Kneeling beside my bed, I pulled the top box to me, reading my adolescent scrawl before I shoved the box aside to take to the brat pack at the hospital later. The moving van had shown up at my mom’s house yesterday, and I was tired of packing peanuts and bubble wrap, depressed by all the good-byes. Mom and Robbie had brought the last of my things over early this afternoon, waking me up and taking me out for a bon voyage breakfast at an old-lady eatery, since by Robbie’s guess her kitchen was already in Kansas. I think we got bad service because of my shunning, but it was hard to tell unless your waitress wrote BLACK WITCH on the back of your napkin. It didn’t matter. We weren’t in any hurry. The coffee sucked dishwater, though.
Robbie had been in a good mood because he’d paid for the moving van. Mom had been in a good mood because she had some excitement in her life. I was in a bad mood because she wouldn’t have had to do this if I hadn’t gotten shunned. It didn’t matter that my mother had been apartment hunting since getting back from visiting Takata. She was moving because of me. Robbie and my mom had probably landed by now, and all that remained of them in Cincinnati were six boxes, her new fridge in my kitchen, and her old Buick out front.
Melancholy, I pulled new tape off an old box, peeking inside to find my dad’s old ley line stuff. Making a pleased sound, I stood and hoisted the box onto a hip to take it to the kitchen.
The pixies were noisy up front in the sanctuary as I made my way to the back of the church, and I didn’t even bother to turn on the lights as I shoved the box on the center counter. In the corner, the little blue lights on my mom’s fridge glowed. It had a through-the-door ice dispenser, and Ivy and I had been thrilled when she gave it to us. The pixies had taken all of six seconds to discover that if three of them hit the ice dispenser together, they’d get a cube, which they then used like a surfboard to skate around the kitchen floor. Smiling at the memory, I left the box and went back to my room. I’d unpack it later.
The entire back part of the church had a chill air about it that couldn’t all be blamed on the late hour. Ivy being out might account for some of it, but most was because we had inherited my mom’s space heater along with half her attic. The electric heater was going full tilt up front, and the pixies were enjoying a hot summer evening in January, but since the thermostat for the entire church was in the sanctuary, the heat hadn’t clicked on in hours. It was cool away from the reach of the space heater, making me shiver in my still-tender skin. Coffee would be nice, but since having that grande latte…raspberry…thing, nothing seemed to taste good anymore.
Thoughts of cinnamon and raspberry dogged me back to my room, and I pulled the tape from the next box to find music I’d forgotten I ever had. Pleased, I shoved the box into the hall to go through with Ivy later.
Ivy was doing well, having borrowed my mom’s Buick after sundown to go talk to Rynn Cormel. I didn’t expect her back until after sunrise. She had told him about the oubliette last week, how Denon had been Art’s ghoul set to watch her until she quit the I.S., and how Art had died. I hoped she’d kept quiet about how her aura had protected me when I pulled on a line so hard that it melted stone, but I bet she’d told Rynn Cormel that, too. Not that I was embarrassed or anything, but why advertise to the city’s master vampire that you can do that sort of thing?
Had it surprised me that her aura could shield my soul? I’d never heard of such a thing before, and a search on the Internet and in my books yielded nothing, but since our auras had blended the last time she had bitten me…I wasn’t surprised-I was scared. There was the potential here to find a way to reunite her mind, body, and soul after her first death. I just didn’t see how yet. Kisten had his soul when he died that second time. I knew it. What I didn’t know was if it was me and our love for each other, or if it had been because he had died twice in quick succession, or if it had been something completely different. It wasn’t worth risking Ivy’s soul to find out. Just the thought of her dead terrified me.
A third unmarked box turned out to be more stuffed animals, and I sat back on my heels as my fingers went to pick one up. My smile became sad, and I brushed the unicorn’s mane. This one was special. It had graced my dresser for most of my high school years. “Maybe I’ll keep you, Jasmine,” I whispered, then I straightened at a zing of adrenaline.
Jasmine. That was her name! I thought, elated. That was the name of the black-haired girl I’d hung around with at Trent’s dad’s make-a-wish camp. “Jasmine!” I whispered, excited as I held the stuffed animal close and smiled with a bitter happiness. The toy made a small spot of warmth against me. I remembered it covering a much larger area when I was younger. Happy, I stretched to set it next to the giraffe on my dresser. I’d never forget again.
