A Fistful of Charms. Ким Харрисон

lapping up her misery when he rewarded her for behavior that went contrary to what she wanted to believe. Eventually she abandoned everything to keep from going insane, turning herself off and letting Piscary make her into whatever he wanted. She started hurting people she loved when they were at their most vulnerable, and when they abandoned her, she started enticing innocents.”

      Dropping his eyes, Kisten looked to his bare feet. I knew he was one of the people she had hurt, and I could tell he felt guilty for leaving her. “You couldn’t do anything,” I said, and his head jerked up, anger in his eyes.

      “It was bad, Rachel,” he said. “I should have done something. Instead, I turned my back on her and walked away. She won’t tell me, but I think she killed people to satisfy her blood lust. God, I hope it was by accident.”

      I swallowed hard, but he wasn’t done yet. “For years she ran rampant,” he said, staring at the van but his eyes unfocused, as if looking into the past. “She was a living vampire functioning as an undead, walking under the sun as beautiful and seductive as death. Piscary made her that way, and her crimes were given amnesty. The favored child.”

      He said the last with bitterness, and his gaze dropped to me. “I don’t know what happened, but one day I found her on my kitchen floor, covered in blood and crying. I hadn’t seen her in years, but I took her in. Piscary gave her some peace, and after a while she got better. I think it was so she wouldn’t kill herself too soon for his liking. All I know is she found a way to deal with the blood lust, chaining it somehow by mixing it with love. And then she met you and found the strength to say no to it all.”

      Kisten looked at me, his hand touching my hair. “She likes herself now. You’re right that she isn’t going to throw it all away just because you aren’t here. It’s just…” He squinted, his gaze going distant again. “It was bad, Rachel. It got better. And when she met you, she found a core of strength that Piscary hadn’t been able to warp. I just don’t want to see it break.”

      I was shaking inside, and somehow my hands found his. “I’ll be back.”

      He nodded, looking at my fingers within his. “I know.”

      I felt the need to move. I didn’t care that it now came from the need to run from what I had just learned. My eyes dropped to the keys. “Thanks for letting me use your van.”

      “No biggie,” he said, forcing a smile, but his eyes were worried, so terribly worried. “Just return it with a full tank of gas.” He reached forward, and I leaned against him, breathing in his scent one last time. My head tilted and our lips met, but it was an empty kiss, my worry having pushed any passion out. This was for Jenks, not Nick. I didn’t owe Nick anything.

      “I slipped something in your suitcase for you,” Kisten said, and I pulled away.

      “What is it?” I asked, but he didn’t answer, giving me a smile before he reluctantly stepped back. His hand trailed down my arm and slipped away.

      “Good-bye, Kist,” I whispered. “It’s only for a few days.”

      He nodded. “ ‘Bye, love. Take care of yourself.”

      “You too.”

      Bare feet soundless, he turned and went back into the church. The door creaked shut, and he was gone.

      Feeling numb, I turned and yanked open my door. Jenks’s kids flowed out of his open window, and I got in, slamming the door behind me. The laptop slipped under the seat with my bag, and I jammed the keys into the ignition. The big engine turned over and settled into a slow, even rumble. Only now did I look across to Jenks, surprised again at seeing him there, sitting beside me in Kisten’s sweats and his shockingly yellow hair. This was really weird.

      His seat belt was on, and his hands dropped from where he’d been fiddling with the visor. “You look small,” he finally said, looking both innocent and wise.

      A smile quirked the corner of my lips. Shifting into gear, I accelerated down the street.

       Eight

      “For the love of Tink,” Jenks muttered, angling another one of the Cheetos into his mouth. He meticulously chewed and swallowed, adding, “Her hair looks like a dandelion. You think someone would have told her. There’s enough there to make a quilt out of.”

      My gaze was fixed on the car ahead of us, going an aggravating fifty-six miles an hour on the two-lane, double-yellow-lined road. The woman in question had white hair frizzed out worse than mine. He was right. “Jenks,” I said, “you’re getting crumbs all over Kisten’s van.”

      The crackle of cellophane was faint over the music—happy, happy music that didn’t fit my mood at all. “Sorry,” he said, rolling the bag down and shoving it in the back. Licking the orange from his fingers, he started messing with Kist’s CDs. Again. Then he’d fiddle with the glove box, or spend five minutes getting his window at ju-u-u-u-ust the right height, or fuss with his seat belt, or any of the half a dozen things he’d been doing since getting in the van, all the while making a soft commentary that I think he didn’t know I could hear. It had been a long day.

      I sighed, adjusting my grip on the wheel. We had been off the interstate for the last 150 miles or so, taking a two-lane road instead of the interstate up to Mackinaw. The pine forest pressed close on either side, making the sun an occasional flash. It was nearing the horizon, and the wind coming in my window was chill, carrying the scent of earth and growing things. It soothed me where the music couldn’t.

      The National Forestry sign caught my eye, and I smoothly braked. I had to get out from behind this woman. And if I heard that song one more time, I was going to jam Daddy’s T-Bird down Jenks’s throat. Not to mention “Mr. Bladder the size of a walnut” might need to use the can again, which was why we were on the back roads instead of the faster interstate. Jenks got frantic if he couldn’t pee when he wanted to.

      He looked up from rifling through the glove box as I slowed to bump over the wooden bridge spanning a drainage ditch. He’d been through it three times, but who knows? Maybe something had changed since the last time he had arranged the old napkins, registration, insurance, and the broken pencil. I had to remind myself that he was a pixy, not a human, despite what he looked like, and therefore had a pixy’s curiosity.

      “A rest stop?” he questioned, his green eyes innocently wide. “What for?”

      I didn’t look at him, pulling in between two faded white lines and shifting into park. Lake Huron lay 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