Unbound

1

The dim gloom was heavy in the lower level of Jenks’s stump, only the high ceiling of the cavernous great room still holding the fading haze of the setting sun. Working by the glow of his dragonflylike wings, Jenks hovered in the wide archway leading to the storerooms, feet dangling and shoulders aching as he smoothed a nick from the lintel. The smell of last year’s garden drifted up past him: musty dandelion fluff, dried jasmine blossoms, and the last of the sweet clover used for their beds. Matalina was a traditionalist and didn’t like the foam he’d cut from a sofa he’d found at the curb last fall.

The rasping of his lathe against the living oak only accentuated the absence of his kids; the quiet was both odd and comforting after a winter spent in his human-size partner’s church. Shifting his lower wings to push the glowing, silver pixy dust upward to light his work, Jenks ran a hand across the wood to gauge the new, decorative curve. A slow smile spread across his face.

“Tink’s panties, she’ll never know,” he whispered, pleased. The gouge his daughter had made while chasing her brother was now rubbed out. All that was needed was to smooth it, and his beautiful and oh-so-clever wife would never know. Or at least she’d never say anything.

Satisfied, Jenks tilted his wings and darted to his tools. He would’ve asked his daughter to fix the archway, but it took cold metal, and at five Jolivia didn’t yet have the finesse to handle toxic metal. Spilling more dust to light his well-used tools, he chose an emery board, swiped from Rachel’s bathroom.

Late March, he thought as he returned to his work, the sparse sawdust mixing with his own pixy dust as he worked in the silence and chill. Late March, and they still hadn’t moved back into the garden from Rachel’s desk, on loan for the winter. The days were warm enough, and the nights would be fine with the main hearth lit. Cincinnati’s pixies were long out of hibernation, and if they didn’t move into the garden soon, someone might try to claim it. Just yesterday his kids had chased off three fairy scouts lurking about the far graveyard wall.

Breath held against the oak dust, Jenks wondered how many children he would lose this fall to romance and how it would affect the garden’s security. Not much now, with only eight children nearing the age of leaving. Next year, though, eleven more would join them, with no newlings to replace them.

A burst of anxious motion from his wings lit a larger circle to show the winter-abandoned cushions about the main central hearth, but it wasn’t until a sudden commotion at the ground-floor tunnel entrance that he spilled enough dust to light the edges to show the shelves, cupboards, and hooks built right into the living walls of the stump. “If there’s no snapped wings or bones sticking out, I don’t want to hear about it!” he shouted, his mood brightening as he recognized his children’s voices.

“Papa. Papa!” Jerrimatt, one of his youngest sons, shouted in excitement as he darted in, trailing silver dust. “We caught an intruder at the street wall! He wouldn’t leave, even when we scared him! He said he wanted to talk to you. He’s a poacher, I bet, and I saw him first!”

Jenks rose, alarmed. “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“Naww,” the suddenly dejected boy said as he tossed his blond hair in a credible mimicry of his dad. “I know the rules. He had red on.”

Exhaling, Jenks let his feet touch the ground as, in a noisy mob, Jack, Jhem, Jumoke, and Jixy pushed a fifth pixy wing-stumbling into the room.

“He was on the fence,” Jixy said, roughly shoving the stranger again to make his wings hum, and she touched her wooden sword, ready to smack him if he made to fly. She was the eldest in the group, and she took her seniority seriously.

“He was looking at our flower beds,” Jumoke added. The dark-haired pixy’s scowl made him look fiercer than usual, adding to his unusual dark coloring.

“And he was lurking!” Jack exclaimed. If there was trouble, Jack would be in it.

The five were on sentry detail this evening, and Jenks set the emery board aside, eyeing his own sword of pixy steel nearby. He would rather have it on his hip, but this was his home, damn it. He shouldn’t need to wear it inside. Yet here he was with a strange pixy in his main room.

Jerrimatt, all of three years old, was flitting like a firefly on Brimstone. Reaching up, Jenks caught his foot and dragged him down. “He is wearing red,” Jenks reminded him, glad they hadn’t drawn blood from the hapless pixy, wide-eyed and scared. “He gets passage.”

“He doesn’t want passage,” Jerrimatt protested, and Jixy nodded. “He was just sitting there! He says he wants to talk to you.”

“Plotting,” Jixy added suspiciously. “Hiding behind a color of truce. He’s pixy trash.” She threatened to smack him, stopping only when Jenks sent his wings clattering in disapproval.

The intruder stood with his feet meekly on the floor, his wings closed against his back, and glancing uneasily at Jumoke. His red hat of truce was in his hands, fingers going around and around the brim. “I wasn’t plotting,” he said indignantly. “I have my own garden.” Again, his gaze landed on Jumoke in question, and Jenks felt a prick of anger.

“Then why are you looking at ours?” Jhem demanded, oblivious to the intruder’s prejudice against Jumoke’s dark hair and eyes. But when Jhem went to push him, Jenks buzzed a warning again. Eyes down, Jhem dropped back. His children were wonderful, but it was hard to teach restraint when quick sword-point justice was the only reason they survived.

At a loss, Jenks extended a hand to the ruffled pixy as his children watched sullenly. The pixy buck before him looked about twelve or thirteen, old enough to be on his own and trying to start a family, married by the clean and repaired state of his clothes. He was healthy and well-winged, though they were now blue with the lack of circulation and pressed against his back in submission. The unfamiliar sword in Jumoke’s grip led Jenks to believe the intruder’s claim to having a garden was likely not an exaggeration, even if it was fairy steel, not pixy. The young buck wasn’t poaching. So what did he want?

Jenks’s own suspicions rose. “Why are you here?” he asked, his focus sliding again to his own sword, set carelessly next to his tools. “And what’s your name?”

“Vincet,” the pixy said immediately, his eyes roving over the sunset gray ceiling. “You live in a castle!” he breathed as his wings rose slightly. “Where is everyone?”

Vincet, Jenks thought, wary even as he straightened with pride at Vincet’s words concerning his home. A six-letter name, and out on his own with cold steel. Pixies born early into a family had short names, those born later, the longest. Vincet was the fifth brood of newlings in his family to survive to naming. That he had a blade and a long name to his credit meant that his birth clan was strong. It was the children born late in a pixy’s life that suffered the most when their parents died and the clan fell apart. Most children with names longer than eight letters never made it. Jerrimatt, though…Jenks’s smile grew fond as he looked at the blond youngster scowling fiercely at Vincet. Jerrimatt, his birth brother, and both his birth sisters would survive. Matalina was stronger now that she wasn’t having children anymore. One or two more seasons, and all her children would survive her. It was what she prayed for.

Not knowing why he trusted Vincet, Jenks gestured for his children to relax, and they began shoving one another. The earth’s chill soaked into Jenks now that he wasn’t moving, and he wished he’d started a fire.

“I heard you investigate things,” Vincet blurted, his wings lifting slightly as the kids ringing him drifted a few paces back. “I’m not poaching! I need your help.”

“You want Rachel or Ivy.” Jenks rose up to show him the way into the church. “Rachel is out,” he said, glad now he hadn’t accompanied her on her shopping trip as she searched for some obscure text her demonic teacher wanted. She’d be in the ever-after tomorrow for her weekly teaching stint with the demon, and of course she’d waited until the last moment to find the book. “But Ivy is here.”

“No!” Vincet exclaimed, his wings blurring but his feet solidly on the poker-chip floor, rightfully worried about Jenks’s kids. “I want your help, not some lunker’s. I don’t have anything they’d want, and I pay my debts. They’ll tell me to move. And I can’t. I want you.”

His kids stopped their incessant shoving, and Jenks’s feet touched the cold floor. A job? he thought, excitement zinging through him. For me? Alone?

“Will you help me?” Vincet asked, the dust from him turning a clear silver as he regained his courage and his wings shivered to try and warm himself. “My newlings are in danger. My wife. My three children. I don’t dare move now. It’s too late. We’ll lose the newlings. Maybe the children, too. There’s nowhere to go!”

Newlings, Jenks thought, his focus blurring. A newborn pixy’s life was so chancy that they weren’t given names or considered children until they proved able to survive. To bury a newling wasn’t considered as bad as burying a child. Though that was a lie. He and Matalina had lost their entire birthing the year they moved into the church, and Matalina hadn’t had any more since, thanks to his wish for sterility. It had probably extended Mattie’s life, but he missed the soft sounds newlings made and the pleasure he took in thinking up names as they grasped his finger and demanded another day of life. Newlings, hell. They were children, every one precious.

Jenks’s gaze landed squarely on Vincet, assessing him. Thirteen, with a lifetime of responsibility on him already. Jenks’s own short span had never bothered him—a fast childhood giving way to grief and heartache—until he’d seen the other side, the long adolescence and even longer life of the lunkers around them. It was so unfair. He’d listen.

And if he was listening, then he should probably make Vincet feel at home. As Rachel did when people knocked on her door, afraid and helpless.

A flush of uncertainty made his wings hum. “We’re entertaining,” he told his kids with a firmness he’d dredged up from somewhere, and they looked at one another, wings drooping and at a loss. Pixies didn’t tolerate another on their land unless marriage was being discussed, much less invite him into their diggings.

Smiling, Jenks gestured for Vincet to sit on the winter-musty cushions, trying to remember what he’d seen Rachel do when interviewing clients. “Um, give me his sword, and get me a pot of honey,” he said, and Jerrimatt gasped.

“H-honey…” the youngster stammered, and Jenks took the wooden-handled blade from Jhan. The fairy steel was evidence of a past battle won, probably before Vincet had left home.

“Tink’s burned her cookies, go!” Jenks exclaimed, waving at them. “Vincet wants my help. I don’t think he’s going to run me through. Give your dad an ounce of credit, will you?”

His cursing was familiar, and knowing everything was okay, they dove for the main tunnel, chattering like mad.

“I brought you all up,” he shouted after them, conscious of Vincet watching him. “You don’t think I know a guest from a thief?” he added, but they were gone, the sound of their wings and fast speech fading as they vanished up the tunnel. It grew darker as their dust settled and went out. Chilled, Jenks vibrated his wings for both warmth and light.

Making a huff, Jenks handed the pixy his sword, thinking he’d never done anything like that before. Vincet took it, seeming as unsure as Jenks was. Asking for help was in neither of their traditions. Change came hard to pixies when adherence to rigid customs was what kept them alive. But for Jenks, change had always been the curse that kept him going.

Jenks darted to a second, smaller hearth at the outskirts of the room for the box that held kindling. Insurance wouldn’t allow a fire inside the church, and the kit had never made it inside. And if I’m interviewing a client, he thought, worried he might not make a good impression, it should be by more than the glow of my dust. The interview should be given the honor of the main hearth in the center of the room.

Vincet slid his sword away, his wings shivering for warmth as he looked at the ceilings.

“Um, you want to sit down?” Jenks said again as he returned with the kindling, and Vincet gingerly lowered himself to the edge of the cushion beside the dark fire pit. Though never starting outright war, poaching was a plague upon pixy society. Even being used to bending the rules, Jenks felt a territorial surge when Vincet’s eyes scanned the dim room.

“I heard you lived in a castle of oak,” Vincet said, clearly in awe. “Where is everyone?”

Watching him, Jenks struck the rocks together, whispering the words to honor the pixies who first stole a live flame and to ask for a prosperous season. Matalina should be at his side as he started the season’s first flame, and he felt a pang of worry, wondering if it was wrong to do this without her.

“Right now we’re living in the church,” he said as an ember caught the charred linen, glowing as he added bits of fluff. “We’re going to move out this week.” I hope.

Vincet’s wings stilled. “You live inside. With…lunkers?”

Smiling, Jenks began placing small sticks. With an instinctive shift of the muscles at the base of his wings, he modified the dust he was laying down to make it more flammable. It caught immediately, and stray bits floated up like motes of stars. “For the winter so we don’t have to hibernate. I’ve seen snow,” he said proudly. “It burns, almost, and turns your fingers blue.”

Perhaps I could turn one of the storage rooms into an office? he thought as he set the first of the larger sticks on the flames and rose from his knees. But the thought of Matalina’s eyes, pained as strangers violated their home repeatedly, made him wince. She was a grand woman, saying nothing when his fairy-dusted schemes burned in his brain. Better to ask Rachel to bury a flowerpot upside down in the garden beside the gate at the edge of the property. Hang a sign out or something. If he was going to help Cincinnati’s pixies, he should be prepared.

“I need your help,” Vincet said again, and Jenks’s dust rivaled the firelight.

“We don’t hire ourselves out for territory disputes,” Jenks said, not knowing what else the pixy buck could want.

“I’d not ask,” Vincet said, clearly affronted as his wings slipped a yellow dust. “If I can’t hold a piece of ground, I don’t deserve to garden it. My claim is strong. My wife and I have land, three terrified children from last year, and six newlings. I had seven yesterday.”

Though the young pixy’s voice was even, his smooth, childlike face clenched in heartache. Seeing his pain, Jenks settled back, impressed that this was his second season as a father, and he had managed to raise three children already. It had taken him and Matalina two seasons to get their first newlings past the winter, and no newlings at all had survived that third winter. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Food is hard at this time of year.”

Vincet had his head bowed, mourning. “It’s not the food. We have enough, and both Noel and I would gladly go hungry to feed our children. It’s the statue.” His head came up, and Jenks felt a stab of concern at Vincet’s haunted expression. “You’ve got to help me—you work with a witch. It’s magic. It’s driving my daughter mad in her sleep, and last night, when I kept her awake, it killed one of my newlings.”

Jenks’s wings angled to catch the heat from the fire, and a sudden surge of warmth drove out the chill that had taken him. A statue? Leaning forward, Jenks wished he had a clipboard or a pencil like Ivy always had when she interviewed clients. He didn’t know what to say, but a pen always made Ivy look like she knew what she was doing. “A statue?” he prompted, and Vincet bobbed his head, his blond hair going everywhere.

“That’s how we got the garden,” he said, his words faster now that Jenks was listening. “It’s in a park. The flower beds abandoned. No sign of pixy or fairy. We didn’t know why. Last year, we held a spot of ground in the hills, but lunkers cut it down, built a house, and didn’t put in any flowers or trees to replace what they destroyed. I barely got my family out alive when the dozers came. Noel—that’s my wife—was near her time. She couldn’t fly much. The park was empty. We didn’t know the ground was cursed. I thought it was goddess-sent, and now my children…The newlings…They’re dying in their sleep, burning up!”

Jenks crossed his knees, trying to look unaffected by Vincet’s outburst, but in reality, he was worried. Rachel always got as much information as she could before saying yes or no. He didn’t know what difference it made, but he asked, “What park are you in?”

Vincet licked his lips. “I don’t know. I’ve not heard anyone say the name of the place yet. I’ll take you there. It’s by a long set of steps in the middle of a grassy place. It was perfect. We took the flower beds, dug out a small room under the roots of a dogwood. Noel brought to life seven newlings. We were even thinking of naming them. Then Vi, my daughter, began sleepflying.”

