A Fistful of Charms
Chapter Twenty-seven

It was one of the oddest charm outlets I had ever been in, nothing like the richly scented earth magic shops I usually frequented, being brightly lit against the dark and spacious, and having a small spot up front to sit in cushy chairs and sip the marvelous coffee the owner made. The shelves were glass, and ley line paraphernalia was arranged like knickknacks. Jenks would have had an orgasm of delight.
There were only a small section of earth magic charms, and the traditional redwood scent was largely overpowered by the aroma of ginger coming from the proprietor's coffeemaker. I felt strangely out of place, thinking the banners with dragons and white-bearded wizards next to the crucibles made everything look silly. An earth witch would have sneered at most of the ritual stuff in there, but maybe that's what ley line magic used. Something was off with the merchandise, though. It didn't smell right. Literally.
Ivy was halfway across the store with my basket of goodies after I snarled at her that I was fine and to stop hovering. Now I was sorry, but she had been acting weird since picking Jenks and me up at the mall - depressed almost, avoiding me but always near - and it was getting on my nerves. It didn't help that I was feeling vulnerable, my knees shaky from blood loss again now that Jenks's street-grade Brimstone had worked itself out.
I had found the shop in the yellow pages, and after I showered and stuffed myself on an entire box of macaroni and cheese, Ivy drove me over. She'd insisted, saying the Weres would know the moment I put my toe on the street. They had, and we'd been followed by two street racers glowing blue and green neon from underneath. It was worrisome, but between the thirty-six hour truce, my magic, and Ivy's presence, they'd probably leave us alone.
As I hoped, Walter had backed off. Jax had said the trio of Weres in fatigues who picked Brett up was rough, but the lie that Brett convinced me to release the statue to him alone had kept him alive. I don't know why I cared. I really didn't.
I think Walter was using the time as I was: fortifying defenses and getting everyone in place for a last attack if I reneged on our arrangement. I was, but if I did it right, he'd never guess it had been my intent from moment one. The packs could not have the focus. The thing was demon crafted, and any power gained from it was artificial and would ultimately lead to their damnation, dragging most of Inderland along with them, probably.
My phone was to my ear while I shopped with Ceri, five hundred miles away and standing in my kitchen with Kisten. Ivy had asked him to watch the church and field the calls, and I didn't want to know what my kitchen looked like with nothing between it and pixy chaos but a vampire. Ceri was off checking some point of charm, and I could hear Kisten talking to Jenks's kids. The muted familiar sounds of home were both comforting and depressing.
I picked up a large smoked bottle of generic fixative I could use for the demon transference curse, blanching when I saw the price. Holy crap. Maybe I could get away with the smaller bottle. I turned the smoked bottle over in my hand and squinted at the liquid. It was supposed to have camphor in it, but all I smelled was lavender. I didn't like buying pre-made stuff, but I was pressed for time.
Seeing me holding the bottle, Ivy started my way to put it in the basket, halting when I returned it to the shelf and frowned. God help her, but I wasn't that weak. I could hold a stinking bottle of fixative without a Brimstone boost.
I had fixed my own lunch today, after the sandwich Ivy gave me made my fingertips tingle. I don't know how she managed to slip Brimstone into it without me realizing, but I was still mad from the two of them dosing me up without my knowledge, even if the high from Jenks's street-grade Brimstone had made the difference in where I was sleeping tonight.
Picking up the smaller bottle of fixative, I sighed, feeling my knees shake. Maybe I should just accept the Brimstone Ivy kept pushing on me and let it go. I was tired from simply walking around. Ivy wouldn't tell me how much blood she'd taken, and Jenks was no help, seeing as he thought a bleeding hangnail was reason for panic.
Shades of gray, I thought, knowing I was slipping into places I had vowed I'd never go. Damn it, I used to be able to see black and white, but things got fuzzy right about the time I found my last I.S. paycheck cursed.
