The Witch With No Name

“You mean that one fought the others off?” I lifted my head. “Only when they wanted to eat me by themselves.”

“That’s not what he was doing, though.” Trent’s lips twisted as he looked at the waffles. “These are awful. I’m making you some from scratch.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, and he turned from throwing them away, his eyes pinched.

“Coffee?” he asked, and I nodded just so he’d lose that sad look. His reach for a mug hesitated at the sound of men in the hall, but it was just Quen setting up additional security. A faint smile twisted my lips. I imagine a white-clad vampire sneaking into the common rooms had put Trent’s head of security in a tizzy. Thank God Jonathan had been there.

I blinked. Thank God Jonathan had been there? Never thought I’d think that.

Trent set three full mugs on the table, and I pulled the nearest closer, a flutter going through me as I felt as if I was a part of something—Trent expected Quen to join us, and I was a natural part of the conversation—even if Quen acted as if he was humoring us.

“What strikes me as the oddest is that the demon who defended Nina was the same one who tried to chew her face off not thirty seconds earlier,” Trent said, gaze unfocused as he held his coffee and breathed in the steam. “One moment she’s breakfast, and the next she’s a god.”

I tapped the mug with a finger, not liking the red dust under the nail. “I think I’d do a little groveling myself if I’d never seen a master vampire before.”

“True.” Trent bobbed his head. “But the rest didn’t seem to care.”

“You noticed that, too?” I took a sip, startled by the rich warmth, but my thoughts were on Ivy. She was going to be okay, but the panic of sitting with her on the cold ever-after ground, holding her hand as she died, was just under my skin. I thanked God I hadn’t had to make that choice of following her desires and killing her again before she rose as an undead.

Oblivious to my thoughts, or more probable, aware and trying to distract me, Trent said, “I’ve never seen a surface demon with a weapon before. Apart from rocks.”

“I have,” I said, turning my mug in a revolving circle. “Newt used a surface demon as a marker in a time and space calibration curse. It had a sword. That’s how she knows which one it is and how long it lived.”

Kisten, I thought, sighing. Kisten had died twice within moments of his first death. I’d been there, but thankfully I hadn’t had to make that choice.

I had held Kisten’s hand and he had died happy, telling me that God had kept his soul for him. Stop it, Rachel, I thought miserably, wiping a tear away before it could brim as I recalled Kisten’s laughing smile. God! My emotions were all over the map. I had loved Kisten. I could love someone without fear. Felix was wrong.

Trent’s eyes were pinched, and he fidgeted. “Calibration curse?” he asked, desperate to get my mind on something else.

Smiling faintly, I reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “Ask me some other time,” I said, remembering the pain of the surface demon living its entire existence in the span of three heartbeats. I was starting to think that surface demons weren’t much more than ghosts, living, breathing ghosts who lusted after the living like the undead only without the shackles that a consciousness imparted. How could anything survive five thousand years without magic?

Clearly relieved, Trent scooted his chair closer to mine. “You think it’s the same one? Newt’s, I mean?”

Tired, I shook my head. “Newt’s had a sword. This one used a staff.” Felix used a staff, too. Maybe that was why the surface demon liked him. But the question remained, why had it done a one-eighty and turned into a groveling love puppy? “You know, it was almost as if the surface demon knew Felix already,” I said slowly. “And didn’t recognize him at first.”

I stopped, heart pounding as I looked up. It hadn’t been Felix in the ever-after in the beginning. It had been Nina. The surface demon hadn’t groveled in front of Nina, it had groveled in front of Felix. Like it knew him. Which would be really hard since the undead never go into the ever-after.

Lips parted, I stared at Trent, a new idea sifting down through my brain. “I think I know where vampire souls go when they die,” I whispered, seeing Trent’s face as white as mine felt.

“The ever-after,” we said in unison.

Chapter 5

I’m trying to help you,” I said, phone pressed to my ear as I sat in Trent’s car, parked across from the church. “But I need to get into my church, and I need you to take the hit off Ivy. I’ve found your souls, so back off!” Calm, composed, relaxed. The litany was no help. Coming home to find my church full of vampires was harassment, pure and simple. It had scared the crap out of me, too, but that had probably been Cormel’s intent.