Frowning, Jenks shivered his wings for some light as he sat across the fire from him. “Sleepflying? She’ll outgrow it. One of my sons spent a summer waking up in the garden more than his bed.” Jenks smiled. There was always some question if Jumoke had been sleepflying, or simply looking for solitude. His middle-brood son endured a lot of good-natured ribbing from his elder siblings due to his brown hair and hazel eyes, rare to the point of shame among pixies.

Vincet made a rude huff, the dust from his wings turning black. “Did your son scream in pain as his wings smoldered while he beat at a statue? Did his aura become sickly, and pale? My daughter isn’t sleepflying, she’s being attacked. I can’t wake her up until the moon passes its zenith. Even if I bend her wing backward. It’s been happening every night now that the moon is nearly full.”

Vincet’s face went riven with grief, and his head dropped. “Last night I kept her awake, and the statue attacked a newling. Noel held him as he died, unable to breathe, he was screaming so. It was…” The young pixy’s wings drooped, and he wiped his eyes, black dust slipping from his fingers when the tear dried. “I couldn’t wake him. We tried and tried, but he just kept screaming as his wings turned to powder and his dust burned inside him.”

Horrified, Jenks shifted on his cushion, not knowing what to say. Vincet’s child had burned alive?

Vincet met his eyes, begging without saying a word. “Noel is afraid to let the newlings sleep,” he whispered, his hands wringing and his wings still as he sat on Jenks’s winter-musty cushion. “My children are terrified of the dark. A pixy shouldn’t be afraid of the dark. It’s where we belong, under the sun and moon.”

Jenks’s paternal instincts tugged on him. Vincet wasn’t much older than Jax—his eldest now on his own. If he hadn’t seen Vincet’s fear, he would have said the pixy buck was dust-struck. Taking a stick as thick as his arm, Jenks knelt to put it on the fire, dusting it heavily to help it catch. “I don’t see how a statue can cause children to go wandering,” he said hesitantly, “much less set their dust on fire. Are you sure that’s the cause? Maybe it’s a mold or a fungus.”

Vincet’s dust turned a muddy shade of red as it pooled about his boots. “It’s not a mold or fungus!” he exclaimed, and Jenks eyed his sword. “It’s the statue! Nothing grows on it. It’s cursed! And why would her aura shift like that? Something is in her!”

Jenks’s wings hummed as he drew back from the hearth. Making a statue come to life to torment pixies didn’t sound like witch magic, but there were other things that hadn’t come out of the closet when the pixies, vampires, and witches had—things that would cause humans to raze the forests and plow the abandoned smaller towns into dust if they knew. But a statue? And why would a statue want to destroy itself? Unless…something was trapped in it?

“Have you felt anything?” he asked, and Vincet glanced at the dark tunnel behind him.

“No.” He shifted uncomfortably, looking at his sword. “Neither has Noel. I’ve nothing to give you but my sword, but I’d gladly hand it over to you if you’ll help us. I’m lost. I can defend my land from fairies, hummers, crows, and rats, but I can’t see what is killing my children. Please, Jenks. I’ve come such a long way. Will you help me?”

Embarrassed, Jenks looked at the young man’s sword as Vincet held it out to him, his face riven with helplessness. “I won’t take another man’s steel,” Jenks said gruffly, and the young pixy went terrified.

“I have nothing else…” he said, the tip of the sword falling to rest on his knees.

“Now, I wouldn’t say that,” Jenks said, and Vincet’s wings filled the room with the sound of a thousand bees and the glow of the sun. “You have two hands. Can you make a dragonfly hut out of a flowerpot?”

Vincet’s hope turned to disgust. “I’ll not take charity,” he said, standing up with his sword in a tight grip. “And I’m not stupid. You have a castle and a large family. You can make a dragonfly hut yourself.”

“No!” Jenks said, standing up after him. “I want an office on the edge of the property, on the street side of the wall that divides the garden from the road. Can you build me that? Under the lilac? And paint me a sign if I give you the letters for it? It’s not garden work, and I can’t ask my children to make me an office. My wife would pluck my wings!”

Vincet hesitated. His eyes shut in a slow blink, and when they opened, hope shone again. “I can do that.”

Smiling, Jenks wondered if Jax had made half as honorable a man. The dust-caked idiot had run off, poorly trained, with a thief. Jenks’s last words to him had been harsh, and it bothered him, for once a child left the garden, he was gone forever. Usually. But Jenks’s kids were changing that tradition, too. “I’ll take a look,” Jenks said. “Me and my partner, Bis,” he added in a sudden thought. Rachel never went on a run without backup. He should take someone, too. “If I can help you, then you’ll build me an office out of a flowerpot.”

Looking up at him, Vincet nodded, relief a golden dust slipping from him. “Thank you,” he said, sliding his sword away with a firm intent. “Can you come now?”

Jenks looked askance at the ceiling to estimate the light. The sun was down by the looks of it, and Bis would be awake. “Absolutely. But, ah, I have to let my wife know where I’m going.”

Vincet sighed knowingly, and together they flew up the short passage to the sun, leaving the fire to go out by itself.

PIXY SITUATIONS, INQUIRE HERE, Jenks thought as he guided Vincet to the garden wall to sit with Jumoke while he talked with Matalina. What harm could ever come of that?

2

Hands on his hips to maintain his balance, Jenks shifted his wing angle to keep his position as the night wind gusted against him. Before him, the distant evening traffic was a background hum to the loud TVs, radios, and phone conversations beating on his ears in the dark, coming from the brightly lit townhouses across the street. Behind him were the soft sounds of a wooded park. The noise from the nearby city was almost intolerable, but the small garden space with its two statues and profusion of flowers in the middle of the city was worth the noise pollution. The barrage was likely reduced to low thumps and rumbles underground where Vincet had begun to make a home for his young family.

His middle was empty, and as he waited for Vincet to return from telling Noel they were back, Jenks fumbled in a waist pack for a sticky wad of nectar, honey, and peanut butter. His human partners were clueless, but if he didn’t eat every few hours, he’d suffer. What Rachel and Ivy didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“That’s the statue, eh?” he said when Vincet rejoined him and they both came to rest on the back of a nearby bench. It was across the sidewalk from Vincet’s flower beds, and staying off the greenery made both of them happier—even if he had been invited and was wearing his red bandanna like a belt. He hesitated, and then thinking it might be required as part of his new “helping” role, he offered Vincet a sweetball. He’d never given food to anyone outside his family before. It felt odd, and Vincet blinked at him, clearly shocked at the offer.

“No, thank you,” he said, looking confused. “Um. Yes, that’s the statue.” Vincet pointed at the closest statue, and Jenks slipped the second sweetball away. “It won’t attack until the moon is higher,” Vincet added, more at ease now that the food was put away. Wings shivering, he glanced up at the moon, a day shy of full. “It attacks at midnight, not the lunkers’ clocked midnight, but the real midmoon when it’s at its zenith.”

Jenks’s attention dropped to the twin statues spaced about ten feet apart, surrounded by new annuals and low shrubs. Both had a Greek look about them, with a classic beauty of smooth lines and draping robes. The older statue was black in places from pollution, making it almost more beautiful. Carved ringlets of hair pulled back and braided framed a young-looking face, almost innocent in her expression. Her stone robes did little to hide her admittedly shapely legs from her thighs down. There was a flaccid water sack on her belt, and her fingers were wrapped about the butt of a sword, pushing into the pedestal at her toe.

The second statue was of a young man with smooth, almost feminine features. An empty ankle sheath was on one bare leg not covered by his stone robe. He was lithe, thin, with a hint of wild threat in his chiseled expression. The sign between them, framed by newly planted, honey-smelling alyssum, said that both statues had been donated by the Kalamack Foundation to commemorate Cincinnati gaining city status in 1819, but only the statue of the woman looked old. The other was a pearly white as if brand-new. Or freshly scrubbed, maybe.

A distant argument over burned rice became audible from over the grass between the garden and the nearby townhouses. Tink’s tampons, humans were noisy. It was as if they didn’t have a place in the natural order anymore, so they made as much noise as they could to prove they were alive. His garden and graveyard stretching an entire block within the suburbs, now made his by human law and a deed, was a blessing he’d come to take for granted. Rachel and Ivy never seemed to make much noise. ’Course, they slept a lot, and Ivy was a vampire, if living. She never made much noise to begin with.

“Did you clean it?” he asked Vincet, and the young pixy shook his head, looking scared.

“No. It was like that when we got here. Vi wakes as if in a trance, mindless as she hits the base of the statue until the burning brings her down. Then she screams until the moon shifts from the top of the sky and the statue lets her go.”

Jenks scratched the base of his wings, puzzled. Though he didn’t move from the back of the bench, his wings sent a glitter of dust over them. Holy crap, he had to pee again.

Vincet pulled his frightened gaze from the white stone glinting in the light of a nearby streetlamp. “I’d fight if I could. I’d die defending my children if I could see it. Is it a ghost?”

“Maybe.” Pulling his hands from his hips, Jenks crossed his arms. It was a bad habit he’d gotten from Rachel, and he immediately put his fists back on his hips where they belonged.

A sudden noise in the trees above them caught them unawares, and while Jenks remained standing on the back of the bench, Vincet darted away, clearly surprised. It was Bis, returning from his circuit of the park under Jenks’s direction. Jenks was used to giving orders, but not while on a run, and he nervously hoped he was doing this right.

With a soft hush of sliding leather and the scent of iron, the cat-size gargoyle landed on the back of the bench, his long claws scrabbling for purchase. Bis could cling to a vertical slab of stone with no problem, slip through a crack a bat would balk at, but trying to balance on the thin back of the slatted bench was more than he could manage. With an ungraceful hop, he landed on the concrete sidewalk between the bench and the statues.

“Nothing larger than an opossum near here,” the gray, smooth-skinned kid said, his ears pricked to make the white fur lining them stick out. He had another tuft on the tip of his lionlike tail, but apart from that, his pebbly patterned skin was smooth, able to change color to match what was around him and creep Jenks out. He had a serious face that looked something like a pug’s, shoved in and ugly, but Jenks’s kids loved him. And his cat, Rex, was enamored of the church’s newest renter. Jenks sighed. Once the feline found out Bis could kick out the BTUs when he wanted to, adoration was a foregone conclusion.

Bis was too young to be on his own, and after having been kicked off the basilica for spitting on people, he’d found his way to the church, slipping Jenks’s sentry lines like a ghost. Bis slept all day like a proverbial stone, and he paid his rent by watching the grounds during the four hours around midnight when Jenks preferred to sleep. He ate pigeons. Feathers and all. Jenks was working on changing that. At least the feathers part. He was working on getting Bis to wear some clothes, too. Not that anything showed, but if Bis was wearing something, Jenks might catch him sneaking around on the ceiling. As it was, all he ever saw was claw marks.

“Thanks, Bis,” Jenks said, standing straighter and trying to look like he was in charge. “You grew up around stone. What’s your take on the statue? Is it haunted?”

It might have been a jest if anyone else had said it, but both of them knew there were such things as ghosts. Rachel’s latest catastrophe, Pierce, was proof of that, but he had been completely unnoticed when bound to his tombstone. Only when it had cracked had Pierce escaped to harass them. Get a body. Become demon-snagged. Confuse Rachel into a love/hate relationship. Something was wrong with the girl. But now that he thought about it, maybe that’s why Vincet’s daughter was trying to break the statue. Tink’s a Disney whore, not another ghost.

The gargoyle flicked his whiplike tail in a shrug. His powerful haunches bunched, and Vincet darted back with a flash of pixy dust when Bis landed atop the statue in question, his skin lightening to match the marble perfectly. Looking like part of the statue itself, he scraped a claw down a fold of chiseled hair. Bis brought it to his nose, sniffing, then tasting. “High-quality granite,” he said, his voice both high and rumbling. “From Argentina. It was first worked hundreds of years ago, but it’s only been here for a hundred and twenty.”

Impressed, Jenks raised his eyebrows. “You got all that from tasting it?”

Smirking to show his black teeth, the kid pointed a claw to a second sign. “Just the high-quality part. There’s a plaque.”

Vincet sighed, and Jenks’s wings went red.

Wheezing his version of laugher, the gargoyle hopped to the spot of light on the sidewalk. “Seriously, something is wrong. Both statues are on the ley line running through the park. No one puts two statues on a ley lines. It pins it down and weird stuff happens.”

“There’s a line?” Jenks asked, seeing Vincet looking understandably lost. “Where?”

Bis pointed at nothing Jenks could see, cocking his ugly, bald head first one way, then the other as he focused on the flower beds. “Lines don’t move, but they shift like the tide under the moon—unless they’re pinned down. Something is absorbing energy from the line—right between the statues where it’s not moving.”

“It’s the statue,” Vincet said, glancing at the shadowed hole beside the dogwood tree where his family lived. “It comes alive when the moon is high and the pull is the strongest. It’s possessing my daughter!”

“I don’t think it’s the statue,” Jenks murmured, hands on his hips again. “I think it’s something trapped in it.” Puzzled, he stared at nothing. His partner Rachel was a witch. She could see ley lines, pull energy off them, and use it to do magic. Bis could see ley lines, too, which made Jenks doubly glad he’d brought Bis with him. “You can see it, huh?” Jenks asked.

“It’s more like hear it,” Bis said, his big red eyes blinking apologetically.

“It’s almost time,” Vincet said, clearly scared as he glanced up at the nearly full moon with his fingers on the hilt of his sword. “See? As soon as the moon hits that branch, it will attack Vi. Jenks, I can’t move my family. We’ll lose the newlings. It will break Noel’s heart.”

“That’s why we’re here,” he said, putting a hand on Vincet’s shoulder, thinking it felt odd to give comfort to a pixy not of his kin. The pixy buck looked too young for this much grief, his smooth features creased in a pain that most lunkers didn’t feel until they were thirty or forty, but pixies lived only twenty years if they were lucky. “I won’t let any of your children die tonight,” he added.

Bis cleared his throat as he scraped his claws the sidewalk, silently pointing out the danger in making promises that he couldn’t guarantee. Vincet’s wings drooped, and Jenks took his hand from his shoulder. “Maybe I should go to sleep,” Jenks said softly. “If you kept all your children awake, it would have no choice but to attack me.”

“Too late.” Bis made a shuffling hop to land on the bench’s seat, wings spread slightly to look ominous. “The resonance of the line just shifted.”

“Sweet mother of Tink,” Vincet whispered, wings flashing red as he looked at his front door. “It’s coming. I have to wake them!”

“Wait!” Jenks flew after him and caught his arm. Their wings almost tangled, and Vincet yanked out of his grip.

“They’ll die!” he said angrily.

“Wake the newlings.” Jenks’s hand dropped to the butt of his sword. “Let the children sleep. I’m sorry, but they’ll survive. I’ll protect Vi as if she was my own.”

Vincet looked torn, not wanting to trust another man with his children’s lives. Panicked, he turned to a secluded knoll and the freshly turned earth of his newling’s grave, still glowing faintly from the dust of tears. “I can’t…”

“Vincet, I have fifty-four kids,” Jenks coaxed. “I can keep your child alive. You asked me to help. I have to talk to whatever is trapped in that statue. Please. Bring her to me.”

