Itook a deep breath, pulling the garden-damp air deep into me and feeling as if the golden haze of afternoon pooled inside me, all yellow and swirly. There was a hint of chill in the air this early in the spring, and the tang of Jenks's stump, still burning, reminded me of fall. It might burn for months, the roots smoldering underground as it slowly erased Jenks's heartache. Even so, it felt good to be home and in the garden.

There was only the faint hissing of cars to remind me that I was in the suburbs of Cincinnati; all else was quiet. Jenks's family was in mourning, and the garden seemed empty. In my hand was a handful of hickory twigs, still green and sporting new leaves. I'd used the last of the bark scrapings this morning making up a new batch of pain amulets. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to need for tonight's escapade, but pain amulets were a good bet. Especially if I didn't have a splat gun - thanks to Pierce.

Motions slow and provocative, I went up the worn back-porch steps, daring the coven to take a potshot at me, but it was probable that Vivian was at the coven, relating how I'd given Brooke to a demon. They had to have heard about the fairies by now, too. Ceri had taken the survivors with her when she'd left in the same cab I'd pulled up in this morning with Nick. All but one fairy, apparently, which I had yet to see and Jenks didn't know about.

My hand on the screen door, I looked over my shoulder at the garden, remembering how dangerous it had been when I was four inches tall. Fairies and pixies were the Arnolds of the Inderland world as far as I was concerned. Suddenly uneasy, I looked to the invisible ley line, feeling like someone was watching. My eyes rose to see Bis sleeping on the steeple. Creeped out, I darted inside as if the monster under the bed had taken up residence under my porch.

The screen door smacked behind me, making me jump, and I kicked my running sneakers off, leaving chunks of dirt that Ivy would eventually yell at me about. I shut the main door by leaning back against the thick wood, and my gaze fell on the tiny arrows still in Ivy's couch. Had it been only yesterday?

Ivy and Nick's soft bickering in the kitchen was soothing. They'd been at it since downloading and printing out the blueprints of Trent's outbuildings from the city's public files. Ivy insisted that she'd gone through a secure server and that the download would be undetected, but I was sure we were on someone's list now.

Twigs in hand, I went into the kitchen, my peace growing as I found them reasonably calm at Ivy's big table, construction blueprints between them. Nick and Ivy had been modifying them, changing what was on file at the city to match what had actually happened at the construction site. The taped-together pages covered the table, and most of Ivy's stuff had been stacked on the floor to make more room.

Only Pierce looked up as I entered, standing at the fridge with a glass and playing with the water dispenser. At the table, the argument over some small placement of a camera continued. Ivy was edging into a vampy state, her eyes dark and motions quick, but she wasn't sultry, which was her big tell for losing it. Her black mood wasn't bothering Nick, and he was strenuously arguing a point, erasing her marks and penciling in his own. The white flash of her new cast had been covered with a black stretchy fabric that might have been a sock with the toe cut off. I had no doubts that being in a cast wasn't going to slow her down at all.

Standing on the paper, Jenks watched. I was surprised he was here, but the garden was probably too painful. His classic Peter Pan pose had slumped into a depressed hunch with his arms over his middle, and his wings were against his back. Jax, back again and sitting on Nick's shoulder, didn't look much better.

Jenks looked up when I dropped my twigs on the center counter, a flash of guilt crossing him in that he hadn't gotten them for me. I smiled, and a black dust sifted down. Reaching for the last dirty spell pot, I dunked it in the warm sudsy water.

"What about the security at that level?" Ivy said, tapping the paper. "You know they have more than cameras down there. Spell detectors, too."

"Tink's titties, Ivy," Jenks complained, his wings perking up. "That's what I'm for! Uh, we're for," he amended, looking at his son when Jax scraped his wings.

"The pixies have this," Nick said dryly as he tossed his pencil down and leaned back, scowling. "You've really got a problem with trust, vampire."

Ivy's eyes narrowed, and my neck tingled. "I trust the pixies. You, I don't."