My gaze drifted to the window, black with night and acting like a mirror. Seeing my reflection, I adjusted the collar of my little red jacket. It went great with the black STAFF shirt from Takata's last concert. Thanks to my last pain amulet, nothing hurt, but looking at my slumped stance, I decided I didn't look tired, I looked sick. My gut clenched when I realized I looked like a vampire's shadow, well-dressed, thin, sophisticated - and ill.
Pulse hammering, I turned away. No more Brimstone, I thought. Ever. There is black. There is white. Gray is a cowardly excuse to mix our wants with our needs. But I wasn't sure I could believe it anymore as I stood in a charm shop buying materials to twist a black curse. Just this once, I thought. Just this once, and never again.
Phone still tucked to my ear, I set the fixative down. I would have hung up and called her back later, but I was enjoying hearing the sounds of normalcy, soft and distant, five hundred miles away. It seemed farther. Relaxing, I reached for an elaborately inlaid wooden box. It was beautiful, and curiosity and a love for fine workmanship prompted me to open it to find it held magnetic chalk. It was ungodly expensive, and its presence solidified that there was a population of practicing ley line witches nearby.
I abruptly realized the proprietor was watching me over her coffee mug, and I intentionally kept fiddling with the chalk, inspecting the seals as if I was considering buying it. I hated it when they watched me as though I might steal something. Like the illegal hex above the door that would give you zits wasn't enough of a deterrent?
Technically a black spell, I mused. So why didn't I turn her in?
"Magnetic chalk?" Ivy said from my elbow, and I jumped, almost dropping the phone between my ear and my shoulder.
"I don't need it," I said, trying to cover my surprise. "Especially in a box like that. Salt works just as well, and you only have to vacuum when you're done."
Reluctantly I let my fingers slip from the beautifully crafted container. It was dovetailed, the only metal on it the hinges, latch, and reinforced corners of black gold. Once the chalk was gone, it would make an excellent place to store anything that needed extra precautions. It was the nicest thing in the shop, in my opinion.
My eyebrows rose at the package of herbs in the basket that I hadn't put there. "Is that catnip?" I asked, seeing the cellophane printed with little black footprints.
"I thought Rex might leave Jax alone if she had something else to do." Brown eyes showing embarrassment, she dropped a step away. "You okay? Do you want to sit down?"
It was the third time she'd asked since leaving the motel, and I stiffened. "I'm fine," I said. Liar, I thought. I was tired, weary in heart and body.
The soft clatter of the phone being picked up rustled in my ear. "Ceri," I said, before she could say anything. "Just how much fixative do I need for the transference curse?"
The sound of the pixies shrieking diminished, and I guessed Ceri had moved into the living room. "A thumb drop," she said, and I gratefully took up the smaller bottle.
"My thumb?" I complained. "What is that, about a teaspoon? Why can't they use normal measurements?"
"It's a very old curse," Ceri snapped. "They didn't have teaspoons back then."
"Sorry," I apologized, my eyes meeting Ivy's as I placed the fixative into the basket. Ceri was one of the nicest, most giving people I knew, but she had a temper.
"Do you have a pencil?" the elf in hiding said politely, but I could hear her annoyance at my impertinence. "I want you to write this down. I know you have the inertia dampening curse in one of the books with you, but I don't want you to translate the Latin wrong."
I glanced at the proprietor - who was starting to eye Ivy skulking about - and turned my back on her. "Maybe you could give me just the ingredients right now." The clutter in my basket was odd enough already. If the proprietor was worth her salt, she'd be able to tell I was making a disguise charm. The only difference between my legal disguise charms and the illegal doppelganger spells was a point of law, a few extra steps, and a cellular sample of the person to copy. I didn't think she'd be able to tell I was also going to twist a demon curse to move the power from the statue to something else. What she would make of the ingredients for the inertia damping demon curse was anyone's guess. Ceri said it was a joke curse, but it would work.
Joke curse, I thought sourly. It was still black. If I was caught, I'd be labeled a black witch and magically castrated. I wasn't fooling myself that this was anything other than wrong. No "saving the world" crap. It was wrong.
Just this once, echoed in my thoughts, and I frowned, thinking of Nick. Telling Al about me had probably started with just one harmless piece of information.