Hesitating, Vincet’s wings hummed like a thousand bees in the dark.

“I promise,” Jenks said, only now understanding why Rachel made stupid vows she knew she might not be able to keep. “Let me help you.”

Vincet’s wings turned a sickly blue. “I have no choice,” he said, and trailing a gray sparkle of dust to light the dew-wet plants, he flew to his home and disappeared under the earth.

Watching him, Jenks started to swear with one-word sentences. What if he couldn’t do this? He was a stupid-ass to have promised that. He was as bad as Rachel. Angry, he fingered the butt of his sword and glared at the statue. Bis edged closer, his eyes never leaving the cold stone glinting in the moon and lamplight. “What if I’m making a mistake?” Jenks asked.

“You aren’t,” the gargoyle said, then stiffened, his glowing eyes widening as he pointed a knobby finger at the statue. “Look at that!”

“Holy crap, what is it doing?” Jenks exclaimed, the heartache of a child’s death gone as the moonlight seeping through the branches brushed the statue, seeming to make it glow. No, he thought as a gust of wind pushed him back. The stone really was glowing, like it had a second skin. It wasn’t the moonlight!

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jenks said, dropping to land beside Bis on the bench.

“Yeah.” The kid sounded scared. “Something’s trapped in that stone, and it’s still alive. Jenks, that’s not a ghost. This isn’t right. Look, I’ve got goose bumps!”

Not looking at Bis’s gray, proffered arm, Jenks muttered, “Yeah, me too.”

Across the street, three TVs exploded into the same laugh track. The glow about the statue deepened, becoming darker, less like a moonbeam and more like a shadow. It stretched, pulling away to maintain the same shape as the statue, looking like a soul trying to slip free.

“Fewmets!” Bis barked, and with a ping of energy Jenks felt press against his wings, the shadow separated from the statue and vanished. “Did you see that? Did you freaking see that!” Bis yelled, wingtips shaking.

“It’s gone!” Jenks said, unable to stop a shudder.

The bench shook as Bis hopped to the sidewalk and tucked under the slatted wood. “Not gone, loose,” he said from underneath, worrying Jenks even more. “Hell’s bells, I can hear it. It sounds like bird feathers sliding against each other, or scales. No, tree branches and bones.”

Uneasy, Jenks slipped through the slats of the bench to alight beside Bis on the sidewalk where the heat of the day still lingered, watching the same empty air that the gargoyle was staring at. A thin lament rose from the small hummock of Vincet’s home. The sound hit Jenks and twisted, and he wasn’t surprised when the glow about the door brightened, and in a glittering yellow pixy dust, Vincet emerged with a small child in his arms.

She was in a white nightgown, her fair hair down and tousled. Two wide-eyed children clung to the door, a matronly silhouette beside them, crying and unable to leave the newlings.

The memory of the past night’s torment was on Vincet when he joined them under the bench. “It’s Vi,” he said, grief-stricken. “Please, you said you’d help.”

Jenks awkwardly took another man’s child, feeling how light she was, stifling a shudder when the girl’s unnatural, silver-tinted aura hit him. A piercing wail came from her throat, too anguished to be uttered by someone so young. Bis’s ears pinned to his skull, and Jenks shifted his grip, binding her swinging arms and tightening his hold on her.

“Please make it stop,” Vincet said, touching his daughter’s face to wipe her dusty tears.

Though it went against his instincts, Jenks brought the girl to his shoulder. Like a switch, the child’s wailing shifted to an eerie silence. Bis hissed and backed up, the scent of iron sifting over them as his claws scraped the sidewalk until he found the earth.

Jenks shivered. Not knowing what he’d find, he pulled the child from his shoulder and held her at arm’s length.

At the shift of her weight, the child opened her eyes. They were black, with silvery pupils—like the sky and the moon—and her weird-ass aura.

“Trees,” whispered Vi, clearly not Vi at all. Her voice was wispy, like wind in branches. “This cold stone is killing me.”

Bis hissed as he clung to a tree like a misshapen squirrel, black teeth bared and tail switching. Vincet stood helpless, wings drooped and silent tears falling from him to dry into a black, glittery dust. He reached out, and Vi screamed wildly, “I have to get out!”

Jenks held her with her bare feet dangling. It wasn’t Vincet’s daughter speaking. Under the hatred streaming from Vi’s eyes was a pinched brow and a fevered panting. Whatever gripped Vi was drawing the ley line through her. That’s why she burned.

“Something is wrong with it,” Bis hissed, half hidden by the tree. “The statue is sucking up the line like it’s feeding off it, and I can hear it going right into her.”

“Who are you?” Jenks whispered.

The young girl’s eyes rolled to the moon. “Free me, Rhenoranian!” she begged it. “I beg you! Have I not suffered enough!”

Rhenoranian? Jenks’s wings blurred into motion. It sounded like a demon’s name. His hands holding Vi were warm from her heat, and he gently set her down, catching her shoulders as she swayed, oblivious to him. “What are you?” he asked, changing his demand as he knelt before her. “You’re hurting the girl. Maybe I can help, but you’re hurting Vi.”

Vi’s eyes tore from the moon as if seeing him for the first time. “You can hear me?” she whispered as her wings smoldered, limp against her back. Eyes focusing on Jenks, Vincet, and Bis, Vi seemed to shake herself. “Gracious Rhenoranian! You are wise and forgiving!”

Jenks rocked backward when Vi flung herself at him, her little arms encircling his knees. Bis hissed at the sudden movement, and even Vincet dropped back.

“Please, help me,” she babbled, her long hair tangled as she gazed up at Jenks. “I’ll do anything you ask. I’m trapped in that statue—a moon-touched nymph put me there, jealous of my attentions to her sisters. Rhenoranian sent you. I know he did. I’ve waited so long. Break the statue. Quick, before she comes back! She’s going to come back! Please!” Vi begged.

Vincet watched wide-eyed as Jenks disentangled himself, pushing her off him and making her stand up. His hands warmed where they touched her shoulders, and he jerked away. “You’re burning the child,” he said. “Stop, and maybe I can help.”

Anger flashed in the girl’s face, then vanished. “There’s no time. Break the statue!”

“You are killing my daughter!” Vincet shouted. “You already killed my son!”

Vi’s eyes went wide. Taking a deep breath, she glanced at the second statue of the woman. His jailer, probably, and likely dead and gone. Nymphs had vanished during the Industrial Revolution, long before the Turn, brought down by pollution. “I’m sorry,” she panted, but the edges of Vi’s wings were starting to smolder. “I didn’t know I was hurting anyone. I…I can’t help it. It’s Rhenoranian’s blood. It keeps me alive, but it burns. I’ve been burning forever.”

Rhenoranian’s blood? Did he mean the ley line?

Behind them, Bis hissed. “Jenks?” he questioned. “I don’t like this. It’s eating the line. That’s wrong like three different ways.”

“Of course it’s wrong! That’s why it burns!” Vi shouted, then went silent, frustrated. “Break the statue and let me out, and I’ll never bother the child again.”

Eyes narrowing in suspicion, Jenks clattered his wings in acknowledgment to Bis. It sounded almost like a threat. Let it out or else. But the line energy running through Vi was making her tremble, and the higher the moon got, the worse it became. Soon, she would be screaming in pain, if Vincet was right, and his chance to talk to it would be gone.

“Tell me what you are,” he said, grasping her wrist and bring her attention to him, but when Vi looked at him, Jenks let go, not liking what lay in the depths of her eyes.

“I’m Sylvan, a dryad,” Vi said. “The nymph imprisoned me unfairly. Punishing me for my attentions to her sisters. She believes she’s a goddess. Completely touched, but the demons didn’t stop her. Why do you hesitate? Break my statue. Let me out!”

Jenks blinked, surprised. A dryad? In a city? Between him and the statue, Bis dropped to the grass, clearly amazed as well. “You’re supposed to live in trees,” Jenks said. “What are you doing in a statue?”

Twitching in pain, the child looked at Bis then back to Jenks, assessing almost. “I told you, the nymph put me there. She’s touched in the head. But I survived. I learned to live on the energy right from a ley line instead of that filtered from a living tree. Though every moment I exist as if burning in Hell itself, I can survive in dead stone. I beg you, break my statue. Free me!” Vi’s eyes went to her father with no recognition. “I promise I’ll leave you pixies in peace. Forgive me for the agony upon the child. I cannot help it.”

Still, Jenks hesitated as he looked at Vi, the hope in her flushed face too deep for her years. Something wasn’t right.

Jenks pinned his wings when the wind gusted. He looked up, the scent of honey and gold tickling a memory he’d never had. Vi’s eyes widened. “Too late!” she shrieked. Darting to Vincet, she kicked his shin. The pixy yelped, dropping his sword to grasp his leg. Even as Jenks flung himself into the air, Vi snatched the sword up, running, not flying, to the statue. Her nightclothes furled behind her like a ghost, and, screaming, she swung the blade at the stone. With a ping, the fairy steel broke. Using the broken hilt like a dagger, she beat at it, trying to chip the stone away.

“Jenks!” Bis shouted, and Jenks turned, bewildered but not alarmed. Until he saw what the gargoyle was pointing at.

A robed, barefoot woman stood in the middle of the sidewalk, heart-shaped face aghast as she stared at the hush of cars at the edge of the park. Lungs heaving as if in pain, she put a hand to her chest and looked at the distant buildings, their lights twinkling brighter than the stars. A sword was in her grip, and she appeared exactly like the second statue, even down to the braid her black ringlets were arranged in, shining in the light as if oiled. And her aura was shiny?

“It’s her!” Bis shouted, bringing the woman’s gaze to them.

“Who dares defile my sacred grove to free Sylvan?” she intoned, robe furling as she gestured to Bis. “Is it you?” Her arm dropped, and she peered at him in the dark. “What are you?” she asked. “A new demon dog? Come into the light.”

“Let me go!” shrieked Vi, struggling now in Vincet’s arms. “Let me go!”

Jenks darted to help Vincet, and still she fought them, her skin red and hot to the touch. At his nod, Bis awkwardly went to stand in the middle of the sidewalk between them.

“I’m a gargoyle, not a dog,” he said, fidgeting like the teenager he was. “Who are you?”

The woman spun a slow circle, dismissing him. “Someone tried to free Sylvan, woke me from my rest. Did you see who it was, honorable…ah…gargoyle?”

“It was me,” Jenks said, grunting when Vi’s foot escaped his grip and kicked him. “What’s it to you?” Turning to Vincet, he screwed his face up. “I gotta go talk to her. Can you hold her alone?”

Vincet nodded, and together they got the girl facedown on the manicured grass as she howled. Looking miserable, the young father sat on her, wincing as her screams grew violent.

Satisfied, Jenks rose up into the air to the woman’s level, frowning when he saw her amusement in her steely eyes. They were silver, like the moon, and just as warm. “A pixy?” she said, laughing. “Leave my sacred grove, little sprite. Return to it, and you will die. Your children will die. I will hunt you down and destroy the very earth you ever walked upon. Go.”

Fists on his hips, Jenks sifted a red dust that made it all the way to the sidewalk. “Sprite? Did you just call me a sprite, Little Miss Shiny Aura? What did you do? Eat a roll of tinfoil?”

Claws scraping, Bis edged closer, his white-tufted ears pinned to his head in submission. “Jenks,” he hissed, not taking his eyes off the woman. “We should go. She’s doing something weird with the line.”

But Jenks flitted almost to her nose. She smelled like violet sunshine, and the gold pin holding her robe shut sparkled. “Did you just threaten me, little prissy pants?” he shot out.

Her nostrils flared, and her hand gripped her sword tighter. “You mock me? I am Daryl, and you are warned!”

Jenks snickered, his own hand on the butt of his sword. “I think if you think I’m going to fly away and let you keep some helpless dryad forever imprisoned, burning in a ley line, you got your toga too tight, babe.”

Mouth open, she put a hand to her chest. “You…you defy me?” she said, wheezing slightly, clearly not doing well. “Do you know who I am!”

Glancing at Bis, who was silently looking up at him, pleading with him to be nice, he said, “You look asthmatic, is what you look like. Forget your inhaler at the temple?”

“I am Daryl!” she stated, then coughed. “Goddess of the woods. I’ve learned of steel and leather to defend my sisters, and you are…warned!” Turning away, she struggled to breathe.

“See, she’s touched!” Vi yelled from under Vincet. Struggling, the little girl got an arm free. “Go crying to your demon, Daryl! You’re a concubine! A minor nymph with delusions of goddesshood!”

Jenks’s eyes widened as the woman’s coughing suddenly ceased. Head turning to the base of Sylvan’s statue, she straightened. A murderous look was on her, and Jenks felt a moment of panic. “Get out of that pixy, Sylvan,” she intoned. “Now!”

Straining, the little girl gestured rudely. “Ay gamisou!” she yelled defiantly.

Jenks had no idea what she had said, but he filed it away for future use when the woman staggered back, clearly appalled.

“Jenks!” Bis whispered from under him. “Let’s go!”

“I promised to help!” Jenks said, fascinated at the color the woman was turning in her outrage. “And I’m not going to leave Sylvan stuck in a statue by some nymph!”

Daryl’s attention flicked to Jenks and Bis, then back to Vi. “I will not allow you to hurt another, Sylvan!” she said loudly, gesturing.

Bis reached up, wings spread as he half jumped to snag Jenks from the air and pull him down. Bis’s warmth hit him as Jenks cowered in his hand while a wave of nothing he could see passed over them, pressing against his wings and driving the blood out. His wings collapsed for an instant, then rebounded on his next heartbeat.

Vi screamed, the sound reaching deep into Jenks and driving him to wiggle from Bis’s fingers. His head poked free, and he saw Vincet spring into the air with his daughter. Her dust had taken on a deathly shade of black, bursting into a white-hot glow as it fell from her. Again Vi’s scream tore the silence of the night as Daryl clenched her fist, her face savage with bloodlust.

“She’s killing her!” Vincet shouted, terrified. “Jenks, she’s killing my daughter!”

“Get her away from the line!” the gargoyle cried out as he stood his ground. “I can see the energy flowing into her. You have to get Vi out of the line!”

Jenks’s lips parted. Cursing himself as a fool, he darted to Vincet, snatching the pain-racked child to him and throwing himself straight up. The line. The entire garden was in the line between the statues! Get her far enough away, and the connection would break!

Vi fought him as his ears popped painfully, thumping her fists into his chest and squirming until she suddenly went terrifyingly limp. “Vi!” Jenks shouted, scrambling to catch her as she threatened to slip from him, a good forty feet up. Her skin was hot, and her face was pale in the glow of his own dust. But a profound peace was on her face, and as he held her far above the dark city, fear struck him deep. The silver tint to her aura was gone.

“Vi,” he whispered, jiggling her as the night cocooned them. “Vi, wake up. It’s over.” Oh God. Had he failed her? Was she dying? Killed by his own shortsightedness? Another man’s child dead in his arms because of his failing?