I gave the spell pot a quick rinse in my saltwater vat, then ran it under the cold tap. The copper needed a good polishing, but not today. Pierce silently took it from me before I could set it to dry, yanking the dish towel from the rack and making good with it. I gave him a quick smile. He'd been a big help today, and I'd gained a deeper respect for his skills. It was a lot like when I worked with Al, but Pierce wasn't as quick to play teacher - which I appreciated.

Behind me on the center counter were three disguise potions. Okay, they were curses, but the twisting of them had been exactly like a standard disguise potion, except instead of ingredient X to give Y result, I had used a focusing object from the person I wanted to look like. For any other witch, the result would be a potion that would do nothing, but if I tapped a line and said the magic word, my blood - my demon-enzyme blood - would make it work.

By all appearances, Ivy, Jenks, and Nick had forgotten we had to get out again, too, so while they fussed and fumed about how to get in, I'd made up the curses to escape under fire. Soon as we were discovered - and we would be discovered - the codes to the locked doors would change, so I picked three people who wouldn't need any freaking codes. Even with Ivy planning this, something would go wrong. As Al always said, the demon s in the details.

The first potion in the tiny vial had been sensitized from a page of one of my newer ley-line textbooks, written by Dr. Anders. The second had a chunk of Ceri's smashed teacup, and the third, a strand of hair from the Pandora charm that Trent sent me. The rope had been made from his horse's tail, and it was probably the best focusing object of the lot. Getting Ivy to take hers wasn't going to be fun.

That there were only three curses hadn't escaped Pierce's notice. He wasn't coming. We had too many people running this job to begin with, and someone needed to stay home and watch Jenks's kids. And he was a babysitter.

Pierce hung the dry spell pot up over the center counter, and Ivy stood, a hint of sexual dominance in her as she went to the fridge. "Trent's compound isn't one of your pantywaist museums," she said as she yanked open the door. "You've never been in there. He has redundant systems on his redundant systems. Quen's been studying pixies for at least six months. He's got something for them by now."

I crouched at the center counter to put my books away, not feeling at all guilty that most of them were demon texts. Quen probably had something for doppelganger charms now, too, since I'd shown him my skill last Halloween, but what was on the counter now weren't charms, but curses. Na-na. Na-na. Na-a-a-a-a, na.

Nick cleared his throat, and I could almost feel the tension spike, but it was Jenks who took offense. "You telling me I can't do this?" he said with a shadow of expected indignation.

Orange juice in hand, Ivy softened as she nudged the fridge shut. "No. I'm saying I want a plan for when it goes wrong. This is Trent. I know you're good." She looked at Jax and exhaled softly. "But you don't get second chances with Kalamack." Leaning back against the counter, she drank right from the container, her cast making it awkward. "Right, Rachel?"

I stood from putting my spell books away, not happy about the reminder of my stint as a mink in Trent's office. I shrugged, and Nick said, "Just because your plans are inherently flawed doesn't mean mine won't work."

"Flawed?" Ivy's fingers tightened until I thought the container would cave.

"Guys!" I said, setting three caps by the open vials. Demon magic. I was going to pay for this in spades, but if I was going to use black magic to save my friends, then I was going to use it to save my own ass. "Can we find a plan you both like? It's almost dark."

Nick made an innocent face, then focused on the blueprints. Pierce was a shadow, silently putting things away exactly where they were supposed to go. It was eerie, and I didn't know if it was because he'd been in the church for over a year before gaining a body, or if he was a quick study from having watched me get everything out. I appreciated the help, though.

Ankles crossed, Ivy kept her distance, allowing herself the space she needed to calm down. "I want a second plan if something goes wrong," she said softly. "Rachel can't use offensive magic or she'll end up in worse trouble than she is now. I don't even like the target. A painting? Sounds to me like you're funding your own retirement island - Nick."

Nick flipped through the blueprints, shifting only the corners. "If I take something from Trent's cache, it won't be a cheap, poorly done canvas," he muttered.

"Then why are we stealing it?" Jenks flew up when Nick flipped to the page he wanted.

