'Brimstone.'
I spun, shocked. 'What?' I exclaimed.
Jenks snickered, and Ivy didn't drop my gaze as she got to her feet. 'I'm kidding,' she said flatly. Still I stared at her, my face cold. 'Can't you take a joke?' she added, shuffling to the hall. 'Give me an hour. I'll call Carmen and get her moving.'
Jenks vaulted into the air. 'Great,' he said, his wings humming. 'I'm going to go say good-bye to Matalina.' He seemed to glow as a shaft of light pierced the kitchen as he slipped past the curtains.
'Jenks!' I called after him. 'We aren't leaving for at least an hour!' It didn't take that long to say good- bye.
'Yeah?' came his faint voice. 'You think my kids just popped out of the ground?'
Face warming, I flicked the switch and started the coffee brewing. My motions were quick with anticipation, and a glow settled in to burn in my middle. I had spent the last week planning Jenks's and my excursion out to Trent's in painful detail. I had a plan. I had a backup plan. I had so many plans I was amazed they didn't explode out my ears when I blew my nose.
Between my anxiety and Ivy's anal-retentive adherence to schedules, it was exactly an hour later that we found ourselves at the curb. Both Ivy and I were dressed in biker leather, giving us eleven feet, eight inches of bad-ass attitude between us—Ivy most of it. A version of those assassin life-monitoring amulets hung around our necks, tucked out of sight. It was my fail-safe plan. If I got in trouble, I'd break the charm and Ivy's amulet would turn red. She had insisted on them—along with a lot of other things I thought were unnecessary.
I swung up behind Ivy on her bike, with nothing but that fail-safe amulet, a vial of saltwater to break it, a mink potion, and Jenks. Nick had the rest. With my hair tucked under the helmet and the smoked faceplate down, we rode through the Hollows, over the bridge, and into Cincinnati. The afternoon sun was warm on my shoulders, and I wished we really were just two biker chicks headed into town for a Friday afternoon of shopping.
In reality, we were headed for a parking garage to meet Nick and Ivy's friend, Carmen. She would take my place for the day, pretending to be me while they drove around the countryside. I thought it overkill, but if it pacified Ivy, I'd do it.
From the garage, I would sneak into Trent's garden with the help of Nick playing lawn-service guy, spraying the bugs Jenks had seeded Trent's prize rosebushes with last Saturday. Once past Trent's walls, it would be easy. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.
I had left the church calm and collected, but every block deeper into the city wound me tighter. My mind kept going over my plan, finding the holes in it and the 'what ifs.' Everything we had come up with seemed foolproof from the safety of our kitchen table, but I was relying heavily upon Nick and Ivy. I trusted them, but it still made me uneasy.
'Relax,' Ivy said loudly as we turned off the busy street and into the parking garage by the fountain square. 'This is going to work. One step at a time. You're a good runner, Rachel.'
My heart thumped, and I nodded. She hadn't been able to hide the worry in her voice.
The garage was cool, and she wove around the gate, avoiding the ticket. She was going to drive right on through as if using the garage as a side street. I took my helmet off upon catching sight of the white van plastered with green grass and puppies. I hadn't asked Ivy where she had gotten a lawn-care truck. I wasn't going to, either.
The back door opened as Ivy's bike lub-lub-lubbed closer, and a skinny vamp dressed like me jumped out, her hand grasping for the helmet. I handed it to her, sliding off as her leg took my place. Ivy never slowed the bike's pace. Stumbling, I watched Carmen stuff her blond hair under the helmet and grab Ivy's waist. I wondered if I really looked like that. Nah. I wasn't that skinny. 'See you tonight, okay?' Ivy said over her shoulder as she drove away.
'Get in,' Nick said softly, his voice muffled from inside the van. Giving Ivy and Carmen a last look, I jumped into the back, easing the door shut as Jenks flitted inside.
'Holy crap!' Jenks exclaimed, darting to the front. 'What happened to you?'
