Dead Witch Walking

“How much is this going to cost?” I asked, remembering I was supposed to be angry.

“Seven hundred a month, utilities—ah—included,” Ivy said quietly.

“Seven hundred?” I hesitated, surprised. That would be three fifty for my share. I was paying four fifty uptown for my one-room castle. That wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. Especially if it had a yard. No, I thought, my bad mood returning. It was a graveyard.

“Where are you going?” I said as Ivy walked away. “I’m talking to you.”

“To get a cup of coffee. You want one?” She disappeared through the door at the back of the raised stage.

“Okay, so the rent is cheap,” I said. “That’s what I said I wanted, but it’s a church! You can’t run a business from a church!” Fuming, I followed her past the opposing his-and-her bathrooms. Farther down was a door on the right. I peeked past it to find a nice-sized empty room, the floor and smooth walls giving back an echo of my breathing. A stained-glass window of saints was propped open with a stick to air the place out, and I could hear the sparrows arguing outside. The room looked as if it had once been an office, having since been modified for toddlers’ nap cots. The floor was dusty, but the wood was sound under the light scratches.

Satisfied, I peeked around the door across the hall. There was a made-up bed and open boxes. Before I could see more, Ivy reached in front of me and pulled the door shut.

“That’s your stuff,” I said, staring at her.

Ivy’s face was empty, chilling me more than if she had been pulling an aura. “I’m going to have to stay here until I can rent a room somewhere.” She hesitated, tucking her black hair behind an ear. “Got a problem with that?”

“No,” I said softly, closing my eyes in a long blink. For the love of St. Philomena. I was going to have to live at the office until I got myself set. My eyes opened, and I was startled by the odd look Ivy had, a mix of fear and—anticipation?

“I’m going to have to crash here, too,” I said, not liking this at all but seeing no other option. “My landlady evicted me. The box by the front door is all I’ve got until I can get my stuff despelled. The I.S. black-charmed everything in my apartment, almost nailed me on the bus. And thanks to my landlady, no one within the city limits will rent to me. Denon put a contract out on me, just like you said.” I tried to keep the whine out of my voice, but it was there.

That odd light was still in Ivy’s eyes, and I wondered if she had told me the truth about being a nonpracticing vamp. “You can have the empty room,” she said, her voice carefully flat.

I gave her a terse nod. Okay, I thought, taking a deep breath. I was living in a church—with bodies in the backyard—an I.S. death threat on me—and a vamp across the hall. I wondered if she would notice if I put a lock on the inside of my door. I wondered if it would matter.

“The kitchen’s back here,” she said, and I followed her and the smell of coffee. My mouth fell open as I rounded the open archway, and I forgot to be angry again.

The kitchen was half the size of the sanctuary, as fully equipped and modern as the sanctuary was barren and medieval. There was gleaming metal, shiny chrome, and bright, fluorescent lights. The refrigerator was enormous. A gas stove and oven sat at one end of the room; an electric range and stovetop took up the other. Centered in the middle of it all was a stainless steel island with empty shelves beneath. The rack above it was festooned with metal utensils, pans, and bowls. It was a witch’s dream kitchen; I wouldn’t have to stir my spells and dinner on the same stove.

Apart from the beat-up wooden table and chairs in the corner, the kitchen looked like one you might see on a cooking show. One end of the table was set up like a computer desk, the wide-screen monitor blinking furiously to itself as it cycled through the open lines to find and claim the best continuous link to the net. It was an expensive program, and my eyebrows rose.

Ivy cleared her throat as she opened a cupboard beside the sink. There were three mismatched mugs on the bottom shelf; other than that, it was empty. “They put in the new kitchen five years ago for the health department,” she said, jerking my attention back to her. “The congregation wasn’t very big, so when all was said and done, they couldn’t afford it. That’s why they’re renting it out. To try and pay off the bank.”

The sound of coffee being poured filled the room as I ran my finger over the unblemished metal on the island counter. It had never seen a single apple pie or Sunday school cookie.

