I nodded. The long stretch of railroad track between Cincy and Bowman Park had been converted to a safe running surface shortly after the Turn. This time of year, you'd only find Weres on it at night, and the rails-to-trails path ran fairly close to the church before it crossed the river into Cincinnati. David had used the church as an endpoint before, but this was the first time he had the ladies with him. I wondered if it was their first long fall run. If so, they were in for a treat. To run full out and not get hot was exquisite.
I shut the door and ushered the men from the unlit foyer into the sanctuary. David's duster brushed his worn boot tops, and he took off his hat as he entered, clearly uncomfortable on the holy ground. As a witch, Howard didn't care, and he smiled and waved at the tiny hellos from the ceiling. I probably owed Howard a big thank-you - it had been his idea that David should take me as his new business partner.
David set his worn leather hat on the piano and rocked from heel to toe, looking every inch the alpha male, albeit an uncomfortable one. The faint hint of musk rose from the sturdy but graceful man, and his hand nervously ran across the hint of stubble the almost-full moon was causing. He wasn't tall for a man, standing almost eye to eye with me, but he made up for it in sheer presence. "Sinewy" would be the word I'd use to describe him. Or maybe "yummy," if he were in his running tights. But like Minias, David had a problem with the different-species thing.
He'd been forced to assume the title of alpha male for real when he accidentally turned two human women into Weres. It wasn't supposed to be possible, but he had been in possession of a very powerful Were artifact at the time. Watching David accept his responsibility left me both proud and guilty, since it was partly my fault. Okay, mostly my fault.
It would be a year come the winter solstice since David had started a pack with me, pressured into it by his boss and obstinately choosing a witch instead of a Were female so he wouldn't have to take on any new responsibilities. It was a win-win situation: David got to keep his job, I got my insurance cheap. But now he was an alpha for real, and I was proud of him for accepting it with so much grace. He went out of his way to make the two women he had turned with the focus feel wanted, needed, and welcome, taking every chance he could to help them explore their new situation with joyous abandonment.
But I was most proud of his refusal to show the guilt he lived with, knowing that if they knew how bad he felt for changing their lives without their consent, they might feel that what they had become was wrong. He had gone on to prove his nobility by taking the Were curse from me to save my sanity. The curse would have killed me by the first full moon. David said he liked it. I believed him, though it worried me. I appreciated David for everything he was and who he was becoming.
"Hi, David, Howard," Ivy said from the top of the hall, her hair freshly brushed and shoes now on her feet. "Can you stay for dinner? We have a slow cooker full of chili, so there's plenty." Ivy, however, just wanted to get in David's pants.
David had started at her voice. Shifting his long coat closed, he took a step back as he turned. "Thanks, but no," he said, eyes down. "I'm going for a run with the ladies. Howard might want to come back after dropping us off, though."
Howard mumbled something about a meeting, and Ivy turned to the stained-glass window and the moon, just shy of full but hidden behind clouds. Weres could change anytime, but the three days of a full moon were the only time it was legal to roam the city's streets on four paws, tradition turned to law by paranoid humans. What Weres did in their own houses, though, was their own business. The moonlit trail would be busy tonight.
Ivy's foot twitched like a cat's tail as she sat, turning her magazine over to hide the headline. I had to work to keep a straight face. It wasn't often that she was smitten enough by anyone to look like a high schooler with a crush. And it wasn't that she was obvious about it, but she was so closed with her emotions that any indication of attraction was as clear as finding love notes strewn on her bedroom floor. She'd probably recognized the sound of his car and had gone to tidy up, using the excuse of lowering the music.
"You should have called me when the demon showed," David said, edging to the door.
Jenks's wings clattered as he darted from the desk to the center of the room. "I was there to save her ass," he said belligerently, then added a belated, "Hi, David. Who's your friend?"
"This is Howard, my old partner," David said, and Jenks's head bobbed up and down.
"Oh, yeah. You stink for a witch. Whatcha been doing?"
Howard laughed, the sound echoing into the rafters and setting the pixies giggling. "Some freelance work. Thank you, Mr. Jenks. I'll take that as a compliment."
"It's just Jenks," the pixy muttered, giving Howard an unusual, cautious look as he landed on my shoulder.
Ivy was making eyes at David from over the crackers, and the small man started edging toward the door in earnest. "Do you want me to stay until sunup? Just in case?"
