it! This was the one I needed!
“That’s the book Robbie gave you on the solstice when you were eighteen, right?” she was saying. “I made Robbie give it to me, but I didn’t know if it was the right one. I think you’ll need this, too.”
Eyes wide, I took the red-and-white rock with the small dip in it with shaking hands. She wanted me to rescue Pierce? “Why?” I managed, and my mom patted my knee.
“Pierce was good for you,” she said instead of explaining. “I watched you find more strength and personal resolve in that one night together than the entire eighteen years before. Or maybe it was always there, and he simply brought it out. I’m proud of you, sweetheart. I want you to do wonderful things. But unless you have someone to share them with, they don’t mean a dog’s ass. Trust me on this.”
I couldn’t say anything, and I just stared at the book and the crucible. She thinks Pierce would make a good boyfriend? “Mom, I only want this to prove to Al that he can’t just jerk people into the ever-after,” I said, and she smiled.
“That’s a good start,” she said as she stood up, drawing me to a stand in her wake. “Save him, and if it works, then it does. If it doesn’t, then no harm done. The important thing is that you try.” My mom leaned forward and gave me a hug, smothering me in a heady redwood scent.
I was pretty sure she was talking about trying Pierce on as a boyfriend, not trying to summon him out, and I absently hugged her back.
“You need someone a little dirty, honey, with a heart of gold,” she whispered in my ear as she patted my back. “I don’t think you’re going to find it in this century. We don’t make honest men who are that strong in their convictions anymore. Society seems to just…twist them bad.”
She let go and stepped back. “Mom,” I managed, but she waved me off.
“Go. Go on. You still have the watch, don’t you?”
I nodded, not surprised she knew it was part of the spell. It was my dad’s watch, but it had been Pierce’s before that.
“Do it exactly like before. Exactly. If you added something by accident, do it again. If you stirred it with your finger, do it again. If you got your hair into it, add a strand. It has to be exact.”
Again I nodded. There were tears in both our eyes, and she walked me to the hall with her arm over my shoulders. “Don’t worry about the rest of this. I’ll bring everything over tomorrow in the Buick. Your little car would need three trips.”
Blinking, I smiled at my mom and pulled the book and stone tight to me. “Thanks, Mom,” I whispered. And with the knowledge that my mom believed in me even if the rest of the world didn’t, I headed for the door.
Twenty-four
I winced at the clatter of the three black potion storage bottles in the sink. Looking up at the night-darkened window, I listened for the whine of adolescent pixy wings. It was just after midnight; Jenks’s kids were asleep, and I wanted to keep it that way. Hearing nothing, I shoved my sleeves up higher and dipped my hands into the warm suds. I wouldn’t be able to invoke Pierce’s charm until tomorrow night, but I had to do something to distract myself from my worry over Ivy, and prepping the charms would help. I still hadn’t heard from Cormel, and if no one called me soon, I was calling them.
A box of cold pizza with one piece gone lay open atop Ivy’s papers, and a two-liter bottle of pop sat, barely touched. The fridge was gone, leaving an empty space; our food was outside on the picnic table. Behind me on the center counter were the partially prepared bits and pieces of my spell, making a wide semicircle around the open university textbook. There was enough stuff to make three substance charms, and I was going to use it all.
New Year’s Eve was my best chance to find enough ambient energy to work the spell, and I wasn’t going to bet everything on one go. Not after the locator charms had failed to work. Yes, it had probably been my blood that had been the problem, seeing that Marshal’s worked and mine hadn’t, but the mere thought that I might do a spell wrong was enough for me to spend the time to stir a little insurance.
Oh God, Marshal, I thought, almost dropping the slippery storage bottle as I remembered my shunning. What was I going to tell him? Or better yet, how was I going to tell him? Hey, hi, I know we just had sex with our clothes on, but guess what I found out! Shunning was contagious. I didn’t want him to lose his job because of me. Actually, I didn’t want him to lose his job again because of me. I was the freaking black plague.
Mentally tired, I rinsed the bottles in salt water and reached for the dishcloth. And things had been going so well, too-apart from my latest mess, that is. I’d finally gotten the Weres off my case by returning the focus to them. Thanks to my saving Trent, the elves weren’t bothering me despite my potential demon, ah, liabilities. The vampires were edgy, but I think I had just taken care of that. Ivy was going to be okay, and our relationship was going to get a lot less chaotic. Just when everything was under control and I might be able to have something normal with a normal guy doing normal things, my own people had come down on me.
“Must have been Tom,” I muttered, shoving my sleeves back up and pulling out the drain plug.
Young, attractive guys who have a good job and don’t mind a girl who spends a night in the ever-after once a week were hard to find. It wasn’t as if Marshal and I had been planning a life together, but damn it, there’d been the chance that it might have gone that way. Eventually. Not anymore. What was wrong with me?
Standing at the black window, I closed my eyes and sighed. That power pull had been fantastic, though. What am I going to tell him?
Grimacing, I turned back to the center counter and the spells waiting to be put together, bottled, and stoppered for tomorrow. I’d take them out to Fountain Square, find an alley, and when the crowd started singing “Auld Lang Syne,” I’d invoke them all if I had to. And then Al and I would talk. Get a few things settled.
But even as I was looking forward to it, the thought of arguing with Al in the snow with a naked ghost and a square full of witnesses made me cringe. Maybe I could rent a van and do it in the parking garage. It wasn’t as if Al was giving me any choice. I’d tried to call him earlier, but all I’d gotten for my trouble was a lingering headache and a “go away” message. Fine. We could do it the hard way. I had agreed not to summon him, but he hadn’t said anything about stealing his latest chunk of meat out from under him.
The soft hum of pixy wings got my attention, and I gave Jenks a closed-lipped smile as he flew in. “Hi, Jenks,” I said as I shook the black bottle to get the water out and dried the exterior, impatient to get to the fun stuff on my counter. “I didn’t wake up your kids, did I?”
Jenks glanced over my spelling supplies, and a slip of silver dust sifted from him as he hovered over the table. “No. Have you heard from Cormel yet?”
“No.” The word was flat, carrying all my worry. “But she’ll be fine.” And if she isn’t, I’m taking up the new profession of master-vampire killer.
He landed on the open pizza box, making a face at the unused garlic dipping sauce. “Fine. Yeah. Going after a banshee is fine. You’re both lucky to be alive.”
I set the bottle upside down in the cold oven and turned it on low, letting the door shut with a hard thump. There was a clatter as the bottle fell over. “Don’t you think we know that?” I said, irritated. “Mia came after us, we did not go after her. What would you like us to have done? Roll over and play dead?”
“Ivy might be okay if you had,” he muttered, just within my hearing, and I shook the last drops of water out of the next bottle before giving it a cursory swipe with the towel. It went in beside the first, this time propped up against the wall, and I reached for the last black bottle.
“Ivy thinks it’s her fault that Mia learned how to kill without a trace,” I said. “She tried to bring her in. She tried, failed, and learned from it. Next time, we’ll do it together.” I looked at his drooping wings, and added, “All of us. It’s going to take all of us. That’s one wicked bitch.”
His wings blurred into nothing, and feeling better, I set the last bottle in the oven with the others and carefully shut the door. They’d be dry by the time I was ready for them.
Whether from the pixies being asleep, or Ivy being gone-or maybe because Pierce was in the ever-after-the church felt empty. Turning to the center counter, I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked at the clock. Spelling on the back side of the night wasn’t the best of times, but it would be okay. “Wine,” I said as I reached for the cheap bottle and unscrewed the top. Not one of the finest wines to have graced our kitchen, but it was local, the grapes grown in the soil where Pierce had lived and died.