Ivy was silent, and Nick stuck a pencil between his teeth. "Ask Rachel," he said. "She wanted something embarrassing but not priceless. That's exactly what it is." The pencil came out, and he looked at me, turning slightly in his chair. "It was painted in the fifteenth century by a nobody, and Ivy, before you go off on a nut, the reason we're targeting it is because the subject looks like Trent but is actually a savage prince in the mountains of Carpathia."

Jenks landed on my shoulder as I put my new pain amulets away. His wings were a depressed blue, cold when they brushed me. "If it were me, I'd burn it," he said.

"I think he's proud of it," Nick said. "Lets him think he comes from evil kings." Looking up, he shook his head as if I was making a mistake. "Rachel, he's just going to put you in jail - if you're lucky. Prison does not equal safety from the coven or him."

Dont I know it. Confident, I shut the cupboard door with a thump. "Trent won't press charges. It's a game, Nick. Like for fun? We've been stealing things from each other and giving them back since before you hot-wired your first car." Oh God, what if I was wrong?

Jenks's wings hummed to life, sending the scent of burning leaves over me. "Like when he took your ring and mailed it back! I still don't know how he did that."

"Or me stealing his hoof pick," I said, feeling a flash of guilt quickly followed by a surge of anxiety. "It's the same thing, and as long as I give it back... " He wouldn't press charges, but it would get his attention, and that's what I wanted.

Ivy poured the last of the juice into a glass and rinsed out the container. "All this aside, I've never heard of it," she muttered suspiciously.

"It's been in his basement." Nick turned back to the blueprints. "Passed down."

Pierce and I exchanged knowing looks. But you ve heard of it? I questioned silently. "Sounds like you've had your eye on it for a while," I said, brushing the used bits of herbs off the counter and into my hand.

Nick gave me a familiar smile that used only half his face. "I have. It's worth a fortune."

Glass in hand, Ivy was the picture of tense belligerence. "You just said it was worthless."

"It is worthless, but public image is worth a lot more than money to Trent," Nick said.

Pierce leaned forward, breathing into my ear, "I don't set much store by his story."

I stifled a shiver at his breath on my skin and Jenks's warning wing draft on my other side. Unfortunately I agreed with him, and after muttering to Jenks that I had this, I turned to dampen a washcloth. My back to Nick, I asked, "So... if it's been in Trent's basement for generations, how did you find out about it?"

Nick was silent. I turned, jaw tightening as he looked at me innocently. Far too innocently. His eyes dropped, and my pulse quickened as Jenks pointedly cleared his throat. "It's amazing what you hear when you ask the right questions," Nick finally muttered, rattling the papers. "Will you get out from behind me, Ivy? You're giving me the creeps."

My expression wry, I exchanged a look with Ivy as I ran the cloth over the center counter. Moving slowly, she shifted to stand in front of him, setting her glass down right on the sum he was figuring in the margin. "If you even think about crossing us... ," she threatened, and Jax spilled a frightened green dust.

Using two fingers and a thumb, Nick moved her glass, letting it drop the last quarter-inch, hitting with a thunk that almost spilled it. "You can have the painting," he said, tossing his hair from his eyes as he looked up. "That's not what I'm after."

Pulse fast, I stood with the center counter between us, the damp cloth in my hand. "What are you after?" I asked, and Jenks hummed his wings in agreement.

Nick's eyes were placidly blue as he looked at me. "A clean slate."

Pierce grimaced, but I only laughed as Jenks darted from my shoulder, his dust shifting to silver. "Dream on, rat boy," he barked. "You think we've been eating fairy farts for breakfast?"

Ivy sat before her computer. She was scowling, making me feel even more uneasy. Shaking the towel over the sink, I draped it over the spigot and turned. I knew Nick. Pierce might believe Nick was doing this to get back in my good graces, but once we were in Trent's compound, Nick was going to add a little to his own personal agenda and steal something that was going to move this stunt from teenage double-dog dare you to grand larceny. I knew it. Jenks knew it. Ivy knew it. And if we knew it, we could plan accordingly. Stupid ass of an ex-boyfriend.

