make a new scrying mirror, preferably from a bush growing over a grave. My old mirror hadn’t worked since Al had cracked it in a self-indulgent pity party.
“You need the upstairs kitchen?” Ivy asked, her eyes on the cute little girl sporting a panda-eared cap.
“If you’re not going to be in it,” I said. I didn’t like the barren industrial counters and cold ovens that still smelled like vamps and pizza, but I couldn’t set a circle over water. “It won’t take long. Half an hour, maybe. I need to set a protection circle.”
She smiled a closed-lipped smile. “That’s why I asked. Take all the time you need.”
“Thanks.” My phone pinged, and I dug it out, eyebrows rising. Trent clearly wanted me there. He’d changed Ellasbeth’s ill-thought plan for lunch at Carew Tower’s rotating restaurant to ice cream at Eden Park, and could I make it by four? Right after his and the girls’ naps.
“Actually, we might want to designate that freestanding counter as yours,” Ivy said, brightening. “Nina wants to try her hand in the kitchen more, and it will be faster to cordon off a corner for you than to educate her on the dos and don’ts of mixing spell prep with food prep.”
“She wants to cook? Really?” I said as I answered Trent’s message with a “yes” and hit send. I’d have time to make a new scrying mirror and shower. No problem. “What is it with the undead wanting to cook?” I asked, remembering Piscary. “It’s not as if they eat it.”
“It gives them a way into our lives that doesn’t involve blood,” she said softly, and I nodded. Piscary had the reputation of making Cincinnati’s best pizza as a way to lure potential blood sources closer and give his contacts a plausible-deniability way to check in. Nina, though, was a new kind of undead, thanks to Ivy holding her soul and giving Nina sips of it along with her blood. The drive to give back to Ivy was probably a desperate need.
“She wants to make Thanksgiving dinner,” Ivy said, a faint blush coloring her cheeks. “Her parents are both gone, and I think she’s trying to recapture something. You want to come?”
“Um, sure,” I said, still thinking it odd that an undead vampire wanted to make a dinner she couldn’t eat. “Mind if I ask Trent and the girls?”
“Oh, crud,” Ivy said softly. “I forgot about that. Forget I asked. You’ve already got plans.”
“No, I don’t. I mean, Trent’s got reservations at Carew Tower. That’s not Thanksgiving. He needs to experience what it’s like to sit at a card table and eat dry turkey and listen to the same old jokes year after year.” I hesitated. “Unless three more is too many.”
Ivy’s smile warmed. “I think we can handle it. That makes seven including Jenks,” she said, and I stifled an unexpected, slow quiver threatening to rise up through me. Damn it, my neck was tingling, and I looked away as Ivy sent out a wash of pheromones. Food. I’d forgotten that eating crunchy things was a living vampire turn-on. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“We’re doing this after dark, right?” I asked. Ivy might have been good living in Piscary’s old digs now that Rynn Cormel had gone back to Washington, but the downstairs always gave me the creeps. My attention followed the yellow leaves skating across the plaza, rising up in a breath of air to pass before a silent crow hunched in a tree waiting for an unattended pretzel. Cincy seemed to be thick with them this year. Maybe they paired up with the zombies.
“Upstairs, yes,” Ivy said, her voice distant. “The downstairs kitchen isn’t big enough to make anything but popcorn in. There’s Edden.”
She sounded pleased, and I smiled at the somewhat squat, square older man striding purposefully toward us across the zoo. I stood in anticipation, liking the FIB captain. He’d helped me pay off my I.S. debt three years ago, but it seemed longer than that. He moved with a military precision, one arm holding a folder as he squinted in the sun from behind his plastic-frame, round glasses and acknowledged our presence with a raised hand. Though dressed professionally, he wasn’t in uniform. I knew he didn’t get out of the office as much as he liked. He wasn’t flabby, but his shoes weren’t made for running.
Ivy stood as well, and his smile widened to encompass his entire somewhat round face.