For A Few Demons More. Kim Harrison
summoners? You’re crude, unintelligent, grasping hacks with no sense of social grace, demanding we cross the lines and pick up the cost?”
I warmed, but before I could tell him to shove it, he said, “I’ll call first. You take the imbalance for that, since you asked for it.”
I glanced at Ceri for guidance, and she nodded. The guarantee that he wouldn’t show up while I was showering was worth it. “Deal,” I said, hiding my hand so he wouldn’t take it.
From behind him, Newt eyed me with her brow creased. Minias’s steps were silent as he moved to take her elbow possessively, his worried eyes darting to mine. His head rose to look past Ceri and me to the open door, and I heard the lub-lub-lub of a cycle pulling into the carport. In the time between one heartbeat and the next, they vanished.
I slumped in relief. Ceri leaned against the piano, the flat of her arms getting blood on it. Her shoulders started to shake, and I put a hand on one, wanting nothing more than to do the same. From outside came the sudden silence of Ivy’s bike turning off, and then her distinctive steps on the cement walk.
“So then the pixy says to the druggist,” Jenks said, the clatter of his wings obvious. “Tax? I thought they stayed on by themselves!” The pixy laughed, the tinkling sound of it like wind chimes. “Get it, Ivy? Tax? Tacks?”
“Yes, I got it,” she muttered, her pace shifting as she took the cement steps. “Good one, Jenks. Hey, the door is open.”
The light coming into the church was eclipsed, and Ceri pulled herself up, wiping her face and smearing it with blood, tears, and dirt from her garden. I could smell the stink of burnt amber on me and throughout the church, and I wondered if I would ever feel clean again. Together we stood, numb, as Ivy halted just past the foyer. Jenks hovered for three seconds, and then, dropping swear words like the golden sparkles he was shedding, he tore off in search of his wife and kids.
Ivy put a hand on her cocked hip and took in the three—no, four—circles made of blood, me in my pj’s and Ceri crying silently, her hand sticky with drying blood clutching her crucifix.
“What on God’s green earth did you do now?”
Wondering if I’d ever sleep again, I glanced at Ceri. “I have no idea.”
I didn’t feel good, my stomach queasy as I sat on my hard-backed chair in the kitchen at Ivy’s heavy and very large antique table, shoved up against an interior wall. The sun was a thin slice of gold shining on the stainless-steel fridge. I didn’t see that often. I wasn’t used to being up this early, and my body was starting to let me know about it. I didn’t think it was from the morning’s trouble. Yeah. Right.
Tugging my terry-cloth robe shut, I flipped through the Yellow Pages while Jenks and Ivy argued by the sink. The phone was on my lap, so Ivy wouldn’t take over as I searched for someone to resanctify the church. I’d already called the guys who had reshingled the roof to give us an estimate on the living room. They were human, and Ivy and I liked using them, since they generally got here bright and early at noon. Newt had torn up the carpet and pulled several pieces of paneling off the walls. What in hell had she been looking for?
Jenks’s kids were in there right now, though they weren’t even supposed to be in the church, and by the shrieks and chiming laughs, they were making a mess of the exposed insulation. Turning another thin page, I wondered if Ivy and I might take the opportunity to do some remodeling. There was a nice hardwood floor under the carpet, and Ivy had a great eye for decorating. She had redone the kitchen before I’d moved in, and I loved it.
The large industrial-sized kitchen had never been sanctified, having been added on to the church for Sunday suppers and wedding receptions. It had two stoves—one electric, one gas—so I didn’t have to cook dinner and stir my spells on the same surface. Not that I made dinner on the stovetop too often. It was usually microwave something or cook on Ivy’s hellacious grill out back, in the tidy witch’s garden between the church and the graveyard proper.
Actually, I did most of my spelling at the island counter between the sink and Ivy’s farmhouse kitchen table. There was an overhead rack where I hung the herbs I was currently messing with and my spelling equipment that didn’t fit under the counter, and with the large circle etched out in the linoleum, it made a secure place to invoke a magical circle; there were no pipes or wires crossing either overhead in the attic or under in the crawl space to break it. I knew. I had checked.
The one window overlooked the garden and graveyard, making a comfortable mix of my earthy spelling supplies and Ivy’s computer and tight organization. It was my favorite room in the church, even if most of the arguments took place here.
The biting scent of rose hips came from the tea Ceri had made me before she left. I frowned at the pale pink liquid. I’d rather have coffee, but Ivy wasn’t making any, and I was going to bed as soon as I got the reek of burnt amber off me.
Jenks was standing on the windowsill in his Peter Pan pose, his hands on his hips and cocky as hell. The sun hit his blond hair and dragonfly-like wings, sending flashes of light everywhere as they moved. “Damn the cost,” he said, standing between my betta, Mr. Fish, who swam around in an oversize brandy snifter, and Jenks’s tank of brine shrimp. “Money doesn’t do you any good if you’re dead.” His tiny, angular features sharpened. “At least not for us, Ivy.”
Ivy stiffened, her perfect oval face emptying of emotion. On an exhale she drew her athletic six-foot height up from where she’d been leaning against the counter, straightening the leather pants she usually wore while on an investigation run and tossing her enviably straight black hair from habit. She’d had cut it a couple of months ago, and I knew she kept forgetting how short it was, just above her ears. I’d commented last week that I liked it, and she had gotten it styled into downward spikes with gold tips. It looked great on her, and I wondered where her recent attention to her appearance was coming from. Skimmer, maybe?
She glanced at me, her lips pressed together and spots of color showing on her usually pale complexion. The hint of almond-shaped eyes gave away her Asian heritage, and that, combined with her small, strongly defined features, made her striking. Her eyes were brown most of the time, going pupil black when her living-vampire status got the better of her.
I had let her sink her teeth into me once, and though as exhilarating and pleasurable as all hell, it had scared the crap out of both of us when she lost control and nearly killed me. Even so, I was willing to cautiously risk trying to find a blood balance. Ivy flatly refused, though it was becoming painfully obvious the pressures were building in both of us. She was terrified of hurting me in a haze of bloodlust. Ivy dealt with fear by ignoring its existence and avoiding its origin, but her self-imposed denial was just about killing her even as it gave her strength.
If my roommates/business partners could be believed, finding thrills was what I organized both my daily life and my sex life around. Jenks called me an adrenaline junky, but if I was making money at it and remembered my limits, where was the harm? And I knew to the depths of my soul that Ivy didn’t fall under that “looking for a thrill” umbrella. Yes, the rush had been incredible, but it was the self-worth I had given her that told me it hadn’t been a mistake, not the blood ecstasy she had instilled.
For an instant, Ivy had seen herself as I did: strong, capable, able to love someone fully and be loved in return. By giving her my blood, I had told her that yes, she was worth sacrificing for, that I liked her for who she was, and that her needs weren’t wrong. Needs were needs. It was us who labeled them right or wrong. I wanted her to feel that way all the time.
But God help me, it had been a rush.
As if she had heard my thought, Ivy turned from Jenks. “Stop it,” she said, and I flushed. She couldn’t read my mind, but she might as well have. A vamp’s sense of smell was tuned to pheromones. She could read my mood as easily as I could smell the sharp scent of rose hips