My jaw dropped. “How did you know …?” I stammered as Jenks yelped in surprise.
A faint smile, unusual but honest, pulled the corners of her mouth up. A flash of fang showed, her canines the same size as mine but sharp, like a cat’s. She’d have to wait until she was dead to get the extended versions. “You talk in your sleep,” she said lightly.
“You knew?” I said, floored. “You never said anything!”
“Nicely done?” Jenks’s wings clattered like June bugs. “You think being a demon’s familiar is a good thing? What train hit you on the way home?”
Ivy went to get a glass from the cupboard. “If Piscary had been released, Rachel would be dead by sunup,” she said as she poured out juice. “So she’s a demon’s familiar? So what? She said the demon can’t use her unless he pulls her into the ever-after. And she’s alive. You can’t do anything if you’re dead.” She took a sip of her drink. “Unless you’re a vampire.”
Jenks made an ugly sound and flew to the corner of the room to sulk. Jih took the opportunity to flit in to hide in the ladle hanging over the center counter, the tips of her wings showing a brilliant red above the copper rim.
Ivy’s brown eyes met mine over her glass. Her perfect oval face was almost featureless as she hid her emotions behind the cool facade of indifference she maintained when there was someone in the room beside us two, Jenks included. “I’m glad it worked,” she said as she set the glass on the counter. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, seeing her relief in the slight trembling of her long pianist fingers. She would never tell me how worried she had been, and I wondered how long she had stood in the hallway listening and collecting herself. Her eyes blinked several times, and her jaw clenched in an effort to stifle her emotion. “I didn’t know it was tonight,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t have left.”
“Thanks,” I said, thinking Jenks was right. I had been an ass for not telling them. I just wasn’t used to having anyone but my mother care.
Ceri was watching Ivy with a puzzled, rapt attention. “Partner?” she hazarded, and Ivy flicked her attention to the small woman.
“Yeah,” Ivy said. “Partner. What’s it to you?”
“Ceri, this is Ivy,” I said as the small woman got to her feet.
Ivy frowned as she realized the precise order she kept her desk in had been altered.
“She was Big Al’s familiar,” I warned. “She needs a few days to find her feet is all.”
Jenks made an eye-hurting noise with his wings, and Ivy gave me a telling look, her expression shifting to an annoyed wariness when Ceri came to stand before her. The small woman was peering at Ivy in confusion. “You’re a vampire,” she said, reaching to touch Ivy’s crucifix.
Ivy sprang back with a startling quickness, her eyes flashing black.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said as I stepped between them, ready for anything. “Ivy, take it easy. She’s been in the ever-after for a thousand years. She may not have seen a living vampire before. I think she’s an Inderlander, but she smells like the ever-after so Jenks can’t tell what she is.” I hesitated, telling her with my eyes and my last sentence that Ceri was an elf, and therefore a loose cannon as far as magic was concerned.
Ivy’s pupils had dilated to almost a full, vampire black. Her stance was domineering and sexually charged, but she had just slaked her blood lust and so was capable of listening. I shot a quick glance at Ceri, glad to see she wisely hadn’t moved. “We all okay here?” I asked, my voice demanding they both back down.
Thin lips pressed tight, Ivy turned her back on us. Jenks dropped to my shoulder. “Nicely done,” he said. “Got all your bitches in line, I see.”
“Jenks!” I hissed, knowing Ivy had heard when her knuckles on her glass turned white. I flicked him off me, and laughing, he rose up and then back down to my shoulder.
Ceri was standing with her arms confidently at her side, watching Ivy grow more and more tense. “Oh-h-h-h-h,” Jenks drawled. “Your new friend is gonna do something.”
“Uh, Ceri?” I questioned, heart pounding as the petite woman went to stand beside Ivy at the sink, clearly demanding her attention.
Pale face tight with a repressed anger, Ivy turned. “What,” she said flatly.
Ceri inclined her head regally, never taking her green eyes from Ivy’s slowly dilating brown ones. “I apologize,” she said in her high, clear voice, every syllable carefully pronounced. “I’ve slighted you.” Her attention dropped to Ivy’s elaborate crucifix on its silver chain about her neck. “You’re a vampire warrior, and yet you can wear the Cross?”
Ceri’s hand twitched, and I knew she wanted to touch it. Ivy knew it too. I watched, unable to interfere as Ivy turned to face her. Hip cocked, she gave Ceri a more in-depth onceover, taking in her dried tears, her exquisite ball gown, her bare feet, and her obvious pride and upright carriage. As I held my breath, Ivy took her crucifix off, the chain gathering her hair in front of her as she pulled it from around her neck.
“I’m a living vampire,” she said as she put the religious icon in the elf’s hand. “I was born with the vampire virus. You know what a virus is, don’t you?”
Ceri’s fingers traced the lines of the worked silver. “My demon let me read what I wished. A virus is killing my kin.” She looked up. “Not the vampire virus. Something else.”
Ivy’s gaze darted to me, then returned to the small woman standing just a shade too close to her. “The virus changed me as I was forming in my mother’s womb, making me some of both. I can walk under the sun and worship without pain,” Ivy said. “I’m stronger than you,” she added as she subtly put more space between them. “But not as strong as a true undead. And I have a soul.” She said the last as if she expected Ceri to deny it.
Ceri’s expression became empty. “You’re going to lose it.”
Ivy’s eye twitched. “I know.”
I held my breath, listening to the clock tick and the almost subliminal hum of pixy wings. Eyes solemn, the thin woman held the crucifix out to Ivy. “I’m sorry. That’s the hell from which Rachel Mariana Morgan saved me.”
Ivy looked at the cross in Ceri’s hand, no emotion showing. “I’m hoping she can do the same for me.”
I cringed. Ivy had pinned her sanity on the belief that there was a witch magic that might purge the vampire virus from her; that all it would take would be the right spell to let her walk away from the blood and violence. But there wasn’t. I waited for Ceri to tell Ivy that no one was beyond redemption, but all she did was nod, her wispy hair floating. “I hope she can.”
“Me, too.” Ivy glanced at the crucifix Ceri was extending to her. “Keep it. It doesn’t help anymore.”
My lips parted in surprise, and Jenks landed upon my big hoop earrings as Ceri placed it about her neck. The elaborately tooled silver looked right against the rich purple and green of her formal gown. “Ivy—” I started, jerking when Ivy narrowed her eyes at me.
“It doesn’t help anymore,” she said tightly. “She wants it. I’m giving it to her.”
Ceri reached up, clearly finding peace in the icon. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Ivy frowned. “Touch my desk again, and I’ll snap every one of your fingers.”
Ceri took the threat with a light understanding that surprised me. It was obvious she had dealt with vampires before. I wondered where—since vampires