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“I will,” Jenks sang out, startling the guy behind the register. He still had that paper clip sword with him, and it made me feel better.
My mom glanced at me, and when I nodded that I’d have some, too, she beamed. “I’ll have that, then. With forks for all of us.” She shyly looked to Minias, and the demon stepped back almost out of my peripheral vision.
The kid snuck glances at Jenks as he punched that in, announcing, “Fourteen eighty-five.”
“We have one more person here,” I said, trying not to frown, and Jenks landed on the counter with his hands on his hips. I hated it when people ignored him. And asking him to share simply because he wasn’t going to eat much was patronizing.
“I want an espresso,” he said proudly. “Black. But give me the domestic blend. That Turkish crap gives me the runs for a week.”
“TMI, Jenks,” I muttered while I yanked my shoulder bag forward. “Why don’t you find a table? Maybe a corner without a lot of people?”
“With your back to the wall. You got it,” he said, clearly doing better in the shop’s moist, balmy climate. A sustained temp below forty would send him into hibernation, and though Cincinnati was regularly hitting that after dark, the stump he and his huge family lived in would retain enough heat to keep them warm until almost mid-November. I was already dreading his brood moving into the church Ivy and I lived in, but they would not hibernate and risk Matalina, his ailing wife, dying of the cold. Jenks was why I wore the scarf; it wasn’t for my comfort.
Glad for the warmth of the shop myself, I unzipped my coat. I handed the kid a twenty, then dropped the change into the tip jar, making the businessman wait while I scribbled “client meeting” on the receipt and tucked it away.
Turning, I found my mother and Minias standing uneasily beside a table against the wall. Jenks was on the light fixture, the dust slipping from him rising in the bulb’s heat. They were waiting for me to sit down before choosing their seats, so grabbing some napkins, I headed over.
“This looks great, Jenks,” I said as I edged behind my mom to reach the chair against the wall. Immediately my mother sat to my left, and Minias chose the chair to my right, shifting it a foot back before sitting down. He was almost in the aisle; apparently we both wanted our space. I took the opportunity to remove my jacket, and my expression froze when the bracelet Kisten had given me slipped to my wrist. Pain hit, almost panic, and I didn’t look at anyone as I tucked it behind the sleeve of my sweater.
I wore the bracelet because I had loved Kisten and still wasn’t ready to let him go. The one time I’d taken it off, I found myself unable to tuck it away in my jewelry box next to the sharp vampire caps he’d given me. Maybe if I knew who had murdered him I could have moved on.
Ivy hadn’t had much luck tracking down the vampire Piscary had given Kisten to as a legal blood gift. I had been sure that Sam, one of Piscary’s lackeys, had known who it was, but he hadn’t. The human polygraph test at the FIB, or Federal Inderland Bureau—the human-run version of the I.S. – was pretty good, but the witch charm I had around Sam’s neck when Ivy “asked” him about it was better. That was the last time I helped her question anyone, however. The living vampire scared me when she was pissed.
That Ivy wasn’t getting results was unusual. Her investigative skills were as good as my ability to get into trouble. Since the “Sam incident,” we had agreed to let her handle our search, and I was getting impatient at her lack of progress, but my slamming vampires into a wall for information wasn’t prudent. What made it worse was that the answer was buried somewhere in my unconsciousness. Maybe I should have talked to the FIB’s psychologist to see if he could pull something to light? But Ford made me uneasy. He could sense emotions faster than Ivy could smell them.
Uncomfortable, I scanned the décor of the busy place. Behind my mother was one of those stupid pictures with babies dressed up as fruit or flowers or something. My lips parted and I looked at Jenks, then to the counter where the college-age kid managed the customers with a professional polish. This was it! I thought in a surge of recognition. This was the same coffeehouse where Ivy, Jenks, and I had agreed to quit the I.S. and work as independent runners! But Junior looked like he knew what he was doing now, sporting a manager tag on his red-and-white-striped apron and with several underlings to handle the nastier parts of running the place.
“Hey, Rache,” Jenks said as he dropped down to dust my sweater with gold. “Isn’t this the store we—”
“Yup,” I interrupted him, not wanting Minias to be privy to more of my life than necessary. The demon was unfolding a paper napkin and meticulously settling it across a jeans-clad knee as if it were silk. Unease flowed through me as I remembered the night I decided to leave the I.S. Going clueless into an independent bounty hunter/escort service/jack-of-all-magical-trades runner service with a vamp had been one of the most stupid and best decisions of my life. It went along with Ivy and Jenks’s opinion that I lived my life to find the edge of disaster so I could feel the rush of adrenaline.
