that runners were all but uninsurable; the I.S. had given me a card, and I'd used it. Then I had to pay some guy to take the lethal spells off my stuff still in storage, buy Ivy a silk robe to replace the one I ruined, and pick up a few outfits for myself since I now had a reputation to uphold.
But the steady drain on my finances had to be from the cab fares. Most of Cincinnati's bus drivers knew me by sight and wouldn't pick me up, which was why Ivy had to come cart me home. It just wasn't fair. It had been almost a year since I accidentally removed the hair from an entire busload of people while trying to tag a Were.
I was tired of being almost broke, but the money for recovering the Howlers' mascot would put me in the clear for another month. And the Weres wouldn't follow me. It wasn't their fish. If they filed a complaint at the I.S., they'd have to explain where they had gotten it.
"Hey, Rache," Jenks said, dropping down from who knew where. "Your back is clear. And what is Plan B?"
My eyebrows rose and I looked askance at him as he flew alongside, matching my pace exactly. "Grab the fish and run like hell."
Jenks laughed and landed on my shoulder. He had ditched his tiny uniform, and he looked like his usual self in a long-sleeve hunter-green silk shirt and pants. A red bandana was about his forehead to tell any pixy or fairies whose territory we might walk through that he wasn't poaching. Sparkles glittered in his wings where the last of the pixy dust stirred up by the excitement remained.
My pace slowed as we reached Fountain Square. I scanned for Ivy, not seeing her. Not worried, I went to sit on the dry side of the fountain, running my fingers under the rim of the retaining wall for my shades. She'd be here. The woman lived and died by schedules.
While Jenks flew through the spray to get rid of the last of the "dead dinosaur stink," I snapped open my shades and put them on. My brow eased as the glare of the September afternoon was muted. Stretching my long legs out, I casually took off the scent amulet that was around my neck and dropped it into the fountain. Weres tracked by smell, and if they did follow me, the trail would end here as soon as I got in Ivy's car and drove away.
Hoping no one had noticed, I glanced over the surrounding people: a nervous, anemic-looking vampire lackey out doing his lover's daytime work; two whispering humans, giggling as they eyed his badly scarred neck; a tired witch - no, warlock, I decided, by the lack of a strong redwood smell - sitting at a nearby bench eating a muffin; and me. I took a slow breath as I settled in. Having to wait for a ride was kind of an anticlimax.
"I wish I had a car," I said to Jenks as I edged the canister of fish to sit between my feet. Thirty feet away traffic was stop-and-go. It had picked up, and I guessed it was probably after two o'clock, just beginning the span of time when humans and Inderlanders started their daily struggle to coexist in the same limited space. Things got a hell of a lot easier when the sun went down and most humans retired to their homes.
"What do you want with a car?" Jenks asked as he perched himself on my knee and started to clean his dragonfly-like wings with long serious strokes. "I don't have a car. I've never had a car. I get around okay. Cars are trouble," he said, but I wasn't listening anymore. "You have to put gas in them, and keep them in repair, and spend time cleaning them, and you have to have a place to put them, and then there's the money you lavish on them. It's worse than a girlfriend."
"Still," I said, jiggling my foot to irritate him. "I wish I had a car." I glanced at the people around me. "James Bond never had to wait for a bus. I've seen every one of his movies, and he never waited for a bus." I squinted at Jenks. "It kinda loses its pizzazz."
"Um, yeah," he said, his attention behind me. "I can see where it might be safer, too. Eleven o'clock. Weres."