dished out bearable.
“Cookie?” she said, backing up and holding out the plate, and I shook my head. The risk of a casual assassination attempt was too real and I didn’t know who had made them. True, I’d been half responsible for getting the ley lines—and hence magic—working again, but no one but me was happy that the demons were living freely in reality. Elf magic wasn’t working well, the running theory behind closed doors being it was because their Goddess had been reborn from an off-balance demon. Again sort of my fault.
I’d had only a smattering of jobs since, all from Trent. I was beginning to think he was finding events for me to escort him to so I’d have a paycheck. Boyfriend or not, I wasn’t going to work for him for free. If the danger was real—and it was—the paycheck should be, too.
“Is David here?” Jenks asked, and I shook my head, dropping down to find the rack to set up a game. Seeing my intent, Ivy braced her back against the wall and, straining, pushed the table in an earsplitting shriek of wood. Jenks shuddered a sickly green dust, but at least we could play now. It wasn’t often I saw the strength her living-vampire status gave her. Thanks to having been born with the vampire virus instead of infected with it later, she had canines that were slightly longer than mine, and sharp. And yep, she had a liking for taking blood, but she didn’t need it to survive as Nina, her undead partner, did.
“Watch the hole,” I said as the balls thumped into the rack. “When are they fixing that?”
“My contractor is still trying to find an old house to scavenge floorboards from,” Jenks said, anxious until I rearranged the balls to put the one at the top and the eight in the middle. He didn’t care about the rest. “Apparently there’s been a lot of construction in Cincinnati lately, and they’re running out of materials,” he finished dryly.
Again, not my fault, but the spontaneous offerings on the front steps notwithstanding, I was probably being blamed for that, too.
Ivy rolled a cue stick across the table to make sure it wasn’t warped. “Any idea why we couldn’t do this at David’s office?” she asked, her low voice sounding right even if the sanctuary was all sawdust, silent power tools, and planking.
“I can tell you why.” Jenks’s wings rasped in anger. “That Were-pup excuse of an insurance company he works for isn’t going to make good on my claim, and he doesn’t want us making a scene at his office—that’s why.”
I lifted the rack, happy the slate was again smooth. “I’m sure that’s not it.”
“He’s a claims adjuster!” Jenks zipped between Ivy and me, his dust a heavy red that temporarily turned the green felt black. “That’s what they do! Take your money, and then when you need it, they adjust it from your pocket to theirs!”
Ivy bent low over the far end of the table, looking svelte in her upscale leather. “Relax, pixy,” she said as she lined up her break shot. “If they deny the claim, we’ll find the money.”
Jenks lost altitude, but he wasn’t alighting on my shoulder as usual. It wasn’t a snub, but it worried me. “It took all I had to put on the roof,” he said, clearly depressed, and I wished he was bigger so I could give him a hug and tell him it was going to be okay.
“I said I’d help with the repair. The church wouldn’t be like this if not for me,” I offered.
His wings hummed when Ivy took her shot and the rack scattered, one ball dropping in. Guilt made me look down. If the church wasn’t in pieces, it wouldn’t feel as if it was ending.
“I can pay my own bills, witch.” Jenks rose up and out of the way as Ivy circled to take a shot at the three and missed. “But even if we do get it fixed, then what?”
Jeez, Jenks. Couldn’t you let sleeping vampires sleep? “Then we move back in.” I scanned the table to avoid his foul mood. “Kisten’s boat is just for the winter,” I said as Ivy handed me the stick, but my eyes jerked to hers when she didn’t let go. Her regret and guilt laced through me, pulling tight against my soul. For the winter, I had said, but we all knew the three of us moving back in wasn’t going to happen. Not