Vi’s lips parted, sucking in air like it was water. Her eyes flashed open, green and full of terror in the light of the moon.

“Tink save you, you’re okay,” he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. She was herself. Sylvan was no longer in her thoughts. That terror of a woman no longer burned her.

With a frightened whimper, Vi threw herself at him, her thin arms cold as they wrapped around his neck. “Don’t let him hurt me,” she begged as she cried, her little body shaking. “Please, don’t let the statue hurt me anymore!”

A clear, healthy glow enveloped them as Jenks held her close, his hand against the back of her head as he whispered it was over, that she was okay, and he was taking her to her papa. He promised her that the statue wouldn’t hurt her again and that Uncle Jenks would take care of everything. Foolish promises, but he couldn’t stop himself.

Uncle Jenks, he thought, wondering why the term had fallen into his mind but feeling it was right. But below them, Daryl waited on the dark sidewalk. And Jenks—was pissed.

Jaw clenching, he descended more slowly than he wanted in order to give her younger ears a chance to adjust. Vincet met them halfway down, his wings clattering and dusting in fear until he saw Vi’s tears. With a cry of joy, the grateful man took his daughter. Vi’s sobs only strengthened his resolve.

“Get your family to ground and stay there,” Jenks said grimly.

“I can help,” Vincet said, even as Vi clung desperately to him.

“I know you can. I’ll take the field, you take the hearth,” he said, falling back on the battle practices of driving off invading fairies. One always stayed in earth to defend the hearth—to the end if it came to that.

Vincet looked as if he was going to protest, then probably remembering his sword was broken at the base of the statue, he nodded, darting away with Vi to vanish beneath the dogwood.

Free, and anger burning in his wings, Jenks drew his sword and dropped to where Bis was clinging to Sylvan’s statue, hissing at Daryl as she stood in a spot of light with a satisfied smile.

“What the hell is wrong with you!” Jenks shouted, darting to a stop inches from the woman to make her jerk back. “You could have killed her! She’s only a year old!”

Daryl’s thin eyebrows rose. “A pixy?” she said haughtily, then stifled a cough. “Take your complaint to what demon will listen to you. Sylvan is in that statue, and there he will stay!”

“I’ll take my complaint to you!” Jenks shouted, poking his sword at her nose.

The woman shrieked, robes furling as she swung her fist to miss him completely. “You cut me! You filthy little mouse!”

Jenks darted back, only to dive in again to slice another cut under her eye. “I’m letting Sylvan go if only to piss you off! You look like a sorority sister in hell week with that discount sheet around you! What is that, a one-fifty thread count? My three-year-old can weave better than that.”

Clasping a hand over her eye, the woman shrieked, her voice echoing in the darkness. “I’ll destroy you for that!” she cried, spinning to keep Jenks in front of her.

“Jenks?” Bis said loudly, half hiding behind Sylvan’s statue. “Maybe we should leave the goddess alone.”

“Goddess!” Jenks pulled up a safe eight feet into the air. His sword glinted red in the lamplight, and his wings hummed. Cocky, he dropped back down. “She’s no goddess. She’s a whiny. Little. Girl.”

Angry at the woman’s lack of respect, Jenks slashed at her robes with each word.

“Uh, Jenks?” Bis warbled his creased face bunched in worry as she screeched.

“Get out of here!” Jenks yelled at her like she was a stray dog. “Go find a museum or something. That’s where you belong! Tell them Jenks sent you.”

Panting, the woman came to a halt, staring up at him. Her face was red, and determination was equally mixed with anger. A car door slammed in the distance. Someone had heard her and was coming across the wide expanse of lawn. Oblivious, the woman jumped straight up at him with a fierce yell.

“Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed, darting up. But the woman had sprung to her statue, scattering Bis and using it to make another leap for him. “Whoa! Lady. Chill out!” Jenks shouted as he darted to the nearby tree. Immediately he realized his mistake when Daryl leapt into the branches, following him.

“I am a goddess!” she screamed, her sword thunking into the branches as he dodged her. “You will die, pixy! Your name will be forgotten. Anyone who aligns themselves with Sylvan is a shade still walking!”

Maybe he went too far, Jenks wondered as her blade got closer with each swing, but before he could retreat, his wings unexpectedly froze. He had a glimpse of Daryl blowing at him with her lips pursed, and then he plummeted, falling through the leaves to the cement below.

“No!” Jenks exclaimed as the smacking of leaves against his back ceased and he dropped into free fall. A yelp escaped him when long, thin, gray fingers caught him, pulling him closer to the ashy scent of iron and dry stone. Above, Daryl scrambled to reach the ground.

“Bis!” Jenks said, dazed as he looked up to the gargoyle’s red eyes. “Good God. We have to get out of here!”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been telling you,” Bis said dryly.

In the distance, the sound of car doors slamming and the revving of an engine told him whoever it was, was now leaving. Bis landed again on Sylvan’s statue, shaking in fear. Carefully testing his wings, Jenks took to the air. Daryl was again on the sidewalk, her steely eyes watching them both in evaluation.

“You okay?” Bis said as his claws scratched the statue’s forehead.

“Yeah,” he said, stretching his shoulders and wondering if there was a remaining stiffness. “We have to get this bitch away from the garden before she hurts someone.”

“How?”

Bis was trembling, his eyes wide and whirling. Grinning, Jenks rose farther up into the air. “I’ll get her to follow me,” he said to the gargoyle, then turned to the woman. “Hey, bright eyes! What’s your problem with Sylvan? Did the dude bump uglies with one of your girlfriends?”

Jenks shifted his hips back and forth to make sure she knew what he was talking about, and Daryl’s eyes narrowed. With no warning, she came at him silently, her robes furling in the wind from her passage.

Adrenaline pushing him, Jenks darted into the green field, leading her away. The city was nearby. He’d get her among the buildings, then ditch her. The cops would pick her up for disturbing the peace. Inderland Security would love bringing in a thought-to-be-extinct species of Inderlander with a goddess complex, but that was their job.

Laughing, Jenks sped across the grass, dark and black with the night. A ripple of wind shifted under his wings, and he looked down. An eerie keening dove down upon him, and in a surge of panic, he found himself tossed in a sudden whirlwind.

His sense of direction vanished. Tumbling, the wind beat at him, almost a living force bending his wings and tearing his breath from his lungs. Starved for air and out of control, he fell out of the sky and slammed into the ground. The wind collapsed on him, bringing him to his knees. Eyes shut, he held his wings to his back, one hand gripping his sword, the other clenched upon the grass to keep him from spinning away.

Just as suddenly as it came upon him, the wind broke into a thousand pieces of shrill voice and vanished. Dazed, he looked up, still kneeling.

Daryl was standing over him, her silver eyes gleaming like a cat’s in the dark. Wheezing from the pollution, she raised her foot. “You are rude, and you will die.”

“Oh, shit…” Jenks whispered.

A dark gray streak slammed into her chest, and, stumbling, Daryl fell back.

“Bis!” Jenks exclaimed as the gargoyle swung back around, plucking him from the ground and holding him close. “Tink loves a duck, you’re a great backup!”

“You can’t fly,” Bis said breathlessly. “You’re too light. Let’s get out of here!”

“’Kay,” Jenks said, grateful but feeling somewhat sheepish. This was the kind of spot he was always getting Rachel out of. He didn’t like being carried, but if the woman could whistle up the wind, then he’d be better off with Bis. The moon had shifted, and Vincet and his family would be okay for another day. If the garden was sacred, Daryl wouldn’t be likely to tear it apart.

Behind them came an infuriated shriek, and Jenks cringed when the roar of the wind came again. Wiggling, he inched himself up to look over Bis’s shoulder, not liking the dips and swerves Bis was putting into his flight. Squinting, he looked behind him expecting to see a frustrated women standing alone, but the grass was empty. Satisfaction filled him. Until he saw the black, boiling cloud bearing down on them, rolling over the grass to leave it untouched.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed, seeing a tiny white figure at the center. “Bis, she’s flying! The freaky bitch is flying!”

Bis’s smooth wing beats faltered. Glancing back, he gulped. “She’s riding a ley line. Jenks, I don’t know how she’s doing it or what she is!”

Pointing at them with her sword, the woman clenched her teeth and grinned, clearly eager for battle. Her oiled ringlets lay flat, and her robe plastered to her like a second skin. The chugging of heavy air reverberated off the nearby buildings, but the trees were utterly still.

“Go!” shrilled Jenks, smacking Bis’s shoulder. “Go to ground!”

The heat off the street was a wave as they left the park. Town homes gave way to buildings, flashing past and reduced to blurs. Cars were moments of light and noise, and still she came on, leaving the sound of horns and folding metal in her wake. Glass shattered, and Jenks hunched into Bis’s protection, a new terror filling him as he realized that to take to the air now would be his death. Bis’s flight grew sickeningly erratic among the buildings, and Jenks looked behind him.

They weren’t going to make it.

“Down!” he screamed, voice lost in the shrieking wind. “Go to ground, Bis!”

Twisting wildly, Bis brought his wings in close, diving for a gutter drain.

“Oh-h-h-h-h no-o-o-o!” Jenks exclaimed, ducking his head.

Wings back, winging furiously in the sudden dark, Bis hit the wall with a grunt, sliding down to land in a sludge of water and goo. Putrid muck splashed up, coating Jenks in cold. Shaking his head, he lay on Bis and tried to figure out what happened.

I’m in a hole, he realized, his pulse hammering hard enough to shake him. I’m alive.

Above him, the wind shrieked, sounding like a woman screaming in battle. Bis shifted underneath him, and Jenks put a finger to his own lips when the gargoyle’s eyes opened. Together they listened to the destruction as glass shattered and heavy things hit the earth. Slowly the roaring wind faded to leave the frightened calls of people and the growing sounds of sirens.

Shaking, Bis began to wheeze in laugher. “Holy pigeon poop. That was close,” he said, sitting up slowly until Jenks took to the air.

Jenks’s flash of anger at Bis’s mirth dissolved as he realized they were okay and they would both live to see the sun rise. “Watch this! I’ll get her to follow me, Bis!” he said, shaking his wings until a sludgy dust spilled from him to light the hole.

Bis stood shin-deep in the muck, his skin shifting toward pink as he upped his body temp. Appreciating the warmth, Jenks moved to his shoulder and tried to wipe the muck off his clothes. Matalina wouldn’t be happy, and he enviously watched the mud dry and flake off Bis.

“Think she’s gone?” Bis asked as he gazed up to the rectangle of brighter dark.

Jenks darted to the opening and the fresher air to hover with his head in the opening. Hands on his hips, he whistled long and low. “She tore up the street,” he said loudly, looking up at the broken streetlights. “Power’s out. Cops are coming. Let’s get out of here.”

The scrabbling of claws made him shiver, and he made the quick flight to the sidewalk when Bis slid out like an octopus. Bis shook his wings and sniffed at his armpits, then turned black to remain unnoticed. The sirens were coming closer, seeming to pull the distraught people together.

Frowning, Bis somberly clicked his nails in a rhythm that Jenks recognized as Mozart as he took in the tossed cars and broken windows. Fingers shaking, Jenks wedged a sweetball out of his belt pack and sucked on it, replenishing his sugar level before he started to burn muscle.

“Do you think all nymphs were like that?” Jenks asked, glad the muck hadn’t gotten to his snack.

“Beats me.”

With a push of his wings, Bis was airborne. Jenks joined him, shifting to fly above him where they could still talk. The night air felt heavy and warm, unusually muggy as they flew straight down the street and to the park. Only a small section of the city was without power, and it looked like the park was untouched.

“Maybe we should check on Vincet,” Jenks said, and the gargoyle sighed, turning back to the cooler grass to check, but Jenks was already thinking about tomorrow. He had promised to help Vincet, and he would—even if it was a dryad trapped in a statue by a warrior nymph.

He had to help these people, and he had to do so before midnight tomorrow.

3

Even from inside the desk, Jenks could hear Cincinnati waking up across the river. Under the faint radio playing three houses down, the deep thumps of distant industry were like a heartbeat only pixies and fairies could hear. The hum of a thousand cars reminded him of the beehive he’d tormented when he was a child and living in the wild stretches between the surviving cities. It wasn’t a bad life, living in the city—if you could find food.

Worried, he sat in his favorite chair, thinking as his family lived life around him. The doll furniture he reclined in had been purchased last year at a yard sale for a nickel, but after stripping it down, reupholstering it with spider silk, and stuffing it with down from the cottonwood at the corner, he thought it was nicer than anything he’d seen in any store Rachel had taken him in. Nicer than Trent Kalamack’s furniture, even. Distant, he rubbed his thumb over the ivy pattern that Matalina had woven into the fabric. She was a master at her craft, especially now.

A faint sifting of dust slipped from him to puddle under the chair, but his glow was almost lost in the shaft of light slipping in through the crack of the rolltop desk. The massive oak desk with its nooks and crannies had been their home for the winter, but after Matalina had perched herself on the steeple last night to wait for his return, she’d breathed in the season and decided it was time to move. So move they did.

The voices of his daughters raised in chatter were hardly noticed, as was the bawdy poem four of his elder sons were shouting as they cheerfully grabbed the corners of the long table made of Popsicle sticks and headed for the too-narrow crack.

Matalina’s voice rose in direction, and the rolltop rose just enough. It wasn’t until Matalina sent the rest of them out to scout for a nest of wasps to steal sentries from that it grew quiet. All his children had lived through the winter. It was a day of celebration, but the weight of responsibility was on him.

Responsibility wasn’t new to him, but he was surprised to feel it—seeing as it was coming from an unexpected source. He’d always felt bad for pixies not as well off as he, but that was as far as it had ever gone. A part of him wanted to tell Vincet that he chose badly and he’d have to move, newlings or not. But Vi clinging helplessly to him had gone through Jenks like fire, and the smell of the newlings on Vincet kept him sitting where he was, thinking.

Jax had been his first newling he’d managed to keep alive through the winter. Jih, his eldest daughter, had survived in Matalina’s arms that same season. Scarcely nine years old, Jih had moved across the street alone to start a garden, and Jax left to follow in his father’s footsteps by partnering with a thief instead of devoting himself to a family and the earth.

Jenks had never wanted more than to tend a spot of ground, but four years ago, forced by a late spring and suffering newlings, he’d shamefully taken a part-time job as backup for Inderland Security, finding that he not only enjoyed it, but was good at it. Working for the man had eventually evolved into a partnership with Rachel and Ivy, and now he was on the streets more than in the garden. Turning his back on his first independent job wasn’t going to happen. Blowing up the statue wouldn’t be the hard part—it would be getting around Daryl to do it.

A nymph and a dryad, he thought sourly as he sucked on a sweetball in the quiet. Why couldn’t it be something he knew something about? Nymphs had vanished during the Industrial Revolution, and the dryads had been decimated by deforestation shortly after that. There was even a conspiracy theory that the dryads had been responsible for the plague that had wiped out a big chunk of humanity forty years ago. If so, it had sort of worked. The forests were returning, and eighty-year-old trees were again becoming common. Nymphs, though, were still missing. Sleeping, maybe?