“You’ve had over a year to work on this.” Cormel’s New York accent fell flat, when I usually found it charming. “You expect me to believe that today, only when I threaten you, that you have a viable plan. Just like that?”

Nervous, I picked at the window stripping until Trent made a pained sound. Beyond the tinted glass of his sports car, my church looked as if it had been hosting an all-night Brimstone party with toilet paper in the trees and what I hoped were just tomatoes smeared on the stained-glass windows. Bis was a lumpy shadow on a hard-to-reach eave, and I hoped he was okay.

“How often do the undead go into the ever-after?” I asked, and he rumbled a soft agreement. “Even I wouldn’t have figured out the connection between surface demons and vampires if you hadn’t chased me there with Ivy. Nina showing up with Felix in her unconscious was the trigger.”

Cormel was silent, probably unwilling to acknowledge why Felix had suddenly become raging and erratic—freaking out over having been tossed out on his ear by Nina—and with that doubt resonating in him, I put my last card on the table, shaking and glad we had thirty miles and probably two stories of dirt between us.

“Cormel,” I said softly. “I’m not making this up. Surface demons do not defend people, they tear them to shreds. That surface demon was Felix’s soul. It recognized Felix’s consciousness lurking in Nina. I can do this, I just need time.”

“Felix has not been dipping into Nina’s mind. He has promised me. He’s working again. A productive member of society.”

“Seriously?” Disgusted, I slumped to put my knees up against the dash, then took them down when Trent cleared his throat. “Look. I need time to prep the charms to capture it and then affix it to Felix. If it works, then we can all go back to normal. If it doesn’t, I’ll tweak it until it does, but I can’t do anything if I’m protecting Ivy. I’m doing what you want, but if you kill her, this all goes away.”

I glanced at Trent, drawn by his fingers slowly tapping in concern, not all of it for me and Ivy. It was his opinion that giving the undead a soul might not have the effect the vampires were looking for. Frankly, I didn’t care. I just wanted them to leave Ivy and me alone.

“Excuse me,” Cormel said. “I’ll be right with you.”

“Cormel?” I called, but he was gone. The line was still active, and I put my phone on speaker so we both could enjoy the happy, light sounds of dulcimers that Cormel had on his hold button. What a crock.

Peeved, I set the phone on the dash and unkinked my fingers. Someone was looking at me from the belfry and drew back when our eyes met. I was glad Nina and Ivy were still at Trent’s. Ivy had a hard enough time when a repairman came over. Seeing this invasion would jerk her instincts to the breaking point.

“Thank you for waiting with me,” I said to Trent as I pulled my shoulder bag onto my lap. It was dusty from the ever-after and smelly, and it didn’t have much in it anymore.

“I wasn’t about to drop you off and leave. I’m looking to chip some vampire fang before I go.” His smile became charming. “It’s much more satisfying than my political boardroom shuffle.”

“I’m hoping it doesn’t come down to that.” Worried, I rubbed the tension from my fingers. Sure, I could drive them away with a charm, but Jenks and Belle were in there.

The dulcimers cut off and I scrambled for the phone. “One hour,” Cormel said tightly.

“An hour!” I exclaimed, not bothering to take him off speaker. “Mr. Cormel, I have to wait until sunset before the surface demons even come out! I cannot, nor will I, go any further with this if I have to guard Ivy against your assassins.”

My heart pounded, and Trent and I waited, breath held.

“Ivy is safe until sunrise,” Cormel said. “I’m leaving a chaperone.”

“No chaperone,” I countered. Maybe that was asking a lot, but the last thing I wanted was an amorous vampire lurking in the corner, filling the air with sexy pheromones and innuendo.

“Then you have until midnight.” Cormel waited as I silently protested, but when I kept my mouth shut, he ended the conversation by hanging up. Midnight. I had until midnight to show real progress, or it would all start up again.

Exhaling, I ended the call. Trent took the keys out of the ignition; we could walk from here. “You think I should have gone with the chaperone and the extra time?”