Ceri sighed. "All you need for the joke curse is dust from inside a clock and black candles made from the fat of the unborn. The rest is incantation and ritual."
"The unborn?" I said in a horrified, hushed whisper. "Ceri, you said it wasn't that bad."
"The fat of an unborn pig," she reiterated, sounding angry. "Honestly, Rachel."
My brow furrowed. Okay, it was a fetal pig, the same thing biology students dissect, but it sounded close to the slaughtering-goats-in-your-basement kind of magic. The transference curse looked harmless apart from the black it would put on my soul, and the disguise charm was white - illegal, but white. The inertia-dampening curse was the worst of the lot - and it was the one that would keep Jenks alive - a joke curse. Just this once.
I was so stupid.
Stomach roiling, my thoughts flicked to Trent and his illegal labs, which saved people so he could blackmail them into seeing things his way. He, at least, didn't pretend to be anything other than what he was. Things had been a lot easier when I didn't have to think. But what was I supposed to do? Walk away and let the world fall apart? Telling the I.S. would make matters worse, and giving the statue to the FIB was a joke.
Angry and sick inside, I sidestepped Ivy to get to the candles. I'd already been there to pick out my colored candles for the transference curse. Behind the carved castles and colorful "dragon eggs" were the real goods, arranged by color and size, branded at the bottom with either what the fat had been rendered from or where they had first been lit. The woman's selection was surprisingly good, but why they were hidden behind such crap was beyond me.
"Taper or barrel?" I asked Ceri, crouching to reach one with PIG scratched on it. You can't light a candle in a pig, so it was a good bet that's where the fat had come from. I'd never been in a ley line charm shop other than the university's, and that didn't count since they only carried what the classes needed. Maybe there was a spell that used "dragon eggs," but I thought they looked lame.
"Doesn't matter," Ceri answered, and with the smallest taper in hand, I turned and rose, almost running into Ivy. She winced and backed up.
"I'm fine," I muttered, setting the candle in the basket. "Did you see any packaged dust?"
Ivy shook her head, the tips of her black hair shifting about the bottom of her ears. There was a rack of "pixy dust" by the register that was just glitter. Jenks would laugh his ass off. Maybe the real stuff was behind it, like the candles.
"You sound tired, Rachel," Ceri said, question high in her voice as I moved to the rack.
"I'm fine." Ceri said nothing, and I added, "It's stress." Just this once.
"I want you to talk to Kisten," she said firmly, as if she was doing me a favor.
Oh God. Kisten. What would he say if he knew Ivy had bitten me? "I told you so," or maybe "My turn"? "Ceri," I protested, but it was too late, and as Ivy fingered a display of amber bottles that were good to store oil-based potions in, Kisten's masculine voice came to me.
"Rachel...How's my girl?"
I blinked rapidly, the threatened tears shocking me. Where had they come from? "Ah, I'm fine," I said, missing him terribly. Bad things had happened, and I'd been carrying the pain since. I needed to talk to him, but not standing in a charm shop with Ivy listening.
Ivy had stiffened at the sudden emotion in my voice, and I turned my back on her, wondering if I should tell her that the glass container shaped like a full moon in her grip was generally used to store aphrodisiac potions.
"Good," he said, his voice going right through me. "Can I talk to Ivy?"
Surprised, I turned to her, but she had heard him and shook her head. "Uh..." I stammered, wondering if she was afraid of what he'd say to her if he knew what had happened. We were both chickenshit, but we would be chickenshit together.
"Ivy, I know you can hear me," Kisten said loudly. "You have a big problem waiting for you when you get back from your vacation. Everyone knows you're out of the city. You're his scion, not me. I can't go up against even the youngest undead. The only thing keeping a lid on this is that most of them are my patrons and they know if they act up, I'll ban them."
Ivy walked off, her boots loud against the hardwood floor. Her passive response surprised me. Something was really bothering her.
"She walked away," I said, feeling guilty Ivy had come up there to help me.