And what about Daryl, anyway? A deluded nymph, Sylvan had said. A goddess, Daryl claimed. There were no gods or goddesses. Never had been, but there were documented histories of Inderlanders taking advantage of humans, posing as deities. He frowned. Her eyes were downright creepy, and he hadn’t liked demons being mentioned, either.

Jenks started, jerking when his chair moved. The breeze of four pairs of dragonfly wings blew the red dust of surprise from him, and he looked up to find four of his boys trying to move his chair with him in it. They were all grinning at him, looking alike despite Jumoke’s dark hair and eyes, in matching pants and tunics that Matalina had stitched.

“Enough!” Matalina called out in a mock anger, her feet in a shaft of light, a dusting rag in her hands, and a flush to her cheeks. “Leave your papa alone. There’s the girls’ things to be moved if you need something to do.”

“Sorry, Papa!” Jack said cheerfully, dropping his corner to make the chair thump. Jenks’s feet flew up, and his wing bent back under him. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Dust a little,” Jaul said, tangling his wings with Jack’s, and Jack dusted heavily, shifting as he pushed him away. “The fairies will think you’re dead,” he finished, sneezing.

“Come and carry you away,” Jumoke added, his wings lower in pitch than everyone else’s. It made him different, along with his dusky coloring, and Jenks worried, not liking how Vincet had looked at him as if he were ill or deformed.

Jake just grinned, his wings glittering as he hovered in the background. Apart from Jumoke, they were the eldest in the garden now, as fresh-faced and innocent as they should be, strong and able to use a sword to kill an intruder twice their size. He loved them, but it was likely this would be the last spring they’d help the family move. Jack, especially, would probably find wanderlust on him this fall and leave.

“Go do what your mother said,” he grumped, grabbing four sweetballs from the bowl beside him and throwing them to each boy in turn. “And keep your sugar level up! You’re no good to me laid flat out in a field.”

“Thanks, Papa!” they chorused, cheeks bulging. It kept them quiet, too.

Matalina came closer, smiling fondly as she shooed them out. “Go on. After the girls’ room, find the big pots and fill them. Check for cracks. I’m soaking spider sacks tomorrow for the silk. They’ve been in the cool room all winter. If we’re not careful, we’re going to have a hatching. I’m not going to make your clothes out of moonbeams, you know.”

“Naked in the garden is okay with me,” Jumoke mumbled, and Matalina swatted him.

“Out!”

“Remember what happened the last year?” Jaul said, his words muffled from the sweetball as they headed for opening.

“Webs everywhere!” Jack said, laughing.

“Yeah, well you’re the one that moved the sacks into the sun,” Jumoke said, and they were gone, the dust from them settling in a glowing puddle to slowly fade.

“How else was I going to win the bet as to when they were going to hatch?” came faintly from outside the desk, and Jenks chuckled. It had been an unholy mess.

Slowly their voices vanished, and Jenks watched Matalina’s expression, gauging her mood as she smiled. Wings stilling, she walked across the varnished oak wood to settle next to him, their wings tangling as she snuggled in against him. Slowly their mingling dust shifted to the same contented gold.

“I can’t wait to get back into the garden,” she said, gazing at the pile of laundry across the room. “I’ll admit I don’t like moving day, but I’ll not set myself to sleep like that again with the fear of guessing who might not wake up with me in the spring.” Reaching to the bowl, she deftly twisted a sweetball into two parts and handed him half. “You’re quiet. What’s got your updraft cold this morning?”

“Nothing.” Setting his half of the sweet back in the bowl, he draped his arm over her shoulder, moving his thumb gently against her arm. Remembering the smell of the newlings, he dropped his gaze to her flat belly, not swelling with life for more than a year now. His wish for sterility might have extended her life—but had it also made her last years empty?

Setting her sweetball aside as well, Matalina shifted from him, pulling out of his reach to sit facing him. “Is it the pixy that you and Bis went into Cincinnati to help? I’m proud of you for that. The children enjoy watching the garden when you’re gone. They feel important, and they’ll be all the more prepared when they’ve a garden of their own.”

A garden of their own, he thought. His children were leaving. Vincet’s children were so young. His entire adult life was before him. “Mattie, do you ever wish for newlings?” he asked.

Her eyes fell from his, and her breath seemed to catch as she stared at the piles of clothes.

Fear struck Jenks at her silence, and he sat up to take her hands in his. “Tink’s tears. I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I thought you didn’t want any more. You said…We talked about it…”

Smiling to look even more beautiful, Matalina placed a fingertip to his lips. “Hush,” she breathed, leaning her head forward to touch his as her finger dropped away. “Jenks, love, of course I miss newlings. Every time Jrixibell or any of the last children do something for the first time, I think that I’ll never see the joy of that discovery on another child’s face, but I don’t want any more children who won’t survive a day after me.”

Worried, he shifted closer, his hands tightening on hers. “Mattie, about that,” he started, but she shook her head, and the dust falling from her took on a red tinge.

“No,” she said firmly. “We’ve been over this. I won’t take that curse so I can have another twenty years of life. I’m going to step from the wheel happy when I reach the end, knowing all my children will survive my passing. No other pixy woman can say that. It’s a gift, Jenks, and I thank you for it.”

Beautiful and smiling, she leaned forward to kiss him, but he would have none of it. Anger joining his frustration, he pulled away. Why won’t she even listen? Ever since he’d taken that curse to get lunker-size for a week, his flagging endurance had returned full force. It had fixed his mangled foot and erased the fairy steel scar that had pained him during thunderstorms. It was as if he was brand-new. And Mattie wasn’t.

“Mattie, please,” he began, but as every other time, she smiled and shook her head.

“I love my life. I love you. And if you keep buzzing me about it, I’m going to put fairy scales in your nectar. Now tell me how you’re going to help the Vincet family.”

He took a breath, and she raised her eyebrows, daring him.

Jenks’s shoulders slumped and his wings stilled to lie submissively against his back. Later. He’d convince her later. Pixies died only in the fall or winter. He had all summer.

“I need to destroy a statue,” he said, seeing the clean wood around him and imagining the dirt walls Vincet was living between, then remembering the flower boxes he and Mattie had raised most of their children among. He was lucky, but the harder he worked, the luckier he got.

“Oh, good,” she said distantly. “I know how you like to blow things up.”

His mood eased, and he shifted her closer to feel her warmth. Pixies had known how to make explosives long before anyone else. All it took was a little time in the kitchen. And a hell of a lot of nitrogen, he thought. “By tonight,” he added, bringing himself back to the present, “to help free a dryad.”

“Really?” Eyeing him suspiciously, Matalina popped her half of the sweetball into her mouth. “I ’ought ’ay were cut ’own in the great deforestation of the eighteen hundreds. ’Ave they emigrated in from Europe?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But this one is trapped in a statue, existing on energy right off a ley line instead of sipping it filtered from a tree. He’s been slipping into Vincet’s children’s minds when they sleep, trying to get them to break his statue.” He wasn’t going to tell her the dryad had accidentally killed one. It was too awful to think about.

Matalina stood, rising on a burst of energy to dust the ceiling. “A city-living dryad?” she murmured, cleaning wood that would lay unseen for months if Rachel continued her pattern and avoided her desk even after they vacated it. “Tink loves a duck, what will they think of next?”

Jenks reclined to see if he could see up her dress. “Blowing it up isn’t the problem. See, there’s this nymph,” he said, smiling when he caught a glimpse of a slim thigh.

She looked down at him, her disbelief clear. Seeing where his eyes were, she twitched her skirt and shifted, eyes scrunched in delight even as she huffed in annoyance. “A nymph? I thought they were extinct.”

“Maybe they’re just hiding,” he said. “This one said something about waking up. She was having a hard time breathing through the pollution.” Until she came after us.

Flitting to the opening in the desk, Matalina shook her rag with a crack. “Hmmm.”

“She’s got this goddess…warrior vibe,” he said when Matalina returned to the ceiling. “Mattie, the woman is scary. I think if I get the dryad free, the nymph will follow him and leave Vincet in peace.”

Again Matalina made that same doubt-filled sound, not looking at him as she dusted.

“Freeing the dryad is the only way I can help Vincet,” Jenks said, not knowing if Matalina was unsure about Sylvan or the nymph. “He’s only been on his own for a year, and he has three children and passel of newlings. He’s done so well.”

Matalina turned at the almost jealous tone in his words, the pride and love in her expression obvious. “You were nine, love, when you found me,” she said as she dropped to him, her wings a clear silver as they hummed. “Coming from the country with burrs in your hair and not even a scrap of red to call your own. Don’t compare yourself to Vincet.”

He smiled, but still…“It took me two years to be able to provide enough for Jax and Jih to survive,” he said, reaching up to take her hand and draw her to him.

His wife sat beside him, perched on the very edge of the couch with her hands holding his. “Times were harder. I’m proud of you, Jenks. None has done better. None.”

Jenks scanned the nearly empty desk, the sounds of his children playing filtering in over the radio talking about the freak tornado that had hit the outskirts of Cincinnati last night. Not wanting to accept her words, he pulled her to sit on his lap, tugging her close and resting his chin on her shoulder and breathing in the clean smell of her hair. He could have done better. He could have given up the garden and gone to work for the I.S. years sooner. But he hadn’t known.

“You need to help this family,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “I don’t understand why you do some of the things you do, but this…This I understand.”

“I can’t do it alone,” he said, grimacing as he remembered Daryl controlling the wind, taking the very element he lived in and turning it against him.

“Wasn’t Bis a help?” she asked, sounding bewildered.

Jenks started, not realizing what his words had sounded like. “He was the perfect backup,” he said, his words slow as he remembered almost being squished, and then Bis’s frantic flight in the streets. “He’s no fighter, but he yanked my butt out of the fire twice.” Smiling, Jenks thought he couldn’t count how many times he’d done the same for Rachel. “I’d ask Rachel to help,” he said, “but she won’t be home until tomorrow.”

Still on his lap, Matalina reached for Jenks’s half of sweetball and put it in his mouth. “Then ask Ivy,” she said as he shifted it around. “She’ll help you.”

“Ivy?” he said, his voice muffled. “It’s my job, not hers.”

Collapsing against him in irritation, Matalina huffed. “The vampire is always asking you to help her,” she said severely. “I don’t begrudge it. It’s your job! But don’t be so slow-winged that you won’t ask for help in return. It would be more stupid than a fairy’s third birthday party for Vincet to lose a newling because you were too proud to ask Ivy to be a distraction.”

Jenks thought about that, lifting Matalina to a more comfortable position on his lap. “You think I should ask her?” he asked.

Matalina shifted to give him a moot look.

“I’ll ask her,” he said, feeling the beginnings of excitement. “And maybe have Jumoke come out with me, too. The boy needs something other than his good looks.”

Matalina made a small sound of agreement, knowing as much as he did that his dark hair and eyes would make finding a wife almost impossible.

Grinning, Jenks pushed them both into the air. She squealed as their wings clattered together, and a real smile, carefree and delighted, was on her as he spun her to him, hanging midair in the closed rolltop desk. “I’ll teach Jumoke a trade so he has something to bring to the marriage pot beside cold pixy steel and a smart mind,” he said, delighting in her smile. “I can teach him everything I know. It won’t be like Jax. I’ll make sure he knows why he’s doing it, not just how. And with Ivy distracting the nymph, I’ll blow up the dryad’s statue. I already know how to make the explosive. I just need a whopping big amount of it.”

Matalina pulled from him, holding his hands for a moment as she looked at him in pride. “Go save them, Jenks. I’ll be in the garden when you get back. Bring me a good story.”

Jenks drew her close, their dust and wings mingling as he kissed her soundly. “Thank you, love,” he said. “You always make things seem so simple. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’ll get along just fine,” she whispered, but he was gone, already having zipped through the crack in the rolltop desk. Smile fading, Matalina looked over the empty desk. Picking up the discarded fabric, she followed him out.

4

The shouts of his kids came loud through the church’s kitchen window, their high-pitched voices clear in the moisture-heavy air as they played hide-and-seek in the early dark. The boys, especially, had been glad to get out of the desk and into their admittedly more-cramped-than-a-troll’s-armpit quarters in the oak stump. More cramped, but vastly more suited to a winged person smaller than a Barbie doll.

A parental smile threatened Jenks’s attempt at a businesslike attitude as he stood on the spigot before the window and cleared his throat. Jumoke’s apprenticeship had begun, and Jenks was trying to impress on him the sensitivity needed in mixing up some pixy pow. It wouldn’t be napalm, which pixies had first used to get rid of weeds—then fairies when it was discovered to their delight that it would go boom under the right conditions. And it wouldn’t be C4, C3, or any other human explosive. It would be something completely different, thanks to the dual properties of stability and ignition that pixy dust contained.

“That’s it, Papa?” Jumoke said doubtfully as he penciled in the last of the ingredients on one of Ivy’s sticky notes. Unlike most of Cincinnati’s pixies, Jenks’s family could read. It was a skill Jenks taught himself shortly after reaching the city, then used it to claim a section of worthless land before the proposed flower boxes existing on a set of blueprints went in.

“That’s it,” he said, gazing at his son’s hair. It looked especially dark in the fluorescent light. For the first time, he saw it as perhaps an asset. It wouldn’t catch the sun as his own hair did, a decided advantage in sneaking around. Perhaps Jumoke was the reigning hide-and-seek champion for a reason.

Bis, newly awake and doing his sullen gargoyle thing atop the fridge, rustled his wings in disbelief. “There is no way that soap, fertilizer, lighter fluid, and pixy dust is going to blow that statue up. It’s solid rock!”

“Wanna bet a week’s worth of sentry duty?” Jenks asked. “I use it all the time. A pixy handful will blow surveillance lines and fry motherboards, QED. We’re just going to need a lot more.” Rising up, he eyed the rack of spelling equipment hanging over the center island counter. “Can you get that pot down for me?”

Jumoke made a small noise, and Bis’s pebbly gray skin went black. “Rachel’s spell pot?” the gargoyle squeaked in apparent fear.

Hands on his hips, Jenks hummed his wings faster. “The little one, yes. Jumoke, go see if you can find Ivy’s lighter fluid out by the grill. We need more propellant than we have dust.”

The young pixy darted out into the hallway, and Jenks frowned at the worried tint to his son’s aura now. Tink’s tit-ties, he could use Rachel’s spelling equipment. The woman wouldn’t mind. Hell, she’d never even know.

Ears pinned to his ugly skull, Bis hopped the short distance from the fridge to the center island counter, jumping up with his wings spread to pluck the small copper pot. It would hold about a cup of liquid and was Rachel’s favoritesize spell pot. She had two of them.

“Can I have the other one, too, please?” Jenks said dryly, and the kid’s tail wrapped around his feet, his ears going flatter. “I can’t touch anything but copper,” he complained. “And if I use the plastic ones, they’ll smell funny. Will you grow a pair and get the bowl?” he said, darting upward and smacking it to make it ping.

