A Fistful of Charms (48 page)

He jerked from her. Clearly shaken, he stepped out of her easy reach. “Rachel—”

“Good-bye, Nick,” I said flatly, feeling my blood pressure rise. I still didn't understand how he could think that selling Al information about me, even harmless information, wasn't a betrayal of everything we had shared.

I didn't watch him leave. Eyes lowered, I took a sword-pierced cherry. The sweet mush was bland in my mouth. Swallowing, I set the red plastic sword beside Jenks for him to take home to his kids. “I'm tired of this,” I whispered, but I don't think anyone heard me.

Jenks took a scoop of the cobbler, watching me with his intent green eyes. “You going to be okay?” he asked around his full mouth.

Picking up a spoon, I held the plate so I could wrangle an even bigger bite of ice cream. “Just dandy.”
Why was I eating? I wasn't hungry.

The music finally died, and in the renewed sound of chatter, Ivy held a napkin to her mouth and muttered, “I don't like this. I don't like it at all. I don't like Nick. I don't trust Nick. And if he doesn't show up with that truck to do his part, I'm going to kill him.”

“I'll help,” Jenks offered, carefully cutting the remaining ice cream in two and claiming the largest half.

“Okay, I made a mistake in trusting him. Can we move on to something else?” I said, scraping the lion's share of caramel to my side of the plate.
God help me, but I had been stupid. Stay with your own kind, Rachel. Not that your track record there is much better.
“But I do trust his greed,” I added, and Jenks's eyebrows rose.

Shifting my shoulder, I touched my bag on my lap. “He wants the statue. He's going to show, if only to try and steal it back after all is said and done.”

Ivy crossed her arms in front of her and seethed.

Jenks cocked his head in thought and ate another bite of cobbler. “You want me to have Jax shadow him?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“It might be too cold,” I said. “He can sit this one out.”

“He's doing well with low-temp excursions,” Jenks said around his full mouth, then swallowed. “I'm proud of him.” A satisfied smile hovered in his eyes. “He can read now,” he added softly. “He's been working hard at it. He's serious about taking after his old man.”

My smile faltered at the reasons for the lessons. Jenks didn't have many more battles left to fight. Ivy steadied herself, visibly forcing herself to be cheerful.

“That's great,” she said, but I could hear her stress. “What grade level is he at?”

Jenks pushed his plate away. “Tink's titties, I don't know. Enough to get by.”

I sent my attention to the bathroom door when Nick came out, his head down, clearly worried. I exhaled in a slow puff, leaning back into my chair. “Oh that's just swell,” I said sourly. “Something's wrong with the charms.”

Triangular face worried, Jenks followed my gaze, saying nothing. Ivy didn't look at all, and waited for it as Nick sat down before his Virgin Bloody Rabbit and took a gulp.

“My shoes are too tight,” he whispered, fingers shaking.

Mouth open, I stared. It hadn't been Nick's voice. “Peter?”
I breathed, shocked. My eyes jerked from him to Ivy and Jenks. “My God. Can I cook, or can I cook!”

Ivy's breath slipped from her in a slow sound.
Check
I thought, seeing her mentally cross off the next item on her list.

Grinning, Jenks started to eat again, this time working on my half of the ice cream.

I tried not to look at Peter, but it was hard not to. The vampire sat beside me, his arms resting on the table as if tired, the barest tremble in his fingers, which were a shade shorter than Nick's, and thin, not swollen. The two men had exchanged clothes along with identities, and it was eerie how complete the change was. Only in the eyes could I see a clear difference. Peter had a haze from the painkiller he had taken so he could walk upright. Just as well I'd be driving.

“No wonder those things are illegal,” Ivy said, hiding her words behind her glass of juice.

My worry deepened when Jenks added, “His aura is the same.”

“Shit,” I whispered, my stomach knotting. “I forgot about that.”

Jenks finished the ice cream and pushed the plate away with a little sigh. “I wouldn't worry about it,” he said. “Weres can't use the ever-after. They can't see auras.”

Embarrassed, I hunched over my drink. “You can. And you can't use the ever-after.”

He grinned. “That's because pixies
are
ever-after. We're magic, baby. Just ask Matalina.”

Ivy snickered. She took a cherry, and Jenks put her sword with mine when she casually handed it to him.

“You know,” I said, “you can buy a box of those for a buck fifty in any grocery store.”

Jenks shrugged. “Where's the fun in that?”

Watching the banter, Peter smiled, making my heart ache when I remembered Nick looking at me like that. “I wish I had the chance to know you before all this,” he said softly. “You fit well together. Like a vampire camarilla, but without the jealousy and politics. A real family.”

