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“Huh,” Jenks said, a smile on him as he looked at me sitting with my hands clasped primly in my lap and that unusual amount of space between Marshal and myself. “I guess you can teach a young witch new tricks.”
“Jenks!” I exclaimed, knowing he was talking about me distancing myself from Marshal, but the poor witch didn’t have a clue. Thank God. Incensed, I made a snatch for the pixy, and the laughing four-inch man settled himself on Marshal’s shoulder. Marshal stiffened but didn’t move but for tilting his head and trying to see Jenks.
“You said you were here for an interview?” Ivy said pleasantly, but I didn’t trust her mood as far as I could throw her. Which was about three feet on a good day.
Moving carefully as if Jenks might leave, Marshal eased into the cushions and away from her. “At the university,” he said, showing signs of nervousness.
“What’s the job?” Ivy questioned, and I could almost hear her think “Janitor?” Though not saying one cross word, she wasn’t being nice, like I’d asked him to come over to betray Kisten’s memory.
Marshal must have picked up on it, too, for he shifted his wide shoulders and tilted his head to crack his neck, clearly a nervous tick. “I’d be coaching the swim team, but once I’m on the payroll, I can put in for a real teaching position.”
“Teaching what?” Jenks asked suspiciously.
At that, Marshal smiled. “Minor ley line manipulations. More of a high school course than anything else. A primer to bring deficient students up for the hundred-level classes.”
Clearly Ivy wasn’t impressed. But she probably didn’t know that he had to be at a four-hundred level to instruct anyone in anything. I had no idea where my ley line proficiency put me, seeing as I was picking it up as I went along, learning what I had to when I needed it, not what was safe or prudent in a steady, progressive pace.
“Cincinnati doesn’t have a swim team,” Ivy said. “Sounds like quite a job to build one.”
Marshal’s head bobbed, and the stubble on it caught the light. “It will be. Normally I wouldn’t even try for the position, but I earned my bachelor’s here, and coming back feels right.”
“Hey!” Jenks exclaimed, and I shivered in the draft from his wings. “You’re a Cincy boy! What year did you graduate?”
“Class of 2001,” he said proudly.
“Holy crap, you’re almost thirty?” the pixy said. “Damn, you look good!”
“Almost? No, I’m past it,” he said, clearly unwilling to divulge just how much. But since he was a witch, it didn’t really matter. “It’s the swimming,” he said softly, then looked at Ivy as if he knew she was going to look up his records. “I majored in business management, and I used my degree to start Marshal’s Mackinaw Wrecks.” Disappointment flickered over him. “But that’s not going to work anymore, so here I am.”
“Too cold?” Jenks said, either ignoring that we were likely the reason it wasn’t working anymore or trying to make light of it. “God, I froze my nuggie plums off in that water.”
I winced, thinking Jenks’s mouth was getting steadily worse. Almost as if he had to prove he was a man in front of Marshal, and the way to do it was to be as raunchy as he could. But I had heard the hint of blame in Marshal’s words.
“The Mackinaw Weres found out you had something to do with me getting onto the island, didn’t they,” I said, knowing I was right when he looked at his water-stained yellow leather boots. Shit. “I’m sorry, Marshal,” I said, wishing now I’d just knocked him on his head and stolen his stuff. At least he’d still have his business. I’d done the right thing, and it had hurt him in the long run. Where was the justice in that?
His smile was tight when he pulled his head up, and even Ivy looked apologetic. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I didn’t lose anything that mattered in the fire.”
“Fire?” I whispered, appalled, and he nodded.
“It was time for me to come back,” he said, one shoulder rising in a shrug. “I only started the diving business so I could build the capital to get my master’s.”
Ivy’s fingers, drumming on the couch, went still. “You’re finishing your degree?”
Saying nothing, Marshal ran his gaze over her as if estimating how great a threat she was and nodded. “Hey, I have to go. I’ve got a couple of apartments I’m looking at tonight, and if I don’t show on time, the Realtor will probably figure it was a Halloween prank and leave.”
He stood, and I found myself rising as well. Jenks darted into the air, grumbling about not having anything comfortable to put his ass on in the entire church before he landed on my shoulder. I wanted to go with Marshal so the Realtor wouldn’t convince him to take a rattrap that would be noisy with humans after sunup, but he probably knew Cincinnati as well as I did. Not much changed fast, despite the size of the city. Besides, I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.
