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before us, but I was too tired to enjoy it.  To rest. The music cut off with the engine. Reaching under the
seat, my healing knuckles grazed my new laptop when I shifted the seat rearward. Closing my eyes, I
took a slow breath and leaned back, my hands still on the wheel.Please get out and take a walk, Jenks.
Jenks was silent. There was the crackle of cellophane as he gathered up the trash. The man never
stopped eating. I was going to introduce him to a mighty burger tonight. Maybe three-quarters of a
pound of meat would slow him down.
 You want me to drive? he asked, and I cracked an eyelid, looking askance at him.
Oh, there s a good idea. If we were stopped, it d be me getting the points, not him. Nah, I said, my
hands falling from the wheel and into my lap.  We re almost there, I just need to move around a little.
With a wisdom far beyond his apparent age, Jenks ran his eyes over me. His shoulders slumped, and I
wondered if he knew he was getting on my nerves. Maybe there was a reason pixies were only four
inches tall.  Me too, he said meekly, opening his door to let in a gust of sunset-cooled wind smelling of
pine and water.  Do you have any change for the machine?
Relieved, I tugged my bag onto my lap and handed him a fiver. I d have given him more, but he had
nowhere to put it. He needed a wallet. And a pair of pants to put it in. I had hustled him out of the church
so fast that all he had was his phone, clipped proudly to his elastic waistband, which had since been
depressingly silent. We d been hoping Jax would call again, but no such luck.
 Thanks, he said, getting out and tripping on the flip-flops I d bought him at the first gas station we
stopped at. The van shifted when he shut the door, and he made his way to a rusted trash can set about
fifty feet from the parking lot, chained to a tree. His balance was markedly better, with only the usual
trouble most people had walking with slabs of orange plastic attached to their feet.
He dumped the trash and headed for a tree, an alarming intentness to his pace. I took a breath to call
out, and he jerked to a stop. Slumped, he scanned the park, making his way to a clapboard restroom
instead. Such were the trials in a day of the life of a six-foot-four pixy.
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I sighed, watching him slow at the bed of straggly daylilies to talk to the pixies. They buzzed about him in
a swirl of gold and silver sparkles, coming from all over the park like fireflies on a mission. Within
moments a cloud of glowing dust hovered over him in the darkening air.
I turned at the hush of a car pulling in a few slots down. Three boys like stair steps exploded out, arguing
about who switched whose dead batteries in their handheld games. Mom said nothing, wearily popping
the trunk and settling it all with a twelve-pack of double A s. Money was offered by Dad, and the three
ran to the vending machines under a rustic shelter, shoving each other to get there first. Jenks caught the
smallest before he fell into the flowers. I had a feeling Jenks was more worried about the plants than the
boy. I smiled when the couple leaned against the car and watched them, exhaling loudly. I knew the
feeling.
My smile slowly faded into melancholy. I had always planned on children, but with a hundred years of
fertility facing me, I was in no hurry. My thoughts drifted to Kisten, and I pulled my eyes from the boys at
the vending machines.
Witches married outside their species all the time, especially before the Turn. There were perfectly
acceptable options: adoption, artificial insemination, borrowing your best friend s boyfriend for a night.
Issues of what was morally right and wrong tended not to matter when you found yourself in love with a
man you couldn t tell you weren t human. It sort of went with the whole
hiding-among-humans-for-the-last-five-thousand-years thing. We weren t hiding now, but why limit
oneself simply because there wasn t a safety issue anymore? It was way too soon for me to think about
kids, but with Kisten, any children would have to be engendered by someone else.
Frustrated, I got out of the van, my body aching from my first day without a pain amulet since my
beating. The couple drifted away, talking between themselves.There wouldn t be any children with Nick
either, I reminded myself,so it isn t like this is anything new.
Painfully stretching to touch my toes, I froze, realizing I had put him in present tense. Damn. This was not
a choice between them.Oh God, I thought.Tell me I m only doing this to help Jenks. That nothing is left in
me to rekindle. But the wedge of doubt wiggled itself between me and my logic, settling in to make me
feel stupid.
Angry with myself, I did a few more stretches, and then, wondering if the black on my aura had soaked
in, I tapped a line and set a circle. My lips curled in revulsion. The shimmering sheet of energy rose black
and ugly, the reddish light of sunset coming in from around the trees adding an ominous cast to the black
sheen. The gold tint of my aura was entirely lost. Disgusted, I dropped the line, and the circle vanished,
leaving me depressed. Even better, Mom and Dad Cleaver called to their kids and, with an unusual
hushed haste at their loud questions, jammed everyone into the car to drive away with a little squeak of
tire on pavement.
 Yeah, I muttered, watching their brake lights flash red as they settled into traffic.  Run from the black
witch. I felt like a leper, and leaned against the warm van and crossed my arms over my chest,
remembering why my folks always took us to big cities or places like Disney World on vacation. Small [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]