“Don’t blame me if Rachel yells at you for using her spell pots,” Bis muttered as he plucked it from the overhead rack and set it rocking next to the first. The draft from his wings blew Jenks back when Bis hopped to Ivy’s chair at the big farmhouse kitchen table, pulling first the phone book, then Vixen’s Guide to Gathering Guys and Gals down and onto the seat. The guide was the larger of the two.

“Don’t blame me if Ivy de-wings you for using her computer,” Jenks shot back as Bis settled onto the stack of books and shook the mouse to wake the computer up. One day he was going to get caught, and then there’d be Tink to pay. Tugging a bowl to the middle of the counter, Jenks felt a moment of guilt. “Rachel will never know. What’s the problem here?”

Bis looked up from the keyboard. His thin fingers were curved so his nails touched the keys, and he snapped off Ivy’s password without looking. “You didn’t ask her.”

“Yeah, like you said pretty-please for Ivy’s password,” he said, and Bis flushed dark black. Smug, Jenks pulled the recipe closer and wondered how he was going to size up the amounts. “I’ll polish the stinkin’ bowls when I’m done,” he muttered, and Bis smirked. “I’m not afraid of Rachel!” he said, hands on his hips.

“And I’m not afraid of Ivy.”

They both jumped at the hum of dragonfly wings, but it was Jumoke. “It’s metal,” he said, his expression going confused when he saw the panicked look on their faces. “What did I do?”

“I thought you were your mother,” Jenks said, and Jumoke’s wings turned a bright red as he drifted backward, giggling. It didn’t seem right to be teaching a six-year-old how to make explosives. The giggling didn’t help. But now was the time to start teaching him, not two weeks before he left the garden like he had Jax. There was a moral philosophy that went along with the power a pixy could wield, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Jumoke as he had with Jax.

Bis stood, stretching his wings until the tips touched over his head. “I’ll help,” he said, and the two flew out into the hall and then the back living room. The cat door squeaked, and Jenks sighed, glancing at the clock. He’d already called Ivy, but she wouldn’t be home for a couple more hours. The three of them would have to make a whopping amount of explosive before she got home; he didn’t want Ivy to know he could make this stuff. Word would get out, and then Inderland Security would start drafting them into service. Pixies liked where they were, on the fringes and ignored…mostly.

Jenks drifted down until his feet hit the polished stainless steel, harmless through his boots. The squeak of the cat door brought him back to reality, and he pretended to be estimating the depth of the bowl when Bis and Jumoke flew in with the reek of petroleum.

“Because their horns don’t work,” Bis said. “Get it? Because their horns don’t work?”

The thunk of the tin can hitting the counter was loud, and Jenks’s hair shifted in the gust from Bis’s wings. “Jumoke, what do you think. A cup?” Jenks asked, measuring the bowl off at his shoulder and pacing around the perimeter.

“I don’t get it,” Jumoke said, and after landing inside one of the bowls, he added, “A cup and a third to the brim?”

“You know, their horns?” The gargoyle reached up and touched the tiny nubs where his would be when he grew up.

“Bis, I don’t get it!” Jumoke said, clearly embarrassed. “Dad, what’s next?”

Jenks smiled, pleased. A cup and a third. Jumoke had it right. Jenks looked up to find Bis and Jumoke watching him eagerly. Teaching an adolescent pixy and teenage gargoyle how to make explosives might not be such a good idea. But hell, he’d learned when he was five.

“Mmmm, Ivory soap,” he said. “Ivy has a stash of it—”

“In Rachel’s bathroom under the sink,” Jumoke finished, already in the air. “Got it.”

Bis was a moment behind, his wind-noisy takeoff making the bowls rock.

“Just one bottle ought to do it!” Jenks shouted after them. “We’re blowing up a statue, not a bridge.” The Turn take it, they were far too eager to learn this.

When the sound of their rummaging became muffled, he braced himself against the copper bowl and pushed it to the can of lighter fluid. Taking to the air, he tapped the can with his sword point, moving down until he heard a sound he liked. Marking the spot with his eyes, he darted back, aimed his sword, and flew at it.

With a stifled yell for strength, he jammed his sword into the canister. The hard pixy steel went right through. His elder children had fairy steel, taken from invaders testing their strength. Jenks’s blade was stronger, and the thin sheet of metal was nothing. Grinning as he imagined it was an invading fairy he had just pierced, Jenks put his foot on can for support and pulled the sword out, darting back to avoid the sudden stream flowing out and arching into the bowl…just as he had planned.

Wiping his sword on the rag over the sink, Jenks listened to the changing sound to estimate how full the bowl was getting. Little splashes spotted the counter, and he dropped to the floor, slipping into the cupboards by way of the open space at the footboard.

It was a weird world of wooden supports and domesticity behind the cupboards, and using his arms as much as his wings, he maneuvered himself to the kitchen’s catch-all drawer. Vaulting into the shallow space, Jenks hunched over, vibrating his wings to create some light as he moved to the front, dodging dead batteries and mangled twist ties until he found the spool of plumber’s putty. The trip out was faster, and eyeing Bis and Jumoke standing on the counter and panicking about the rising level of lighter fluid, he expertly plugged the hole.

“More than one way to empty a can,” he said, vertigo taking him when the flow stopped and the fumes hit him hard. “Don’t get too close, Jumoke. I swear, this is the worst part.”

“It stinks like a fairy’s funeral pyre,” the boy said, plugging his nose and backing up.

Standing on the counter beside his son, Bis looked huge. There was a bottle of soap in his grip, and the gargoyle easily wedged the top open. Jenks could have done it, but it would have been a lot harder. “How much?” Bis asked, poised to squirt it out.

Still reeling, Jenks covered his eyes, now streaming a silver dust as his tears hit the air and tuned dry. “Put it in the empty bowl. I’ll say when.”

“Rachel’s spell bowl?” Bis said, hesitating.

“It’s soap!” Jenks barked, rubbing his eyes and staggering until Jumoke grabbed his shoulder. Holy crap, it was nasty stuff until it all got mixed together.

The squirt bottle made a rude sound as it emptied, and feeling better, Jenks peeked over the edge to see how much they had. “That’s good,” he said, and Bis capped the bottle by smacking the tip on the counter. “Jumoke, see the proportion to the lighter fluid? Now all we need is the nitrogen and the pixy dust. Lots of nitrogen to make the boom intense.”

“Fertilizer,” Jumoke said. “In the shed?” he asked, and when Jenks nodded, Jumoke rose up. “I’ll check.”

In an instant, he was gone. Glancing out the night-darkened window, Jenks watched Jumoke’s arrow-straight path, the sifting dust falling to make a gold shadow of where he’d been. His siblings called out for him to join them, but Jumoke never even looked.

Pleased, Jenks turned to find Bis trying to get the fridge open by wedging a long claw between the seals. It felt good to be teaching someone his skills. Tink knew that Jax had been a disappointment, but Jumoke was genuinely interested. He already knew how to read.

Leaning against the bowl of soap, Jenks scratched the base of his wings, watching Bis hang from a fridge shelf with one hand and pull out a tinfoil-covered leftover with the other. His claws scrabbled on the linoleum when he dropped, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Bis shook the leftover lasagna into the trash under the sink and ate the tinfoil instead.

The rasping sound of teeth on metal made him shudder. Black dust sifted from him, and seeing it, Bis shrugged, crawling back up onto his elevated seat before Ivy’s computer. “A gargoyle doesn’t live on pigeon alone,” he said, and Jenks winced.

Pushing off into the air, Jenks rose into the hanging utensils for his own snack. There was a pouch of sweets for the kids in the smallest ladle. Rachel never used it. Opening it, he popped one of the nectar and pollen balls into his mouth, then grabbed another for Jumoke. The kid had a lot to learn about maintaining his sugar level. Unless he was snacking in the garden. How long did it take to look through the shed, anyway?

Angling his wings, Jenks dropped to the dark windowsill and pocketed the second sweet. Hands on his hips, he stared out into the dark garden and watched the bands of colored light sift from the oak tree. Jumoke wasn’t among them. The individual trails of dust slipping down were as pixy-specific as voices, and he knew them all. There’d been no new patterns to learn in years.

No more newlings, he thought, more melancholy than he thought he’d be. He’d done it to save Mattie’s life, and it had seemed to have worked. A healthy pixy woman gave birth to more sons than daughters by almost two to one. The size of the brood, too, was telling, which was why only two children were born that first season, none the next, then eight, eleven, ten, twelve…then seven—four of them girls. That was the year he panicked, going to work for Inderland Security. Matalina had borne only three children the year he’d met Rachel, two of them girls. None had survived to naming. His wish for sterility had saved her life. Another birth of newlings might have killed her.

What he hadn’t anticipated was with the absence of newlings, both he and Matalina had time to spare on other things. He’d gone from side jobs to a full-time career outside the garden, gaining enough money to buy the church and the security that went with it. Matalina had been able to help their eldest daughter take land before taking a spouse, something that only pixy bucks traditionally managed. Not to mention Matalina pursuing her desire to learn how to read, and then teaching the rest of the children—all impossible if caring for a set of newlings. Children were precious, each one a hope for the future. How could they be detrimental?

Frowning, Jenks tried to figure it out, failing. Perhaps he wasn’t old enough yet, because it didn’t make sense to him. Maybe Mattie could help him. She was the smart one. As soon he got her to take the Tink-damned curse, he’d rest easier. They’d live in the garden for another twenty years, then, watching their children grow, take their places…

The sharp taps of Bis on the keyboard stopped, and the gargoyle ruffled his wings. “Listen to this,” he said, his high, gravelly voice pulling Jenks’s attention from the window. “‘Dryads declined with the deforestation, and many ghosts have been blamed on them as they learned to live in statues placed on ley lines.’”

Jenks flitted close, thinking he looked nothing like Ivy. “Kind of like pixies adapting to city gardens. Humans. Learn to live with them, or die trying.”

Bis blinked his red eyes at him. “We’ve always lived with humans. I can’t imagine living in the woods. What would I eat? Iron ore and sparrows?”

Ignoring his sarcasm, Jenks moved closer to the screen. Now that he thought about it, gargoyles were dependent on people. The picture of the dryad on the monitor was his size, and he tapped it. “Look at that. It looks like the statues in the park, doesn’t it?” He turned, starting when he found Bis unexpectedly inches from him. Holy crap, didn’t the kid breathe?

“Yeah…” Bis said softly, not noticing he had jumped.

Trying to cover his surprise, Jenks walked across the keyboard to the “down” arrow, scrolling for the rest of the article. “‘Because they declined before the Turn,’” he read aloud, proud that he could, “‘little is written about them without the trappings of fairy tale, but it’s commonly accepted that they live as long as the tree they frequent does, perhaps even hundreds of years. Though generally thought of as meek and gentle, Grimm has placed them several times in the position of wildly savage.’”

Chuckling, Jenks put his hands on his hips. “Yeah,” he said as Jumoke flew in trailing a disappointed green dust. “And the freak had kids shoving witches into ovens, too.” Scraping his wings for his son’s attention, he tossed Jumoke the pollen ball.

Catching it, his son tucked it away, saying, “It’s not there. I think Rachel used it.”

“Crap on toast,” Jenks swore, using one of Rachel’s favorites, but pleased that Jumoke had indeed been tapping off his sugar level. The kid had a head on his shoulders. “She did. I remember now. She put it around the azaleas this spring.” Frustrated, he rose up as his wing speed increased. “I hate it when people use stuff and don’t replace it. How am I supposed to make a bomb without nitrogen?”

Bis brought up a serious-looking black screen and started deleting evidence of Web sites and searches. “How about mothballs?” he asked, and Jenks laughed.

“You’ve been watching TV again. No, mothballs and pixy dust don’t mix. Besides, that would make something more like napalm, and we want inward destruction, not outward devastation. Vincet wouldn’t thank me for destroying his garden.” Jenks frowned. Ammonia, maybe, but Ivy didn’t keep that on hand like she did the soap and lighter fluid. “We want a nice simple pop, and for that, we want fertilizer.”

“How much?”

Jenks looked at Bis as he pushed back from the table, wondering what Ivy would say if she knew the gargoyle had been using her computer. Silent, Jenks pointed to a bowl hanging from the overhead rack.

Bis’s pushed-in face smiled as he flew to the rack, his wings sending the loose papers on the table flying. Jumoke took flight, yelling that Bis was as dumb as a downdraft, but Jenks squinted through it, not moving as the gargoyle dropped to the counter with the larger bowl.

“We’ve got lots of nitrogen at the basilica,” Bis said, grinning at him through the settling papers. “I’ll ask my dad about nymphs and dryads, too.”

Alarmed, Jenks clattered his wings. “Hey, this is a run, not a job,” he called, and Bis hesitated, flipping in midair to cling to the archway to the hall with the bowl dangling from a hind foot. “You can’t steal it from the gardener shed.”

Bis made his wheezing laugh, looking evil as he hung upside down with the white tuft of his tail twitching. “No problem. They can’t give this stuff away. Thirty minutes.” Instead of dropping to fly out, he slithered up to the hall ceiling, going nearly invisible as he shifted his skin tone to match the shadows. Only the glint of the copper bowl gave him away. That, and the faint scrabbling of claws. Jenks would be really worried about the scratches on the ceiling if he didn’t know where they came from. The ceiling, the walls, the window ledges…He had to get Bis to start wearing some clothes. A bandanna or something.

Stifling a shudder, Jenks turned back to Jumoke, seeing him pale and wide-eyed. “It gives me the creeps when he does that skin thing,” the small pixy said, and Jenks nodded.

“Me too. But we need to figure out how to mix this stuff up in one batch before he comes back or we’ll be here all night. I know Vincet’s going to keep his kids up, and Sylvan might burn another one of his newlings. And carefully!” he added when Jumoke tipped the bowl with the lighter fluid to look in it. “The last thing I need is Ivy coming home and finding fire trucks at the curb. She’d have hairy canaries coming out her, ah, ear.”

At his shoulder, peering in at the lighter fluid, Jumoke shook his head. “Women.”

That one word jerked Jenks’s attention up, and his own smile grew to match Jumoke’s. Pride filled him. Jax hadn’t been like this. He wasn’t making a mistake teaching Jumoke his skills. This was going to work, and his son would have a unique talent, one that would help him find a wife, and then all his children could have their happy-ever-after.

Jenks clapped him across the shoulders. “Can’t live with them, can’t die without them,” he said, beaming with pride. This was not a mistake. Not a mistake at all.

5

“Pigeon poop?” Vincet exclaimed, aghast as he hovered with his three children clustered behind him, clearly frightened of the sight of Ivy reclining on the nearby bench. “You’re going to save my family with pigeon poop!”

“Pigeon poop,” Jenks affirmed, concentrating on the silvery goop in the bowl Bis was holding steady. The moon was up, making it easy to see Vincet’s horror as he dug his hand into the softly glowing mess. Taking another oozing wad back to the statue, he slapped it onto the smooth stone with the rest. “That and pixy dust!” he said cheerfully, trying not to think about it as he wiped his hands off on a fold of stone. He’d never be able to handle a mixture of lighter fluid, soap, and nitrogen like this without the pixy dust to act as a stabilizer. It was the dust that made it go boom so spectacularly, too.