Ivy stood as Marshal shrugged into his coat. “Nice to meet you, Marshal,” she said, then turned her back on him as she walked out. Five seconds later, I heard her taking the lid off the slow cooker, and a new wave of tomato, beans, and spices wafted out.
“Can you stay for dinner?” I found myself asking, not knowing why, except that he had helped Jenks and me, and I owed him. “We actually cooked tonight. Chili.”
Marshal’s eyes went to the top of the dark hallway. “No, but thank you. I’m having dinner with a couple of guys from school. I just wanted to bring Jenks his hat and say hi.”
“Oh, okay.” Of course he’d have friends here. I was being stupid.
I followed him to the door to see him out, my eyes landing on Jenks’s leather cap, back after months of being with Marshal. I was glad to see him, and I wished he could stay, but it was tinged with depression from the guilt that I even wanted him to.
Glowing a hot gold, Jenks hovered at eye-height beside Marshal as I reached to open the door. “It’s good to see you, Marsh-man,” he said. “If it was warmer, I’d show you my stump.”
The way he said it almost sounded like a threat, and I could see Marshal thinking about it as he slowly buttoned his coat, probably trying to decide if he was serious or not. I wanted to talk to Marshal alone for a moment, but Jenks wasn’t leaving.
Jenks suddenly noticed that neither of us was talking, and when I made a face at him, he dropped in height. “If you want me to go, you just have to say so,” he said sullenly, then darted off to leave a fading sprinkling of pixy dust to glow on the floor for a moment. My blood pressure dropped, and I smiled at Marshal.
“That was the most excellent charm I’ve ever seen,” Marshal said softly, his eyes dark to take in the limited light in the foyer, “making him human-size, then small again.”
“It’s not half as excellent as the person who actually made it for me,” I said, thinking that Ceri should get her just dues. “I just invoked it.”
Marshal took his hat out of his wide pocket and put it on. I felt a twinge of relief when he reached for the door, then guilt that I’d enjoyed seeing him again. God, how long will I have to live like this? Marshal hesitated. Turning back, he searched my face. I silently waited, not knowing what might come out of his mouth.
“I, ah—I’m not interfering in something, am I?” he asked. “With your roommate?”
I grimaced, cursing both Ivy for her jealousness and Jenks for his protective nature. God help them, were they that obvious?
“No,” I said quickly, then dropped my gaze. “It’s not that. My boyfriend …” I took a breath and lowered my voice so it wouldn’t break. “I just lost my boyfriend, and they both think I’ll jump into bed with the first guy to come into the church simply to fill the ache he left behind.” A fear that is both understandable and at the same time unnecessary.
Marshal shifted his weight back. “The guy that went over the bridge?” he asked quizzically. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“Not him,” I said, flicking my eyes to his and away. “My boyfriend after him. Kisten was … important to both Ivy and me. He died to prevent an undead vampire from binding me to him … I don’t remember it, but I know he did. And I still …” I closed my eyes, a lump in my throat. “I still miss him,” I said miserably.
I looked at Marshal, needing to see what he thought. His face was carefully blank of expression. “He died?” he said, and I nodded, looking away.
“I think I understand,” he said as he reached to touch my shoulder, and guilt tweaked through me as I soaked in the support radiating from him. “I’m really sorry about your boyfriend. Um … I didn’t know. I should have called before coming over. I’ll just, uh, go.”
His hand slipped away, and my head came up. “Marshal,” I said, reaching to take his sleeve, and he stopped. I let go, then glanced behind me at the empty church, then back to him. I loved Kisten, but I had to try to start living again. The pain would ebb only if I pushed it out with something good. Marshal patiently waited, and I took a deep breath.
“I’d like to see you again,” I said, miserable. “If you want. I mean, I really can’t handle having a boyfriend right now, but I’ve got to get out of this church. Do something.” His eyes widened, and I blurted, “Never mind.”
“No, no!” he said. “That’s cool.” He hesitated, then shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not looking for a girlfriend either.”
I kind of doubted that, but I nodded, grateful he pretended to understand.
“There used to be a place by the waterfront that had really good pizza,” he offered.
