so thick that the corpse she’d been animating had been burning. A line of char showed where Al had circled us, the smut from a thousand years of curses serving as an unexpected protective filter from the Goddess’s rage. Plywood covered the hole in the floor, and my eyes rose to the thick cracked beams and, higher, past the false ceiling, to the glint of new nail tips.
There’d been the reek of burned pixy dust, the feeling of hopeless odds, of no escape. My focus blurred as I remembered Ivy’s pure sob of joy when Nina saw her soul in the one she loved and knew it was safe: good things, too.
Melancholy, I pulled the cover off the pool table in a sliding sound of vinyl.
A muffled gasp of surprise spun me to the abandoned altar, where we’d shoved the couch, chairs, and coffee table. It was a kid, towheaded and gawky, maybe sixteen. He stared at me in wide-eyed surprise from the sawdust-laden couch. A plate of half-eaten food sat on the low table before him, but it was obvious that he’d been sleeping.
“Goddess guts,” he said, a scared but resolute look on him. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
I dropped the vinyl cover, my feet placed wide on the floor of my church. “What are you doing here?” My gaze went to the plate, and he flushed, his fair features becoming red under his thin, transparent, almost white hair. He was an elf, and my stance eased. A little.
“I, ah, thought this was your waiting room.” He stood. He was almost my height, but youth made him thinner, awkward in torn jeans and an olive green T-shirt. “I was waiting.”
For me? “What do you want?” I asked, gaze flicking to the plate again.
His sneakers shifted on the old oak floors, and I stifled a shiver at the sound. “I, ah . . . You know Mr. Kalamack. Can you get me in to talk to him? It’s important.”
My eyebrows rose at the mix of fear and strength in his voice. Mr. Kalamack. I hadn’t thought of Trent as Mr. Kalamack in a long time. He was, as Jenks would say, my main squeeze, the sparkle in my dust, the flower in my garden, the sword in my . . . ah, yeah. We’d been dating.
“You need some help? What’s your name?” I reached for my phone, but the sound of a car door slamming pulled my attention to the front of the church. He was gone when I turned back.
Without a sound, I thought. “Kind of flighty, aren’t you?” I whispered as his lanky shadow passed outside the unbroken window, furtive and fast. He must have gone out Ivy’s window. God knew Ivy had used that particular egress on more than one occasion.
But my frown eased when the familiar clatter of pixy wings fell like a balm over the battered church and Jenks flew in, gold dust trailing from him in contentment. Saluting me, the four-inch pixy flew into the exposed rafters on his dragonfly-like wings to inspect the roof repair. More dust sifted from him like a living sunbeam, pooling on the floor before vanishing in a faint draft.
“Just ’cause we’re living on Kisten’s old boat doesn’t mean you can slack off on the yard work, Rache,” he said as he dropped down, hands on his hips in his best Peter Pan pose and hovered before me. “The lawn looks like hell.”
My spider dream flashed through me, but my breath to answer hesitated when Ivy strode in, a plate of cookies from the front steps in hand. “Ease up, Jenks,” she said, her voice like living dust, gray, silky—and just as irritating when she spoke the truth. “She’s been busy. We all have.”
Ivy hit the lights, and I squinted when they flickered on. I hadn’t even known power had been restored, but my flash of guilt vanished as I gave Ivy a quick one-armed hug and breathed deep, taking in the scent of oiled steel and orange juice. The distinctive smell of the I.S. tower was heavy on her, the multitude of vampires, witches, and Weres mixing together with the scent of paperwork and quick feet on the pavement. It told me as much as her professional attire and slightly dilated eyes that she’d come right from work. Under it all was a growing thread of Nina, as distinctive as a fingerprint. That they’d found a lasting happiness together made a lot of the crap my life