my mind with it.
“Goddess spit,” Trent whispered, staggering as he reached for a bullet-torn chair.
My eyes flicked to his, and I gave him a weak smile. It was the curse. He’d probably never swum in a ley line like this before. Bis? I threw out into the ether, my smile brightening when I got an almost immediate response.
Where are you? Underground? Again? came Bis’s response.
And then he was here, startling the guards and delighting Zack as he landed with a wide-eyed stare on the back of the probably once-priceless wingback chair.
“Cool.” Bis gave Jenks a tiny fist bump, and the pixy went to Zack to help him direct the guards. “Where are we? The Monastery’s undercroft? The Basilica has one, too, but it only has rats.” He frowned at the broken shelves and scattered artifacts. “Is everything okay?”
“Sort of?” I said, then started when Hodin popped in as well, the demon appearing in the center of the room with his head nearly brushing the low ceiling. The men positioning the wardrobe against the archway cried out, and Landon, almost forgotten, began to struggle in earnest.
Jenks rose up high, a piercing whistle from his wings getting their attention. “You all just calm down, or I’m going to pix you into an itching frenzy,” he said, hands on his hips as he hovered between them and Hodin. “This here is Rachel’s friend, and he ain’t going to abduct you.” He turned to Hodin. “Right?”
Hodin shrugged.
Suspicion thickened in me, and I eyed the demon in his black jeans and T-shirt. Clearly he’d been with Bis. Again. “I didn’t call you,” I said. “What are you doing with my gargoyle?”
Bis’s eyes widened, and he made a hopping jump to my shoulder, his tail wrapping securely around my back. “We were just flying,” he said.
I eyed Hodin, who smiled insincerely. I didn’t like this. Bis was his own person, but Hodin had what it took to keep up with the kid and I clearly didn’t. Maybe I should rectify that, I thought, stifling a surge of jealousy.
I spun at a loud thump to see the guards shove the wardrobe back into place. Zach was standing by it, looking ill.
“Busy evening?” Hodin looked around, eyebrows rising as he tracked Trent ambling about the destruction, picking things up and setting them down as if he were shopping.
Feeling my gaze, Trent turned. “We should leave before they break the back off that wardrobe.”
It was solid mahogany, but they did have an ax.
“Where to?” Bis said, brightening.
“The church,” I said softly. Not the boat or Piscary’s, where Ivy was. Not Trent’s, where the girls were. The church. My church. They could find me there if they wanted to.
Hodin brought his attention up from Landon. “I’m here because I want it,” he said flatly.
“Want what?” I said, eyeing Trent’s stuffed pockets. Good God. Jenks is right. He’s a common thief.
“The baku,” Hodin said, and Trent started, his green eyes sharp in warning. “I think you have an excellent chance of containing it.” He looked at Landon, and the man went ashen. “And I want it,” he finished softly.
“No, I’m last!” Zack said, but Bis had landed on his shoulder, and the two winked out.
“Well, maybe I want to leave him here to turn into a zombie,” I said, though I didn’t, and beside me, Trent sidled close, clearing his throat in a gentle rebuke to consider the future. “He tried to kill Jenks. If he got his way, he would make me kill you,” I said.
“But he didn’t,” Trent reminded me.
Bis popped back in a flurry of leather-snapping wings, pinwheeling to snatch Jenks right out of the air. “Next!” he shouted merrily, and the two were gone to leave only Jenks’s swearing to fade with his dust.
At the archway, the ax was biting through the back of the wardrobe, four men holding it firm. We had only moments.
“I want it because it tormented me for six agonizing years as they perfected it,” Hodin said, his long face hard in remembered anger.
“Not to hold it over your kin as a threat?” Trent suggested, and Hodin’s anger shifted into an evil-looking smile that made me stifle a shiver.
“That, too,” he said.
Behind me, the guards cried a warning and moved a chair into position. My gaze dropped to Landon, silent as he waited to see how fate would fall. Maybe if I put my curses where my mouth was, the Order would take me seriously. If the baku was in a bottle, Landon