“Piscary’s?” I almost panicked. Not Kisten’s old dance club. “Uh, it’s closed,” I said, which was the truth. The elaborate apartments underground were now the property of Rynn Cormel. And since he wasn’t a partier, he had gutted the upper rooms and turned them into a day residence for his living guests and staff. But it still had one hell of a kitchen. Or so Ivy said.
Weight shifting to one foot, Marshal frowned in thought. “Don’t the Howlers have an exhibition game this week? I haven’t seen them play in years.”
“I’m banned,” I said, and he looked at me as if he thought I was joking.
“From the Howlers?” he said. “Maybe we could just have lunch or something.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, not knowing if I could actually do this.
His smile widened and he opened the door. “I have that interview tomorrow, but I was going to go look at some apartments before that. If I treat you to coffee, will you tell me which ones are overcharging me? Unless you’re working …”
“Two days before Halloween?” I clasped my arms about me in the sudden chill. I hadn’t expected to do anything this soon, and now I was having second thoughts. I thought of backing out on the excuse of needing to track down a demon summoner before sundown tomorrow, but I had to give my sources time to work. I stunk at research, and I knew enough people who enjoyed it to pass it off on them. “Sure,” I reluctantly said. It was coffee. How bad could it be?
“Perfect,” he said, and I froze when he eased forward. Before it could become a hug, or worse, a kiss, I stuck out my hand. Marshal tried to make his shift to my hand natural, but it was kind of obvious, and his fingers slipped from mine almost immediately. Embarrassed by my guilt and misery, I looked down.
“I’m sorry you’re still hurting,” he said sincerely as he stepped back onto the stoop. The light from the sign above the door made shadows on him. His eyes, when I met them, held a soft emotion, black from the low light, nothing more. “I’ll see you tomorrow. About noon?”
I nodded as I tried to think of something to say—but my mind was empty. Marshal smiled one last time before taking the steps lightly and heading for the new-model, chrome-plated sport utility at the curb. Numb, I backed up into the church, my shoulder thumping painfully into the doorjamb and startling me back into reality. Heartache swelled as I shut the door and leaned back against it to stare into the sanctuary.
I had to start living again, even if it killed me.
Five
The soft click of teeth on the knob of my bedroom door stirred me, but it wasn’t until a wet nose snuffled in my ear that I truly woke up, with a pulse of adrenaline that was better than chugging three cups of coffee.
“David!” I exclaimed, jerking upright and scooting back to the headboard, my covers pulled to my neck. “How did you get in here?” Pulse hammering, my panic subsided, turning to irritation when I saw his pricked ears and his doggy smile. My gaze slid to my clock. Eleven? Damn it, I had a good hour left before the alarm was going to ring. Irritated, I flicked the alarm off. No way would I get back to sleep now. Not after a Were’s version of a wet willy.
“What’s the matter? Your car not starting?” I asked the large, gangly wolf, but he only sat on his haunches and let his tongue loll as he stared at me with his luscious brown eyes. “Get out of my room. I have to get up. I’m meeting someone for coffee,” I said, making shooing motions with one hand.
At that, David snuffed a negation, and I hesitated.
“I’m not meeting someone for coffee?” I said, ready to believe him. “Is Ivy okay? Is it Jenks?” Worried, I swung my feet to the floor.
David put his front paws, each as big as a saucer, to either side of me to keep me sitting. His breath was warm, and he gave me a comforting lick. He wouldn’t get this close in his people skin, but wearing fur seemed to bring out the softer side of most Weres.
I eased back, deciding everything was okay. He didn’t look worried. “Talking to you is like talking to a fish,” I complained, and David huffed, his claws clicking on the hardwood floor as he got off my bed. “You want some clothes?” I asked, seeing as he probably hadn’t woken me up for the hell of it. If it wasn’t car problems, maybe he had forgotten to bring something to change into. “You might fit in Jenks’s old stuff.”
David bobbed his head, and after a brief thought of my almost-nakedness, I got out of bed and snagged my robe from the back of a chair. “I kept a pair of his sweats,” I said as I shrugged into the blue terry cloth and tied it closed with an abrupt, embarrassed haste, but David had turned to the hallway, the perfect gentleman. Feeling awkward, I dragged a box down from my closet shelf and dropped it on my bed. Not that we had a lot of naked men in our church, but I wasn’t going to throw out Jenks’s old clothes from when he had been people-size.
