For A Few Demons More. Kim Harrison

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СКАЧАТЬ she said, setting the bottle down beside the bucket. “It will get rid of the—” Her words stopped. “Just wipe the floor with it,” she added, and my eyebrows rose.

      “Oka-a-ay.” I bent back over the floor, hesitating at the circle Ceri had scribed to call Minias, then smeared it to nothing. Ceri could help me make a new one, and I wasn’t going to have demonic blood circles on the floor of my church.

      “Hey, Ivy,” Jenks called. “You want to keep this?”

      She rocked into motion, and I shifted to keep her in my view. Jenks had a coupon for pizza, and I smirked. Right. Like she would even consider ordering anything but Piscary’s Pizza.

      “What else does she have in here?” Ivy said, throwing it away. I turned my back on them, knowing that the clutter I kept my desk in drove Ivy insane. She’d probably take the opportunity to tidy it. God, I’d never be able to find a thing.

      “Spell-of-the-Month Club … toss,” Jenks said, and I heard it thunk into the trash can. “Free issue of Witch Weekly … toss. Credit check … toss. Crap, Rachel. Don’t you throw anything away?”

      I ignored him, having only a small arc to finish. Wax on, wax off. My arm was hurting.

      “The zoo wants to know if you want to renew your off-hours runner’s pass.”

      “Save that!” I said.

      Jenks whistled long and low, and I wondered what they had found now.

      “An invitation to Ellasbeth Withon’s wedding?” Ivy drawled in question.

      Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.

      “Tink knocks your kickers,” Jenks exclaimed, and I sat back on my heels. “Rachel!” he called, hovering over the invitation that had probably cost more than my last dinner out. “When did you get an invitation from Trent? For his wedding?”

      “I don’t remember.” I dunked the brush and started in again, but the hush of linen against paper brought me upright. “Hey!” I protested, wiping my hands dry on my robe to make the tie come undone. “You can’t do that. It’s illegal to open mail not addressed to you.”

      Jenks had landed on Ivy’s shoulder, and they each gave me a long look over the invitation in her grip. “The seal was broken,” Ivy said, shaking to the floor the stupid little white tissue paper I had carefully replaced.

      Trent Kalamack was the bane of my existence, one of Cincinnati’s most beloved councilmen, and the Northern Hemisphere’s most eligible bachelor. No one seemed to care he ran half of the city’s underworld and worked a good slice of the world’s illegal Brimstone trade. That wasn’t even considering his punishable-by-death dealings in genetic manipulation and outlawed medicines. My being alive because of them was a big part of my keeping quiet about it. I didn’t like the Antarctic any more than the next person, and that’s where I’d end up if it got out. That is, if they didn’t just kill me, burn me, and send my ashes to the sun.

      Suddenly having a demon trash my living room didn’t seem so bad.

      “Holy crap!” Jenks swore again. “Ellasbeth wants you to be a bridesmaid?”

      Jerking my robe closed, I stalked across the sanctuary and snatched the invitation out of Ivy’s hand. “It’s not an invitation, it’s a badly worded request for me to work security. The woman hates me. Look, she didn’t even sign it. I bet she doesn’t even know it exists.”

      I waved it in the air and shoved it into a drawer, slamming it shut. Trent’s fiancée was a bitch in all ways but the literal. Thin, elegant, rich, and bitingly polite. We had gotten along really well the night we had breakfast together, just her, me, and Trent caught between us. Course, part of that might have been from my letting her believe that Trent and I had been childhood sweethearts. But she was the one who decided I was a courtesan. Stupid Yellow Pages ad.

      Ivy’s expression was wary. She knew better than to push me when it came to Trent, but Jenks wouldn’t let it go. “Yeah, but think of it, Rache. It’s going to be a hell of a party. The best of Cincinnati is going to be there. You never know who will show up.”

      I lifted a plant and ran my hand under it—my version of dusting. “People who want to kill Trent,” I said lightly. “I like excitement, but I’m not insane.”

      Ivy moved my bucket and mop to a dry part of the floor and sprayed a heavy layer of that unlabeled bottle. “You going to do it?” she asked, as if I hadn’t already said no.

      “No.”

      In one motion I swept all the papers off the desktop and into the uppermost drawer. Jenks landed on the clean surface, his wings stilling as he leaned against the pencil cup and crossed his ankles and arms to look surprisingly alluring for a four-inch-tall man. “Why not?” he accused. “You think he’s going to stiff you?”

      Again, I added in my thoughts. “Because I already saved his freaking elf ass once,” I said. “You do it once, it’s a mistake. You do it twice and it’s not a mistake anymore.”

      Mop and bucket in hand, Ivy walked out, snickering.

      “It’s RSVP by tomorrow,” Jenks needled. “Rehearsal is Friday. You’re invited.”

      “I know that.” It was my birthday, too, and I wasn’t going to spend it with Trent. Ticked, I headed into the kitchen after Ivy.

      Flying backward, Jenks got in my face and preceded me down the hallway, slices of sunlight coming in from the living room. “I’ve got two reasons you should do it,” he said. “One, it will piss Ellasbeth off, and two, you could charge him enough to afford to resancitify the church.”

      My steps slowed, and I tried to keep the ugly look off my face. That was unfair. By the sink, Ivy frowned, clearly thinking the same. “Jenks …”

      “I’m just saying—”

      “She’s not working for Kalamack,” Ivy threatened, and this time he shut his mouth.

      I stood in the kitchen, not knowing why I was here. “I gotta shower,” I said.

      “Go,” Ivy said, meticulously—and needlessly—washing the bucket with soapy water before putting it away. “I’ll wait up for the man coming over with an estimate.”

      I didn’t like that. She’d probably fudge on the quote, knowing that her pockets were deeper than mine. She had told me she was nearly broke, but nearly broke for the last living member of the Tamwood vampires was not my broke, rather more of a down-to-six-figures-in-her-bank-account broke. If she wanted something, she got it. But I was too tired to fight her.

      “I owe you,” I said as I grabbed the cooled tea Ceri had made for me and shuffled out.

      “God, Jenks,” Ivy was saying as I avoided my room with my scattered clothes and just headed for my bathroom. “The last thing she needs is to be working for Kalamack.”

      “I just thought—” the pixy said.

      “No, you didn’t think,” Ivy accused. “Trent isn’t some pantywaist rich pushover, СКАЧАТЬ