Kisten's sigh was heavy. "Will you tell her that there was a riot in the mall downtown last night? It was at four in the morning so it was mostly living vampires, thank God, and some Weres. The I.S. handled it, but it's going to get worse. I don't want a new master vampire in the city, and neither does anyone else."
I stood before the rack of pixy dust and rifled through the hanging vials, reading the tiny cards attached to each. If Piscary lost control of Cincinnati, Trent would have free rein. But I didn't think it was a power play by the undead vampires or Trent. It was more likely that the riot had been the Mackinaw Weres looking for me. No wonder Walter had agreed to a thirty-six-hour truce. He had to get his pack together.
Tired, I let the vials slip through my fingers. "I'm sorry, Kisten. We have a couple of days before we can call this done. It depends on how fast I can do the prep work."
He silently took that in, and I could hear Ceri singing with the pixies in the background. "Can I help?" he asked, and my throat tightened at the concern in his voice, even as I heard his reluctance to leave Cincinnati. But there wasn't anything he could do. It would be over one way or the other by tomorrow night.
"No," I said softly. "But if we don't call you by tomorrow midnight, we're in trouble."
"And I'll fly up there in two hours," he assured me. "Are you sure there's nothing I can do? Call someone? Anything?"
Shaking my head, I fingered a book on how to knot love charms from hair. These things were illegal. Small towns have very little in the way of policing witches, but then I saw that it was a fake, a novelty item. "We have it okay," I said. "Will you feed Mr. Fish for me?"
"Sure. Ivy told me."
"He only needs four grains," I rushed. "Any more and you'll kill him."
"Don't worry about it. I've had fish before."
"And stay out of my room," I added.
He started making a fake radio hiss, whistling and popping. "Rachel? The connection is going bad," he said, laughing. "I think I'm losing you."
A smile, the first in days, touched me. "I love you too," I said, and he stopped.
There was a suspicious hesitation. "Are you okay?" he asked.
Worry slid through me. He was starting to pay attention. "Why?" I said, realizing my hand had gone up to cover my neck. "Um, yeah," I reiterated, thinking it had sounded guilty. "I'm just stressed. Nick..." I hesitated. I couldn't tell him Nick had been playing kiss-and-tell. It was embarrassing to have been that stupid. "I told Nick to kiss off, and it bothered me," I said. Not really a lie. Not really.
He was silent, then, "Okay. Can I talk to Ivy?"
Relieved, I exhaled into the mike. "Sure."
I handed the phone to Ivy - who had come up behind me to listen, presumably - but she closed the top and handed it back. "He can handle it a few days more," she said, then turned to the counter. "Do you have everything? It's getting late."
Tension edged her voice. She was trying to hide her mood, but not doing very well. Concerned, I took the basket from her. "Everything but the dust. Maybe she has some behind the counter. God, I'm tired," I finished without thinking. Ivy didn't say anything, and I put the basket on the counter, eyeing the aphrodisiac bottle Ivy set by her catnip.
"What?" Ivy said, seeing me look at it.
"Nothing. Why don't you put your stuff in with mine?"
She shook her head. "I'm going to get something else too, but thanks."
The woman behind the counter set her coffee on her stained hot plate, her fingers reaching to take my things out of the basket. "Will that be all then, ladies?" she asked, hiding her wariness of Ivy behind her professionalism.
"You don't happen to have clock dust?" I asked, feeling it was a lost cause.
Immediately she lost her tinge of her nervousness. "From stopped clocks? Sure enough I do. How much do you need?"
"Thank the Turn," I said, leaning against the counter as my muscles started to feel the weight of standing too long. "I didn't want to have to go to Art Van and dust their floor samples. I just need a, uh, pinch."
Pinch, dash, smidgen. Yeah, real exact measurements. Ley line magic sucked.
The woman glanced at the front door. "Be but a sec," she said, then, with the fixative in her hand, she went into a back room. I stared at Ivy.
"She took my stuff," I said, bewildered.
Ivy shrugged. "Maybe she thinks you're going to run out the door with it."
