The Coffee Vault, indeed. At least I'd never be trapped in the ever-after again.
Spinning to the wall behind me, I found the thin lines of a door and the expected keypad. "Come on in, guys," I whispered, and hit the green button.
There was the hum of machinery, and I backed up. The two panels slid apart like the doors in a science-fiction movie to show Ivy, Nick, and Jenks, hovering with brow furrowed. "Rache?" Jenks questioned.
"We'll talk about it later," I said, and Ivy bumped Nick when he bent to pick up his stuff. Scowling, he caught himself and followed her in, immediately plugging his card into the panel.
"Cameras?" Ivy asked, scanning the room, and when negative wing chirps came from both Jenks and Jax, she went to the canvas display. "So this is Trent's basement," Ivy said as she started leafing through the hanging canvases, arranged like posters in a pagelike display. Nick made a satisfied grunt and pulled the card from the reader.
"We're good," he said, his gaze fixing on the picture Ivy had turned to. "That's it," he said, eyes eager as Ivy paused at a really small painting. It was hardly a foot by a foot, showing a dark background of snowy mountains and a castle, the foreground taken up by a satisfied-looking young man in a red robe and funny hat, fur around his collar and three downy feathers in his lapel. That the man looked like Trent was almost anticli-mactic.
"That's it?" Jenks said, landing on my shoulder as we eyed it. "It's not very big."
"Kinda ugly, too," I said, getting a funny feeling about this. I didn't want to say this was too easy, seeing as I'd used a door neither a witch nor a demon could open, but everything was going too well.
Nick was spreading a black silk cloth on the coffin-size freezer. "It's not the size, Jenks, it's how you use it," he said, smirking. "It doesn't need to be big if it looks like Trent."
Well, it did look like Trent. Jenks wasn't laughing, his hands on his hips as he moved out of the way while Ivy took the picture to Nick. "It stinks. Almost as bad as you, Rache," he accused.
"I smell?" I said, flushing.
Holding the canvas at the unpainted corners, Ivy frowned at him. "You were in the ever-after," she said, one shoulder lifting in a shrug, and I took a step back from them, feeling unclean. Great, I hadn't even noticed.
Oblivious, Nick carefully took the picture from Ivy, making a production out of rolling it up in the black cloth to put into the mailing tube he'd been carrying across his back like a sword. I couldn't help but sourly wonder if it was stamped and addressed to his latest girlfriend.
While the two of them discussed who was going to carry it, I unzipped my belt pack and brought out the hoof pick. I'd leave it here where Trent would be sure to find it. If he didn't make the connection that he was going to get the painting back, I might be in trouble.
Jenks joined me, and together we looked at the beautiful inlaid wood one last time before I set it on an open display case, bright with mirrors and lights. "I should have done this a long time ago," I said softly, wondering if I'd ever get my entire memory back. But who really remembered anything about being twelve?
"Oh my God," Jenks said, eying the statue next to it. It wasn't any bigger than he was, but I felt myself warm as I looked more closely. It was two men and a woman, buck naked, doing the nasty. At the same time. One in front, one in back. She looked like she was enjoying herself, though, ample breasts heaving and back arched, which kind of made it hard for the guy in back, but by his expression, he didn't care. They had pointy ears, the woman sporting a cute pageboy haircut and the men having hair past their shoulders, wild and feral.
"What is it?" I said, wanting to pick it up but feeling it might leave me sullied.
"Tink's dildo, you're asking me?" he said with a snort, but he didn't elaborate. Not even one rude gesture or comment. The unusual restraint was clear evidence of his depressed state.
"Ivy?" I called. This was too good not to share, timetable or not. "You gotta see this."
She came closer, Nick trailing behind as he capped the top of