If a pixy could hover guiltily, Jenks was. 'Nothing much,' he said, darting past Ivy and me into the sanctuary. 'Nothing that wouldn't have happened anyway.'
My eyes narrowing, I followed him back to the party, setting Ceri's hat on the piano in passing. Ivy was right behind me. 'What did you do, Jenks?'
'Nothing that wouldn't have happened on its own,' he whined, shedding green sparkles onto the pool table. 'I like where I live,' he said, landing behind the side pocket in his best Peter Pan pose. 'You two women are too flaky to put my family in your hands. Just ask anyone here. They'd agree with me!'
Ivy huffed and turned her back on him, muttering under her breath, but I could tell she was relieved her new landlord wasn't her mom.
'What did you do, Jenks?' I demanded.
Ivy's eyes narrowed in a sudden thought. Faster than I would have believed possible, she snatched up a pool cue and slammed it down inches from Jenks. The pixy shot up into the air, almost hitting the ceiling. 'You little bug!' she exclaimed, and Ceri grabbed Keasley and the cake and headed toward the kitchen. 'The paper says Trent's been released.'
'What!' Appalled, I gazed at Jenks up near the ceiling. Keasley jerked to a brief halt in the hallway, then continued on. David had dropped his head into his hands, but I think he was trying not to laugh.
'The fingerprint they lifted from Brett and the paperwork was lost,' Ivy said, smacking a beam with the cue to make Jenks dart to the next one over. 'They dropped charges. You stupid pixy! He murdered Brett. She had him, and you helped Quen him get off?'
'Wha-a-a-at,' he griped, moving to my shoulder for protection. 'I had to do something to save your pretty little ass, Rache. Trent was thi-i-i-i-is close to taking you out.' His voice went high in exaggeration. 'Arresting him at his own wedding was stupid, and you know it!'
My anger evaporated as I remembered Trent's expression when the cuffs ratcheted shut. God, that had felt good. 'Okay, I'll give you that,' I said, trying to see him on my shoulder. 'But it was fun. Did you see the look on Ellasbeth's face?'
Jenks laughed, doubling up. 'You should have seen her dad's,' he said. 'Oooooh, doggies, that man was more upset than a pixy papa with eight sets of girls.'
Ivy set the pool cue on the table and relaxed. 'I don't remember it,' she said softly.
Her lack of memory was disturbing, and trying to ignore that I was missing chunks of my week, too, I looked up as Ceri and Keasley came back in, the cake almost on fire from all the candles they'd stuck into it.
I couldn't very well stay mad when they started singing 'Happy Birthday,' and I felt the tears prick again that I had people in my life who cared enough to go through the misery of trying to pretend everything was normal when it wasn't. Ceri settled the cake on the coffee table, and I hesitated only briefly at my wish. It had been the same every year since my father had died. My eyes closed against the smoke as I blew the candles out. They smarted, and I wiped them with no one saying anything as they clapped, teasing to find out what the wish was.
Taking up the big knife, I started slicing the cake, layering perfectly triangular pieces on paper plates decorated with spring flowers. The chatter became overly loud and forced, and with Jenks's kids everywhere it was a madhouse. Ivy wouldn't look at me as she took her plate, and seeing as she was the last, I settled myself across from her.
David followed Ceri and the cat to the piano, where she started playing some complicated tune that was probably older than the Constitution. Keasley was trying to keep the pixies occupied and out of the frosting, entertaining them with the way his wrinkles disappeared when he puffed his cheeks out. And I was sitting with a plate of cake on my lap, absolutely miserable and having no cause for it. Or not really.
The awful feeling of loss I had felt in the FIB conference room rose from nowhere, pulled into existence by the reminder of Kisten's death. I'd thought Ivy and Jenks were dead. I'd thought everyone I cared about had been severed from me. And that I had given up and accepted the damage of a demon curse when I thought I'd nothing left to lose had opened my eyes really fast. Either I was an emotional wimp and had to learn to handle the potential loss of everyone I loved without caving or—and this was the one that scared me the most—I had to come to grips and accept that my black-and-white outlook on demon curses wasn't so black and white anymore.
I had a sick feeling that it was the latter. I was going bad. The lure of demon magic and power was too much to best. But damn it, when she's fighting demons and nasty elves with the strength of the world's economics on their side, a girl has to get a little dirty.
I looked at my chocolate cake and forced my jaw to unclench. I wasn't going to agonize over the smut on my soul. I couldn't and still live with myself. Ceri was coated with it, and she was a good person. Hell, the woman had almost cried over forgetting my birthday cake. I was going to have to handle demon magic the same way I did earth and ley line magic. If the stuff that went into the spell or curse didn't hurt anyone, and the working of the spell/curse didn't hurt anyone, and the result of the spell/curse didn't harm anyone but me, then I was going to twist the stupid curse and call myself a good person. I didn't give a damn what anyone else thought. Jenks would tell me if I was straying, wouldn't he?
Fork in hand, I cut a bite, then put it back on the plate untasted. I met Ivy's miserable expression, seeing the tears in her eyes. Kisten was dead. To sit here and eat my cake seemed so hypocritical. And trite. But I wanted something normal. I needed something to tell myself that I was going to live past this, that I had good friends—and since I didn't drown my sorrows in beer, I'd do it in chocolate.
'You going to eat that, or cry over it?' Jenks said, flitting in from the piano.
'Shut up, Jenks,' I said tiredly, and he smirked, sending a glitter of sparkles to puddle on the table before the breeze from the upper transom window blew them into infinity.
'You shut up,' he said, spooning up a wad of my frosting with a pair of chopsticks. 'Eat your cake. We made it for your damned birthday.'
Eyes warming from unshed tears, I jammed the fork into my mouth just so I wouldn't have to say anything else. The sweet chocolate tasted like ashes on my tongue, and I forced it down, reaching for another bite like it was a chore. Across from me Ivy was doing the same thing. It was my birthday cake, and we were going to eat it.
In the rafters pixies played, safe in their garden and church until the two worlds collided. Kisten's death would darken my coming months until I found a new pattern to my life, but there were good things to balance against the heartache. David seemed to be handling the curse—he seemed to like it, actually—and since he had a real pack, his boss would stop gunning for me. Al was tucked away in an ever-after prison, most likely. The Weres were off my case. Piscary was not only no longer my landlord but was dead. Really dead. Lee would step into the gambling and protection vacuum he'd left behind, and seeing as I had some part in freeing him, he probably would give up on his urge to knock me off. Having Lee back would pacify Trent, too, though it rankled me back to the Turn that he was out of jail. God! The man was like Teflon.
And Ivy? Ivy wasn't going anywhere. We would figure this out eventually, and no one would die trying. No longer tied to Piscary, she was her own person. Together with Jenks, we three could do anything.
Right?