Maybe I had once, but not anymore. Believing I had killed Jenks and Ivy with one of my stunts had cured me one hundred percent, and Kisten’s death had slammed the lesson home, hard. And to prove it, I wasn’t going to work with Minias no matter what he offered. I wouldn’t repeat the past. I could change my patterns of behavior. I would. Starting here. Watch me.
“Coffee up!” the kid shouted, and Minias took his napkin from his lap as if he was going to rise.
“I’ll get it,” I said, wanting to minimize his interactions with everyone.
Minias eased down without a fuss. I gathered myself to stand, then frowned. I didn’t want to leave him with my mother either.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” my mother said, standing to drop her purse loudly on the table. “I’ll get it.”
Minias touched her arm, and I bristled. “If you would, Alice, bring the cinnamon with you?” he asked, and my mother nodded, slowly pulling from his fingers. She was holding her arm when she walked away, and I leaned toward Minias.
“Don’t touch my mother,” I threatened, feeling better when Jenks took an aggressive stance on the table, his wings clattering menacingly.
“Someone needs to touch her,” Minias said dryly. “She hasn’t been touched in twelve years.”
“She doesn’t need to be touched by you.” I leaned back with my arms crossed over my middle. My gaze went to my mother, who was flirting in an old-lady way with the counter kid, and I paused. She hadn’t remarried when Dad died, hadn’t even dated. I knew she intentionally dressed herself to look older than she was to keep men at a distance. With the right haircut and dress, we could pass as big sister, little sister. As a witch, her life span was a good hundred and sixty years, and while most witches waited until they were sixty before starting a family, she had had Robbie and me very early in her life, giving up a promising career to raise us first. Maybe we were accidents. Passion babies.
That brought a smile to my face, and I forced it away when I noticed Minias watching me. I straightened as my mom approached with a canister of cinnamon and her plate of cheesecake; the kid behind the counter was following with the rest. “Thank you, Mark,” she said as he placed everything on the table and backed up a step. “You’re a sweet boy.”
I smiled at Mark’s sigh. Clearly he wasn’t happy with the title. He glanced at me, then Jenks, his eyes brightening. “Hey,” he said as he tucked the tray under his arm. “I think I’ve seen you somewhere. …”
I cringed. Most times people recognized me, it was from the news clip of me being dragged on my ass down the street by a demon. The local news had incorporated it into their front credits. Sort of like that guy on skis pinwheeling over the finish line in the agony of defeat.
“No,” I said, unable to look at him as I pulled the lid off my cup of coffee. Ah, coffee.
“Yes,” he insisted, weight on one foot. “You’ve got that escort service. In the Hollows?”
I didn’t know if that was better or not, and I looked tiredly up at him. I’d done escort service before, not that kind of escort service, but real stuff, dangerous stuff. I had a boat blow up around me once. “Yeah, that’s me.”
Minias looked up from shaking cinnamon on his coffee. Jenks snickered, and I bumped my knee on the underside of the table to make his espresso slop over. “Hey!” he shouted, rising up a few inches, then settled back down, still laughing.
The front door jingled, and the kid shot off his glad-to-have-you-here spiel and left. Minias was the only one listening.
My coffee was steaming, and I hunched over it while I watched the demon. His long fingers were interlaced about the white soup-bowl mug as if relishing its warmth, and though I couldn’t tell for sure because of the sunglasses, I think his eyes closed as he took the first sip. A look of bliss so deep it couldn’t have been faked slipped over him, easing his features and turning him into a vision of relaxed pleasure.
“I’m listening,” I said, and a mask of nothing fell between us.
My mother quietly ate her cheesecake, her eyes flicking uneasily between us. I had the distinct impression she thought I was being rude.
“And I’m not happy,” I added, making her lips press tightly. “You told me Al was contained.” I lifted my coffee and blew across the top. “What are you going to do about him breaking his word and coming after me? What do you think will happen when this gets out?” I took a sip, forgetting for a moment where I was when it slipped down, easing my slight headache and relaxing my muscles. Jenks cleared his throat, bringing me back.