I had to get Trent and the coven together and threaten them both with going public with their dirty laundry unless they backed off. Trent wouldn't agree to a meeting unless I had a door prize, one sensational enough to get his attention, and innocent enough that he wouldn't try to kill me.

"I can get you your canvas," Nick said, his voice even. "All you have to do is get me into the main compound. The rest is easy."

That's all, eh? I found a finger stick in the silverware drawer and broke the safety seal with a sharp snap, slamming the drawer shut. "I can get you in," I said, poking my finger and massaging blood to the tip to invoke the demon doppelganger curses. "I have. I can do it again."

Nick sighed. "I'm not talking sneaking into the public areas with a landscaping truck. I'm talking high-tech security in the basement labs."

Ivy snorted, and I made a moot face at him. "I'm not playing tiddledy-winks in the ever-after, Nick. I can get us in." And out.

"It's getting out that I'm worried about," Pierce muttered.

I shrugged, counting three red drops as they plunked into the first vial. Like a wash, the scent of burnt amber oozed over the top. Crap! I thought, capping the vial before anyone other than Pierce noticed. Ivy would freak. But at least I knew I'd done it right.

"When have I ever not gotten out?" I said, perhaps a little too pride-fully. Sure, I always got out, and it cost me every single time.

Nick wouldn't look up from his blueprints. "There's a first time for everything."

"You got that right," Jenks said, his hum by my ear prompting me to move my hair out of his way. "I never thought I'd see your ass in our kitchen again. Least not outside ajar."

I couldn't help my smile as he landed, smelling of green things. "You doing okay?" I asked when Ivy went to argue with Nick about how fast a pixy had to fly to evade detection.

"I'm fine," he said, the draft he was making dying. "My stomach hurts, is all."

His stomach hurt. God, his wife wasn't gone even a day, and he was trying to work, trying to escape the pain in the garden, maybe. My heart seemed to darken as I quickly finished invoking the other two potions, capping them and setting them aside. It didn't seem right to be doing this when Matalina's ashes weren't even cold yet, but Jenks seemed eager for anything to distract himself. I wouldn't be doing this at all except that Trent was going to announce his candidacy for mayor tomorrow at Fountain Square. It was the perfect opportunity to return what we stole amid a media circus.

Jenks was frowning at the three vials, his gaze going to Ivy and Pierce as if wondering which one of them was going to be left behind.

"I don't like this," Jenks said softly from my shoulder as I fanned the faint burnt amber smell away. "Nick isn't getting anything out of this. Not even notoriety."

"I don't trust him either," I said, loud enough so everyone could hear. "That's why Ivy is going with us. She's going to babysit him."

Ivy smiled, tipping her glass in salute, but Nick sputtered. Pierce's expression became dark, a protest forming. Nick, though, was faster.

"Ivy is not coming," he said hotly. "It will increase the risk of getting caught by eighty percent."

Ivy bristled. "I won't be the one to get us caught, you infected blood clot."

"You're not going into the belly of Kalamack's fortress without me," Pierce said. "His father was a traitorous, untrustworthy worm and Trent is the same."

"She's coming," I said to Nick. "Make it work, genius." And then to Pierce, "Tell me something I don't know. You're just worried Al is going to be pissed, and Al is pissed at you already. You're staying. You reach too fast for the black magic, and though that has saved both Ivy and me, using it now will land me in an Inderland jail, or worse, in the ever-after."

"I opine I know how to keep my magic to myself!" Pierce said indignantly.

Striding across the kitchen, I put myself right in his face, making Jenks dart away when I put my hands on my hips and leaned in. "No," I said firmly. "I've put up with you for three days. Watched you for three very long days!" I said, then dropped my voice again. "You have saved my life. You have saved Ivy's. I owe you everything. But you keep overreactingl Tell me I'm wrong, Pierce, that you like using black magic? Tell me that."

"I do not overreact," he said, suddenly unsure.

