For a Few Demons More

I looked at Jenks, guilt rising thick in me. Maybe we could get the city to defray the cost if we refiled as a city shelter. It wasn't as if we could ask the landlord to fix it. Piscary owned the church, and though Ivy had dropped the facade of paying rent to the master vampire she looked to, we were responsible for the upkeep. It was like living rent free in your parents' house when they were on an extended vacation— vacation being jail in this case, thanks to me. It was an ugly story, but at least I hadn't killed him… uh, for good.

Ivy's sigh was audible over the sound of my work. 'Can you get out here before tonight?' she asked, making me feel marginally better.

I didn't hear the answer to that, but there was no more conversation forthcoming, and I focused on rubbing out the smears, moving clockwise as I went. Jenks watched for a moment from the rim of the bucket, then said, 'You look like a porno star on your hands and knees, mopping in your underwear. Push it, baby,' he moaned. 'Push it!'

I glanced up to find him making rude motions. Doesn't he have anything better to do? But I knew he was trying to cheer me up—at least that's what I was telling myself.

As his wings turned red from laughter, I jerked my robe closed and sat back on my knees before I blew a shoulder-length red curl from my face. Taking a swing at his smirk would be useless—he had gotten really fast since his stint under a demon curse that made him people-size. And turning my back to him would be worse.

'Would you straighten my desk for me?' I asked, allowing a touch of annoyance into my voice. 'Your cat dumped my papers.'

'You bet,' he said, zipping off. Immediately I felt my blood pressure drop.

Ivy's soft steps intruded, and Jenks cussed fluently at her when she pulled the papers off the floor and set them on the desktop for him. Politely telling him to shove a slug up his ass, she strode past me to her piano, a spray bottle in one hand and a chamois cloth in the other.

'Someone's coming out this morning,' she said, starting to clean Ceri's blood from the varnished wood. Old blood didn't flip any switches in living vamps—not like the chance to take it did. 'They're going to give us an estimate, and if our credit checks out, they'll do the entire church. You want to pay the extra five thousand to insure it?'

Five thousand to insure it? Holy crap. How much was this going to cost? Uneasy, I sat back up on my heels and dunked the brush. My rolled-up sleeve slipped, soaking in an instant. From my desk Jenks called out, 'Go for it, Rache. It says here you won a million dollars.'

I glanced behind me to find him manhandling my mail. Irritated, I dropped the brush and squeezed the water from my robe. 'Can we find out how much it's going to cost first?' I asked, and she nodded, giving her piano a heavy coat of whatever was in that unlabeled spray bottle. It evaporated quickly, and she wiped it to a shine.

'Here,' she said, setting the bottle down beside the bucket. 'It will get rid of the—' Her words stopped. 'Just wipe the floor with it,' she added, and my eyebrows rose.

'Oka-a-ay.' I bent back over the floor, hesitating at the circle Ceri had scribed to call Minias, then smeared it to nothing. Ceri could help me make a new one, and I wasn't going to have demonic blood circles on the floor of my church.

'Hey, Ivy,' Jenks called. 'You want to keep this?'

She rocked into motion, and I shifted to keep her in my view. Jenks had a coupon for pizza, and I smirked. Right. Like she would even consider ordering anything but Piscary's Pizza.

'What else does she have in here?' Ivy said, throwing it away. I turned my back on them, knowing that the clutter I kept my desk in drove Ivy insane. She'd probably take the opportunity to tidy it. God, I'd never be able to find a thing.

'Spell-of-the-Month Club… toss,' Jenks said, and I heard it thunk into the trash can. 'Free issue of Witch Weekly… toss. Credit check… toss. Crap, Rachel. Don't you throw anything away?'

I ignored him, having only a small arc to finish. Wax on, wax off. My arm was hurting.

'The zoo wants to know if you want to renew your off-hours runner's pass.'

'Save that!' I said.

Jenks whistled long and low, and I wondered what they had found now.

'An invitation to Ellasbeth Withon's wedding?' Ivy drawled in question.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

'Tink knocks your kickers,' Jenks exclaimed, and I sat back on my heels. 'Rachel!' he called, hovering over the invitation that had probably cost more than my last dinner out. 'When did you get an invitation from Trent? For his wedding?'

'I don't remember.' I dunked the brush and started in again, but the hush of linen against paper brought me upright. 'Hey!' I protested, wiping my hands dry on my robe to make the tie come undone. 'You can't do that. It's illegal to open mail not addressed to you.'

Jenks had landed on Ivy's shoulder, and they each gave me a long look over the invitation in her grip. 'The seal was broken,' Ivy said, shaking to the floor the stupid little white tissue paper I had carefully replaced.

Trent Kalamack was the bane of my existence, one of Cincinnati's most beloved councilmen, and the Northern Hemisphere's most eligible bachelor. No one seemed to care he ran half of the city's underworld and worked a good slice of the world's illegal Brimstone trade. That wasn't even considering his punishable-by-death dealings in genetic manipulation and outlawed medicines. My being alive because of them was a big part of my keeping quiet about it. I didn't like the Antarctic any more than the next person, and that's where I'd end up if it got out. That is, if they didn't just kill me, burn me, and send my ashes to the sun.

Suddenly having a demon trash my living room didn't seem so bad.

'Holy crap!' Jenks swore again. 'Ellasbeth wants you to be a bridesmaid?'

Jerking my robe closed, I stalked across the sanctuary and snatched the invitation out of Ivy's hand. 'It's not an invitation, it's a badly worded request for me to work security. The woman hates me. Look, she didn't even sign it. I bet she doesn't even know it exists.'

I waved it in the air and shoved it into a drawer, slamming it shut. Trent's fiancee was a bitch in all ways but the literal. Thin, elegant, rich, and bitingly polite. We had gotten along really well the night we had breakfast together, just her, me, and Trent caught between us. Course, part of that might have been from my letting her believe that Trent and I had been childhood sweethearts. But she was the one who decided I was a courtesan. Stupid Yellow Pages ad.

Ivy's expression was wary. She knew better than to push me when it came to Trent, but Jenks wouldn't let it go. 'Yeah, but think of it, Rache. It's going to be a hell of a party. The best of Cincinnati is going to be there. You never know who will show up.'

I lifted a plant and ran my hand under it—my version of dusting. 'People who want to kill Trent,' I said lightly. 'I like excitement, but I'm not insane.'

Ivy moved my bucket and mop to a dry part of the floor and sprayed a heavy layer of that unlabeled bottle. 'You going to do it?' she asked, as if I hadn't already said no.

'No.'

In one motion I swept all the papers off the desktop and into the uppermost drawer. Jenks landed on the clean surface, his wings stilling as he leaned against the pencil cup and crossed his ankles and arms to look surprisingly alluring for a four-inch-tall man. 'Why not?' he accused. 'You think he's going to stiff you?'

Again, I added in my thoughts. 'Because I already saved his freaking elf ass once,' I said. 'You do it once, it's a mistake. You do it twice and it's not a mistake anymore.'

Mop and bucket in hand, Ivy walked out, snickering.

'It's RSVP by tomorrow,' Jenks needled. 'Rehearsal is Friday. You're invited.'

'I know that.' It was my birthday, too, and I wasn't going to spend it with Trent. Ticked, I headed into the kitchen after Ivy.

Flying backward, Jenks got in my face and preceded me down the hallway, slices of sunlight coming in from the living room. 'I've got two reasons you should do it,' he said. 'One, it will piss Ellasbeth off, and two, you could charge him enough to afford to resancitify the church.'