The scent of Queen Anne’s lace came to me when I wrestled the box open. Fingers searching through the cool fabric, my slight headache eased and the smell of growing things and sunshine rose high. Jenks smelled good, and it hadn’t washed out.
“Here you go,” I said when I found the sweats and extended them to him.
His brown eyes sheepish, David carefully took them in his mouth before padding to the dim hallway, the oak floorboards glowing with morning sun reflecting in from the living room and kitchen. Shuffling to the bathroom, I decided he had probably locked himself out of his car and change of clothes—which left me curious as to where the ladies were. David didn’t seem to be distressed, and I knew he would be if either one of them had a problem.
Wondering how David knew I didn’t have a coffee date when I hadn’t even told him I had one to begin with, I shuffled into the bathroom and quietly shut the door to keep everyone who was sleeping, sleeping. It was nearing the golden hour of noon when the church went silent—Ivy and me asleep and the pixies just settling down for their four-hour nap.
Hanging on the back of the door, my costume thumped, and I quieted it, listening for the hum of pixy wings. I fingered the supple leather in the silence, hoping I would get a chance to wear it. I was pretty much churchbound after dark until I nailed whoever was sending Al after me. And Halloween wasn’t a holiday to be missed.
Since the Turn—the nightmarish three years following the supernatural species coming out of the closet—the holiday had been gaining strength until now it was celebrated for an entire week, becoming the unofficial celebration for the Turn itself.
The Turn actually began in the late summer of sixty-six when humanity began dying of a virus carried by a bioengineered tomato that was supposed to feed the growing populations of the third-world countries, but it was on Halloween that we celebrated it. That was the day Inderland had decided to come out of the closet before humanity found us by way of the “why aren’t these people dying?” question. It had been thought that Halloween might ease the panic, and it had. Most of the surviving human population thought it was a joke, easing the chaos for a day or two until they realized that we hadn’t eaten them yesterday, so why would we today?
They still threw a bloody-hell tantrum, but at least it had been aimed at the bioengineers who designed the accidentally lethal fruit instead of us. No one had been so tactless as to make the holiday official, but everyone took the week off. Human bosses didn’t say, er, boo when their Inderland employees called in sick, and no one even mentioned the Turn. We did throw tomatoes instead of eggs, though, put peeled ones in bowls and called them eyeballs, stacked them up on our porches along with carved pumpkins, and generally tried to gross-out the human population that wouldn’t touch the no-longer-lethal red fruit.
If I was stuck in my church for the night, I was going to be ticked.
By the time I finished a quick morning prep and was headed for the kitchen, David was changed and at the table, with coffee brewing and two empty mugs waiting. The hat he had forgotten yesterday was beside him, and he looked good sitting there with a thick black stubble heavy on him and his long black hair loose and flowing. I’d never seen him so casual before, and it was nice.
“’Morning,” I said around a yawn, and he turned to acknowledge me. “Did you and the ladies have a good run?”
He was smiling, his brown eyes showing his pleasure. “Mmmm. They headed home from here on paws, confident enough without me. That’s why I’m here, actually.”
I sat at my spot at the table, the bright sun and the scent of coffee making my head hurt. There was a stack of late-night newspapers opened to the obituaries that I’d gone through before bed. There had been nothing obvious, but Glenn, my FIB contact, was running the three young witches I’d found there through their database to see if they were known acquaintances. One had died of a heart attack at age thirty, another of a brain aneurism, and the third of sudden appendicitis—which had once been a common, pre-Turn expression for a magic misfire. Soon as I got this morning’s edition, I’d pass any more likely candidates on to Glenn. He was working Halloween since he was a human and didn’t celebrate it; he policed it.
“I thought you’d locked yourself out of your car,” I said, and he chuckled.
“No. I would have just run the rest of the way home if I had. I wanted to ask you about a pack tattoo.”
My eyebrows rose. “Oh?” Most Were packs had a registered tattoo, but I hadn’t seen the need, and David was used to standing alone.
Seeing my reluctance, David shrugged. “It’s time. Serena and Kally are confident enough to be on their own in fur, and if they don’t have a sign of pack recognition, someone might think they’re curs.” He hesitated. “Serena especially is getting cocky. And there’s nothing wrong with that. She has every right, but unless she has an obvious way to show her status and affiliation, someone will challenge her.”
