'I'm not going to turn into anything,' Ivy growled, followed shortly by Nick's fervent agreement.
I ran through the church as the hefty revving of a diesel truck shook the windows—apart from the one Pierce broke that was covered with plywood. Flinging the door open, I shouted and waved, snatching up my lethal amulet from my bag by the door as I ran down the steps in my sock feet. Looking almost disappointed, the guy in brown got out, coming to meet me with a package.
'Thank you,' I said as he handed it to me, and I half expected him to ask for some ID. He was a witch. I could tell from his disdainful look. My amulet was a healthy green, and snatching the small package from him, I turned and went back into my church. What did I care what some guy in brown shorts thought? Even if he wore the uniform very well. Damn, where did they go to hire these guys? The gym?
The church felt empty when I came back in, absent of pixies after the long winter. Feet silent, I padded to my abandoned desk, turning at the last moment to sit in one of the leather chairs around the coffee table. The return address was from a shipping place downtown, and tearing open the gummy label, I shook the hard plastic of my phone out onto the table.
'Oh,' I said, drawing my hand back as it spun and settled. Eyebrows raised, I cautiously looked inside the package for a note, not finding one. The coven had returned my phone? I eyed my lethal-spell amulet again, still not wanting to touch it. Hell, I'd seen Vivian almost kill Ivy with two white charms. I wasn't about to take anything at face value.
'Hey! The coven sent me my phone!' I shouted, waiting for someone to come look. But no one did. 'Jenks!' I shouted, scowling, and the hum of pixy wings sounded loud over Nick's argument from the kitchen.
'What?' the pixy complained. 'We re kind of in the middle of something.'
I looked up at him, hovering five feet above the floor, his hands on his hips and spilling a lavender dust. 'The coven sent my phone back to me. Is it bugged?'
He flew a sweeping arc over it and back to his original position. 'Yeah. Can I get it later? They've almost agreed on something.'
My mouth opened to protest, but he was already gone, yelling at Nick to shut the hell up and that Ivy was right before he even reached the kitchen.
Slumping into the soft leather, I got brave and thumbed the phone open. It was on and charged... and I had a message.
Curious, I hit the button and listened to the prerecorded preamble. But when a high-pitched, familiar voice came through the earpiece, I sat up, heart pounding. Vivian.
'Rachel Morgan,' Vivian said formally, and I pressed the phone to my ear to catch every nuance. 'As of last night, and the... incident at Love-land Castle, we are reassessing the threat you represent. I told them that Brooke was trying to circumvent coven mandates and had summoned a demon after you warned her not to, and that you tried to stop him from taking her, but they think I'm
Her last words sounded accusing, and I sat on the edge of the couch. 'We know you used a curse to kill the fairy clan. I'll be honest with you. A reassessment is not necessarily a good thing, but you'll be given a chance to come in peacefully before we take action again. If you force this from a quiet acquisition to a public one, we'll bring your family into it.'
'I don't even know why I'm telling you this,' she said, 'except maybe to thank you for trying. With Brooke, I mean. I may be a lot of things, but a liar isn't among them, and I wanted you to know that I'm not behind that accusation. Brooke did it to herself.'
The message clicked off, and I scrambled to save it, exhaling when I hit the right button. Snapping the phone closed, I slumped back to stare at the empty rafters with not a speck of dust or cobweb on them. Frustrated, I tossed the phone to the table for Jenks to debug later. I'm glad she believed me, but what good was it going to do?
Sighing, I levered myself up and headed back to the kitchen to finish up the plans. I wasn't keen on testing Trent's security, but I didn't have much of a choice. I had to get my shunning removed. To do that, I had to survive the coven. They weren't going to back down unless I got Trent to vouch for me without signing that lame-ass paper of his. Which meant blackmail at the worst, and uneasy truce at the best. I was hoping for the truce, but after that Pandora charm had gone deadly, I didn't have a problem with the blackmail.
Getting into Trent's fortress was going to be the easy part. Getting out would be the kicker. But having Ivy and Jenks with me would make this as easy as falling off a log.
Right into the pit of snakes.
Thirty
I'd never been to Trent's primary stables, just his foaling stables a stone's throw away. But the rough-cut boards and smell of hay still felt familiar after the Pandora charm, even if the memory had almost killed me. It made stealing from Trent really easy on my conscience. Stupid elf. I waited in the glow of the security light, feeling exposed with my back pressed against the vertical boards. There was no moon, but there was nowhere to hide either, and I listened to a sitcom come down from an open window on the second floor. Breeding racehorses, Trent forced an early April foaling, so the staff on hand here would be correspondingly small.
Ivy was a shadow at the corner of the building. Jenks, Jax, and Nick were at the window beside me, more of a door, really, where they tossed the hay in. It was locked, of course, with sensor pads. The pixies were trying to find the right amount of electricity to keep the circuit closed even when it was open. They'd been at it long enough to make me nervous. It never took Jenks this long. The entire job was being run like it was a damn committee, and I hated it.
'Are we there yet?' I whispered, and Jax's wings spilled a silver dust. Sighing, I leaned back and fingered my belt pack, holding a couple of pain amulets, the three potion vials—and Trent's dad's hoof pick. I was hoping that if I gave it back, Trent would realize that it was a game and not kill me outright. Even if Pierce hadn't melted my splat gun, I wouldn't have brought it. If I got caught, it wasn't going to be with a potentially lethal weapon on my person. Using my splat gun without the backing of a warrant would put me in jail faster than Bis could hit Pierce's tombstone with a wad of spit, game or no. Any charm I used would leave a trace that the I.S. could track right back to me. I was going in almost naked, and not happy about it.
It was almost three, right when pixies and elves were about to wake up and witches about ready to crash. Crashing sounded good. I was tired. Evading Vivian this afternoon had been harder than I'd thought it would be. We'd finally resorted to jumping stores in the mall until we all went out different delivery entrances to take the bus to one of Ivy's friends. His car had gotten us to the interstate, and from there, we'd walked in across the pastures where they couldn't use motion detectors because of the horses. Everyone had an Achilles' heel, and apparently Trent's was his horses.
'Got it,' Jenks said, making a quick circle around me before darting off to get Ivy. Nick gave me a toothy smile as he carefully opened the wooden door, hesitating to allow Jax to oil the hinges with pixy dust when they squeaked. A horse nickered at the new draft, and we froze, listening as the muted conversation from upstairs continued and the laugh track exploded. The pixies vanished inside, and Nick leapt easily to the sill, disappearing soundlessly.
Alone with Ivy, I exhaled in worry. I didn't like how many people it was taking to do this, but I wasn't going to miss out, and Ivy wouldn't let Nick and me do this alone.
Her hair in a black scrunchy, Ivy vaulted easily through the black window. Her hand without the cast came out, and I tobk it, using it to find my way inside.
I felt like a thief as I landed, my dew-wet running shoes quiet on the swept concrete. The fragrant hay made towers around us, and the soft, inset lighting of the stables was enough to see by. Jax was gone or not moving, but Jenks came close, landing on my shoulder to whisper, 'We've got the alarms disabled and the cameras on a loop. Ivy's going to take care of the two guys and the vet upstairs. Hang tight.'
I nodded as I took the cloth that Ivy had used to wipe her shoes. Calm and confident, she headed into the aisle and to the heavily polished stairway to the living quarters. There were inlaid lights on each step, and it looked far too fine to be in a stable. Arm swinging, Ivy looked more like she was crossing a bar to get a drink than going