“That’s disgusting!” Vincet said softly, and Bis, holding the bowl, rolled his eyes.

“Tell me about it,” the gargoyle said. His voice was stoic, but Jenks could tell he was almost laughing. The white tufts of fur in his ears were trembling.

Ivy, too, smirked. The living vampire had driven them out here on her cycle—Bis on the gas tank and grinning into the air like a dog—but now she looked bored, lying back on the bench with her knees bent to gaze up into the branches of the tree. It was obvious that she’d been at someone ear-ier tonight; her color was high, her motions edging into a vampire-quick speed, and her obvious languorous sultriness, which she tried to hide from Rachel, poured from the slightly Asian-looking woman in a flood of release. Even Vincet had noticed, wisely not saying anything when the leather-clad woman had strode up to Daryl’s statue, hip cocked as she pronounced she could take the nymph—if she had the brass to show up.

Right now, though, Ivy looked more inclined to seduce the next being on two legs she encountered, not fight them, her long straight hair falling almost to the cement as she lay on the bench, and a sated smile on her placid face. No wonder Ivy satisfied her blood urges during Rachel’s weekly absences. Seeing Ivy like this might blow everything to hell. An emotionally constipated Ivy was a safe Ivy.

“This would go faster if someone would help me,” Jenks said, eyeing the goop remaining when he flew down for another handful.

In a smooth motion, Ivy sat up and swung her boots to the cement to stand. “I’m going to do a perimeter,” she said, heels silent on the sidewalk as she headed out. “And don’t put that bowl in my cycle bag. Got it?” she shouted over her shoulder.

Jumoke landed atop Bis’s head and fell into wide-footed stance that would allow him the best balance if the wind should gust. “Mom made me promise not to touch it,” the kid said, clearly proud of his new red belt.

“I’m holding the bowl,” Bis said quickly, eyes darting.

Vincet took his daughter’s hand, pretending he needed to watch her.

“Chicken shits,” Jenks muttered, scooping out a handful and throwing it at the statue. It hit with a splat, and Ivy, somewhere in the dark, gasped, swearing at him.

At that, Bis grinned to look like a nightmare. “Pigeon shits,” he said cheerfully, and Jenks smeared another glowing handful on Sylvan’s statue’s nose.

The chiseled face looked as if it could see him and knew what he was doing. “It’s not that bad,” Jenks muttered, but his nose was wrinkling at the stink. It seemed to be sticking to him even if the modified plastique wasn’t. His gaze dropped to Rachel’s bowl, glinting in the lamplight, and his wings hummed faster. Ivy wouldn’t tell Rachel, would she?

Hovering backward, he looked over his work, almost putting his hands on his hips before stopping at the last moment. If he’d done it right, it’d shatter at the base and out toward the walkway. Sylvan would be free. Jenks’s gaze shifted to the small opening under the dogwood that was Vincet’s home. It was too close for his liking.

“Jumoke,” Jenks said tersely, and the young pixy rose on a glittering column of sparkles. “Set down a layer of flammable dust on the plastique. I have to get this crap off of me.”

“You bet, Dad,” he said enthusiastically, zipping to the statue. Jenks had put a heavy layer of dust in the mix already, but a top dusting would flash it all into flame faster than any petroleum product made from dead dinosaur.

Bis was stretching his neck to get away from the smell, holding the bowl and being more dramatic than Jrixibell pretending to have a sore wing so she wouldn’t have to eat her pollen. He’d used only about half of what he had made. Maybe he should blow both statues up. That would piss off Daryl.

“You got a problem?” Jenks asked, and Bis shook his head, breath held.

“No,” Bis said, his thick lips barely moving. “You done with this?”

“For now,” he said, and Bis shoved the bowl under the bench, then scuttled to the middle of the sidewalk, gasping dramatically when he stopped in the puddle of lamplight.

Frowning, Jenks wiped his hands off on his red bandanna, then wondered what he was going to do with it. He couldn’t put the symbolic flag of good intent back around his waist. Not only did it stink, but taking it back to Matalina to wash wasn’t an option. Glancing at Vincet, he dropped it into the bowl. If Vincet had a problem with it, he could just suck Tink’s toes.

Just off the sidewalk beside Sylvan’s statue, Vincet was on one knee, trying to get his kids to go inside. The triplets were clearly unhappy about being told to go to ground. Vincet was just as reluctant to leave Jenks alone to take them there. Even now, he was eyeing the bow and quiver that Jenks had brought with him to ignite the explosive.

Give me a break, Jenks thought dryly. Like he’d take the man’s garden? Frowning, he reached for his bow peeking from the small bag beside the dung-filled copper pot. Vincet stiffened when Jenks put the quiver over his shoulders and strung the bow. Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten rid of his red bandanna.

“Go inside,” Vincet said tersely to his children, but they only clung to him tighter.

“Papa? I’m scared,” Vi said, her eyes riveted to the crap-smeared statue.

Irritation flashed over Vincet, and taking her hands, the young father faked a smile for his eldest and only daughter. “Go wait with your mother so Jenks can fix this,” he said. “I can’t leave another man alone in my garden with a bow, Vi. Even Jenks. It isn’t right.”

“But Uncle Jenks won’t touch the flowers,” she whined. “Papa, please come with us. Don’t let the ghost out. Please!”

Smiling, Jenks gestured for Jumoke, who was bored and flying up and down like a yo-yo. They had time before the moon hit its zenith point. Daryl wouldn’t appear until Sylvan did, and hopefully the statue would be demolished before then. Jenks had to give Jumoke something to do. That darting up and down was irritating.

“Come here,” he said as he brought out from the bag a pot the size of two fists. “I want you to hold on to the coal pot,” he said, handing it to the excited pixy.

“Got it,” he said, wings clattering, and Jenks reached up, snagging his foot when he started to flit away.

“Keep it lit, Jumoke,” he said, yanking him back down so hard Jumoke lost his balance and had to scramble to find it again. “Give it sips of air, nothing more. If it goes out from too much or too little air, I’m going to have to ask Ivy for a light, and that would be embarrassing.”

“Uh, guys?” Bis interrupted, claws scraping as he slid to a stop beside them.

“Just a minute, Bis,” Jenks said, turning back to Jumoke. “When I ask, take the top off, okay? Not before. The coal won’t last long given full air.” His voice was severe, but Jumoke was holding the small pot with the right amount of care now, and Jenks was satisfied.

“Go wait with your mother!” Vincet shouted across the way, and his two boys darted away to leave a heavy dust trail. But Vi…Vi didn’t look so good.

“Jenks?” Bis said, clawed feet shifting, but Jenks’s attention was riveted to Vi. Her dust didn’t look right, and as he watched, her eyes rolled back and her wings collapsed. And her aura—went silver.

Shit.

“Vi!” Vincet shouted, scooping up the girl as she fell into convulsions. “The dryad’s taking her!” he exclaimed, eyes wide in horror as he held his daughter. “She wasn’t even asleep! Blow it up! Blow it up now!”

“Sorry,” Bis said, ears pinned as he looked sheepish. “I tried to tell you.”

Feeling betrayed, Jenks looked at the moon. It wasn’t anywhere near its zenith! Reaching behind him, he fumbled for one of his arrows tied with dandelion fluff at the tip. Wings clattering, he turned to Jumoke, finding him…gone.

“What the hell?” he stammered, rising up to scan the area, but there wasn’t a single twinkle of dust anywhere. He was gone! “Jumoke!”

Vincet flew to him with Vi in his arms, his wings clattering and desperation falling from him like the dust he was shedding. “He’s hurting her!” Vincet shouted, Vi’s skin red and her dust white-hot. “Blow it up! Free him!”

“I can’t! Jumoke has the firepot!” Jenks hovered, poised and scanning. Bis waited on the sidewalk, tail lashing, but Jumoke was gone. Ivy was gone. By the dogwood, Noel was a faint glow gathering the two boys and pulling them underground. They were safe. Where the hell is Jumoke!

“Jumoke!” Jenks shouted, exasperated, and Bis took to the air with two heavy wing beats to find him. They didn’t have time for this, but as Jenks started off in the other direction, he jerked to a halt in midair. Something smelled like honey and sun-warmed gold.

Tink’s dildo, the warrior woman was back.

“You will not!” echoed a vehement voice off the nearby townhouses, and there she was, standing on the sidewalk beside her statue, her bare feet spread wide and her robes shifting. Her expression was frantic, and upon seeing the bow in his hands, she flung her hand out.

“Look out!” Bis shouted, leaping for him.

A blast of honey-smelling air hit them. Tumbling into the air, Jenks felt his heart pound, but he fought with his instinct, folding his wings against him and tightening into a ball as he flew out of control. Holy crap, he was heading right for the trees!

“Gotcha!” came Bis’s faint exhalation, and the wind shifted as the gargoyle caught him, pulling him close.

Jenks’s eyes opened to see the world dip and swoop. In Bis’s other hand were Vincet and Vi. Vincet looked terrified, but Vi’s expression held a shocking amount of hatred. It was Sylvan. That’s why Daryl had appeared! The stupid dryad. Couldn’t he have waited a few more minutes?

With a sharp drop and a wrench that hurt Jenks’s neck, Bis dropped to the ground beside the sidewalk next to a large rock. The wind died. Daryl was coughing with her hand to her chest, shaking as she tried to catch her breath in the pollution-stained air.

Jenks unwedged himself from Bis’s grip and flitted down to feel small beside him. Taking to the air was too chancy, and he could hit the statue from here.

“Why didn’t you shoot it!” Vincet yelled at him, angry as he struggled with Vi, they, too, firmly on the earth.

Where the hell is Jumoke! Jenks thought, still not sure what end was up yet.

“I warned you,” Daryl wheezed, pulling herself straight again. She wiped her mouth, then hesitated, shocked at the sheen of blood glinting in the lamplight. Gathering her resolve, she hid it, shouting, “You will die before I allow Sylvan to perpetrate his abuse on another!”

“You’re a whiny little nymph!” Vi shouted as she struggled to be free. “The gods are dead, and actors play their rules! You’re alone! Give up! The world’s too ugly for your kind!”

“That’s the trouble with you dryads. You talk too much,” Daryl said. Eyes narrowed, she raised her sword. The nearby light flickered and went out. The one behind it went black, too, and like dominos, the townhouses across the park went dark. A distant chorus of complaint rose, joined by the beeping of smoke detectors.

Bis shifted his wings, his back to the rock. “I got a bad feeling about this!” he squeaked.

“Hey! Golden girl!” Ivy shouted from behind them, and Jenks rose up, wings flashing red when he saw the silver dusting of Jumoke with her. “Pick on someone your own size!” she added as she strode forward, boots clacking aggressively.

“Dad!” Jumoke exclaimed as he darted to him.

“Where have you been?” Jenks shouted, his relief coming out as anger. “We can’t blow up the statue without that pot!”

Jumoke’s wings drooped as he landed beside him, pot hugged to his middle. “I’m sorry. I was getting Ivy. I saw Daryl, and I just…” The boy’s face screwed up. “I’m sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t have left.”

“Blow it up!” Vincet exclaimed, jerking when Vi got her arm free and smacked his face. He caught her wrist, and Sylvan howled. The white-hot dust spilling from Vi was turning the moss black, burned.

“Let me out!” she said, her childlike voice sounding wrong. “Before that bitch stops you!”

“Ivy’s in the way,” Jenks said tightly. Giving both Jumoke and Vincet a look to stay grounded, Jenks darted after her, coming to a halt at her shoulder as his partner stopped eight feet back from Daryl. The spicy scent of vampire spun through him, seeming to shift his own dust a darker tint. Ivy was pissed. Hell, even her aura was sparkling.

Seeing them together, Daryl dropped her sword, flushed as she looked at Ivy’s tight clothes and anger. “You’re aligned with the pixy? Who are you? A goddess?”

“Ooo! Ooo!” Jenks said, looping the bow over his shoulder so he could have both hands free for his own sword. “I’ve heard this one before. Just say yes, Ivy.”

Ivy was eyeing Daryl with the same evaluation. “Worse,” she said softly, and Jenks shuddered. “I’m heir to madness. Vessel of perversion. Your nightmare should you cross me.”

Daryl’s chin lifted, trembling. “Indeed. We might be sisters then, for I’m the same.”

Ivy hunched slightly, eyeing the woman almost hungrily. “You hurt my friends.” A long hand went out, beckoning. Her lips drew back in a horrible smile, and she let her small but sharp canines show. “Can you hurt me?”

The nymph blinked as the moonlight hit them, then she tightened her sword grip.

The air seemed to hesitate, and when Bis’s nails scraped, Ivy jerked, jumping at her.

Jenks shot straight up, yelling, “Get her away from the statue so I can blow it up!”

“You can’t!” Daryl cried out, moving impossibly fast as she dodged out of Ivy’s attack. Her sword was swinging toward Ivy’s back, and Jenks yelled a warning.

Ivy dropped. Daryl’s sword point missed, but just. Rolling backward, Ivy tried to knock Daryl down, but the nymph jumped straight up. Ivy was standing when she landed, and the two women hesitated, looking at each other in surprise and what might be respect.

“Blow it up, Jenks!” Ivy called out. “I’ll get out of the way!”

Jenks’s mouth dropped open. Holy shit. Ivy didn’t know if she could take her or not.

Darting back to the rock for protection, he sheathed his sword and pulled an arrow from his quiver. “Everyone get behind the rock!” he shouted. “Jumoke, the firepot!”

Leathery wings shaking, Bis scrambled behind the rock. Vincet fought his child as he dragged her to safety, the freedom-hungry dryad screaming. Vi was only a year old. Her tiny body couldn’t take this. She was dusting heavily, glowing like a demon as the energy of the ley line ran through her. Vincet’s own tears turned to dust as he fought to keep her from attacking Daryl—but he looked up at Jenks with hope.

“Here, Dad!” Jumoke shouted, taking off the lid. The scraping of the lid was loud, and Jenks buried the tip of the arrow in it. Immediately the wad of dandelion fluff ignited. Matalina was the real archer, he thought as he took aim and the arrow arched away. Fortunately, all he had do to was hit the statue. “Fire in the hold!” he shouted. “Everyone down!”

“No!” Daryl screamed, stretching her hand out. A flash of wind came at him, and he went tumbling backward, but a pained cry echoed, and the force immediately died.

When he found air again under his wings, his arrow was lost and the statue untouched. Daryl was writhing on the cement, downed by Ivy in the instant the nymph lost her concentration. Ivy herself looked winded, holding her arm where the nymph’s sword had scored on her.

“Rhenoranian, help me!” Daryl said, coughing as she got to her knees, undeterred.

Expression pinched, Ivy strode forward, but Daryl groaned, kneeling as she shoved the air at her with both hands.

“Watch out!” Bis cried as Ivy was flung back to land in the flower bed beside Sylvan’s statue as if having been pulled by a string. Frustrated, Jenks lowered his next arrow, not yet lit.

