Ever After (The Hollows #11)(81)
Author: Kim Harrison

I slumped. This was where her turmoil was coming from. "Your needs are not wrong-"

"Then why couldn’t I make it work, Rachel?" she shouted, and I drew back. "Why did they have to move halfway across a continent to get away from me?"

Throat tight, I crossed the room to her. "Because you need someone who needs you, and I don’t anymore," I whispered. "Ivy, I’m sorry."

Her shoulder under my hand trembled, and she backed out of my reach. "There’s no reason to be," she said softly, hair falling to hide her face. "I have to do this. I like Nina. She’s alive, smart, always moving but never toward anything that doesn’t have meaning. The way she loves life reminds me of you, and she is good at making me do things that I’m afraid to do. But what Felix is doing to her . . . It draws me to her as much as it disgusts me. She’s so much like a master, but innocent."

Eyes bright with unshed tears, she looked at the ceiling. "I left for a week, and I came back to find he’s in her thoughts almost every waking moment the sun is up, and half the time at night, filling her with power and desire as he sucks in the memory of the sun and love. He won’t leave her alone. I don’t think he can anymore." Again she looked at her fingers among her mail, shifting them aimlessly. "The man is using her like a drug. He’s not tapping her for blood anymore, which might mean she’s become an extension of himself in his mind. Nina is balanced on a fine edge of control."

"And you like it."

Head down, she nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She felt better for having told me. I could tell. Or maybe it was because I was asking about what she could do, plan . . . fix. "She’s as dependent upon him for control as he is on her for stimulation at this point. He can die twice for all I care, but I don’t want her to pay for his mistake. The only chance Nina has to survive is to take control and tell him no for as long as she can. Even if it puts her in more danger."

And it would. I could tell. This wasn’t good.

"Nina’s control when alone and under stress is almost nil," Ivy said, eyes lowered toward the table. "That’s why I asked Jenks to go with her, to buffer any conflicts. I know I can help her learn control if I can keep them apart long enough." Her head came up, meeting my eyes fully. "She has a chance. If she really wants it, she has a chance."

I managed a smile to match her own tremulous expression. Ivy had a tremendous need to give, to lift others above the muck she had pulled herself out of. Watching Nina innocently and willingly slip in over her head had been hard. Accepting the challenge to help her was even harder. "Be careful," I said as I reached across the distance between us and touched her arm. "I’m proud of you, Ivy."

Her smile slowly vanished, and her dark eyes drifted aimlessly over our kitchen, touching parts of our lives as if she’d never seen them before. "Felix is going to be looking for her tonight. I have to get her to a safe house, but I’ll be back to help plan the museum job." She took a deep breath, her chin lifting as if she was taking on a new responsibility-or maybe accepting that I wished her well. "The hell they put us through," she whispered.

I didn’t know what to say. I could tell she was about to leave.

"I should probably go," Ivy said. "Jenks won’t be able to do much if she loses it. I didn’t want to bring up the safe house while she was in the church. She thinks she’s got the world by the tail."

Yet another trait that Nina and I shared. "That’s usually when you get bitten," I said, and Ivy smiled. Nina was far away and distant from me, but there was enough there to make an easy comparison. Ivy might not know it yet, but she was falling in love again.

Ivy reached for her purse, then hesitated. "Are you sure you’ll be okay for a few hours?"

My gut hurt, and I smiled widely. "Oh, hell yes. Nick is around somewhere, but I’ll be fine, especially with all those gargoyles. Ku’Sox won’t show, afraid the curse will bounce back at him. Go."

Still unsure, Ivy started to back up to the hallway and out of my life. "Stay on hallowed ground until I get back, okay?"

She knew the kitchen wasn’t hallowed ground. "You got it," I said, turning to look out at the silent, damp garden. "And Ivy? I know what I said, but I will always be here to put you back together. If it should come to that."

Her smile faltered as she stood in the threshold. "I know. Thank you."

Head down, she turned away, the keys to Nina’s car jingling. Her footsteps were slow as she made her way through the dark to the front of the church. The boom of the door shook through me.

Arms wrapped around my middle, I smiled even as the tears threatened. This was good. This was very, very good. It had to be if it hurt this much.

Chapter Nineteen

Ms. Morgan! Why is your church the only one with gargoyles?" the woman on my front stoop was saying as I smiled and waved at the camera guy, waiting for the last pixy to come back in before I shut the door in their faces. "What a bitch!" the newscaster added as I bolted it, probably not aware that voices carried through the wall of the church well enough that we didn’t need an intercom.

A peephole would be nice, though, I thought as I put an ear to the door and listened to them pack up and head back to the news van. The camera guy was talking about going down the back street to get a shot of the graveyard and the gargoyles perched on the tombstones, but the woman was in too bad a mood to care about aesthetics. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to them after they misaligned, misinformed, and generally blew everything out of proportion when it came to my life-but that I really didn’t care to speculate on local TV as to why every single gargoyle in the Cincinnati area was now perched on my church’s wall and in my graveyard.

Sighing, I headed back to the kitchen with pixies in my hair, wishing I’d taken the time to take my apron off before I’d answered the door. I was a mess from spell prep, bits of green stuff and ground herbs marking me. Pixy dust was everywhere, and the ugly red stain on my sleeve from the organic berries looked ominous. At least I wasn’t barefoot.

Boots clunking, I headed for the kitchen, my pixy escort going before me in swirls of cheerful color and noise. Though the night was warm, they were all back inside to avoid the gargoyles. I’d been spelling for hours, and I had to clean something before I could make anything new.

As I ran the water into my spell-grimed pots, Jenks flew in smelling like garden and sounding like wind chimes. Cutting a startling image, he landed on the center counter beside my drying charms. No longer in his usual gardener green, or even his alternate thief-black, skintight ensemble, he all but strutted a few steps, clearly liking the sound of the bells that Belle had sewn into the top of his new boots that she’d made to go with his new black jacket and pants.