"You do," I insisted, "you overreacted when you broke the church window, and you overreacted when you almost fried Lee in the university's philosophy building. But the reason you're not coming is because you have bad ideas, Pierce, and you act too fast on them."

Ivy was wide eyed, and even Nick had sat back, pencil almost falling out of his mouth.

"Do tell." Pierce's lips were tight, and his brow was furrowed.

"You said to keep quiet to Al about Alcatraz, but the coven wanting my ovaries had a lot to do with convincing him to give me my name back. You nearly dragged me onto that bus that Vivian crashed into a bridge. And what's with shooting at Al with my gun with my charms in the hopper? What if you had killed him? Who do you think the demons would blame for the death of one of their own? You, the familiar? Or me, the one whose gun was smoking? Now I'm down a splat gun until I can find someone who doesn't know I'm shunned and will sell me a new one! I can't trust you in a pinch, and because of that, you're watching Jenks's kids. Got it?"

"I can fix the window and I'll get you a new gun," he said, and I made my hands into fists, frustrated. He'd saved my life and I owed him, but half my problems this week were because of him.

"The gun isn't the problem," I said. "You keep telling me what to do. You don't ask. You don't suggest. You tell. And I don't like it. I have people to help me who I trust won't overreact and make things so out of control that it takes black magic to fix. You aren't coming."

I was out of breath, and I stopped, waiting for his reaction. By the frown on his face, it wasn't going to be nice. "You don't want me to help," he said, voice tight.

"No," I said, then added more gently, "Not today."

Pierce clenched his jaw, and without another word, he turned and strode from the kitchen. Jenks's eyes were wide, and I exhaled when I heard the back door slam. Shaking inside, I turned to Nick. "Did you have something to say about Ivy coming?"

Nick glanced at Ivy, his eyes dropping to her cast, then rising to me. "No, but her being there is going to increase the time to cross the main floor by at least three seconds. I don't know if the camera sweep can handle that. If you get caught, it's not my fault."

Jenks darted up, then down. "I'll worry about the cameras, rat boy. You worry about not tripping over your big fat wizard feet."

I took a deep breath to get rid of the adrenaline. Telling Pierce off had been something I'd been wanting to do all day, and now that it was done, I felt guilty. Glad I'd done it, regardless, I followed Jenks to the table to study the papers. I couldn't make heads or tails out of what they had scribbled. "Why can't we go downstairs from a low-security office, work through the underbelly in the lab where security will be light, then come up on the other side?" I asked, then tucked my hair behind my ear when it fell forward.

Both Ivy and Nick looked at me like I'd just said we should take a train to the moon. "You mean, like in the air ducts?" Nick finally offered.

"Yes," I said, wondering why Jax was smirking. "We can all go mink or something."

Ivy looked at Nick, and I swear... I saw them bond. "No," Nick said, white faced.

"I'm not going to turn into a rodent," Ivy said, her voice low and throaty.

"A mink is not a rodent," I snapped. "God! Everyone but Trent knows that."

Taking the pencil from behind her ear, Ivy circled a camera and drew a cone around its scanned area. "I'm not turning into anything," she said, glancing at the potions on the counter.

This might make our getaway more complicated. "You're afraid!" I accused, putting a hand on my hip. "Both of you. I know how to do this! I'm not going to leave you that way! You just have to think the word to break the curse."

Nick cleared his throat, and I got more ticked yet. It would be so easy if they weren't afraid. Maybe I should just do this by myself, just Jenks and me.

Ivy looked up, her gaze distant. "There's a delivery truck at the door," she said, and the doorbell rang. "If you don't hurry, they'll take it back to the depot."

Unfortunately she was right, and I spun away, almost running in my sock feet down the hall, shouting that I was coming. They wouldn't leave packages since I'd been shunned.

Behind me, I could hear Jenks saying, "Tink's panties, Ivy. She's right. If you got small, it would be a snap. You're both chicken shit. Rachel doesn't mind. She looks good small."

"I'm not going to turn into anything," Ivy growled, followed shortly by Nick's fervent agreement.