"Good God, no!" I exclaimed. "I'm on holy ground. I'm as safe here as if I was in my mother's arms."
"We've met your mother," Ivy said lightly. "That doesn't instill any confidence."
"What is this, pick-on-Rachel night?" I said, tired of it. "I can take care of myself."
No one said anything, the silence broken by a stifled laugh from the rafters. I looked up, but the pixies had hidden themselves.
"Guess what she's doing tonight?" Jenks said, leaving me to escort a quickly retreating David and Howard to the door. "Making a list of people who want to kill her, followed by ways to detect demon summoning."
"She told me." David retied his coat closed and headed for the door. "Don't forget to put Nick on there."
"Got him," I said, flopping into my chair and scowling at Ivy. She chased David away almost every time. "Thanks, Jenks," I shot at the pixy, but he wasn't listening as he opened the door for David and rose up out of the cold draft.
David turned at the threshold. Behind him, Howard was heading down the steps to an unfamiliar station wagon. Parked by the curb was David's gray sports car. "'Bye, Rachel," David said, the light over the door glinting on his black hair. "Call me tomorrow if I don't see you. Summoning demons usually results in a claim or two being filed. When I get back to the office, I'll see if anything unusual has come in."
My eyebrows rose, and I made a mental note to add insurance claims to the list. David worked at one of the largest on-paper insurance companies in the United States and had access to just about everything, given time. Actually, maybe I'd call Glenn at the FIB to see if they had any complaints recently. They kept great records to compensate for their utter lack of Inderlander talents.
"Thanks, I'll do that," I said as David followed his old partner out and shut the door.
Ivy frowned at the dark foyer, sipping her drink as one foot bobbed up and down. Seeing me track the motion, she forced it still. I jumped at the high-pitched burst of noise from my desk, eyes widening as four streaks of silver raced out from it and into the back of the church. A crash brought me around in my seat, and I wondered what had just fallen off the overhead rack in the kitchen.
And so it begins....
"Jack!" came Matalina's shrill cry, and she zipped out of the desk after them. Jenks intercepted her, and the two had a rapid high-pitched discussion in the hallway punctuated by bursts of ultrasonic sound that made my head hurt.
"Honey," Jenks coaxed when she slowed enough that we could hear them again. "Boys will be boys. I'll talk to them and make them apologize."
"What if they had done that when your cat came in!" she shrilled. "What then?"
"But they didn't," he soothed. "They waited until she was secure."
Hand shaking as she pointed to the back of the church, she took a breath to start in again, gulping it back when Jenks kissed her soundly, wrapping her slim form in his arms and body, their wings somehow not tangling as they hovered in the hallway.
"I'll take care of it, love," he said when they parted, his emotion so earnest that I dropped my eyes, embarrassed. Matalina fled to the desk in a dusting of mortified red, and after grinning at us in some masculine display of...masculinity, Jenks flew to the back of the church.
"Jack!" he shouted, the dust slipping from him a brilliant gold. "You know better than that. Get your brothers and get out here. If I have to dig you out, I'm going to clip your wings!"
"Huh." Ivy's long fingers carefully picked up a cracker. "I'll have to try that."
"What?" I asked, shifting to prop my clipboard up on my knees.
Ivy blinked slowly. "Kissing someone from agitation into bliss."
Her smile widened to show a slip of teeth, and a sliver of ice dropped down my spine. Fear mixed with anticipation, as unstoppable as jerking my hand from a flame. And Ivy could sense it as easily as she could see my embarrassed flush.
Pulling herself upright, she stood. I blinked up at her as she stretched, and brushing past me in a wave of vampire incense, she headed for the door as the doorbell rang.
"I got it," she said, her pace provocative. "David left his hat."
My exhaled breath was slow and long. Damn it, I was not an adrenaline junkie. And Ivy knew we weren't going to shift our relationship in either direction. Still...the potential was there, and I hated that she could flip switches in me as easily as I could flip them in her. Just 'cause you can do something, doesn't mean you should, right?
Exasperated with myself, I grabbed the empty cracker plate and headed for the kitchen. Maybe I needed a midnight run myself to clear my head of all the vamp pheromones in there.
"Cat in the house!" came Ivy's call, and then a different voice filtered in, stopping me cold.
"Hi, I'm Marshal."
If the mellow, attractive voice hadn't jerked me to a halt, the name would have, and I spun in the hallway.
"You must be Ivy," the man added. "Is Rachel in?"