“They want their church back,” Ivy said, looking thin as she leaned against the counter with her mug cradled in her pale hands. “But they’re dying. The church, I mean,” she added as I met her eyes. “No new members. It’s sad, really. The living room is back here.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut and followed her into the hallway and through a narrow doorway at the end of the hall. The living room was cozy, and furnished so tastefully that I had no doubt these were all Ivy’s things. It was the first softness and warmth I had seen in the entire place—even if everything was in shades of gray—and the windows were just plain glass. Heavenly. I felt my tension loosen. Ivy snatched up a remote, and midnight jazz drifted into existence. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

“You almost got tagged?” Ivy tossed the remote onto the coffee table and settled herself in one of the voluptuous gray suede chairs beside the empty fireplace. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I admitted sourly, seeming to sink nearly to my ankles in the expansive throw rug. “Is all this your stuff? A guy bumped into me, slipped me a charm that wouldn’t invoke until there were no witnesses or causalities—other than me. I can’t believe Denon is serious about this. You were right.” I worked hard to keep my voice casual so Ivy wouldn’t know how shaken I was. Hell, I didn’t want to know how shaken I was. I’d get the money to pay off my contract somehow. “It was lucky as toast the old guy across the street took it off me.” I picked up a picture of Ivy and a golden retriever. She was smiling to show her teeth; I stifled a shiver.

“What old guy?” Ivy said quickly.

“Across the street. He’s been watching you.” I set the metal frame down and adjusted the pillow in the chair opposite hers before I sat. Matching furniture; how nice. An old mantel clock ticked, soft and soothing. There was a wide-screen TV with a built-in CD player in one corner. The disc player under it had all the right buttons. Ivy knew her electronics.

“I’ll bring my things over once I get them dissolutioned,” I said, then winced, thinking how cheap my stuff would look next to hers. “What will survive the dip,” I added.

Survive the dip? I thought suddenly, closing my eyes and scrubbing my forehead. “Oh no,” I said softly. “I can’t dissolution my charms.”

Ivy balanced her mug on a knee as she leafed through a magazine. “Hmm?”

“Charms,” I half moaned. “The I.S. overlaid black spells on my stash of charms. Dunking them in saltwater to break the spell will ruin them. And I can’t buy more.” I grimaced at her blank look. “If the I.S. got my apartment, I’m sure they’ve been to the store, too. I should have brought a bunch yesterday before I quit, but I didn’t think they’d care if I left.” I listlessly adjusted the shade of the table lamp. They hadn’t cared until Ivy had left with me. Depressed, I tossed my head back and looked at the ceiling.

“I thought you already knew how to make spells,” Ivy said warily.

“I do, but it’s a pain in the butt. And where am I going to get the raw materials?” I closed my eyes in misery. I was going to have to make all my charms.

There was a rustle of paper, and I lifted my head to see Ivy perusing her magazine. There was an apple and Snow White on the cover. Snow White’s leather corset was cut to show her belly button. A drop of blood glittered like a jewel at the corner of her mouth. It put a whole new twist on the enchanted sleep thing. Mr. Disney would be appalled. Unless, of course, he had been an Inderlander. That would explain a lot.

“You can’t just buy what you need?” Ivy asked.

I stiffened at the touch of sarcasm in her voice. “Yeah, but everything will have to be dunked in saltwater to make sure it hasn’t been tampered with. It’ll be nearly impossible to get rid of all the salt, and that will make the mix wrong.”

Jenks buzzed out of the fireplace with a cloud of soot and an irritating whine. I wondered how long he had been listening in the flue. He landed on a box of tissue and cleaned a spot off his wing, looking like a cross between a dragonfly and a miniature cat. “My, aren’t we obsessed,” he said, answering my question as to whether he had been eavesdropping.

“You have the I.S. trying to nack you with black magic and see if you aren’t a little paranoid.” Anxious, I thwacked the box he was sitting on until he took to the air.

He hovered between me and Ivy. “Haven’t seen the garden yet, have you, Sherlock?”

I threw the pillow at him, which he easily dodged. It knocked the lamp beside Ivy, and she casually reached out and caught it before it hit the floor. She never looked up from her magazine, never spilled a drop of her coffee perched on her knee. The hair on my neck prickled. “Don’t call me that, either,” I said to cover my unease. He looked positively smug as he hovered before me. “What?” I said snidely. “The garden has more than weeds and dead people?”

“Maybe.”

“Really?” This would be the first good thing to happen to me today, and I got up to look out the back door. “Coming?” I asked Ivy as I reached for the handle.

