to a severe emptiness. Playing up to them, I cracked my knuckles in warning.
"Ooooh, hit me baby," Jenks said, moving suggestively where he sat.
"That's my job, sweetie," Ivy purred, pulling him close and tucking her head into the hollow between his shoulder and ear. Her hand was a stiff claw upon his pristine neck, and I saw a flicker of concern in Jenks before he realized she was playing and was nowhere close to losing it. "I'm the bad vamp this time," she purred. "She's the good witch."
Ivy drew her hand back to give him a tart slap on the face, but Jenks was faster, catching her wrist. Eyes sultry, he kissed her fingertips.
"Mmmm," Ivy said, her dark eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks and her lips parting. "You know what I like, pixy dust."
Becky's face reddened. "Just the cobbler?" she stammered. "And the drink?"
Ivy nodded, her free hand wrapping around Jenks's and her tongue coming out to lick his fingertips. Jenks froze, truly surprised. The woman took a breath and walked away, her steps unheard over the noise. Great. Now I probably wouldn't get my fries.
Jenks reclaimed his hand, a faint flush on his face. "Four spoons!" he shouted after her.
My breath escaped me in a hiss. "You two are awful!" I said, frowning at Ivy as she shifted away from Jenks, a satisfied-cat smile on her face.
"Maybe," Ivy agreed, "but the Weres were watching us, not Audrey and Peter."
I stiffened, seeing Ivy mentally tick item number two off her list. We had moved that much closer to the end of this, and the first of the butterflies rose in me.
"Jenks tastes like oak leaves smell," Ivy said, ignoring his fluster as he tapped the table in rhythm with the karaoke machine.
Jenks squirmed, looking all of eighteen. "Don't tell Matalina about that, okay?"
Ivy said nothing, and I forced myself to the back of my chair. What was keeping Nick? Maybe he'd seen the nice display of low-class Inderlander at our table and decided to stay at the bar. Or perhaps he didn't want to cross the room and draw the Weres' attention to himself. Regardless, I could use that water.
Slowly Ivy's tension started to filter back, unusual for her. For all my nervousness, Jenks and I were handling this better than she was, and I could understand why. Every run was personal to me. Ivy, though, wasn't used to having the outcome of a run mean this much to her. She didn't have the patterns of behavior to cope, and it showed around her eyes.
"It'll be okay," I said, stifling the urge to reach across the table and pat her hand. The memory of her fingers gripping my waist, the rush of her teeth in me, lifted through my thoughts, and I stifled a shiver of adrenaline.
"What?" Ivy said belligerently, her eyes flashing black.
"It'll work," I said, putting my hand under the table so I wouldn't touch my stitches.
She frowned, the rim of brown growing about her eyes. "A Mack truck driven by your ex-boyfriend is going to run over you, and you say everything is going to be okay?"
Well, when she put it like that...
Jenks snorted, shifting his chair a little farther from Ivy. "Crap for brains is back."
I turned in my seat, almost glad to see Nick. He had a glass of water with a slice of lemon and two drinks of differing shades of orange. One had a carrot stick in it, and he put the other before Ivy as he eased into the chair beside me. I resettled my bag on my lap and tried to make it look like I wasn't concerned about it.
Ivy curved her fingers about her drink. "That had better not have alcohol in it," she said, looking at Nick's drink. Jenks reached to take it, and Nick jerked it away, all but spilling it.
"You aren't drinking anything if you're aiming a truck at Rachel," the large pixy said.
Bothered, I grabbed the glass and brought it to my nose. Before Nick could protest, I took a sip, almost spitting it out. "What in hell is that?" I exclaimed, running my tongue around the inside of my mouth. It was mealy, but sweet.
"It's a Virgin Bloody Rabbit." Sullen, Nick pulled it closer. "There's no alcohol in it."
Bloody Rabbit? It was a Virgin Bloody Mary made with carrot juice. "These are better made from tomato juice," I said, and Nick blanched.
Jenks tapped his fingers on the table, smiling when Becky stopped at our table and set down a plate of ice cream and pastry along with his four-cherry drink and the requested number of spoons. No fries. Big surprise. "Thanks, Becky," Jenks called after her over the music, and her neck went red.
Ivy took one of the spoons and delicately scooped a dollop of ice cream, placing it succinctly into her mouth. She pushed it away as if done, saying, "Peter is in the bathroom."
My heart gave a thump. Check.
Nick took a shaky breath. I wouldn't look at him, pretending interest in plucking the cherry with the longest stem out of Jenks's drink. Nick stood, and Ivy reached across the table to grab his wrist. He froze, and my eyes went from his still swollen masculine fingers to Ivy's face. Her eyes were black, a severe anger shining from behind them.
"If you don't show up on that bridge," she said, lips hardly moving. "I swear I'll find you. And if you hurt her, I'll make you a shadow, begging me to bleed you every night for the rest of your pathetic life." Looking like a wraith, she inhaled, taking away the warmth of the room. "Believe it."
I sent my eyes up the faded flannel of his shirt to find him ashen and afraid. For the first time, he was afraid. I was too. Hell, even Jenks had drawn away from her.
He jerked from her. Clearly shaken, he stepped out of her easy reach. "Rachel - "
"Good-bye, Nick," I said flatly, feeling my blood pressure rise. I still didn't understand how he could think that selling Al information about me, even harmless information, wasn't a betrayal of everything we had shared.
I didn't watch him leave. Eyes lowered, I took a sword-pierced cherry. The sweet mush was bland in my mouth. Swallowing, I set the red plastic sword beside Jenks for him to take home to his kids. "I'm tired of this," I whispered, but I don't think anyone heard me.
Jenks took a scoop of the cobbler, watching me with his intent green eyes. "You going to be okay?" he asked around his full mouth.