“You won’t have a chance of luring anyone into any agreements again,” I said as my focus cleared. “No more familiars. Won’t that be nice?” I finished with a simpering smile.
His eyes on the delights of that fruit-baby picture, Minias sipped his drink with his elbows on the table and his mug propped up at mouth height. “This is much better this side of the lines,” he said softly.
“Yeah,” Jenks said. His espresso cup came up to his waist. “That burnt amber really sticks in your throat, doesn’t it?”
A flicker of annoyance flashed across Minias, and a thread of tension entered his stance of relaxed idleness. I took a deep breath, smelling only coffee, cheesecake, and the characteristic redwood scent of a witch. I was sure my mom had slipped him a charm, and I wasn’t looking forward to finding the cost of such an expensive amulet tacked on to the losses from the store. But if it kept him from smelling like a demon and causing a panic, I couldn’t complain.
“Well, what do you want?” I said, setting my cup down. “I don’t have all night.”
My mom frowned, but Minias took it in his stride, easing back in his stiff chair and setting his giant mug aside. “Al is being summoned out of confinement—”
“We figured that part out,” Jenks said snottily.
“Jenks …,” I murmured, and the pixy walked across the table with his makeshift sword to the cheesecake.
“We’ve never run into this before,” Minias said, hesitating as he took in Jenks’s “whatever” attitude. “Because of his extraordinary amount of contact with this side of the lines, Al has arranged for someone to summon him every sundown. They get what they want, then release him without the compulsion to return to the ever-after. It’s a win-win situation for both of them.”
And a lose-lose for me. My thoughts flashed to my old boyfriend, Nick. Jenks eyed me over a chunk of cheesecake as big as his head, clearly thinking the same thing. Nick was a thief who habitually used demons as a source of information. Thanks to Glenn at the FIB, I had a copy of his file in my dresser’s bottom drawer. It was so thick a monster rubber band barely kept it shut. I didn’t like thinking about it.
“Someone’s freeing a demon without compulsion to return to the ever-after?” I managed, my eyes lowered. “That’s not very responsible.”
“It’s extremely clever. For Al.” Minias’s one elbow found the table as he took a draught.
I cringed, fully conscious of my mom listening quietly. “You think someone’s doing this to kill me?” I finally asked.
Minias shrugged. “I don’t know. Nor do I care, really. I simply want it to stop.”
A reproachful huff came from my mother, and Minias pulled his elbow from the table. “We can regain control of him after sunup,” the demon said, his eyes hidden behind his glasses. “When the lines close to cross-traffic, he’s snapped back to our side. Finding him then is just a matter of using his demon marks.”
I pulled my hands from atop the table, my fingers pushing aside Kisten’s bracelet to feel the raised scar. The demon mark had flared into pain just before Al showed up, and a new worry settled in beside the old ones. That’s how Al had found me. Crap. I didn’t like feeling like a tagged antelope.
“Al doesn’t have access to a lab while in custody,” Minias said, drawing my attention back. “So he only has simple, easily performed curses, but he’s exceptionally adept at line jumping.”
“Well, he’s been in someone’s kitchen. He looks like he always does, and I know that’s not his natural form.” I don’t want to know what he looks like. I really don’t.
Minias’s head moved up and down once, and he swallowed his coffee. “Yes,” he said softly as he leaned back. “Someone has been helping him. That he tried to take you tonight went a long way toward convincing me it wasn’t you.”
“Me?” I blurted. “You really think I’d work with him?” Then my fingers, gripping my coffee, went weak. Appearance charms didn’t just happen in one night. That meant that Al … My eyes rose, and I wished Minias would take off his glasses. “How long has Al been slipping your containment?”
Minias’s lips twitched. “This is the third night in a row.”
Fear jolted me, and Jenks rose from the table, red dust slipping from him.
“And you didn’t think I might want to know that?” I exclaimed.
In a smooth motion, Minias took off his glasses. His arm flat on the table, he leaned in to me. “How much effort do you expect me to exert?” he said tightly, and I blinked at the irate emotion reflected in his goat-slitted eyes. “We don’t care if he kills you or not. I have no reason to help you.”
“But you did,” I said belligerently, thinking anger seemed better than fear. “Why?” Immediately Minias backed down, and seeing there was something here he didn’t want to talk about, I decided I did.