It seemed like forever, but the woman came back, her loud steps warning us. "Here you go," she said, carefully setting a tiny black envelope down with the fixative. The bottle now had a string tag around it with an expiration date. I picked it up, feeling a different weight to it.
"This isn't the same bottle," I said suspiciously, and the woman smiled.
"That's the real product," she explained. "There aren't enough witches up here to support a charm shop, so I mix tourist trinkets with the real stuff. Why sell real fixative to a fudgie when they're just going to put it on a shelf and pretend they know what to do with it?"
I nodded, now realizing what had been bothering me. "It's all fake? None of it is real?"
"Most of it's real," she said, her ringed fingers punching the register with a stiff firmness. "But not the rare items." She looked at my pile. "Let me see, you're making an earth magic disguise charm, a ley line inertia joke spell, and..." She hesitated. "What on earth are you going to use the fixative for? I don't sell much of that."
"I'm fixing something," I said guardedly. Crap, what if the Weres found out? They might realize I was going to move the power of the artifact before we blew it up. If I asked her to keep quiet about it, she would likely blab it all over the place. "It's for a joke," I added.
Her eyes flicked to Ivy and she grinned. "Mum's the word," she said. "Is it for that gorgeous hunk of man with you? Saints preserve us, he's beautiful. I'd love to trick him."
She laughed, and I managed a weak smile. Did the entire city know Jenks? Ivy rocked back a step in irritation, and the woman finished wrapping my black candle in matching tissue paper and bundled everything into a paper sack. Still smiling, she totaled it up.
"It'll be $85.33 with tax," she said, clearly satisfied.
I stifled my sigh and swung my shoulder bag forward to get my wallet. This was why I had a witch's garden - and a clan of pixies to maintain it. Not only was ley line magic stupid, but it was expensive if you didn't render your own fetal pigs for making candles. Just this once.
Ivy pushed her two things forward, and looking the proprietor in the eye, said clearly, "Just put it on my bill. I need three ounces of Special K. Medicinal grade, please."
My lips parted and I flushed. Special K? That was Cincy slang for Brimstone, K of course said to stand for Kalamack.
But the woman hesitated only briefly. "Not from the I.S., are you?" she asked warily.
"Not anymore," Ivy muttered, and flustered, I turned my back on them. Ivy saw nothing wrong with an illegal drug that had kept vampire society healthy and intact for untold years, but buying in front of me made me feel all warm and fuzzy.
"Ivy," I protested when the woman disappeared into the back room again. "Trent's?"
Ivy gave me a sidelong glance, eyebrows high. "It's the only brand I'll buy. And I need to restock my cache. You used it all."
"I'm not taking any more," I hissed, then straightened when the woman returned, holding a palm-sized package wrapped in masking tape.
"Medicinal?" she said, glancing at the aphrodisiac bottle. "You store it in that, lucky duck, and you'll be the one that's going to need medical attention."
Ivy's face blanked in surprise, and I dragged my bag from the counter, ready to flee. "It's an aphrodisiac bottle," I said. "Don't pick things up unless you know what they are - Alexia."
Ivy looked as guiltless as a puppy as she dropped the package into her open purse.
The woman smiled at us, and Ivy counted out thirteen hundred-dollar bills and coolly handed them over.
I blinked. Holy shit. Kalamack's medicinal stuff was five times as expensive as the street variety.
"Keep the change," Ivy said, taking my elbow and moving me to the door.
Twelve hundred dollars? I had sucked down Twelve hundred dollars of drugs in less than twenty-four hours? And that wasn't counting Jenks's contribution. "I don't feel well," I said, putting a hand to my stomach.
"You just need some air."
Ivy guided me across the store and took my bag from me. There was the jingle of the door, and a flush of cool air. It was dark and cold on the street, matching my mood. Behind us came the sliding sound of an oiled lock, and the CLOSED sign flickered on. The store's posted hours were from noon to midnight, but after a sale like that, you deserved to go home early.
Fumbling, I put a hand on the bench under a blue and white trolley-stop sign and sat down. I didn't want to chance spewing in Kisten's Corvette. It was the only thing we could drive around town in now that the truck had been seen fleeing a crash and neither Ivy nor I wanted to get in the van.
