Ever After (Rachel Morgan)

the only chance I have of surviving this.”
    “You think?” Jenks said, but I could feel Nick’s eyes on me as I watched the news—nothing so far about surface demons at the park, not even a teaser for the end of the broadcast.
    “I was mad,” Nick continued. “I thought . . .” He hesitated as my teeth clenched. “I was trying to get back at you, okay? It went too far.”
    My eyes flicked to his, holding. Jenks’s wings clattered, and he rose. “Too far?” he said. “Destroying the ever-after and magic to tell your old girlfriend—who doesn’t even like you—that you were mad at her was ‘too far’?”
    I didn’t have to say a word. Jenks was doing all my yelling for me. I appreciated it. It freed me up for more important things, like watching the latest insurance commercial. But even so, my anger grew. Because of him, Ray would never know her mother.
    “I was wrong,” Nick said staring down at the table, his hands in his lap. “You were right.”
    At that, I couldn’t help myself. “I’m the better bet now, huh?”
    Relief slipped into his expression as I finally talked to him. “I’m trying to survive.”
    “Rachel doesn’t owe you crap, you lying sack of toad shit,” Jenks said.
    I put the arches of my feet on the edge of the coffee table. “I don’t owe you crap, you lying sack of toad shit.” That one, I wanted to say.
    Nick pressed his thin lips together, his stubble showing strong when he flushed. “Fine. I’ll leave.”
    He shifted forward to stand, getting no more than three inches before Ivy stood, the pointy part of her sword touching his chest. Looking at it, he sank back down. The tension was getting thick. I didn’t have a clue what to do with him, much less what I was going to wear tomorrow. “Let him go, Ivy,” Jenks said bitterly. “We don’t need him.”
    “He can’t go,” I said as three of Jax’s sisters brought the miserable pixy a blanket. Damn it, he was crying silver tears. I was going to smack Nick into the next dimension for having misled Jax so badly. “He’ll run back to Ku’Sox and tell him how I’m going to smear him into demon pâté.”
    “Is that what you think I’d do?” Nick said, his words clipped. “Go back to Ku’Sox?”
    I leaned over the table. “If the crap stinks, wipe your ass.”
    “I made a mistake!” Nick’s gaze was fixed on mine, and his words were precise. “Throw me a goddamned life preserver, will you?”
    My eyes went to the low ceiling, remembering thinking that myself so many times before. His mistake had cost Ray her mother. Lucy, too. “Nick? Shut up. ”
    Sullen, he pushed back into the cushions. Jax was staring across the room at Belle. She’d come in and was standing beside Rex at the archway, her bow strung and her expression severe. Rex had been Jax’s cat, and I’d give a lot to know what Jax was thinking, both about the cat and that Belle, a fairy, was living under his father’s roof.
    “Rache, this is dumb,” Jenks said, wings going full tilt as he landed on my knee. “Call the I.S. to come pick him up so we can get on with what we have to do.”
    Standing before Nick, Ivy shrugged, which told me she agreed with Jenks. I thought for a moment, my gaze lingering on Jax, miserable as he huddled under a blanket his mother had made. “I’m not happy about this either,” I said, “but the I.S. can’t hold him if Ku’Sox can pop him out.”
    “I told you—” Nick started.
    “Shut up!” I snapped, and Jenks dusted a heavy black to pool on the floor. “I used to listen to you, but you lied and I walked.” Leaning forward, I caught his eyes and held them. “Tell you what. I’ll keep Ku’Sox off you if you stay in the church. That’s it.”
    “Rache . . .” Jenks complained, and I held up a hand. Like I believed for one second that he would stay in the church?
    “Set one toe out of it, and I don’t care anymore.”
    Nick exhaled loudly, clearly wanting more. He wasn’t getting it.
    “I have stuff to do.” Heart pounding, I looked at the clock on the cable box. “Excuse me.”
    Nick’s expression became alarmed at the prospect of my leaving him with Ivy, and sure enough, Ivy smiled to show her teeth, her motions slow and sultry as she almost crawled over the couch to sit beside him. “Can I leave you two alone for five minutes?” I asked as I looked down at her, not altogether kidding, and she smiled even wider.
    “I want to talk to you,” Jenks said, rising up with