My good mood died. Jenks played with his fork to get it to balance on its tines, and Ivy became very interested in the Weres at the bar.

Peter blinked rapidly, a nervous reaction I'd never seen in Nick. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Did I say something—”

Ivy interrupted him. “Peter, we've got about an hour until Nick gets into place with that bridge traffic. Do you want something to eat?”

I gathered myself to look for Becky, yelping when Jenks kicked me under the table. I glared at him until he said, “You don't like Nick. Nick can get his own food.”

Feeling stupid, I slumped in my chair. “Right.” So I tried not to fidget as Peter took the next five minutes to get Becky's attention. From the corner of my sight I watched Nick leave the bathroom, looking like the ailing vampire who was sitting beside me, trying to attract anyone in an apron. Hell, Nick even walked like Peter, slow and pained. It was creepy. He was good at this.

Professional thief,
I reminded myself as I gripped my bag to assure myself it was still in my possession. How I could have been so blind? But I knew my ignorance had been born out of my need for that damned acceptance I hungered after almost as badly as Ivy lusted after blood. We weren't as unalike as it seemed when you got right down to it.

The jitters started when Nick passed out of my sight. I turned my attention to Ivy, reading his progress across the bar by where her eyes went. “He's good,” Ivy said, sipping her juice. “Audrey didn't recognize him until he opened his mouth and said hi.”

“Did the Weres smell him?” I asked, and she shook her head.

Beside me, Peter gritted his teeth, and I was glad he'd had the opportunity to say good-bye to Audrey properly. He was a good person. It wasn't fair. Maybe he could bring the memory of suffering and compassion into his undead existence, but I doubted it. They never did.

Ivy tapped her fingers on the table, and Jenks heaved a sigh. “They're gone,” Ivy said.

I put the flat of my arm on the table, forcing my foot to not jiggle. All that was left was waiting for Nick's phone call that he was in place.

Check.

S
o this is what it feels like to be a murderer,
I thought, taking a tighter grip of the wheel of Nick's truck, squinting from the low sun. I was nervous, sweaty, shaky, and I wanted to throw up.
Oh yeah. I can see why people get off on this.

Beside me in Nick's jeans and cloth coat, Peter watched the passing view as we drove to the bridge, half of Nick's inertia-dampening curse fixed to the bumper. Peter's left hand cradled the defunct statue with DeLavine's blood smear on it. His right hand, looking slightly smaller than Nick's, was holding the handle of the door. I was pretty sure it was nerves since he didn't know the door had a tendency to fly open when you went over a bump.

Nick's truck was old. It rattled when it shook. The shocks were bad but the brakes were excellent. And with the NOS, it could be startlingly fast. Just what every successful thief needs.

Silent, we endured the stop-and-go traffic to get onto the bridge, my attention on Ivy and Jenks behind us as much as on the cars ahead of me jockeying to get on the bridge. It had been Ivy's idea to do this on the bridge. The stiff wind would hamper the Weres' sense of smell, and the bridge itself would prevent a helicopter ambulance and slow things down. But most of all, we needed a stretch of several miles without a shoulder to minimize Were interference after the crash. The five-mile bridge gave us that along with a nice
margin to actually run into each other. The goal was the bridge apex, but a mile either way would work.

My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, but I didn't feel any better seeing Ivy and Jenks in Kisten's Corvette running as a buffer between us and the Weres from the bar. “Put your seat belt on,” I said. I thought it was stupid, like dragging the saddle behind you when you went looking for your horse fleeing the burning barn, but I didn't want to get pulled over for failure to wear a belt and have it all come crashing down when the cop realized Nick's newly flash-painted truck was the same one that had fled the scene of a crash yesterday.

The click was loud when Peter fastened his belt. We were going to be run over by a Mack truck. I didn't think it would make a difference if he had on his seat belt or not.

Oh God. What was I doing?

The traffic light finally turned green, and I pulled onto the bridge, headed for St. Ignace on the other side of the straits. I gripped the wheel tighter, stomach knotting. The bridge was a mess. The two northbound lanes were closed off, making traffic two-way on the southbound. Midway down the span there were big machines and powerful lights to turn the coming night to day as the workers tried to meet their pretourist-season deadline. They had missed it. Red cones separated the two lanes, allowing traffic to easily switch to the other side when needed. The bridge was an incredible five miles long, and every foot of it had needed repair.

Peter exhaled as we accelerated to a steady forty miles an hour, the opposing traffic doing the same an unnerving three feet away. Past the vacant northbound lane and thick girders, I could see the islands, gray and smudged from the distance. We were really high up, and I felt a moment of quickly stifled fear. Despite the stories, witches couldn't fly. 'Least not without a staff of charmed redwood that cost more than the Concord.