Shit. My roommates were turning me into a Brimstone addict.
Ivy gracefully folded herself to sit beside me, all the while scanning the street. "Medicinal grade is processed six times," she said, "to pull out the endorphin stimulants, hallucinogenic compounds, and most of the neuron stimulators, to leave only the metabolism upper. Technically speaking, the chemical structure is so different, it's not Brimstone."
"That's not helping," I said, putting my head between my knees. There was gum stuck to the sidewalk, and I nudged it with my toe, finding it hardened to an immovable lump from the cold. Breathe: one, two, three. Exhale: one, two, three, four.
"Then how about if you hadn't taken it, you'd be laying in bed needing Jenks's help to use the bathroom?"
I pulled my head up and took a breath. "That helps. But I'm still not taking any more."
She gave me a short-lived close-lipped smile, and I watched her face go as empty as the dark street. I didn't want to get up yet. I was tired, and it was the first time we had been together alone since - since the bite. Returning to the motel room with Jenks, Jax, the kitten, and Nick to make my peachy-keen illegal charms and black curses had all the appeal of eating cold lima beans.
A station wagon passed us, the muffler spewing a blue smoke that would have earned the driver a ticket in Cincinnati. I was cold, and I hunched into my coat. It was only eleven-thirty, but it looked like four in the morning. "You okay?" Ivy said, obviously having seen me shiver.
"Cold," I said, feeling like a hypochondriac.
Ivy crossed her legs at her knees. "Sorry," she whispered.
I lifted my gaze, finding her expression lost in the shadow from the streetlight behind her. "It's not your fault I didn't bring my winter coat."
"For biting you," she said, her voice low. Her attention touched upon my stitches, then dropped to the pavement.
Surprised, I scrambled to put my thoughts in order. I'd thought I was going to be the one to bring this up. Our pattern had always been: Ivy does something to scare me, Ivy tells me what I did wrong, I promise Ivy not to do it, we never bring it up again. Now she wanted to talk?
"Well, I'm not," I finally said.
Ivy's head came up. Shock shone from her dark eyes, raw and unhidden. "You said on the phone that you'd done some thinking," she stammered. "That you were going to make smarter decisions. You're leaving the firm, aren't you? As soon as this run is over?"
Suddenly I saw her depression in an entirely new light, and I almost laughed in relief for my misunderstanding. "I'm not leaving the firm!" I said. "I meant smarter decisions on who I trusted. I don't want to leave. I want to try to find a blood balance with you."
Ivy's lips parted. Turned as she was to me, the streetlight glinted on her perfect teeth, and then she snapped her mouth shut.
"Surprise," I said weakly, my pulse fast. This was the scariest thing I'd done in a while - including standing down three Were packs.
For six heartbeats Ivy stared at me. Then she shook her head. "No," she said firmly, resettling herself to face forward and put herself in shadow. "You don't understand. I lost control. If Jenks hadn't interfered, I would have killed you. Jenks is right. I'm a danger to everyone I care about. You have no idea how hard it is to find and maintain a blood relationship. Especially if I leave you unbound." Her voice was calm but I could hear panic in it. "And I'm by God not going to bind you to me to make it easier. If I do, everything would be what I want, not what we want."
I thought of Jenks's warning and had a doubt, then remembered Kisten telling me of her past and felt a stab of fear. But the memory of her heavy sobs as she lay crumpled on the pavement filled me, the despair in her eyes when Jenks said she ruined everything she cared about. No, he had said she ruined everything she loved. And seeing that same despair hiding in her fierce words, determination filled me. I couldn't let her believe that.
"You said I needed to trust the right people," I said softly. Heart pounding, I hesitated. "I trust you."
Ivy threw her hands in the air in exasperation and turned to face me. "God, Rachel, I could have killed you! As in dead! You know what that means? Dead? I do!"
My own ire flared, and I sat up. "Yeah? Well...I can be a little more savvy," I said belligerently. "I can take some responsibility for keeping things under control, be a little more aware of what's going on and not let you lose yourself...like that. We'll do better next time."