“I was tracking Al,” the demon said. “That you were there was merely helpful.”
Jenks began laughing, and all eyes turned to him as he rose several inches. “You got sacked, didn’t you,” he said, and Minias stiffened.
My first impulse to protest died at Minias’s stoic face. “You got fired?” The demon’s reach for his oversize mug almost smacked Jenks in its quickness.
“Why else would he be tracking Al instead of watching TV with Newt?” Jenks said, flitting to the safety of my shoulder. “You got canned. Outsourced. Pink-slipped. Handed your walking papers. Given the go light. Slipped on the banana. Served the dead slug.”
Minias put his glasses back on. “I’ve been reassigned,” he said tightly.
Suddenly I was afraid. Really afraid. “You aren’t watching Newt?” I whispered, and Minias looked surprised by my fear.
“Who is Newt?” my mother asked, dabbing a napkin at her lips and sliding the last half of the cheesecake to me.
“She’s just the most powerful demon they got over there,” Jenks boasted as if he had something to do with it. “Minias was her babysitter. She’s more dangerous than a militant fairy on Brimstone, and she’s the one who cursed the church last year before I bought it. Didn’t twitch a wing. She’s got a major burr up her ass about Rachel.”
Minias bit back a snort, and I wished Jenks would shut up. My mother hadn’t known about the “blasphemy incident.”
“There are no female demons,” my mother said, fumbling in her purse to bring out a compact and her lipstick. “Your father was very clear on that.”
“Apparently he was mistaken.” I picked up a fork but immediately set it down. I’d lost my desire for cheesecake about five surprises ago. Gut clenching, I turned to Minias. “So who’s watching Newt?”
The demon’s face lost all its amusement. “Some young punk,” he said sullenly, surprising me with the modern phrase.
Jenks, though, was delighted. “You lost Newt one too many times, and they replaced you with a younger demon. Oh, that’s beautiful!”
Minias’s hand quivered, his fingers abruptly loosening on his mug when a soft crack rang out from the porcelain.
“Stop it, Jenks,” I said, wondering how much of Minias losing his job was due to Newt slipping away on his watch, and how much was from the demon’s inability to make impartial decisions regarding her security. I’d seen them together, and Minias clearly cared for her. Too much to lock her up when she needed it, probably.
“How do they expect me to seduce her and maintain her adherence to the law simultaneously?” he snarled. “It can’t be done. Damned fool bureaucrats don’t know the first thing about love and dominance.”
Seduce her? I arched my eyebrows, but an icy sensation rippled through me at the glimpse of his anger and frustration. Silence, thick and uncomfortable, took over, making the surrounding conversation seem louder. Seeing us staring, Minias forced his tension from him. His sigh was so soft, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it.
“Al can’t be allowed to flaunt the rules,” he said, as if he hadn’t just shown us the pain in his soul. “If I can contain him, I can return to supervising Newt.”
“Rachel!” my mother exclaimed, and I turned to see a familiar mask of lighthearted ignorance on her. “He’s a runner, just like you! You should go out to a movie or something.”
“Mom, he’s a—” I hesitated. “He’s not a runner,” I said, stopping just short of saying he was a demon. “And he certainly isn’t date material.” Guilt hit me. I’d pushed her, and she was slipping into old patterns. Cursing myself, I pulled my attention to Minias, just wanting to wrap this up and get out of here. “Sorry,” I said to apologize for my mother.
Minias’s face was still empty. “I don’t do witches.”
I had a hard time not finding offense in that, but Jenks saved me from making a total ass out of myself by buzzing his wings to gain everyone’s attention.
“So let me get this straight,” he said, hovering a breath above the sticky table with one hand on his hip, the other pointing that plastic-coated paper clip at Minias. “You lost your cushy babysitting job and are now trying to gain control of a demon who has limited power and resources. And you can’t do it?”
“It’s not a matter of gaining control over him,” Minias protested indignantly. “We can catch him. We simply can’t contain him after sunset. As I told you, someone is summoning him out of confinement.”
“And you can’t stop them?” I questioned, thinking of the charmed zip-strips that the I.S. used to keep ley line practitioners from jumping out of custody via a ley line.
Minias shook his head and his glasses caught the light. “No. We catch him, confine him, and when the sun goes down, he pops out, rested and fed. He’s laughing at us. Me.”
