Twigs in hand, I went into the kitchen, my peace growing as I found them reasonably calm at Ivy's big table, construction blueprints between them. Nick and Ivy had been modifying them, changing what was on file at the city to match what had actually happened at the construction site. The taped-together pages covered the table, and most of Ivy's stuff had been stacked on the floor to make more room.
Only Pierce looked up as I entered, standing at the fridge with a glass and playing with the water dispenser. At the table, the argument over some small placement of a camera continued. Ivy was edging into a vampy state, her eyes dark and motions quick, but she wasn't sultry, which was her big tell for losing it. Her black mood wasn't bothering Nick, and he was strenuously arguing a point, erasing her marks and penciling in his own. The white flash of her new cast had been covered with a black stretchy fabric that might have been a sock with the toe cut off. I had no doubts that being in a cast wasn't going to slow her down at all.
Standing on the paper, Jenks watched. I was surprised he was here, but the garden was probably too painful. His classic Peter Pan pose had slumped into a depressed hunch with his arms over his middle, and his wings were against his back. Jax, back again and sitting on Nick's shoulder, didn't look much better.
Jenks looked up when I dropped my twigs on the center counter, a flash of guilt crossing him in that he hadn't gotten them for me. I smiled, and a black dust sifted down. Reaching for the last dirty spell pot, I dunked it in the warm sudsy water.
"What about the security at that level?" Ivy said, tapping the paper. "You know they have more than cameras down there. Spell detectors, too."
"Tink's titties, Ivy," Jenks complained, his wings perking up. "That's what I'm for! Uh, we're for," he amended, looking at his son when Jax scraped his wings.
"The pixies have this," Nick said dryly as he tossed his pencil down and leaned back, scowling. "You've really got a problem with trust, vampire."
Ivy's eyes narrowed, and my neck tingled. "I trust the pixies. You, I don't."
I gave the spell pot a quick rinse in my saltwater vat, then ran it under the cold tap. The copper needed a good polishing, but not today. Pierce silently took it from me before I could set it to dry, yanking the dish towel from the rack and making good with it. I gave him a quick smile. He'd been a big help today, and I'd gained a deeper respect for his skills. It was a lot like when I worked with Al, but Pierce wasn't as quick to play teacher - which I appreciated.
Behind me on the center counter were three disguise potions. Okay, they were curses, but the twisting of them had been exactly like a standard disguise potion, except instead of ingredient X to give Y result, I had used a focusing object from the person I wanted to look like. For any other witch, the result would be a potion that would do nothing, but if I tapped a line and said the magic word, my blood - my demon-enzyme blood - would make it work.
By all appearances, Ivy, Jenks, and Nick had forgotten we had to get out again, too, so while they fussed and fumed about how to get in, I'd made up the curses to escape under fire. Soon as we were discovered - and we would be discovered - the codes to the locked doors would change, so I picked three people who wouldn't need any freaking codes. Even with Ivy planning this, something would go wrong. As Al always said, the demon s in the details.
The first potion in the tiny vial had been sensitized from a page of one of my newer ley-line textbooks, written by Dr. Anders. The second had a chunk of Ceri's smashed teacup, and the third, a strand of hair from the Pandora charm that Trent sent me. The rope had been made from his horse's tail, and it was probably the best focusing object of the lot. Getting Ivy to take hers wasn't going to be fun.
That there were only three curses hadn't escaped Pierce's notice. He wasn't coming. We had too many people running this job to begin with,