Nick turned in the driver's seat, his teeth showing strong against his makeup-darkened skin. 'Shellfish,' he said, patting his swollen cheeks. He had gone further in his charmless disguise, dying his hair a metallic black. With his dark complexion and his swollen face, he looked nothing like himself. It was a great disguise, which wouldn't set off a spell checker.
'Hi, Ray-ray,' he said, his eyes bright. 'How you doing?'
'Great,' I lied, jittery. I shouldn't have involved him, but Trent's people knew Ivy, and he had insisted. 'Sure you want to do this?'
He put the van into reverse. 'I've an airtight alibi. My time card says I'm at work.'
I looked askance at him as I pulled off ray boots. 'You're doing this on company time?'
'It's not as if anyone checks up on me. As long as the work gets done, they don't care.'
My face went wry. Sitting on a canister of bug killer, I shoved my boots out of sight. Nick had found a job cleaning artifacts at the museum in Eden Park. His adaptability was a continual surprise. In one week he had gotten an apartment, furnished it, bought a ratty truck, got a job, and took me out on a date—a surprisingly nice date including an unexpected, ten-minute helicopter tour over the city. He said his preexisting bank account had a lot to do with how fast he had found his feet. They must pay librarians more than I thought.
'Better get changed,' he said, his lips hardly moving as he paid the automated gate and we lumbered out into the sun. 'We'll be there in less than an hour.'
Anticipation pulled me tight, and I reached for the white duffel bag with the lawn care service logo on it. In it went my pair of lightweight shoes, my fail-safe amulet in a zippy bag, and my new silk/nylon bodysuit tightly packaged into a palm-sized bundle. I arranged everything to make room for one mink and an annoying pixy, tucking Nick's protective, disposable paper overalls on top. I was going in as a mink, but I would be damned if I was going to stay that way.
Conspicuous in their absence were my usual charms. I felt naked without them, but if caught, the most the I.S. could charge me with was breaking and entering. If I had even one charm that could act on a person—even as little as a bad-breath charm—it would bump me up to intent to do bodily harm. That was a felony. I was a runner; I knew the law.
While Nick kept Jenks occupied up front, I quickly stripped down to nothing and jammed every last bit of evidence that I had been in the van into a canister labeled toxic chemicals. I downed my mink potion with an embarrassed haste, gritting my teeth against the pain of transformation. Jenks gave Nick hell when he realized I'd been naked in the back of his van. I wasn't looking forward to changing back, suffering Jenks's barbs and jokes until I managed to get in my bodysuit.
And from there it went like clockwork.
Nick gained the grounds with little trouble, since he was expected—the real lawn service had gotten a cancellation call from me that morning. The gardens were empty because it was the full moon and they were closed for heavy maintenance. As a mink, I scampered into the thick rosebushes Nick was supposed to be spraying with a toxic insect killer but in actuality was saltwater to turn me back into a person. The thumps from Nick tossing my shoes, amulet, and clothes into the shrubs were unbelievably welcome. Especially with Jenks's lurid running commentary about acres of big, pale, naked women as he sat on a rose cane and rocked back and forth in delight. I was sure the saltwater was going to kill the roses rather than the aggressive insects Jenks had infected them with, but that, too, was in the plan. If by chance I was caught, Ivy would come in the same way with the new shipment of plants.
Jenks and I spent the better part of the afternoon squashing bugs, doing more than the saltwater to rid Trent's roses of pests. The gardens remained quiet, and the other maintenance crews stayed clear of Nick's caution flags stuck around the rose bed. By the time the moon rose, I was wound tighter than a virgin troll on his wedding night. It didn't help that it was so cold.
'Now?' Jenks asked sarcastically, his wings invisible but for a silver shimmer in the dark as he hovered before me.
'Now,' I said, teeth chattering as I picked my careful way through the thorns.
With Jenks flying vanguard, we skulked from pruned bush to stately tree, finding our way in through a back door at the commissary. From there it was a quick dash to the front lobby, Jenks putting every camera on a fifteen-minute loop.
