Page 23 of Demon's Bluff
Expression shifting, Al beamed up at her. “Ivy,” he said, voice dripping sarcasm. “It’s good to see you.” Using one finger, he lifted the lid and breathed deep. “Ah,” he added as he helped himself to a slice. “The sauce has not been the same since your lover cut Piscary’s head from his neck and he truly died, but this smells good enough to sell my soul for.”
Ivy shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she eyed me fordirection, and I shrugged. Satisfied, she pulled the box away from him and sat beside me. “I take it your meeting with the coven didn’t go well?”
Wings humming, Jenks came back in, a pair of tiny chopsticks in hand. “How can you tell?” he said with a little chuckle as he descended upon the pizza.
Ivy glanced at the empty box. “She’s looking for something to spell with.”
Al turned another page, silent.
“So.” Ivy flicked a tomato for Jenks off a slice before angling it between her perfect teeth. “They coming to put you in Alcatraz? I didn’t see anything on the news.”
Eating anything with a vampire was an unspoken invitation to become dessert. Ivy knew that wasn’t the case here, but I was still hesitant in my reach for a slice. “June,” I said, and her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Unless I can uncurse Brad. Which will be hard if I can’t get my book back from them. I’m going to retrieve it tonight. Want to come?”
Ivy leaned deep into the cushions with her pizza. “That’s why I’m here,” she said, her network of informants clearly having done their job. “You got to see the spell to recover Kisten, right? Do you need his ashes?”
Al made a low growl, his attention in the magazine.
“Maybe?” I admitted. “It was in ancient elven. I’m going to take a picture of it while we’re getting my book back. If Al won’t help me decipher it, Bis or Trent will.” I shoved the table into Al’s knees, and he grunted in surprise. “Well?”
He beamed. “I’m always interested in coven magic.”
Which wasn’t exactly an answer, but I slid the pizza down the table to make a clear spot. “Okay, let’s see it,” I said, and Ivy blinked at me. “You wouldn’t come here empty-handed.”
“She brought pizza,” Jenks said as he used his chopsticks to peel a flake of bacon free.
I held a hand out. “I need to see the tower’s blueprints so I know what spells to prep.”
“Thought you might.” Ivy reached behind her jacket for her phone. “Idon’t have them, but I can get them if you want. I brought the layout of Elyse’s short-term rental.”
“Not her office?” Worried, I leaned closer as our weights slid us together and the scent of happy vampire washed over me, soaking in like a shot of tequila.
“She’s in Circle Bluffs,” Jenks said as he dropped down, hands on his hips and his dust blanking the screen when it hit it. “Fancy.”
I stifled a shudder and Ivy sort of scooted back a little, the vampire eyeing Al in annoyance that he hadn’t left. “It’s an easy job,” Ivy said, but I was not excited about breaking into someone’s home. Business, sure. Lab, why not? Where someone lived and loved and slept? That was a different story.
“Yeah, Ivy’s right,” Jenks said, expression serious as he used two hands to move the screen. “If the coven took the time to bring you into their offices, show you where the book is, and even give you the word to unlock the cabinet, you can bet it’s not there.” He chuckled. “Infants.”
“You can bet that they will be waiting for you, though,” Ivy added.
“Yeah.” Jenks’s wings rasped as he stood on Ivy’s phone. “Elyse is itching for a reason to put you into Alcatraz without that six-month waiting period. It’s a setup. Come on, Rache,” he coaxed. “If you stole a book from a demon, would you leave it in a library or take it home?”
I glanced at Al. “Home,” I admitted, but it still felt wrong—even if Elyse had reneged on our deal. “Circle Bluffs, huh?”
Ivy gently blew Jenks’s dust from her phone and scrolled to a screen detailing the security measures for the tenants. “She’s renting the visitor bungalow. It has fewer safeguards than most of the homes out there.”
“I didn’t even know they had a visitor bungalow,” I admitted, and Ivy smirked.
“That’s what a neighbors’ association can get you if you can stomach someone measuring your grass twice a month.”
Jenks scrolled to the camera section. “And what color of car you can have.”
Al’s harrumph was loud, and again I wondered why he was lingering. He never took more than a cursory interest in my life—unless it was crashing into his.
“It’s a very easy-in, easy-out run,” Ivy said, her long hair falling like a fragrant curtain between us. “As long as you can get around any safeguards she might have put in. Anything too complex or permanent will violate the lease agreement. It’s short-term and very specific.”
Which I doubted Elyse cared about. I glanced at my bag by the door. The lethal-magic and strong-magic detection charms on my key ring were old but still worked.
“I’ll put the cameras on loop,” Jenks said. “No one will ever know you were there.”