“Welcome home, Jasmine,” I whispered. Trent had wanted to know Jasmine’s name as much as I had, having had a crush on her and nothing to remember her by. Maybe if I told him her name, he might tell me if she’d survived-once he looked her up in his dad’s records.
I ought to try to mend that fence, I thought, rummaging to find a toy that didn’t have a name or face associated with it that I could take to Ford and Holly. I knew he’d appreciate something to distract and help socialize the young banshee. The two of them were doing great the last time I’d called, though Edden wasn’t happy about Ford taking sick days or setting up a nursery in the corner of his office. Not to mention the potty chair in the men’s room.
I grinned. Edden had ranted for an entire fifteen minutes about that.
Pulling out the elephant named Raymond and the blue bear named Gummie that had nothing but happy memories associated with them, I set them aside, folding the box closed and setting it atop the other box to take to the hospital. My aura was just about back to normal, and I really wanted to see the kids. The girl in the red pajamas, especially. I needed to talk to her. Tell her the chance was real. If her parents would let me, that is.
I held my breath against the dust as I hoisted the two light boxes, nudging my door open with a foot and taking them to the foyer. The pixies chorused a cheerful hello as I entered the sanctuary, and Rex darted through the cat door to the belfry stairway, spooked when I dropped the boxes on top of the one already there. Her head poked back through the door, and I crouched and extended my hand.
“What’s up, Rex?” I crooned, and she came out, tail high as she sedately made her way to me for a little scritch under her chin. She’d been in the foyer when I brought the first box in, too.
The hum of pixy wings pulled our attention up. “Toys for the kids?” Jenks said, his wings a bright red from sitting under the full-spectrum light I had put in my desk lamp.
“Yup, you want to come with me and Ivy when we take them?”
“Sure,” he drawled. “I might raid the witch’s floor for some fern seed, though.”
I harrumphed as I stood. “Be my guest.” It was harder to get stuff now that I was shunned, and Jenks was already planning out a third more garden space to compensate for it. There was the black market, but I wasn’t going there. If I did, then I’d be saying I agreed with what they’d labeled me as, and I didn’t.
Rex went to stand under my coat, and I hesitated when she stood on her hind legs to pat the pocket. My eyebrows rose, and I looked at Jenks. I’d chased her out of the foyer twice now.
“Is one of your kids in there?” I asked Jenks, then jumped for the cat when her nails hooked the felt and started to pull. Her claw disengaged when I scooped her up, but I had to drop her when her back claw dug into my arm. Tail bristled, she ran for the back of the church. There was a brief shout from Jenks’s kids, and then disappointment. Having the sanctuary warmer than the rest of the church was better than putting them in a bubble.
Jenks was laughing, but when I pushed my sleeve up, I found a long scratch. “Jenks,” I complained. “Your cat needs her nails trimmed. I said I’d do it.”
“Rache, look at this.”
I tugged my sleeve down, head coming up to find Jenks hovering before me with a blue something in his hands. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was a little bambino, wrapped up in a blue blanket by the way Jenks was carrying it. “What is it?” I asked, and he dropped it into my waiting hand.
“It was in your pocket,” he said, landing on my palm, and we looked at it together in the light coming from the sanctuary. “It’s a chrysalis, but I don’t know what species,” he added, nudging it with his booted toe.
My confusion cleared, and I took a breath, remembered Al curling my fingers around it on New Year’s Eve. “Can you tell if it’s alive?” I asked.
Hands on his hips, he nodded. “Yup. Where did you get it?”
Jenks flew up as my fingers closed over it and I started for the kitchen to wash my scratch. “Uh, Al gave it to me,” I said as we passed through the sanctuary and into the cooler hall. “He was making little blue butterflies out of snow, and this was the only thing that survived.”
“Tink’s a Disney whore, that is the creepiest thing I’ve seen since Bis got stuck in the downspout,” he said softly, his wings a soft hum in the dark.
I thunked the lights on in the kitchen with my elbow, and not knowing what to do with it, I set it on the
