I flopped into Ivy's gray suede chair with a feeling of helplessness. 'Yeah, right,' I said softly. A noncontact spell required a wand. Tuition at the community college hadn't covered wand making, just potions and amulets. I didn't have the expertise, much less the recipe, for anything that complicated. I guess they knew who I was right enough.
The sound of a foot scraping linoleum came from the kitchen, and I glanced at the hall. Swell. Glenn had heard the entire thing. Embarrassed, I pulled myself up from the chair. I'd get the money from somewhere. I had almost a week.
Glenn turned as I entered the kitchen. He was standing next to that canister of useless fish. Maybe I could sell it. I put the phone beside Ivy's computer and went to the sink. 'You can sit down, Detective Edden. We're going to be here a while.'
'It's Glenn,' he said stiffly. 'It's against FIB policy to report to a member of your family, so keep it to yourself. And we're going to Mr. Smather's apartment now.'
I made a scoffing bark of laughter. 'Your dad just loves to bend the rules, doesn't he?'
He frowned. 'Yes ma'am.'
'We aren't going to Dan's apartment until Sara Jane gets off work.' Then I slumped. Glenn wasn't the one I was angry with. 'Look,' I said, not wanting Ivy to find him while I was in the shower. 'Why don't you go home and meet me back here about seven-thirty?'
'I'd prefer to stay.' He scratched at the welt showing a light pink under his watchband.
'Sure,' I said sourly. 'Whatever. I gotta shower, though.' Clearly he was concerned I'd go without him. The worry was well-founded. Leaning to the window over the sink, I shouted out into the lavish, pixy-tended garden, 'Jenks!'
The pixy buzzed in through the hole in the screen so fast, I was willing to bet he'd been eavesdropping. 'You bellowed, princess of stink?' he said, landing beside Mr. Fish on the sill.
I gave him a weary look. 'Would you show Glenn the garden while I shower?'
Jenks's wings blurred into motion. 'Yeah,' he said, going to make wide wary circles around Glenn's head. 'I'll baby-sit. Come on, cookie. You're going to get the five-dollar tour. Let's start in the graveyard.'
'Jenks,' I warned, and he gave me a grin, tossing his blond hair artfully over his eyes.
'This way, Glenn,' he said, darting out into the hall. Glenn followed, clearly not happy.
I heard the back door shut, and I leaned to the window. 'Jenks?'
'What!' The pixy darted back in the window, his face creased with irritation.
I crossed my arms in thought. 'Would you bring in some mullein leaves and jewelweed flowers when you get the chance? And do we have any dandelions that haven't gone to seed?'
'Dandelions?' He dropped an inch in surprise, his wings clattering. 'You going soft on me? You're going to make him an anti-itch spell, aren't you?'
I leaned to see Glenn standing stiffly under the oak tree, scratching his neck. He looked pitiful, and as Jenks kept telling me, I was a sucker for the underdog. 'Just get them, all right?'
'Sure,' he said. 'He's not much good like that, is he?'
I choked back a laugh, and Jenks flew out the window to join Glenn. The pixy landed on his shoulder, and Glenn jumped in surprise. 'Hey, Glenn,' Jenks said loudly. 'Head off toward those yellow flowers over there behind that stone angel. I want to show you to the rest of my kids. They've never met an FIB officer before.'
A faint smile crossed me. Glenn would be safe with Jenks if Ivy came home early. She jealously guarded her privacy and hated surprises, especially ones in FIB uniforms. That Glenn was Edden's son wouldn't help. She was willing to let sleeping grudges lie, but if she felt her territory was being threatened, she wouldn't hesitate to act, her odd, political status of dead-vamp-in-waiting letting her get away with things that would put me in the I.S. lockup.
Turning, my eyes fell upon the fish. 'What am I going to do with you—Bob?' I said around a sigh. I wasn't going to take him back to Mr. Ray's office, but I couldn't keep him in the canister. I cracked the top, finding that his gills were pumping and he was laying almost on his side. I thought perhaps I ought to put him in the tub.