The coffeemaker finished with a hiss. I got up, eager for the distraction. I’d never given it much thought, but the tattoos that Weres decorated themselves with had a real and significant purpose. They probably prevented hundreds of skirmishes and potential injuries, allowing the multitude of packs that lived in Cincy to get along with minimal friction.
“Okay,” I said slowly, pouring out the coffee into his mug first. “What were you thinking of?” I don’t want a tattoo. The damn things hurt!
Clearly pleased, David took a mug when I came back and offered it. “They’ve put their heads together and came up with something with you in mind.”
Images of broomsticks and crescent moons danced in my head, and I cringed.
The Were leaned forward, the pleasant scent of musk giving away his eagerness. “A dandelion, but with black fluff instead of white.”
Oh, cool, I thought, and seeing my reaction, David smiled with one side of his mouth. “I take it that’s okay, then?” he asked, blowing across his coffee.
“I suppose I ought to get one, too?” I asked, worried.
“Unless you want to be rude,” he admonished gently. “They put a lot of thought into it. It would mean a lot to them if you would.”
A breath of guilt wafted through me, and I hid it behind a gulp of scalding coffee. I hadn’t done much with Serena and Kally. Maybe we could get our tattoos together. Oh, God, I’m going to be a hundred and sixty with a flower on my ass.
“You, ah, said I don’t have a coffee date?” I said, changing the subject. “What do you know that I don’t?”
David nodded to a scrap of paper in the middle of the table, and I pulled it closer. “Jenks let me in before he headed off for his nap,” he said. “Matalina …”
His words drifted to nothing, and I looked up from Jenks’s note. “What about her?”
“She’s fine,” he said, easing my worry. “But she was going to bed early, and there was no need for him to stay up to man the door if I was here, so I told him to go.”
I nodded and turned my attention back to the note, uneasy about Matalina, but glad that Ivy and I had broken Jenks of answering the phone without taking a message. According to the note, Marshal’s interview had been moved from tonight to this morning, and he wanted to know if we could get together at about three instead. Plenty of time to do something before Al started gunning for me after sundown. There was a number, and I couldn’t help but smile. Below it was another number with the cryptic message JOB, and Jenks’s reminder that rent was due on Thursday the first, not Friday the second or Monday the fifth.
“I should get home,” David said softly as he rose and took another gulp from his mug. Hat in hand, he said, “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll let Serena and Kally know you like their idea.”
“Um, David,” I said, and I saw his brow crease at the sound of Ivy moving about. “Do you think they’d mind if I went with them when they got their tattoos?”
His sun-darkened face broke into a smile, the faint wrinkles about his eyes deepening in pleasure. “I think they’d like that. I’ll ask them.”
“Thanks,” I said, and he jumped at a bumping sound from Ivy’s room. “You’d better get going unless you want to be here when she gets up.”
He was silent as his face reddened. “I’ll lope in to work later and check out the recent claims for possible demon damage. There won’t be anyone in two days before Halloween, so I won’t have to explain myself.”
“This isn’t illegal, is it?” I asked suddenly. “I’ve gotten you in enough trouble as it is.”
David’s smile was easy and a bit devilish. “No,” he said, shrugging with one shoulder. “But why draw attention to yourself? Don’t worry about it. If someone in Cincy is summoning demons, any claims will be odd enough to be flagged for investigation. At least you’ll know then if it’s a local threat. Help you narrow your suspects.”
I drew my coffee closer and slumped into the hard chair. “Thanks, David. I appreciate it. If I can shut down the guy summoning Al, then I won’t have to take Minias up on his offer.” I didn’t want a demon’s summoning name, especially Al’s. Unusable or not.
A sliver of worry slipped between my thought and reason, and I forced my smile to be light, but David saw it. Coming closer, he put a small but powerful hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get him. Don’t do anything with that demon. Promise?”
I winced, and David sighed when I didn’t say anything. There was a soft creak of a door opening, and David started like a deer. “I’ll, uh, bring Jenks’s sweats back later, okay?” he muttered, then grabbed his hat and almost ran for the back door, red faced, as I chuckled.