“No.”

“Me either. Good thing I work well under a deadline.” Feeling sour, I reached for the door. Getting them to leave was going to be a treat, but with Cormel’s word, I had the clout.

“That was fast,” Trent said, and my head snapped up.

Surprised, I got out as the church’s double door banged open and a steady stream of thin bodies staggered to their cars and vans. There were a lot, and I hoped Jenks was okay. Our phone conversation this morning hadn’t instilled much confidence.

Motions graceful with a slow deliberation, Trent got out, his book on how to put souls in baby bottles tucked under an arm. It was an elven charm, so in theory I shouldn’t have much trouble with it.

A flash of guilt took me, and I looked back at the church—anywhere but at that book.

Doors thumped and engines raced. My neighbors watched behind twitching curtains. It was obvious by their unkempt state and untied shoes that my visitors weren’t assassins per se, but they could still kill someone—and with Cormel running the city, there’d be no inquiry, no notice. Ivy would be a warning, or worse.

“Hey!” I shouted as a woman with a bad case of bed hair shuffled to the last car. “That’s my coat!”

Head hanging, the woman stopped right in the middle of the street, took off my red jacket, and dropped it with a tired indifference. The rest of them were complaining and wanting her to hurry up, and not bothering to open the door to the car, she dove in headfirst through a back window. The car accelerated in a noisy squeal of tires.

I slammed Trent’s door, stalking to my jacket. It reeked of vampire, even worse of her perfume scented heavily with pine. I’d have to air it out for weeks, maybe send it to the cleaners. Vampire incense stuck to leather worse than burnt amber in my hair.

Trent scuffed to a halt beside me, one hand in a pocket, the other holding that book. “I think I just turned a profit on this one party alone,” he said, squinting up at the steeple, and I gave him a dry look. But my mood improved dramatically when a familiar glint of pixy dust arrowed out from the fireplace’s flue.

“Rache!” Jenks shouted as he came to a dust-laden halt before us, his sparkles continuing forward on momentum, making me sneeze. “Tink loves a duck, how did you get them to leave?”

I held my jacket like a dead rat. “Cormel gave us until midnight.”

Jenks flew backward as Trent and I started for the open front door. “And then what?”

My steps slowed. “He gets serious about killing Ivy.”

“Yesterday wasn’t serious?” Jenks said as he alighted on Trent’s shoulder, but it was obvious we were on borrowed time. My stomach clenched as Trent and I took the shallow steps, and I blanched at the smell wafting out the door.

“Nice.” Holding my breath, I went in. “What did they do? Have an orgy?”

The whine of Jenks’s wings increased as I propped the door open. “Uh, something like that. But no one died. Hey, I tried to keep them out of your stuff. I’m sorry. It was just Belle and me after the sun came up and we had to pick our battles.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not your . . . fault . . .” I stopped just inside the sanctuary, lips parting as I took in the empty bowls, smeared glasses, crushed beer cans, and chips bags. The furniture had been rearranged, and someone had drawn a mustache and beard on the TV, presumably on someone’s face at the time. Kisten’s pool table had a cooler on it, and a dark stain spread under it as water dripped from the long crack running the width of the plastic. It was worse than the time my high school boyfriend had volunteered my house for the homecoming party because he knew my mom was working.

“Is Belle okay?” I said as Trent made a sorrowful noise. “Jumoke and Izzy?”

I could re-felt the table, but I knew I never would. I’d have to look at that stain on Kisten’s memory for the rest of my life.

“They’re okay.” Jenks hovered by my ear, a depressed bluish-orange dust slipping from him. “Jumoke and Izzyanna kept to the garden, but Belle was with me. I couldn’t have saved the kitchen without her. That fairy is something else.”

A faint smile found me, and I started to think again. It was a God-awful mess, but I almost didn’t care if it meant Jenks and Belle had attained a deeper level of respect. “Ah, sorry about your room,” Jenks said as I ran a hand down the smooth finish of the pool table’s bumper. “I figured you’d rather I save your kitchen, and ah, they really wanted the bed.”