Her head was bent over a page of leather curtains. “No,” she said, clearly uninterested.

So it was Jenks who accompanied me out the back door and into the garden. The lowering sun was heady and strong, making the scents clear as it pulled moisture from the damp ground. There was a rowan somewhere. I sniffed deeply. And a birch and oak. What had to be Jenks’s kids were darting noisily about, chasing a yellow butterfly over the rising mounds of vegetation. Banks of plants lined the walls of the church and surrounding stone fence. The man-high wall went completely around the property, to tactfully isolate the church from the neighbors.

Another wall low enough to step over separated the garden from the small graveyard. I squinted, seeing a few plants out among the tall grass and headstones, but only those that became more potent growing among the dead. The closer I looked, the more awestruck I became. The garden was complete. Even the rarities were there.

“It’s perfect,” I whispered, running my fingers through a patch of lemongrass. “Everything I could ever need. How did it all get here?”

Ivy’s voice came from right behind me. “According to the old lady—”

“Ivy!” I said, spinning around to see her standing still and quiet on the path in a shaft of late amber sun. “Don’t do that!” Creepy vamp, I thought. I ought to put a bell on her.

She squinted from under her hand, raised against the fading light. “She said their last minister was a witch. He put in the garden. I can get fifty taken off the rent if one of us keeps it up the way it is.”

I looked over the treasure trove. “I’ll do it.”

Jenks flew up from a patch of violets. His purple trousers had pollen stains on them matching his yellow shirt. “Manual labor?” he questioned. “With those nails of yours?”

I glanced at the perfect red ovals my nails made. “This isn’t work, this is—therapy.”

“Whatever.” His attention went to his kids, and he zoomed across the garden to rescue the butterfly they were fighting over.

“Do you think everything you need is here?” Ivy asked as she turned to go inside.

“Just about. You can’t spell salt, so my stash is probably okay, but I’ll need my good spell pot and all my books.”

Ivy paused on the path. “I thought you had to know how to stir a brew by heart to get your witch license.”

Now I was embarrassed, and I bent to tug a weed free from beside a rosemary plant. Nobody made their own charms if they could afford to buy them. “Yeah,” I said as I dropped the weed, flicking the dirt from under my nails. “But I’m out of practice.” I sighed. This was going to be harder than it looked.

Ivy shrugged. “Can you get them off the net? The recipes, I mean.”

I looked askance at her. “Trust anything off the net? Oh, there’s a good idea.”

“There’re some books in the attic.”

“Sure,” I said sarcastically. “One hundred spells for the beginner. Every church has a copy of that.”

Ivy stiffened. “Don’t get snotty,” she said, the brown of her eyes disappearing behind her dilating pupils. “I just thought if one of the clergy was a witch, and the right plants were here, he might have left his books. The old lady said he ran off with one of the younger parishioners. That’s probably his stuff in the attic in case he had the guts to come back.”

The last thing I wanted was an angry vamp sleeping across the hall. “Sorry,” I apologized. “I’ll go look. And if I’m lucky, when I go out to the shed to find a saw to cut my amulets, there’ll be a bag of salt for when the front steps get icy.”

Ivy gave a little start, turning to look at the closet-sized shed. I passed her, pausing on the sill. “Coming? I said, determined not to let her think popping in and out of vamp mode was shaking me. “Or will your owls leave me alone?”

“No, I mean yes.” Ivy bit her lip. It was decidedly a human gesture, and my eyebrows rose. “They’ll let you up there, just don’t go making a lot of noise. I’ll—I’ll be right there.”

“Whatever …” I muttered, turning to find my way up to the belfry.

As Ivy had promised, the owls left me alone. It turned out the attic had a copy of everything I had lost in my apartment, and then some. Several of the books were so old they were falling apart. The kitchen had a nest of copper pots, probably used, Ivy had claimed, for chili cook-offs. They were perfect for spell casting, since they hadn’t been sealed to reduce tarnish. Finding everything I needed was eerie, so much so that when I went out to look for a saw in the shed, I was relieved to not find any salt. No, that was on the floor of the pantry.

Everything was going too well. Something had to be wrong.

