Pike leaned back, his expression unreadable. “Maybe you do have what it takes.”
Edden shifted from foot to foot, clearly eager to go. “Great. Thank you, Rachel. I knew you’d be able to help. I’m going to clock out and pick up a few things. Back in two hours.” A hint of a smile threatened. “There’s bound to be a van in impound that needs to be run to keep its battery from going dead.”
That would help, and the beginnings of true confidence replaced my cold anger.
“So . . . are you good here?” Trent said as he stood. “I need to get something for tonight as well.” He took my hand, hesitating until I looked at him. “Promise you won’t go without me,” he added, and Jenks snickered.
I leaned in and gave him a hug and a quick but earnest kiss. “You know me too well.”
Trent’s eyes were warm, and his hands around me held an unspoken feeling. “That wasn’t a promise,” he said, and I pulled from his hands and dropped back, smiling.
“Then don’t be late,” I said. “You either, Edden,” I added, and the older man raised a hand, acknowledging it.
“By hook or by crook,” he said, and I sighed as the two men started for the door together.
“Seriously?” Pike said, still on the couch. “You’re leaving me alone with her?”
Jenks rasped his wings, the pixy having put himself on the edge of the cracker bowl. “You’re not alone with her, fang boy,” he said. “You’re alone with me.”
Nearly at the door, Trent turned to give me a smile. “Try not to damage him, okay? He might be useful before the end.”
Together, Jenks and I said, “I’ll try,” getting a raised eyebrow from Edden and a disbelieving snort from Pike. But he was beginning to look unsure, and I went to get a bowl of chili as the door opened and closed. Suddenly the sound of that nail gun seemed really loud.
“Is this to convince me you’ve got the nads to run a city?” Pike said, and I calmly ladled a cup of chili into a throwaway bowl. I was dead tired, and I should eat something more than a doughnut before I began spelling.
“I’ve been with you for less than a day,” Pike said pointedly. “And in that time you were beat up by a woman in orange, starved yourself, let a TSA agent feel you up at the San Francisco airport, and a demon throw you across three time zones. Stab wound or no, I could be out of here in . . .” He hesitated. “Ninety seconds.”
“Perhaps.” Thirty seconds, to a minute, to a minute ten, and now a minute and a half. It was nice being taken seriously. I turned, getting a sleepy thumbs-up from Jenks when I tapped a line and I felt my hair begin to float and snarl. “But we aren’t on an island anymore, or in a jet, or even a car. We are in my church.” I breathed him in, liking the sudden hesitancy behind his hard-won confidence. “You set one foot out that door, and I won’t have to kill you. Your brothers will.”
Pike didn’t drop his eyes, but I could tell he was thinking about that. Smug, I came forward a few steps, chili bowl in hand. “I’ve been with you for less than a day,” I said, echoing his words. “And in that time, you were stabbed twice, ate chemically tainted lasagna, nearly choked to death, flirted unsuccessfully with a TSA agent, and were thrown across three time zones to where you needed an elf and a witch to get you home alive. I don’t know why your brothers want you dead. Frankly, I don’t care. But unless Constance wants to risk a bloodbath trying to get you, you’re here with me, pretty boy. It would be easier to convince her to meet with me. Until then, I’m keeping you alive.”
“Pretty boy . . .” Pike frowned. It was the first time I’d had him on edge, and a remembered thrill from Kisten jolted through me. “You are not keeping me alive.”
“I am.” I breathed in the scents of the church, listened to the sounds of life it sheltered, let it fill me up. I was home, and it felt good. “You need someone to watch your back. So do I. No shame in that.” I smiled at Jenks, totally at peace with myself. “Actually, there’s a lot of strength in it. Being able to trust.”
But my smile faltered as Pike showed me a slip of tooth. “Jenks, watch him,” I said, and the pixy touched his forehead in salute. “I’ll be upstairs spelling. Bring him up when you need a break. If he gives you trouble, pix him, then bring him up.”
I put an extra sway in my hips as I crossed the new circle inlaid in the floor, but as soon as my back was to Pike, I let my brow furrow. Storm the I.S. basements. Steal a van of Brimstone. Drive an undead from her daylight quarters a second time in as many days. Sure. I can do that.
“What’s pixing?” Pike asked, and Jenks laughed, sounding like crazy wind chimes.
“You don’t want to know,” he said. “Sit there and eat your chili like a nice vampire, or she’ll pull your soul out and give it to her gargoyle.”
Fatigue rose as I took the stairs to the belfry, feeling every mile we’d crossed, every hour of sleep I’d missed. I’d never pull Pike’s soul out, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a few immobilization curses ready for when he got stupid and tried to leave. It had been a pretty speech, but vampires never listened until you proved your strength. No one did.
I wasn’t letting him out of my sight until Constance was out of my city for good. She had put the entire human-and-Inderland balance under threat because she had no real power but for what lay in fear. There was no getting along with her. It was out, or twice dead.
CHAPTER
20
The irregular thumping coming from the garden had been going on for a while, punctuated by bursts of cheering and good-natured groans. But it was the growing scent of roasting meat and the rattle of pixy wings that woke me, and I jerked awake, surprised that I’d fallen asleep while studying one of my demon texts. My middle was tingling from the extended contact, and when I sat up from the dusty fainting couch and looked, the faded, hand-printed curse was glowing to show an alternative text. Grimacing, I brushed the page to make the words flare and go out. I’d been hoping to find a charm or spell to prevent Al from tossing me into a line and then Alcatraz again, but the reality was, I had stupidly let him do it.
I swung my feet to the floor. The large fourteen-by-fourteen room was warm from the late-morning sun. Almost noon, really, I thought, gaze drawn to the sounds of the ongoing volleyball game in the graveyard where they’d strung a net between two of the higher monoliths. A fading trail of pixy dust caught my attention, and I stretched, muscles pulling. “Jenks?”
The soft rasping of dragonfly wings returned and Jenks slipped in through the cracked door to the stairs. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were pushing pollen,” he said, the unfamiliar pixy metaphor for sleep making me smile as he landed on my pencil cup atop the small marble-topped dresser. It had been here when we first moved in, and I’d used the smooth surface to work a few spells on before. The mug with its happy rainbow was now full of magnetic chalk, ceramic stirring rods, garden scissors, highlighters, and my secondary ceremonial knife. Beside it was a moving box holding my spelling waste, and beside that, the finished products of the morning’s spelling.