"There isn't going to be a next time." Stoic and unmoving, Ivy sat deathly still. The streetlight glinted on her short hair, and she stared at the shadowy pavement, intermittently lit from yellow bulbs. Abruptly she turned to look at me. "You say you want to find a blood balance, but you just refused to take more Brimstone. You can't have your cake and eat it too, witch. You want the blood ecstasy? You need the Brimstone to stay alive."
She thought this was about the ecstasy? Insulted she thought me that shallow, my lips pressed together. "This isn't about you being Ms. Good Feeling and filling me with that...that euphoria," I said angrily. "I can get that from any vamp on the riverfront. This is about me being your friend!"
Emotion poured over her face. "You made it very clear you don't want to be that kind of a friend!" she said loudly. "And if you aren't, then there's no way I can do this! I tried to fix myself, but I can't. The only way I can keep from killing people now is if I shackle the hunger with love, damn it! And you don't want me to touch you that way!"
I'd never seen her show her feelings like this, but I wasn't going to back down - even though she was starting to scare me. "Oh, get off it, Ivy," I said, sliding a few inches from her. "It's obvious from yesterday that you can share blood without sleeping with someone." She gaped at me, and I flushed. "Okay, I admit it - it didn't turn out all that well, but God! It kind of surprised both of us. We just need to go slow. You don't have to have sex to find a feeling of closeness and understanding. Lord knows I feel that way about you. Use that to shackle your hunger." My face flushed hot in the cool night air. "Isn't that what love is?"
She continued to look at me, hiding her emotions again behind her black eyes.
"So you almost killed me," I said. "I let you do it! The point is, I saw you. For one instant you were the person you want to be, strong and comfortable with who she is and what she needs, with no guilt and at peace with herself!"
Ivy went pale in the streetlight. Terrified. Embarrassed, I looked away to give her time to cover her raw emotions.
"I liked being able to put you there," I said softly. "It's a hell of a good feeling. Better than the euphoria. I want to put you there again. I...liked seeing you like that."
Ivy stared at me, her hope so fragile, it hurt to see it. There was a sheen of moisture to her eyes, and she didn't say anything, just sat with a stiff, frightened posture.
"I don't know if I can do this," I admitted, talking because she wasn't. "But I don't want to pretend it didn't happen. Can we just agree that it did and play it day by day?"
Taking a breath, Ivy broke out of her stance. "It happened," she said, voice shaking. "It's not going to happen again." I leaned forward to protest, but she interrupted me with a quick, "Why didn't you use your magic to stop me?"
Surprised, I sat back. "I - I didn't want to hurt you."
She blinked fast, and I knew she was trying not to cry. "You trusted that I wouldn't kill you, even by accident?" she asked. Her perfect face was again blank of emotion, but I knew it was the only way she had to protect herself.
Remembering what Kisten had once said about living vampires craving trust nearly as much as they craved blood, I nodded. But the memory was followed by fear. He also said Piscary had warped her into something capable of mindlessly killing what she loved so he could lap up her despair when she came to him, shamed and broken. But she was not that same person. Not anymore. "I trusted you," I whispered. "I still do."
A truck was approaching, the headlights shining on her face to show a shiny track of moisture. "That's why we can't do this, Rachel," she said, and I was afraid that Piscary might own her still.
The approaching panel truck drove past too slowly. A sliver of warning brought me still, and I watched it without appearing to, taking the cold night air smelling of diesel fuel deep into me. The truck braked too long and was hesitant when it made the turn.
"Yes, I saw it," Ivy said when my shoes scraped the cement. "We should get back to the room. Peter will be here by sunup."
She was ending the conversation, but I wasn't going to let her go that easy. "Ivy," I said as I rose, gathering my bag from beside hers, wanting to try again. "I - "
She jerked to her feet, shocking me to silence. "Don't," she said, eyes black in the streetlight. "Just don't. I made a mistake. I just want everything to be the way it was."
But I didn't.