My limbs tingled, and I got to my feet. Everyone on the lobby floor was paralyzed, most of them facing me as they lay on the tile and that red mist eddied. Watching. My eyes narrowed as I found Pike, the ugly expression on his face looking permanent as he stared at me. He was down like the rest, but his eyes tracked me as I stood with Zack in hand.
“Let’s go.” Head high, I pushed on the revolving door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “We’ve got stuff to do.”
The click of a safety spun me around, and I glared at the two guards who had been posted outside, now pale and unsure. “You want to mess with this?” I said, Zack cupped close as I gestured at myself. I was covered with floor dirt. My hair was a snarled mess, and Pike still had my phone and wallet. “You really want to mess with this!” I shouted again, pulling the nearest line into me until my tangled hair floated and my skin practically glowed. “I am having a really bad day, and I could use a little break,” I added, sniffing as they reconsidered and shook their heads.
“Thank you.” Chin lifted, I put Zack on my shoulder for everyone to see and I strode to my car. “Are we good?” I asked Jenks as I walked into the street. An oncoming car screeched to a halt, its driver wide-eyed.
“As sweet as newling piss,” he said as I gave the startled driver a wave and got in.
The door slammed shut, and I sat there for a moment, shaking until I pulled the visor down and my keys dropped into my lap with a comforting sound of metal. The brumm of my engine was bliss, and, not believing I’d done it, I put my car in drive, checked to see that the way was open, and pulled out.
Pike had left the keys. Not given them to the front desk or security in case they had to move it. He’d left them here. For me? I wondered. Joni had told him something, something that had made her cry and Pike falter in his steadfast determination to bring me down.
He had tried to catch me. The anger in his eyes had been real. The effort to take me back to Constance at all costs had been real.
But so were Joni’s unsaid words and my keys, and I looked at them swinging from the ignition, not sure anymore.
“You want to head out to Piscary’s?” Jenks said as he messed about with the radio in search of the news of our escape. “Trent probably has this, but you never know.”
The pull to rejoin Trent was real. I needed to hold him, to reassure myself that I was okay, and he was okay, and that apart from the coming lawsuits, life was going to go on. But as I looked at Zack shaking in the cup holder, I knew that would have to wait. “Church,” I said as I took Zack into my hand, and the kid curled up and shook some more.
CHAPTER
24
“Is that Mrs. Sarong’s SUV?” I said, one hand on the wheel, one cupped about a very shaken mouse. We were almost at the church, and though no one had followed us from the I.S. tower, the likely consequences of what we’d done were beginning to filter into my uppermost thoughts. I may have slipped the I.S., but there would be repercussions.
Jenks rose up from beside Zack, hovering before the window as I drove slowly down our street. Actually, there were several cars I didn’t recognize sandwiched between the food carts, but it was the two extre-e-e-emely good-looking Weres hanging about the deep red SUV with the VIP stadium stickers that had me worried. I didn’t like Mrs. Sarong, and she didn’t like me. But then again, I had magicked her arena to get her to cough up the money she owed me for finding the Howlers’ mascot.
“Yep, that’s her,” Jenks said, hands on his hips in his best Peter Pan pose. “David’s here, too.” He flashed me a relieved grin. “Trent and Edden. I can hear Kaspar crabbing about something.” He tilted his head and looked at the steeple. “Etude is on the roof. And . . .” He took a deep breath, his sparkles vanishing for an instant. “Vivian?”
Jenks turned to me in midair, and I almost stopped the car. “I smell Vivian,” he repeated.
“Vivian?” I echoed. I liked the woman, especially after she had vouched for me at Alcatraz, but what was she doing this side of the continent, much less in my church? It wasn’t my fault I’d landed in Alcatraz. But as I passed the expensive, unfamiliar cars lining the street, I decided it was probably something else that had drawn them all here. Constance, maybe?
Zack squeaked, his head cocked in clear disbelief, and Jenks frowned. “I can so smell her,” Jenks grumped. “That woman is magic on steroids. No wonder they made her head of the witches’ coven of moral and ethical standards.”
Sighing, I looked down at myself. I was in jeans, and my green shirt was filthy from sliding around on the floor and spotted with chocolate. Vivian knew me well enough to not think twice, but this had all the earmarks of a city-powers meeting, and walking in with my hair snarled and smelling of angry vampire made me feel unprofessional.
“I should have asked Al to teach me that brush-and-wash curse,” I muttered as I pulled into my carport. Someone had taped a reserved sign on the small shelter. I’d say it had been Ivy, except it was hand-lettered; she would have used a stencil. I could hear music—Ivy’s piano.
Jenks’s dust shifted to an irate orange as he eyed the noisy crows, unusual for my street. “You could ask Hodin. I think he’s here, too.”
Just shoot me now. . . . My eyes went from Jenks’s annoyance to Zack’s slumped weariness. “Zack, you mind if I talk to Hodin before we go in and get you changed? He’s a demon, but he’s shown no inclination toward anything but being helpful.” And yet, I keep driving him away, I thought when Zack shrugged. The human gesture on the gray mouse made me smile.
“Thanks. Jenks, would you please tell Trent I’ll be right there so he doesn’t come out? I’m sure they know I’m here. Oh, and tell him we got Zack and he’s safe.”
“You got it, Rache.” Jenks dropped to Zack, whispering something to make the kid sigh before he flew up and away. I watched his sparkles fall, then blew the car seat free of his dust.
“He’s really one of the nicer demons,” I said, then rolled the passenger-side window all the way down. “Ho-o-o-odi-i-i-in?” I shouted. “I know you’re here!”
Zack’s eyes widened when a soft bong came from the church’s bell and a dark shadow dropped from the trees across the street. It was an enormous, bedraggled crow, swooping in under the carport to alight in the open window. Ugly claws scraped the sill, and as his red, goat-slitted eyes focused on Zack, he cawed, wings opening to send a few ragged feathers spiraling down.
“Come here, Zack,” I whispered, remembering what it was like to be that small, and the kid scrambled over the console. “Um, I talked to Al yesterday,” I said as I held Zack close, and the crow made an odd, deep-throat rattle. “He tossed me to Alcatraz because you helped me bury Nash,” I added, and Hodin’s red, goat-slitted eyes narrowed.