The Witch with No Name

Trent sighed as Lucy stopped bouncing, her eyes going wide as she covered them. “Shhh,” she whispered, then flung her hands from her, smacking Trent in the face as she cried out, “Here I am!”

Smiling, I tugged her sweater straight. “That’s right. But you have to be quiet to find Ray. Shhhh. Ready?”

Trent’s free hand touched my waist, and I froze.

“Rachel . . . I . . .”

The door opened and I spun, relaxing when Jenks darted in, Ivy shutting the door softly behind herself.

“Just go,” I said, resisting the urge to straighten his hat after Lucy knocked it. “Ivy and I have this.”

Ellasbeth shrugged her long coat, looking at us as if jealous. “You can’t stop him without elven magic.”

“Watch us,” I said, my confidence faltering.

Jenks’s wings hummed. “Guys, my pixy sense is tingling.”

Trent stiffened. “It’s the curse. He’s starting it.”

“Then you’d better get going,” I said, shoving him to the hallway. “Ellasbeth, where are they?”

The woman’s lips pressed together. Ivy’s eyes shifted to black, and Jenks’s wings clattered a warning. But then Lucy giggled, and Ellasbeth’s shoulders slumped. “He’s across the hall,” she said. “But you can’t stop him. He’s got like six men in there.”

Jenks snickered, and my eyes flicked to the one who had been guarding her. I was going to miss Trent’s help, but hell, I’d been doing this long before I learned he was worth my trust. And to be honest, it would be easier if I wasn’t worrying about him.

Ready, I looked at Ivy, waiting by the door. Jenks was hovering at her shoulder, and I knew we had this. “Go,” I said, and Trent shifted Lucy on his hip.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes glinting as he hesitated briefly in front of me before putting a hand on Ellasbeth’s back and hustling her out the door and down the hallway. We followed them in case there was trouble. Lucy was whispering loudly, but I didn’t think it would make it past the thick doors and soundproofed walls.

“Just like old times,” Jenks said, and I couldn’t help my smile as I checked my hopper.

“Old times,” I scoffed, relishing the adrenaline scouring through me. “We’ve only been doing this for three years.”

“Yeah, but for a pixy, that’s like a decade.”

Ivy was testing the edge of the knife Trent had given her. Her head came up and she tossed it, catching it again to hold it properly. She looked at the door and then cocked her head. “After you, Jenks?”

Jenks shrugged. “I can’t open it. It’s a manual.”

“Manual it is,” the vampire said, and with a soft grunt, she planted a side kick on the lock, exploding the door inward.

Chapter 26

The thick, supposedly kick-proof door took two blows of Ivy’s boot before the lock broke free of the studs and the door slammed into the opposite wall. Men shouted, and Ivy dove in, hands in fists and screaming. Jenks was a hot sparkle of dust after her, and I followed as the thuds of fists into flesh exploded into the snap of a wrist or knee and a masculine bellow of outrage.

Yep, it was going to be one of those days.

I slid to a halt in the well-appointed, low-ceilinged, brightly lit room, half of it arranged as a dining room with a small kitchenette, the other half a comfortable living room complete with big TV and two couches. Ivy was rising from the man she’d just downed, her eyes full and black and her shirt torn. She grinned at the two men by the couch, beckoning them forward.

“Rache!” Jenks shouted in warning, and I ducked, falling to a crouch and spinning with my leg extended to hit the man coming out of the bathroom. He was good, stumbling to avoid contact and going down into a controlled fall and rolling free of me.

I stood up—right into the arms of another man. He smelled like cheese as his arms wrapped around me, pinning my back to his front. Bad idea; I flung my head back, breaking his nose. The man bellowed but didn’t let go, and my eyes widened as the first man pointed a handgun at me.

Adrenaline pounded. My head snapped back again as I broke his hold. Breath held, I spun him to stand between his buddy and me. The gun seemed to explode in the small room, and I shoved my living shield at the shooter, not knowing if he was shot or I was shot or we had both lucked out.

Arms flailing, my would-be attacker fell into the shooter and they crashed into the small dinette table. Drawing my splat gun, I shot them both. One last spasm, and they were still.

“Ivy!” I spun, then went down on one knee as another gun went off and fire engulfed my leg. My breath came in with a gasp and my free hand clamped over my thigh. A man across the room was pointing a gun at me. Shit.

Howling, Ivy blocked a swinging lamp to jam the palm of her hand into someone’s jaw. Hair swinging, she planted her right foot and plowed the other into the man who’d shot me, sending him pinwheeling back into the window. He hit with a thud, shaken but not out. The lamp hit the floor and shattered.