Ever After (The Hollows #11)(86)
Author: Kim Harrison

The morning was bright and chill, and Jenks was warming himself on the light fixture. It was just us three, the way I liked it, and I had a suspicion that we were at the very same booth where we had made our agreement to go into business together. I wondered at all the changes in our lives since then. We were all better, weren’t we? I wasn’t so sure anymore. I’d loved and lost. So had Ivy. So had Jenks. There was good stuff too, wasn’t there?

Ivy checked her watch, folded up the map, and shoved it away.

"Is she here?" Jenks asked, his dust an odd light blue edged in gold. I’d never seen that before, and I wondered if his extended life span was giving him a wider repertoire.

Ivy shook her head, casually pulling her coffee to her with long, pale fingers. Silent, she stared out over the patrons at nothing as she tried to put her night in perspective. Her hair was perfectly arranged, and her short jacket made her look like a model. People were eyeing her in envy. She looked like she had everything. Looked was the keyword. Her eyes were red with worry, and fatigue pulled at her like a cur.

"I would rather have done this at night," I said, thinking that the idea to just walk in, grab the rings, and walk out was great if you were fourteen and trying to steal a candy bar, but not twenty-seven and aiming for a piece of irreplaceable elven heritage. Then again, the oldest tricks worked the best.

"Security is impossible at night," she murmured.

"Ana ‘eesides, ‘ache," Jenks said as he dropped down, his words slurred as he chewed one of the nectar and pollen balls Belle had made for him. "Ee don’t ‘ave time to plan ah ‘eel job. Ou’ll ‘e great!" He swallowed a chunk. "It’s not that much different from legit work. You get busted for doing that, too, half the time."

Resettling my scarf, I eyed him sourly. His cheek was still bulging like a chipmunk’s as he furiously chewed. Belle had made his travel food her size, not his, and his kids had had giggling fits this morning when the fairy had gruffly given them to him in a paper sack she had folded herself. Jenks had only said thank you, even as he’d gestured for his kids to leave off. I was proud of him.

"Piece of cake," I whispered, wanting to ask Ivy for the map.

"Easy as pie!" the pixy said, his fingers now sticking to a napkin. Frustrated, he lifted off the table, taking the napkin with him. His dust shifted to an irate red, and Ivy pinned the paper with her index finger. Wings clattering, he drew his sword, and with three frustrated motions, he rose up, a piece of napkin drifting down under him.

"If you two don’t relax, I’m going to jump Rachel’s jugular," Ivy muttered, and I slumped into my chair, taking my double shot grande, Italian blend, skim milk, shot of raspberry, no foam coffee with me. Al liked whole milk, but I thought it was too rich that way.

"Sorry." It bothered me more than I wanted to admit that we had to steal the stupid rings. Involving an innocent kind of bothered me, too. But as Jenks had said, there hadn’t been enough time for Ivy’s usual beauty-in-planning. We had to go in dirty and fast. Get in, move to the secure area where the pieces were being held under the cover of a distraction, do a little light-fingered shopping, and leave a pair of fake rings before walking out the front door with what we’d come for. It was that skinflint elf’s fault-going back on an arranged . . . arrangement. Trent was still in the ever-after, and it bothered me. A lot.

I fiddled with my cup of coffee, feeling the silence become uncomfortable. "I’m glad you’re back," I said, and Ivy’s eyes flicked to mine. "It’s been quiet."

Her brow furrowed and she looked away. "I’ll try not to make so much noise."

Anger flickered and died, and I watched her pupils dilate and return to normal in response. She’d had a difficult night. I could cut her some slack. "I didn’t say you were being noisy. I said it’s been quiet. I also said I’m glad you’re back. I’m sorry you had such a hard night with Nina. Is she going to be okay? Felix was . . ." I hesitated, my anger vanishing as I remembered his hunched shadow, as he stood anguished in my kitchen in a moment of lucidity, his eyes rolling as he looked for me to kill him as a way out of his new hell. "I don’t like undead vampires, the way they use people like tissue and discard them, but seeing him broken like that and losing his mind?" I looked up, seeing her own pain. "I feel bad for him."

Ivy’s eyes were haunted as she watched her fingers encircle her cup.

"Hey, ah, I’m going to check out the perimeter, okay?" Jenks said, then darted off through the drive-up window, scaring the crap out of the barista managing it. Though the sun was bright this morning, it was too cold for him to be outside long. He’d be back.

Chicken, I thought, but I didn’t blame him. Ivy exhaled, still avoiding me. Either she would talk or she wouldn’t.

"Maybe I shouldn’t have interfered," she said, and I strained to hear her over the noise of "background" music and conversation. Ivy’s eyes came up, heartache mirrored in them. "People suffered for me last night, good people. Not just my friends at Piscary’s who fed that monster, but the ones at the safe house, too. Nina agreed to this arrangement with Felix. Who am I to try to help her?"

I leaned over the table, and Ivy flinched as my hand covered hers. The cup was long cold, but her fingers were warm. "Nina did not agree to this. She bought into a lie, one coated in power and euphoria. People suffered for her, but they did it knowing it was to help one of their own come back. If Nina can survive, if you can bring her back from where Felix filled her with ecstasy and then dumped her, then there’s hope for them. That’s why they took your pain. You gave them hope that they might survive, too."

Ivy looked away in guilt, and I remembered the wild abandonment I’d seen time and again at Piscary’s under Kisten’s management, living vampires going there to lie to themselves that life was good and they had the world on a string. They needed knowing that there was a way out, perhaps more than they knew.

My eyes were warm with unshed tears, and Ivy blinked fast when she pulled her hand out from under mine. She wanted to believe, but it was hard for her to accept others sacrificing for her.

"Keep Nina safe," I said, hiding my hand under the table. A resolve had filled me somewhere between finding Felix in my kitchen and Ivy stumbling home last night crying over someone else’s pain. I couldn’t let Ivy suffer the hell I’d seen Felix trapped in. I had to find a way to save her soul. I had to.

"Thank you," Ivy whispered, her motion slow as she balled up her ecofriendly napkin. Taking a deep breath, I could almost see her focus on the "now." "It was a rough night. It took six of us to hold her down when the bloodlust hit her. If this goes okay, I’m going to try to be there when she wakes up so she knows I’m . . . okay."