Picking up a spoon, I held the plate so I could wrangle an even bigger bite of ice cream. "Just dandy." Why was I eating? I wasn't hungry.
The music finally died, and in the renewed sound of chatter, Ivy held a napkin to her mouth and muttered, "I don't like this. I don't like it at all. I don't like Nick. I don't trust Nick. And if he doesn't show up with that truck to do his part, I'm going to kill him."
"I'll help," Jenks offered, carefully cutting the remaining ice cream in two and claiming the largest half.
"Okay, I made a mistake in trusting him. Can we move on to something else?" I said, scraping the lion's share of caramel to my side of the plate. God help me, but I had been stupid. Stay with your own kind, Rachel. Not that your track record there is much better. "But I do trust his greed," I added, and Jenks's eyebrows rose.
Shifting my shoulder, I touched my bag on my lap. "He wants the statue. He's going to show, if only to try and steal it back after all is said and done."
Ivy crossed her arms in front of her and seethed.
Jenks cocked his head in thought and ate another bite of cobbler. "You want me to have Jax shadow him?" he asked, and I shook my head.
"It might be too cold," I said. "He can sit this one out."
"He's doing well with low-temp excursions," Jenks said around his full mouth, then swallowed. "I'm proud of him." A satisfied smile hovered in his eyes. "He can read now," he added softly. "He's been working hard at it. He's serious about taking after his old man."
My smile faltered at the reasons for the lessons. Jenks didn't have many more battles left to fight. Ivy steadied herself, visibly forcing herself to be cheerful.
"That's great," she said, but I could hear her stress. "What grade level is he at?"
Jenks pushed his plate away. "Tink's titties, I don't know. Enough to get by."
I sent my attention to the bathroom door when Nick came out, his head down, clearly worried. I exhaled in a slow puff, leaning back into my chair. "Oh that's just swell," I said sourly. "Something's wrong with the charms."
Triangular face worried, Jenks followed my gaze, saying nothing. Ivy didn't look at all, and waited for it as Nick sat down before his Virgin Bloody Rabbit and took a gulp.
"My shoes are too tight," he whispered, fingers shaking.
Mouth open, I stared. It hadn't been Nick's voice. "Peter?" I breathed, shocked. My eyes jerked from him to Ivy and Jenks. "My God. Can I cook, or can I cook!"
Ivy's breath slipped from her in a slow sound. Check I thought, seeing her mentally cross off the next item on her list.
Grinning, Jenks started to eat again, this time working on my half of the ice cream.
I tried not to look at Peter, but it was hard not to. The vampire sat beside me, his arms resting on the table as if tired, the barest tremble in his fingers, which were a shade shorter than Nick's, and thin, not swollen. The two men had exchanged clothes along with identities, and it was eerie how complete the change was. Only in the eyes could I see a clear difference. Peter had a haze from the painkiller he had taken so he could walk upright. Just as well I'd be driving.
"No wonder those things are illegal," Ivy said, hiding her words behind her glass of juice.
My worry deepened when Jenks added, "His aura is the same."
"Shit," I whispered, my stomach knotting. "I forgot about that."
Jenks finished the ice cream and pushed the plate away with a little sigh. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "Weres can't use the ever-after. They can't see auras."
Embarrassed, I hunched over my drink. "You can. And you can't use the ever-after."
He grinned. "That's because pixies are ever-after. We're magic, baby. Just ask Matalina."
Ivy snickered. She took a cherry, and Jenks put her sword with mine when she casually handed it to him.
"You know," I said, "you can buy a box of those for a buck fifty in any grocery store."
Jenks shrugged. "Where's the fun in that?"
Watching the banter, Peter smiled, making my heart ache when I remembered Nick looking at me like that. "I wish I had the chance to know you before all this," he said softly. "You fit well together. Like a vampire camarilla, but without the jealousy and politics. A real family."
My good mood died. Jenks played with his fork to get it to balance on its tines, and Ivy became very interested in the Weres at the bar.
Peter blinked rapidly, a nervous reaction I'd never seen in Nick. "I'm sorry," he said. "Did I say something - "
Ivy interrupted him. "Peter, we've got about an hour until Nick gets into place with that bridge traffic. Do you want something to eat?"
I gathered myself to look for Becky, yelping when Jenks kicked me under the table. I glared at him until he said, "You don't like Nick. Nick can get his own food."
Feeling stupid, I slumped in my chair. "Right." So I tried not to fidget as Peter took the next five minutes to get Becky's attention. From the corner of my sight I watched Nick leave the bathroom, looking like the ailing vampire who was sitting beside me, trying to attract anyone in an apron. Hell, Nick even walked like Peter, slow and pained. It was creepy. He was good at this.
Professional thief, I reminded myself as I gripped my bag to assure myself it was still in my possession. How I could have been so blind? But I knew my ignorance had been born out of my need for that damned acceptance I hungered after almost as badly as Ivy lusted after blood. We weren't as unalike as it seemed when you got right down to it.
The jitters started when Nick passed out of my sight. I turned my attention to Ivy, reading his progress across the bar by where her eyes went. "He's good," Ivy said, sipping her juice. "Audrey didn't recognize him until he opened his mouth and said hi."
"Did the Weres smell him?" I asked, and she shook her head.
Beside me, Peter gritted his teeth, and I was glad he'd had the opportunity to say good-bye to Audrey properly. He was a good person. It wasn't fair. Maybe he could bring the memory of suffering and compassion into his undead existence, but I doubted it. They never did.
Ivy tapped her fingers on the table, and Jenks heaved a sigh. "They're gone," Ivy said.
I put the flat of my arm on the table, forcing my foot to not jiggle. All that was left was waiting for Nick's phone call that he was in place.
Check.
