Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(79)
Author: Kim Harrison

Jenks thought about that, lifting Matalina to a more comfortable position on his lap. "You think I should ask her?" he asked.

Matalina shifted to give him a moot look.

"I’ll ask her," he said, feeling the beginnings of excitement. "And maybe have Jumoke come out with me, too. The boy needs something other than his good looks."

Matalina made a small sound of agreement, knowing as much as he did that his dark hair and eyes would make finding a wife almost impossible.

Grinning, Jenks pushed them both into the air. She squealed as their wings clattered together, and a real smile, carefree and delighted, was on her as he spun her to him, hanging midair in the closed rolltop desk. "I’ll teach Jumoke a trade so he has something to bring to the marriage pot beside cold pixy steel and a smart mind," he said, delighting in her smile. "I can teach him everything I know. It won’t be like Jax. I’ll make sure he knows why he’s doing it, not just how. And with Ivy distracting the nymph, I’ll blow up the dryad’s statue. I already know how to make the explosive. I just need a whopping big amount of it."

Matalina pulled from him, holding his hands for a moment as she looked at him in pride. "Go save them, Jenks. I’ll be in the garden when you get back. Bring me a good story."

Jenks drew her close, their dust and wings mingling as he kissed her soundly. "Thank you, love," he said. "You always make things seem so simple. I don’t know what I’d do without you."

"You’ll get along just fine," she whispered, but he was gone, already having zipped through the crack in the rolltop desk. Smile fading, Matalina looked over the empty desk. Picking up the discarded fabric, she followed him out.

FOUR

The shouts of his kids came loud through the church’s kitchen window, their high-pitched voices clear in the moisture-heavy air as they played hide-and-seek in the early dark. The boys, especially, had been glad to get out of the desk and into their admittedly more-cramped-than-a-troll’s-armpit quarters in the oak stump. More cramped, but vastly more suited to a winged person smaller than a Barbie doll.

A parental smile threatened Jenks’s attempt at a businesslike attitude as he stood on the spigot before the window and cleared his throat. Jumoke’s apprenticeship had begun, and Jenks was trying to impress on him the sensitivity needed in mixing up some pixy pow. It wouldn’t be napalm, which pixies had first used to get rid of weeds-then fairies when it was discovered to their delight that it would go boom under the right conditions. And it wouldn’t be C4, C3, or any other human explosive. It would be something completely different, thanks to the dual properties of stability and ignition that pixy dust contained.

"That’s it, Papa?" Jumoke said doubtfully as he penciled in the last of the ingredients on one of Ivy’s sticky notes. Unlike most of Cincinnati’s pixies, Jenks’s family could read. It was a skill Jenks taught himself shortly after reaching the city, then used it to claim a section of worthless land before the proposed flower boxes existing on a set of blueprints went in.

"That’s it," he said, gazing at his son’s hair. It looked especially dark in the fluorescent light. For the first time, he saw it as perhaps an asset. It wouldn’t catch the sun as his own hair did, a decided advantage in sneaking around. Perhaps Jumoke was the reigning hide-and-seek champion for a reason.

Bis, newly awake and doing his sullen gargoyle thing atop the fridge, rustled his wings in disbelief. "There is no way that soap, fertilizer, lighter fluid, and pixy dust is going to blow that statue up. It’s solid rock!"

"Wanna bet a week’s worth of sentry duty?" Jenks asked. "I use it all the time. A pixy handful will blow surveillance lines and fry motherboards, QED. We’re just going to need a lot more." Rising up, he eyed the rack of spelling equipment hanging over the center island counter. "Can you get that pot down for me?"

Jumoke made a small noise, and Bis’s pebbly gray skin went black. "Rachel’s spell pot?" the gargoyle squeaked in apparent fear.

Hands on his hips, Jenks hummed his wings faster. "The little one, yes. Jumoke, go see if you can find Ivy’s lighter fluid out by the grill. We need more propellant than we have dust."

The young pixy darted out into the hallway, and Jenks frowned at the worried tint to his son’s aura now. Tink’s titties, he could use Rachel’s spelling equipment. The woman wouldn’t mind. Hell, she’d never even know.

Ears pinned to his ugly skull, Bis hopped the short distance from the fridge to the center island counter, jumping up with his wings spread to pluck the small copper pot. It would hold about a cup of liquid and was Rachel’s favorite-size spell pot. She had two of them.

"Can I have the other one, too, please?" Jenks said dryly, and the kid’s tail wrapped around his feet, his ears going flatter. "I can’t touch anything but copper," he complained. "And if I use the plastic ones, they’ll smell funny. Will you grow a pair and get the bowl?" he said, darting upward and smacking it to make it ping.

"Don’t blame me if Rachel yells at you for using her spell pots," Bis muttered as he plucked it from the overhead rack and set it rocking next to the first. The draft from his wings blew Jenks back when Bis hopped to Ivy’s chair at the big farmhouse kitchen table, pulling first the phone book, then Vixen’s Guide to Gathering Guys and Gals down and onto the seat. The guide was the larger of the two.

"Don’t blame me if Ivy de-wings you for using her computer," Jenks shot back as Bis settled onto the stack of books and shook the mouse to wake the computer up. One day he was going to get caught, and then there’d be Tink to pay. Tugging a bowl to the middle of the counter, Jenks felt a moment of guilt. "Rachel will never know. What’s the problem here?"

Bis looked up from the keyboard. His thin fingers were curved so his nails touched the keys, and he snapped off Ivy’s password without looking. "You didn’t ask her."

"Yeah, like you said pretty-please for Ivy’s password," he said, and Bis flushed dark black. Smug, Jenks pulled the recipe closer and wondered how he was going to size up the amounts. "I’ll polish the stinkin’ bowls when I’m done," he muttered, and Bis smirked. "I’m not afraid of Rachel!" he said, hands on his hips.

"And I’m not afraid of Ivy."

They both jumped at the hum of dragonfly wings, but it was Jumoke. "It’s metal," he said, his expression going confused when he saw the panicked look on their faces. "What did I do?"

"I thought you were your mother," Jenks said, and Jumoke’s wings turned a bright red as he drifted backward, giggling. It didn’t seem right to be teaching a six-year-old how to make explosives. The giggling didn’t help. But now was the time to start teaching him, not two weeks before he left the garden like he had Jax. There was a moral philosophy that went along with the power a pixy could wield, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Jumoke as he had with Jax.