“Peter?” I said, not liking the silence.

“I'm fine,” he said, his grip tensing on the statue. His voice was cross, sounding nothing like Nick. I couldn't help my
awkward smile of understanding, remembering Ivy bothering me with the same question. My stomach gave a lurch.

“I wasn't going to ask how you were doing,” I said, fiddling with the two charms about my neck. One was for pain that wouldn't cover the hurt caused by being hit, the other was to keep my head from meeting the dash. Peter had refused both.

My eyes lifted to the rearview mirror to see that Ivy and Jenks were still behind us. “Do you want me to turn the lights on?” I asked. It was our agreed upon signal to abort the plan. I wanted him to say yes. I didn't want to do this. The statue didn't matter right now. Peter did. We could find another way.

“No.”

The sun was setting past him, and I squinted at him. “Peter…”

“I've heard it all,” he said, his voice rough as he kept his stiff position. “Please don't. It comes down to one thing. I'm dying. I've been doing it for a long time, and it hurts. I stopped living three years ago when the medicine and charms quit working and the pain took everything away. There's nothing left of me
but
hurting. I fought for two years with the thought that I was a coward for wanting to end the pain, but there is nothing left.”

I snuck a glance at him, shocking myself when I saw Nick sitting there, his jaw clenched and his brown eyes hard. It sounded like it was a story he had told too many times. As I watched, his shoulders slumped and he let go of the door. “This lingering isn't fair to Audrey,” he said. “She deserves someone strong, able to stand beside her and meet her bite for bite in the passion she's aching to show me.”

I couldn't let that go without saying something. “And becoming an undead is fair to her?” I said, making his jaw clench again. “Peter, I've seen the undead. That won't be you!”

“I know!” he exclaimed, then softer, “I know, but it's all I've got left to give her.”

The whirl of air under the tires rose above the sound of
the engine as we went over the first of the grates designed to lighten the bridge's load.

“She knows it won't be me,” Peter said, his voice calm. He seemed to want to talk, and I would listen. I owed him that.

He met my gaze and smiled a scared little-boy smile. “She promised me she'll be happy. I used to be able to dance with such passion that it could drive her wild. I want to dance again with her. I will remember her. I will remember the love.”

“But you won't feel it,” I whispered.

“She'll feel love for the both of us,” Peter said firmly, his eyes on the passing bridgework. “And in time, I'll be able to fake it for her.”

This was not happening.
“Peter—” I reached forward to turn on the lights, and he stopped me with a shaking hand on my wrist.

“Don't,” he said. “I'm already dead. You're only helping me move forward.”

I could not believe this. I didn't
want
to believe it. “Peter, there's so much you haven't done. That you might do. There are new medicines every day. I know someone who can help you.”
Trent could help him,
I thought, then cursed myself.
What in hell was I thinking?

“I've had all the medicines,” Peter said softly. “Legal and otherwise. I've heard the lies, I've believed the promises, but there's nothing left to believe in but death. I'm moved around like a table lamp, Rachel.” His voice faltered. “You don't understand because you aren't done living yet. But I'm done, and when you're done…you just know.”

The car ahead of me flashed its brake lights and I took my foot off the accelerator. “But a lamp can light a room,” I protested, my will weakening.

“Not when the bulb is broken.” His elbow was on the windowsill and his head was in his cupped hand. The setting sun became flashes on him as the girders holding the bridge arched up. “Maybe by dying I can be fixed,” he said over the rumble of a passing truck. “Maybe I can do some good when I'm dead. I'm not good for anything alive.”

I swallowed hard. He wouldn't do anything after he died, unless it met his needs.

“It's going to be okay,” Peter said. “I'm not scared of death. I'm scared of dying. Not dying, but how I'm going to die.” He laughed, but it was tinged with bitterness. “DeLavine told me that being born and dying are the only two things we do perfectly. There's a hundred percent success rate. I can't do it wrong.”

“That sounds funny coming from a dead man,” I said, my breath catching when a big truck went past, shaking the grate we were on.
This was wrong. This was so wrong.

Peter pulled his elbow from the window and looked at me. “He said how I feel when I die is the one thing I have control over. I can be afraid, or I can go boldly. I want to do it bravely—even if it hurts. I'm tired of hurting, but I can take a little more.”

I was starting to shake, though the air from the setting sun coming in was warm and my window was down. His soul would be gone forever. The spark of creativity and compassion—gone.

“Can…can I ask you something?” I ventured. The oncoming traffic had grown thin, and I prayed that they hadn't shut down the southbound lane for some reason. It was probably just Nick driving slow so we would meet somewhere in the middle as planned.