Six

Ankles crossed, I sat atop Ivy’s antique kitchen table and swung my feet in their fuzzy pink slippers. The sliced vegetables were cooked to perfection, still crisp and crunchy, and I pushed them around in the little white cardboard box with my chopsticks, looking for more chicken. “This is fantastic,” I mumbled around my full mouth. Red tangy spice burned my tongue. My eyes watered. Grabbing the waiting glass of milk, I downed a third of it. “Hot,” I said as Ivy glanced up from the box cradled in her long hands. “Cripes, it’s really hot.”

Ivy arched her thin black eyebrows. “Glad you approve.” She was sitting at the table at the spot she had cleared before her computer. Looking into her own take-out box, her wave of black hair fell to make a curtain over her face. She tucked it behind an ear, and I watched the line of her jaw slowly move as she ate.

I had just enough experience with chopsticks to not look like an idiot, but Ivy moved the twin sticks with a slow precision, placing bits of food into her mouth with a rhythmic, somehow erotic, pace. I looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.

“What’s it called?” I asked, digging into my paper box.

“Chicken in red curry.”

“That’s it?” I questioned, and she nodded. I made a small noise. I could remember that. I found another piece of meat. Curry exploded in my mouth, and I washed it down with a gulp of milk. “Where did you get it?”

“Piscary’s.”

My eyes widened. Piscary’s was a combination pizza den and vamp hangout. Very good food in a rather unique atmosphere. “This came from Piscary’s?” I said as I crunched through a bamboo shoot. “I didn’t know they delivered anything but pizza.”

“They don’t—generally.”

The throaty pitch of her voice pulled my attention up, to find that she was absorbed in her food. She raised her head at my lack of movement and blinked her almond-shaped eyes at me. “My mother gave him the recipe,” she said. “Piscary makes it special for me. It’s no big deal.”

She went back to eating. A feeling of unease drifted through me, and I listened to the crickets over the twin soft scraping of our sticks. Mr. Fish swam in his bowl on the windowsill. The soft, muted noise of the Hollows at night was almost unheard over the rhythmic thumps of my clothes in the dryer.

I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing the same clothes again tomorrow, but Jenks told me it wouldn’t be until Sunday that his friend could have my clothes despelled. The best I could do was wash what I had and hope I didn’t run into anyone I knew. Right now I was in the nightgown and robe Ivy had lent me. They were black, obviously, but Ivy said the color suited me fine. The faint scent of wood ash on them wasn’t unpleasant, but it seemed to cling to me.

My gaze went to the empty spot above the sink where a clock should be. “What time do you think it is?”

“A little after three,” Ivy said, not glancing at her watch.

I dug around, sighing when I realized I had eaten all the pineapple. “I wish my clothes would get done. I am so tired.”

Ivy crossed her legs and leaned over her dinner. “Go ahead. I’ll get them out for you. I’ll be up until five or so.”

“No, I’ll stay up.” I yawned, covering my mouth with the back of my hand. “It isn’t like I have to get up and go to work tomorrow,” I finished sourly. A small noise of agreement came from Ivy, and my digging about in my dinner slowed. “Ivy, you can tell me to back off if it’s none of my business, but why did you join the I.S. if you didn’t want to work for them?”

She seemed surprised as she looked up. In a flat voice that spoke volumes, she said, “I did it to tick my mother off.” A flicker of what looked like pain flashed over her, vanishing before I could be sure it existed. “My dad isn’t pleased I quit,” she added. “He told me I should have either stuck it out or killed Denon.”

Dinner forgotten, I stared, not knowing if I was more surprised at learning her father was still alive or at his rather creative advice on how to get ahead at the office. “Uh, Jenks said you were the last living member of your house,” I finally said.

Ivy’s head moved in a slow, controlled nod. Brown eyes watching me, she moved her chopsticks between the box and her lips in a slow dance. The subtle display of sensuality took me aback, and I shifted uneasily on my perch on the table. She had never been this bad when we had worked together. Of course, we usually quit work before midnight.

“My dad married into the family,” she said between dips into the box, and I wondered if she knew how provocative she looked. “I’m the last living blood member of my house. Because of the prenuptial, my mother’s money is all mine, or it was. She is as mad as all hell I quit. She wants me to find a nice, living, high-blood vamp, settle down, and pop out as many kids as I can to be sure her living bloodline doesn’t die out. She’ll kill me if I croak before having a kid.”