Canister in hand, I went into Ivy's bathroom. 'Welcome home, Bob,' I murmured, dumping the canister into Ivy's black garden tub. The fish flopped in the inch of water, and I hurriedly ran the taps, jiggling the flow to try to keep it room temp. Soon Bob the fish was swimming in graceful sedate circles. I turned off the water and waited until it finished tinkling in and the surface grew smooth. He really was a pretty fish, striking against the black porcelain: all silver, with long, cream fins and that black circle decorating one side to look like a reverse full moon. I dabbled my fingertips in the water, and he darted to the other end of the tub.
Leaving him, I crossed the hall to my bathroom, got a change of clothes out of the dryer, and started the shower. As I picked the snarls out of my hair while waiting for the water to warm, my eyes fell upon the three tomatoes ripening upon the sill. I winced, glad they hadn't been anywhere for Glenn to see. A pixy had given them to me as payment for smuggling her across the city as she fled an unwanted marriage. And while tomatoes weren't illegal anymore, it was in bad taste to have them on display when one had a human guest.
It had been just over forty years since a quarter of the world's human population had been killed by a military-generated virus that had escaped and spontaneously fastened to a weak spot in a biogenetically engineered tomato. It was shipped out before anyone knew—the virus crossing oceans with the ease of an international traveler—and the Turn began.
The engineered virus had a varied effect upon the hidden Inderlanders. Witches, undead vampires, and the smaller species such as pixies and fairies, weren't affected at all. Weres, living vamps, leprechauns, and the like got the flu. Humans died by the droves, taking the elves with them as their practice of bolstering their numbers by hybridizing with humanity backfired.
The U.S. would have followed the Third World countries into chaos if the hidden Inderlanders hadn't stepped in to halt the spread of the virus, burn the dead, and keep civilization running until what was left of humanity finished mourning. Our secret was on the verge of coming out by way of the what-makes-these-people-immune question when a charismatic living vamp named Rynn Cormel pointed out that our combined numbers equaled humanity's. The decision to make our presence known, to live openly among the humans we had been mimicking to keep ourselves safe, was almost unanimous.
The Turn, as it came to be called, ushered in a nightmarish three years. Humanity took their fear of us out on the world's surviving bioengineers, murdering them in trials designed to legalize murder. Then they went further, to outlaw all genetically engineered products, along with the science that created them. A second, slower wave of death followed the first once old diseases found new life when the medicines humanity had created to battle everything from Alzheimer's to cancer no longer existed. Tomatoes are still treated like poison by humans, even though the virus is long gone. If you don't grow them yourself, you have to go to a specialty store to find them.
A frown pinched my forehead as I looked at the red fruit beading up with shower fog. If I was smart, I'd put it in the kitchen to see how Glenn would react at Piscary's. Bringing a human into an Inderland eatery wasn't a crackerjack idea. If he made a scene, we might not only get no information, we might get banned, or worse.
Judging that the water was hot enough, I eased into it with little 'ow, ow, ows.' Twenty minutes later I was wrapped in a big pink towel, standing before my ugly pressboard dresser with its dozen or so bottles of perfume carefully arranged on top. The blurry picture of the Howlers' fish was tucked between the glass and the frame. Sure looked like the same fish to me.
The delighted shrieks of pixy children filtered in through my open window to soften my mood. Very few pixies could manage to raise a family in the city. Jenks was stronger in spirit than most would ever know. He had killed before to keep his garden so his children wouldn't starve. It was good to hear their voices raised in delight: the sound of family and security.
'Which scent was it, now?' I murmured, fingers hovering over my perfumes as I tried to remember which one Ivy and I were currently experimenting with. Every so often a new bottle would show up without comment as she found something new for me to try.
I reached for one, dropping it when Jenks said from right beside my ear, 'Not that one.'
'Jenks!' I clutched my towel closer and spun. 'Get the hell out of my room!'
He darted backward as I made a grab for him. His grin widened as he looked down at the leg I accidentally showed. Laughing, he swooped past me and landed on a bottle. 'This one works good,' he said. 'And you're going to need all the help you can get when you tell Ivy you're going to make a run for Trent again.'
Scowling, I reached for the bottle. Wings clattering, he rose, pixy dust making temporary sunbeams shimmer