“Let me be your strength, Rhenoranian!” Daryl said, staggering to her feet. “Let me be your vessel!” She turned to Jenks, and his wings went cold. “Let me be your vengeance!”

Worried, Jenks darted up, then down. He couldn’t see the ley line she was pulling on, but the force of it made his wings tingle. Daryl pointed at him with a new confidence, and then Ivy’s scream echoed against the dark windows across the street. Motions blurring, the battle began again. Twelve feet up, Jenks watched, useless bow in hand and knowing he wouldn’t be able to shoot until Ivy downed the nymph. Daryl kept pushing Ivy back to the statue.

Moving faster than seemed possible, Daryl ducked Ivy’s crescent kick, only to fall when Ivy continued the spin and knocked her feet out from under her.

The nymph hit the ground, coughing. Ivy jumped into the air, elbow poised and clearly ready to slam it into Daryl’s throat as she fell to hit the dirt beside her.

Daryl saw it coming and pulled her sword up to protect her throat. Ivy screamed, knowing she couldn’t move enough to avoid being cut. The blade nicked Daryl’s face, too, upon impact, but it protected her throat. Ivy was hurt more.

The small success seemed to galvanize the nymph, who staggered to her feet when Ivy rolled away holding her numb elbow. Swinging her blade in a wide arc, she waited—grimacing.

Like a mad thing, Ivy rushed her, plowing her foot right into her solar plexus between the gaps of the blade.

Daryl bent, and Ivy lashed out with a front kick, snapping the nymph’s head back.

And still the woman wouldn’t go down, falling back as she tried to find her breath.

“Now, Jenks!” Ivy called out, and Jenks dropped down to the rock and the firepot.

One hand to her middle, Daryl groaned, staggering to a stand. “Help me, Rhenoranian!” she screamed, shaking hand outstretched.

The wind came from everywhere. The black roared. It beat at the trees. Jenks tumbled, fighting it.

“Stop!” Ivy shouted, and when Jenks squinted, he saw she had yanked the nymph up and was pinning her to the tree across from her statue. “Stop, or I will fucking kill you!”

“Let me go, or I will pierce your liver,” the nymph said, her teeth gritted.

“Oh, shit,” Jenks whispered, seeing the glint of metal at Ivy’s side.

Screaming down from the hills, the wind circled them like wolves. A small spot of stillness grew, surrounded by a wall of gray and black fury. The lights of Cincinnati vanished as if behind water. Even the ever-present thumps of industry were gone, overpowered by the chugging of the wind.

But here, in Daryl’s sacred grove, the moon shone down in perfect stillness.

Jenks glanced to Jumoke peeping up from behind the rock as the torn leaves drifted down, gesturing for him to stay. Vi had stopped struggling. Her breath rasped like oven air, and her wings were starting to smolder by the acrid smell now pinching his nose.

Ivy still pinned Daryl to the tree, her arm against her throat. One in white, one in black, one in silk, the other in leather, both unmoving apart from their lungs heaving.

Slowly Jenks started to drop toward the firepot.

“Why do you stand against me?” Daryl whispered. “It’s honor that gives your limbs the strength to best me.” She took a careful breath. “It glows in you, and you hurt from it.”

Ivy flinched when Daryl touched her jaw. “I’m not hurt,” she said quickly.

“Sylvan went against the gods’ law,” the nymph was saying, her cracked lip starting to bleed. “Taught himself to exist in cold stone, then used the knowledge not to live, but to kill for enjoyment. Why do you free him? I don’t understand.”

“She lies!” Vi shouted, elbowing Vincet. “She’s touched! Break the statue! Now!”

Sylvan was in jail? Not imprisoned by a jealous lover? Jenks hesitated, his wings going cold as Vincet struggled to hold her wildly struggling body. Had they had almost let him free? A murderer?

“The demons imprisoned him in stone,” Daryl said, her fingers opening. The knife dropped to the grass, and Ivy flinched. “His heart remains as cold, even now when the fire of the demon’s blood burns through him. I begged for the honor to guard him as it was my sisters he murdered. I fought for the right, learned to kill, to be heartless, only to fail here when it counts. If you free Sylvan, kill me as well, for I’m too cowardly to live when honorable people give such filth freedom.”

Around them, the wind died to let the clamor from the townhouses and city beat upon them once more. The lights were on again, and people were talking loudly. “You’re not a coward,” Ivy said softly, and Daryl’s eyes met hers, widening at something only the nymph could see.

Abruptly Ivy let go of her and stepped back, frightened. Holding her arms to herself, she looked for Jenks, now hovering right over the rock, Jumoke below him with the firepot. “We need to reassess this,” she said, white-faced.

“No!” Vi exclaimed, exploding into motion and hitting her father right between the legs.

“Ooooh,” Jenks said with a wince, then yelped when she scrambled up the rock as if she didn’t have wings, snatching his bow and yanking an arrow from his quiver.

“Jumoke!” Bis shouted as the little girl jumped at the boy, screaming wildly. Jenks’s son took to the air, frightened, but she crashed right into him. The coal pot hit the grass. The lid popped off and coals scattered, flashing orange with the new breath of air.

Screaming in victory, Vi ran for them, burying the tip of an arrow against one. It flared to life even as she pulled the bow back, arrow notched.

“Get her!” Jenks shouted as he tackled her about the knees.

He hit her hard, and they slid across the grass, his arms scraping. Taking a breath, he looked up to see the flaming arrow was arching true to its target.

“Drop!” he shouted, trying to cover Vi from the coming blast. Panic iced his wings as he saw Jumoke still hovering in midair, shocked into immobility. He’d never reach him in time.

Then Bis raised his hand, cupping it before him.

The night turned white and orange, and an explosion pulsed against his ears and echoed up through the ground into him. Hunching down, Jenks tried to bury himself in the grass, feeling the blast push the blood from his wings for an instant. Jumoke fell to the ground in front of him.

“Why didn’t you drop!” Jenks shouted, his own voice sounding muffled from his stunned ears as he got off Vi and went to his son, bewildered on the ground. “Jumoke, are you okay?”

Panicking, he pulled his son up. Frantic, he felt Jumoke’s face, then ran his hands down his wings, looking for tears. Jumoke yelped, wiggling to get out from under Jenks’s hands.

“Oh, that was everlastingly cool,” the boy said, grinning from under his dark hair.

Jenks smacked his shoulder in relief. He was okay. “What’s wrong with you!” he shouted, glad his hearing was coming back. “I told you to drop!”

Bis’s thick skin on his brow was furrowed in worry, but Jenks didn’t think it was from the cut he was looking at on the back of his hand. In the distance, a car alarm was going off. “Um, Jenks?” he said in question.

A quick glance told him Vincet was okay. Vi was in his arms looking stunned but herself. Sylvan no longer possessed her, which meant he was probably free. Great, just freaking great. He only wanted to help, and he freed a murderer. Rachel and Ivy were not going to be happy.

Ivy.

Alarmed, Jenks darted up. Chunks of marble the size of apples and melons littered the sidewalk. A few pieces were embedded in the tree that Ivy had pinned Daryl against, and the scent of cracked rock pervaded. Vincet’s home and Daryl’s statue looked untouched. But no Ivy. No Daryl, either.

“Ivy!” Jenks shouted, realizing he was about to fall from exhaustion. Damn it, he’d let his sugar drop. Immediately he found a sweetball in his pocket and sucked on it. The sugar hit him fast, and his wings sped up. Across the street, people were starting to come out of their homes, aiming flashlights at the park. They had to get out of here.

“Ivy!” he shouted again. “You okay?”

Bis poked his head up from behind the rock, his ears pricked as he looked at the tree, and Jenks wasn’t surprised when Daryl stumbled out from behind it. Ivy levered herself up from the ground, having found a dip to take shelter in. They both picked their way carefully to the sidewalk, taking in the damage with a numb acceptance.

“He’s free,” Daryl whispered, her smooth features bunching in distress.

A crack of noise made them all jump. It was the snap of breaking stone, and the sharp sound echoed off the town homes across the street. As they watched, a huge slab of broken rock slid from Sylvan’s statue, falling to crush the flowers.

“I didn’t do it, Papa!” Jumoke exclaimed, eyes wide as he darted close. “It wasn’t me!”

“It was me,” a new voice said, sly and wispy.

Startled, Jenks turned in the air even as Daryl caught her breath only to start coughing. Ivy held her back from attacking him, but her lips were pressed in anger. A thin figure was standing in the moonlight, his feet on the moss beside the dogwood tree. It looked like Sylvan’s statue. Moving as if it might be hurt, the shadowy figure edged out into the moonlight, drawing back as one bare foot touched the concrete. It was Sylvan. It had to be.

“You lied to me,” Jenks said, loosening his sword.

“I’m free!” the dryad exclaimed, and he leaped lightly onto the concrete, exuberant as his robes furled.

The glow of Vincet’s dust was a sickly yellow as he hovered beside Jenks, his broken sword in hand. The dryad probably didn’t know it, but it was a real threat.

“Is Vi okay?” Jenks asked, and Vincet nodded.

“But I fear we have let loose a demon.”

“You are trash, Sylvan!” Daryl shouted, sagging in Ivy’s arms as she wheezed. “I will not rest until you are dead!”

Sylvan stopped his twirling. Looking at Jenks as if seeing him for the first time, the dryad smiled, his gaze alighting briefly on Vincet, Jumoke, and finally Bis, all fronting him. “Daryl is a crazy bitch,” he said softly, pulling himself to a dignified stance. “I didn’t lie.” Glancing at the people coming across the park from the town homes, he added, almost as an afterthought, “Not much, anyway.”

“Now!” Ivy shouted, springing into action. Jenks darted forward, sword in hand.

“No, wait!” Bis exclaimed, but Ivy was already pinwheeling to a stop. The spot of air where Sylvan had been, was gone.

“Where did he go!” Ivy asked, turning back to them.

Bis shook himself, resettling his wings as he looked at the people coming closer. “Into the line,” he said, clearly unnerved. His ears were pinned and his tail was lashed about his feet. “He shouldn’t be able to do that,” he added, meeting Jenks’s gaze.

Daryl slumped on the bench to look totally undignified and out of character. “It’s why he was imprisoned in stone,” she said, pushing a chip of his statue off to clatter on the cement. “Now I’ll never find him.”

Jenks stifled a shiver as he met Ivy’s eyes. Tink’s contractual hell, he’d made a big mistake. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We can worry about Sylvan later.”

“Right behind you.” Bis flew to their satchel, ducking behind Daryl’s robes and coming out with it and the grimy, dented bowl. A bobbing flashlight across the grass caught his eyes, and they glowed red. Seeing it, someone called out. More lights angled their way.

“Jenks, I’m taking Daryl to the hospital,” Ivy said. “Can you get home from here okay?”

Jenks looked at Daryl, struggling to breathe, and he nodded. “See you there.”

Daryl was complaining she wasn’t going to go to the butchers and leechers when Vincet dropped down to him. “Thank you, Jenks,” he said, his expression solemn in the dim light. “You saved my family.”

Wincing, Jenks looked to Vincet’s front door where his wife and sons were silhouetted in the warm glow of a fire. “You’re welcome. I don’t think Sylvan will be back.”

“Tomorrow,” Vincet said, shaking his hand. “I’ll come tomorrow. Thank you. I can’t ever do enough.”

Jenks managed a smile as he thought of Vi. She’d be fine, now. “Just be nice to some pixy buck who needs it,” he said. “And build me an office.”

Vincet’s head was bobbing as he drifted back, but it was clear he wanted to return to his home. “Yes. Anything. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Jenks agreed, then darted up when a flashlight found him, bathing him in a bright white light. “Sorry about the mess!” he shouted.

Vincet went one way, Ivy and Daryl another, and in an instant, even their dust was gone. He waited until he heard the soft sound of Ivy’s muffled engine before he turned his back on the demolished grove and rose higher. Like a switch, the sounds of chaos went faint and the air turned chill. An uncomfortable mix of success and failure took him. And as Jenks quickly caught up to Jumoke and the slower-flying gargoyle winging his way back across the Ohio River, he had a bad feeling that this was far from over.

6

Hands on his hips, Jenks hovered a good five inches above the damp moss, newly transplanted from somewhere half across the Hollows. He gazed in satisfaction at the freshly scrubbed, upside-down flowerpot buried halfway into the soft soil. The sun was high, but here, under the shelter of an overgrown lilac, it was cool. It had taken almost a week working the four hours before the sun rose, but Vincet had finally called his office done.

While Jenks’s children watched, Vincet had chipped out a door in the upside-down flowerpot, built a hearth, and laid a circle of stone that said “welcome” in pixy culture. Seeds had been planted from Vincet’s own stash, and Jenks wasn’t sure how he felt about another man putting plants into his own soil. How was he to know what was going to come up?

Watching Vincet had been a good lesson to his own kids, who up to now had only seen their parents work, and when Jenks rubbed his wings together to signal the all-clear, his children swarmed down in a wave of silk and noise. The babble grew high, and he fled, darting to where Matalina was on the wall with Jrixibell, again refusing to eat her pollen, having stuffed herself with nectar. He hadn’t a clue where she was getting it. The little girl probably had a stash of flowers somewhere that even her mother didn’t know about.

“Go!” the woman relented as the little girl whined, her wings down in a pitiful display. “But you’re going to eat twice as much tonight!”

“Thank you, Mama!” she chimed out, and Jenks watched for birds until she reached her brothers and sisters, already buzzing in and out of his new office.

Happy, Jenks settled himself beside Matalina, thinking she was beautiful out here in the dappled sun. She handed him a sweetball, and he took it, pulling her close to make her giggle. “I’d rather have you,” he said, stealing a kiss.

“Jenks,” she fussed, clearly liking the attention. “I’m pleased it ended well.”

A flash of guilt darkened his wings. “Yeah, as long as Sylvan doesn’t come back and Rachel doesn’t find out,” he said, gaze going to his kids as they doused Jumoke in pollen from an early dandelion, temporally turning him blond until he shook himself.

“You’re such the worrier,” Matalina teased. “Let the future take care of itself. Vincet’s family is safe, and Jumoke is considering a career outside the garden. I’m proud of you.”

He turned to her, his guilt easing. “You think it will be okay?” he said, and she leaned in, putting her arms around his neck and her forehead against his.

“I’m sure of it. That dryad is long gone. No need to worry.”

Jenks sighed, feeling a knot untying, but still…“How do you like the office?” he asked, trying to change the subject. “I’ll get a little bell and they can ring it. I don’t think anyone will come, anyway.”

Matalina smiled as a shaft of light found her face. “They’ll come, Jenks. Just you wait.”

The sound of one of their children wailing drifted to them, and together they sighed.

“Not today, though,” Jenks said, giving her a kiss before he took to the air, his hands leaving hers reluctantly. “Today, I belong entirely to you.”

And, happy, he rose up, scanning his garden, assessing in an instant what had happened and darting down to make things right.

It was what he did. It was what he always did. And it was what he would always do.