I nodded as if I understood, but I didn’t. “I joined because of my dad,” I admitted. Embarrassed, I put my attention into my dinner. “He worked for the I.S. in the arcane division. He’d come home every morning with these wild stories of people he had helped or tagged. He made it sound so exciting.” I snickered. “He never mentioned the paperwork. When he died, I thought it would be a way to get close to him, sort of remember him by. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“No.”

I looked up, crunching through a carrot. “I had to do something. I spent a year watching my mother fall off her rocker. She isn’t crazy, but it’s like she doesn’t want to believe he’s gone. You can’t talk to her without her saying something like, ‘I made banana pudding today; it was your father’s favorite.’ She knows he’s dead, but she can’t let him go.”

Ivy was staring out the black kitchen window and into a memory. “My dad’s like that. He spends all his time keeping my mother going. I hate it.”

My chewing slowed. Not many vamps could afford to remain alive after death. The elaborate sunlight precautions and liability insurance alone was enough to put most families on the street. Not to mention the continuous supply of fresh blood.

“I hardly ever see him,” she added, her voice a whisper. “I don’t understand it, Rachel. He has his entire life left, but he won’t let her get the blood she needs from anyone else. If he’s not with her, he’s passed out on the floor from blood loss. Keeping her from dying completely is killing him. One person alone can’t support a dead vampire. They both know that.”

The conversation had taken an uncomfortable turn, but I couldn’t just leave. “Maybe he’s doing it because he loves her?” I offered slowly.

Ivy frowned. “What kind of love is that?” She stood, her long legs unfolding in a slow graceful movement. Cardboard box in hand, she vanished into the hall.

The sudden silence hammered on my ears. I stared at her empty chair in surprise. She walked out. How could she just walk out? We were talking. The conversation was too interesting to drop, so I slid from the table and followed her into the living room with my dinner.

She had collapsed into one of the gray suede chairs, sprawled out in a look of total unconcern, with her head on one of the thick arms and her feet dangling over the other. I hesitated in the doorway, taken aback at the picture she made. Like a lioness in her den, satiated from the kill. Well, I thought, she is a vampire. What did I expect her to look like?

Reminding myself that she wasn’t a practicing vamp and that I had nothing to worry about, I cautiously settled in the chair across from her, the coffee table between us. Only one of the table lamps was on, and the edges of the room were indistinct and lost in shadow. The lights from her electronic equipment glowed. “So, joining the I.S. was your dad’s idea?” I prompted.

Ivy had set her little white cardboard box atop her stomach. Not meeting my gaze, she lay on her back and indolently ate a bamboo shoot, looking at the ceiling as she chewed. “It was my mother’s idea, originally. She wanted me to be in management.” Ivy took another bite. “I was supposed to stay nice and safe. She thought it would be good for me to work on my people skills.” She shrugged. “I wanted to be a runner.”

I kicked off my slippers and tucked my feet under me. Curled up around my take-out box, I flicked a glance at Ivy as she slowly pulled her chopsticks out from between her lips. Most of the upper management in the I.S. were undead. I always thought it was because the job was easier if you didn’t have a soul.

“It wasn’t as if she could stop me,” Ivy continued, talking to the ceiling. “So to punish me for doing what I wanted instead of what she wanted, she made sure Denon was my boss.” A snicker escaped her. “She thought I’d get so ticked that I’d jump to a management position as soon as one opened up. She never considered I’d trade my inheritance to get out of my contract. I guess I showed her,” she said sarcastically.

I shuffled past a tiny corncob to get to a chunk of tomato. “You threw away all your money because you didn’t like your boss? I don’t like him, either, but—”

Ivy stiffened. The force of her gaze struck me cold. My words froze in my throat at the hatred in her expression. “Denon is a ghoul,” Ivy said, her words drawing the warmth from the room. “If I had to take his flack for one more day, I was going to rip his throat out.”

I hesitated. “A ghoul?” I said, confused. “I thought he was a vamp.”

“He is.” When I said nothing, she swung herself upright to put her boots on the floor. “Look,” she said, sounding bothered. “You must have noticed Denon doesn’t look like a vamp. His teeth are human, right? He can’t maintain an aura at noon? And he moves so loud you can hear him coming a mile away?”