“What?”

His voice was tired and weary, and the sound of lost hope in it knotted my stomach tighter. “When Ivy bit me,” I said, darting a glance at him, “some of my aura went to her. She was taking my aura along with my blood. Not my soul, just my aura. The virus needs blood to stay active, but is it more than that?”

His expression was unreadable, and I rushed forward with the rest of it while I still had time. “Maybe the mind needs an aura to protect it,” I said. “Maybe the still-living mind needs the illusion of a soul about it, or it will try to get the
body to kill itself so that the soul, the mind, and the body will be back in balance.”

Peter looked at me from Nick's face, and I saw him for what he was: a frightened man who was stepping into a new world with no safety net, both extremely powerful and tragically fragile, reliant upon someone else to keep his mind and body together after his soul was gone.

He didn't say anything, telling me I was right. My breath quickened and I licked my lips. Vampires take auras as their own to fool their mind that a soul still bathed it. It would explain why Ivy's father risked his own death to provide her mother with his blood and his alone. He bathed her mind in his aura, his soul, in the hopes that she would remember what love was. And perhaps, in the instant of the act, she did.

I finally understood. Exhilarated, I stared at the road ahead, not seeing it. My heart was pounding and I felt light-headed.

“That's why Audrey insists on being my scion,” he said softly, “even though it's going to be very hard on her.”

I wanted to stop. I wanted to stop right there in the middle of the freaking bridge and figure this out. Peter looked miserable, and I wondered how long he had agonized over remaining as he was and causing her pain, or becoming an undead and causing her a pain of another kind. “Does Ivy know?” I asked. “About the auras?”

He nodded, his eyes lighting briefly upon my stitches. “Of course.”

“Peter, this is…is—” I said, bewildered. “Why are you hiding this from everyone?”

He ran a hand over his face, the angry gesture so reminiscent of Nick that it shocked me. “Would you have let Ivy take your blood if you knew she was taking your aura, the light from your soul?” he asked suddenly, his eyes fixing on mine vehemently.

I glanced from the road, blurting, “Yes. Yes, I would have. Peter, it's beautiful. It brings something right to it.”

His expression went from anger to surprise, and he said, “Ivy is a very lucky woman.”

Feeling my chest clench, I blinked rapidly. I wouldn't cry. I was frustrated and confused. I was going to kill Peter in less than three miles. I was on a train I couldn't stop. I didn't need to cry, I needed to understand.

“Not everyone sees it like that,” he said, the shadows of the passing girders falling on him. “You're truly odd, Rachel Morgan. I don't understand you at all. I wish I had time to. Maybe after I'm dead. I'll take you dancing and we can talk. I promise I won't bite you.”

I can't do this.
“I'm turning the lights on.” Jaw clenched, I leaned to reach the knob. He wasn't done yet. There was more for him to learn. More he could tell me before he dropped his thread of consciousness forever.

Peter didn't move as I pulled the knob. I leaned into the seat, my face going cold when the dash remained dark. I pushed the knob in and pulled it back out. “They aren't working,” I said as a car passed us. I pushed it in and tried again. “Why aren't they working, damn it!”

“I asked Jenks to disengage them.”

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted, hitting the dash and hurting my hand through the pain amulet. “That damn son of a bitch!” Tears started leaking out, and I twisted in the seat, desperate to stop this.

Peter took my shoulder, pinching me. “Rachel!” he exclaimed, his guilt-ridden expression looking at me from Nick's face tearing at me. “Please,” he begged. “I wanted to end it this way because it would help someone. I'm hoping that because I'm helping you, God will take me even without my soul. Please—don't stop.”

I was crying now. I couldn't help it. I kept my foot on the accelerator, maintaining that same fifteen feet between me and the next car. He wanted to die, and I was going to help him whether I agreed with it or not. “It doesn't work that way, Peter,” I said, my voice high. “They did a study on it. Without the mind to chaperone it, the soul has nothing to
hold it together and it falls apart. Peter, there will be nothing left. It will be as if you never existed—”

He looked down the road. His face paled in the amber glow. “Oh God. There he is.”

I took a breath, holding it. “Peter,” I said, desperate. I couldn't turn back. I couldn't slow down. I had to do this. The shadows from the girders seemed to flash faster. “Peter!”

“I'm scared.”

I looked over the cars to the white truck heading for us. I could see Nick, Peter's doppelganger disguise gone and the legal one in place. Hand fumbling, I found Peter's. It was damp with sweat, and he clutched it with the strength of a frightened child. “I'll be here,” I said, breathless and unable to look from the looming truck.
What was I doing?