Ever After (The Hollows #11)(104)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Shut up!" I snapped, and Jenks dusted a heavy black to pool on the floor. "I used to listen to you, but you lied and I walked." Leaning forward, I caught his eyes and held them. "Tell you what. I’ll keep Ku’Sox off you if you stay in the church. That’s it."

"Rache . . ." Jenks complained, and I held up a hand. Like I believed for one second that he would stay in the church?

"Set one toe out of it, and I don’t care anymore."

Nick exhaled loudly, clearly wanting more. He wasn’t getting it.

"I have stuff to do." Heart pounding, I looked at the clock on the cable box. "Excuse me."

Nick’s expression became alarmed at the prospect of my leaving him with Ivy, and sure enough, Ivy smiled to show her teeth, her motions slow and sultry as she almost crawled over the couch to sit beside him. "Can I leave you two alone for five minutes?" I asked as I looked down at her, not altogether kidding, and she smiled even wider.

"I want to talk to you," Jenks said, rising up with an aggressive wing clatter.

"Sure," I said, the memory of Jax’s tattered wings swimming up. Behind me, I heard Nick tell Ivy to f**k off. Either she would kill him or she wouldn’t. To be honest, I was more concerned about what I was going to wear tomorrow than Nick’s survival. "How are you doing, Jenks?" I said as went into my room, despairing over finding anything in my closet.

Wings clattering, Jenks landed on my dresser, his gaze on the wall as if he could look through it to see his son. "Peachy damn keen," he grumbled.

I could hear the gargoyles in the garden rumbling like elephants as I shut the door. A feeling of pity swept through me. Ivy was annoyed-but Ivy often was. I was angry-again, understandable. Jenks had parental guilt mixed with a strong streak of protection, and he was having the hardest time. "I’m sorry about Jax," I said as I opened my closet door and shoved everything to one side. Maybe there was something at the back that I’d missed, but the only things there were the clothes my mom hadn’t wanted to take with her and were of too high a quality to give away.

Jenks’s expression lost its anger, and he sat, slumped on a perfume bottle, wings drooping. "I didn’t think I’d have to face Jax again," he said softly, and my heart nearly broke.

"I imagine that’s what he’s thinking," I said, and Jenks met my eyes. I pulled out a filmy scarf, drawing it through the air and letting it settle on my bed, thinking it might make a good sash. Maybe I should start with the boots and work my way up.

"I just want to . . . smack him," Jenks said, gesturing weakly. "He doesn’t know how short life is. He’s throwing it away. He could be so much if he’d . . ."

"Come to the dark side?" I said, trying to lighten things up. Jenks was silent, his wings slowly regaining their usual color. Not the white leather dress. Not the black leather pants. My fingers trailed reluctantly off my usual leather. I’d be the same person I was before in it-I had to be different tomorrow. I felt different. My clothes should reflect that. I wanted something that said power, and everything I had said power and sex. Maybe Newt had the right idea with her martial-arts outfits and androgynous hairstyles. I wasn’t going to shave my head, but something more masculine might get the demons to stop looking at me like I was nothing but a pair of X chromosomes.

"Why don’t you ask him to come back to the church?" I said as I lingered over an off-white linen leisure suit of my mom’s from the ’70s, the entire era a bastion of post-Turn fashion freak-out. It had bell-bottoms, but it was also form fitting and flowing, the vest showing off my curves without screaming sex. In sudden decision, I pulled it into the light. "For good."

"What?"

Draping it across the bed, I kicked off my boots to try it on. "If he’s through with Nick, ask Jax to come back. Maybe he’s afraid you don’t love him."

"Don’t love him . . ." Jenks’s eyes were wide, and his mouth gaped.

There was a pop of air from the back of the church, both familiar and surprising, and I froze, Jenks and I looking at each other. Al? I wondered, and then my heart pounded at Newt’s voice screaming Latin. Newt?

Oh God, they’d come for me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I lurched out of my room, almost tripping on Rex streaking into the front sanctuary, a ribbon of caramel with a frightened sparkling of black pixy dust from one of Jenks’s kids over her. Ivy screamed from the kitchen, and I bolted. Jenks was a zizzing light before me, and gripping the edge of the frame, I slid into the kitchen. The cloying scent of burnt amber was so thick, I could almost see it.

"Newt, no!" I exclaimed, and she looked at me, her black eyes lost in madness. She had pinned Ivy to the floor, the butt of her staff at her throat. Ivy was wide-eyed, the blackness of her pupils deep with forever. Terrified, she held the end of the staff, unable to shift it. Jenks darted down with his sword, and I cried out a warning when Newt gestured at him.

Jenks was flung backward, his swearing cutting off when he hit the fridge and slid down.

"Stop!" I cried as I tapped the line, and Newt took a magic-hazed hand from her staff.

It gave Ivy a chance, and she spun out from under the stick, going for her katana. Grimacing, Newt turned back to her, swinging the stick to strike her across the temple. It met Ivy’s head with a dull thwap, and she collapsed.

Oh God. Ivy!

"Invader!" Belle shouted from the floor, and Newt shifted the aim of the black ball of death in her hand from me to the fairy, the demon’s white robes furling elegantly.

"Newt, stop!" I shouted, diving in front of Belle to intercept it. I threw up a protection circle as I lunged, but Newt’s magic tore right through, hitting me in the chest as I took the fall, narrowly missing squishing the small woman I’d been trying to protect.

I clenched into a ball, a spasm ripping through me as everything cramped. My feet scrabbled against the floor as I was racked with a curse that felt like it was ripping my spine apart. Newt hauled me up, pinning me to the farm table.

"Don’t hurt Newt!" I gasped as Belle trilled like an Amazon warrior. "Belle, stop!"

Newt’s black eyes stared into mine, wild and alive. Her color was high, accenting her new, spiky red hair, cut short just at her ears. Her fingers were clenched in my hair as she forced my head back, and her staff was across my neck, pressing me into the table. Clearly something had snapped in her. Had she remembered something, or forgot?

"Belle, no!" I cried out as the fairy, poised at the top of the hanging rack, gathered herself to jump on Newt.

"Immolerate!" Newt snarled, without even looking back.