I ran through the church as the hefty revving of a diesel truck shook the windows - apart from the one Pierce broke that was covered with plywood. Flinging the door open, I shouted and waved, snatching up my lethal amulet from my bag by the door as I ran down the steps in my sock feet. Looking almost disappointed, the guy in brown got out, coming to meet me with a package.

"Thank you," I said as he handed it to me, and I half expected him to ask for some ID. He was a witch. I could tell from his disdainful look. My amulet was a healthy green, and snatching the small package from him, I turned and went back into my church. What did I care what some guy in brown shorts thought? Even if he wore the uniform very well. Damn, where did they go to hire these guys? The gym?

The church felt empty when I came back in, absent of pixies after the long winter. Feet silent, I padded to my abandoned desk, turning at the last moment to sit in one of the leather chairs around the coffee table. The return address was from a shipping place downtown, and tearing open the gummy label, I shook the hard plastic of my phone out onto the table.

"Oh," I said, drawing my hand back as it spun and settled. Eyebrows raised, I cautiously looked inside the package for a note, not finding one. The coven had returned my phone? I eyed my lethal-spell amulet again, still not wanting to touch it. Hell, I'd seen Vivian almost kill Ivy with two white charms. I wasn't about to take anything at face value.

"Hey! The coven sent me my phone!" I shouted, waiting for someone to come look. But no one did. "Jenks!" I shouted, scowling, and the hum of pixy wings sounded loud over Nick's argument from the kitchen.

"What?" the pixy complained. "We re kind of in the middle of something."

I looked up at him, hovering five feet above the floor, his hands on his hips and spilling a lavender dust. "The coven sent my phone back to me. Is it bugged?"

He flew a sweeping arc over it and back to his original position. "Yeah. Can I get it later? They've almost agreed on something."

My mouth opened to protest, but he was already gone, yelling at Nick to shut the hell up and that Ivy was right before he even reached the kitchen.

Slumping into the soft leather, I got brave and thumbed the phone open. It was on and charged... and I had a message.

Curious, I hit the button and listened to the prerecorded preamble. But when a high-pitched, familiar voice came through the earpiece, I sat up, heart pounding. Vivian.

"Rachel Morgan," Vivian said formally, and I pressed the phone to my ear to catch every nuance. "As of last night, and the... incident at Love-land Castle, we are reassessing the threat you represent. I told them that Brooke was trying to circumvent coven mandates and had summoned a demon after you warned her not to, and that you tried to stop him from taking her, but they think I'm lying."

Her last words sounded accusing, and I sat on the edge of the couch. "We know you used a curse to kill the fairy clan. I'll be honest with you. A reassessment is not necessarily a good thing, but you'll be given a chance to come in peacefully before we take action again. If you force this from a quiet acquisition to a public one, we'll bring your family into it."

Son of a bitch. I stiffened as I thought of my mother in Portland.

"I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she said, "except maybe to thank you for trying. With Brooke, I mean. I may be a lot of things, but a liar isn't among them, and I wanted you to know that I'm not behind that accusation. Brooke did it to herself."

The message clicked off, and I scrambled to save it, exhaling when I hit the right button. Snapping the phone closed, I slumped back to stare at the empty rafters with not a speck of dust or cobweb on them. Frustrated, I tossed the phone to the table for Jenks to debug later. I'm glad she believed me, but what good was it going to do?

Sighing, I levered myself up and headed back to the kitchen to finish up the plans. I wasn't keen on testing Trent's security, but I didn't have much of a choice. I had to get my shunning removed. To do that, I had to survive the coven. They weren't going to back down unless I got Trent to vouch for me without signing that lame-ass paper of his. Which meant blackmail at the worst, and uneasy truce at the best. I was hoping for the truce, but after that Pandora charm had gone deadly, I didn't have a problem with the blackmail.

Getting into Trent's fortress was going to be the easy part. Getting out would be the kicker. But having Ivy and Jenks with me would make this as easy as falling off a log.

Right into the pit of snakes.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***