Unbound

“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?”