I disguised my shiver by taking a sip of my coffee. “Any idea who’s doing it?” My thoughts went to Nick, and the coffee turned to acid in my stomach.
“Not anymore.” His boots scraped against the gritty floor. “Soon as I find out, they die.”
Nice. Fumbling for my mom’s hand under the table, I gave it a squeeze.
“Do you have any idea as to who might be helping him?” Minias asked next, and I forced myself to keep breathing.
Nick, I thought, but I wouldn’t say it aloud. Not even if he was sending Al to hurt me—because if it was Nick, I’d take care of him myself. I could feel Jenks’s eyes on me, wanting me to say it, but I wouldn’t. “Why don’t you just get rid of his summoning name?” I said, looking for other options. “You do that, and he can’t be summoned out.”
The skin visible past Minias’s sunglasses tightened. He knew I wasn’t saying something. “You can’t throw away a password. Once you have one, it’s yours.” He hesitated, and I felt the gathering of trouble. “You can exchange it with someone else’s, though.”
The ribbon of tension around my chest squeezed, and all my warning flags went up.
“If someone exchanged names with him,” Minias drawled into the conversation-rich air, “we could contain him. Unfortunately, because of his job, he’s been very lax with his summoning name. There are an astounding number of people on this side of the lines who know it, and no demon will willingly take it.” Minias stared at me. “They have no reason to.”
My fingers tightened on my waxed paper cup, sure now I knew why Minias was sitting at a table sipping coffee with me. I had a password. I had a reason to trade. I had a major problem.
“So what does that have to do with my daughter?” my mother said, her voice thick with warning. Fear caused her to drop the scattered-thoughts image she used as a buffer to hide the damage my dad’s death had wrought.
Minias adjusted his glasses to give himself time to weigh the emotions at our table. “I want your daughter to exchange passwords with Al.”
“No fairy-crap way.” The dust slipping from Jenks was a red so deep that it seemed black.
“Absolutely not,” I echoed. I scowled and slid my chair back.
Unperturbed, Minias shook more cinnamon into his coffee. “Then he’ll kill you. I don’t care.”
“Obviously you do or you wouldn’t be here,” I said sharply. “You can’t hold him without my name. You don’t care if I live or die. It’s you you’re worried about.”
My mom sat stiff and miserable. “Will you remove her demon marks if she does this? All of them?”
“Mom!” I exclaimed, not aware that she even knew about my demon marks.
Green eyes full of pain, she took my cold fingers in hers. “Your aura is filthy, honey. And I do watch the news. If this demon can remove your marks and purge your aura, then you should at least find out what the consequences or possible side effects are.”
“Mom, it’s not just a password, it’s a summoning name!”
Minias gazed at my mother with a new interest. “It’s a summoning name that has no pull on you,” he said. “The most that will likely happen is you fielding a few months of redirected calls to Al.”
I took my hand from my mother’s, not believing this was happening. “You said I had to pick a name no one could figure out, that if someone did, they could make my life miserable. Do you know how many people know Al’s name? I don’t, but it’s more than know mine.” Done with this, I pushed myself from the table. The chair scraped, and the vibration went all the way up my spine and made me shiver.
“That’s the point, witch,” Minias said, making the word an insult. “If you don’t, you’re going to die. I intervened tonight in the hope you’d be willing to come to an arrangement, but I won’t do it again. I simply don’t care.”
Fear, or maybe adrenaline, sparked through me. Arrangement? He meant a deal. A deal with a demon. My mother’s eyes pleaded with me, and Jenks lifted his poker, bristling. “Is that a threat?” he snarled, his wings going red with his increased circulation.
“A statement of odds.” Minias set his cup down with a sense of finality. The napkin was next, folded and laid flat beside it. “Yes or no.”
“Pick someone else,” I said. “There are millions of witches. Someone has got to be more stupid than me and say yes. Give them a name and exchange it with Al.”
He looked at me from over his shades. “You’re one of two witches this side of the lines whose blood is capable of making a strong enough bond. Yes or no?”
Oh, back to the demon magic thing. Swell. “So use Lee,” I said bitterly. “He’s stupid.” As well as aggressive, ambitious, and now a basket case from having been Al’s familiar for a couple of months before I rescued him. Sort of. God, no wonder Al hated me.