“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.”