Four

      “Ra-a-a-achel-l-l-l,” sang a tiny, irritating voice. It cut clearly through the shifting gears and choking gurgle of the bus’s diesel engine. Jenks’s voice grated on my inner ear worse than chalk on a blackboard, and my hand trembled in the effort to not make a grab for him. I’d never touch him. The little twit was too fast.

      “I’m not asleep,” I said before he could do it again. “I’m resting my eyes.”

      “You’re going to rest your eyes right past your stop—Hot Stuff.” He nailed the nickname last night’s cabbie had given me hard, and I slit an eyelid.

      “Don’t call me that.” The bus went around a corner, and my grip tightened on the box balanced on my lap. “I’ve got two more blocks,” I said through gritted teeth. I’d kicked the nausea, but the headache lingered. And I knew it was two blocks because of the sound of Little League practice in the park just down from my apartment. There’d be another after the sun went down for the nightwalkers.

      There was a thrum of wings as Jenks dropped from my earring and into the box. “Sweet mother of Tink! Is that all they pay you?” he exclaimed.

      My eyes flashed open. “Get out of my stuff!” I snatched my damp check and crammed it into a jacket pocket. Jenks made a mocking face, and I rubbed my thumb and finger together as if squishing something. He got the idea and moved his purple and yellow silk pantaloons out of my reach, settling on the top of the seat in front of me. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I asked. “Like helping your family move?”

      Jenks gave a yelp of laughter. “Help them move? No freaking way.” His wings quivered. “Besides, I should sniff around your place and make sure everything is okay before you blow yourself up when you try to use the john.” He laughed hysterically, and several people looked at me. I shrugged as if to say, “Pixies.”

      “Thanks,” I said sourly. A pixy bodyguard. Denon would laugh himself to death. I was indebted to Jenks for finding the spell on my check, but the I.S. hadn’t time to rig anything else. I figured I had a few days if he was really serious about this. More likely it was a “don’t let the spell kill you on the way out” kind of a thing.

      I stood as the bus came to a halt. Struggling down the steps, I landed in the late afternoon sun. Jenks made more annoying circles around me. He was worse than a mosquito. “Nice place,” he said sarcastically as I waited for traffic to clear before crossing the street to my apartment house. I silently agreed. I lived uptown in Cincinnati in what was a good neighborhood twenty years ago. The building was a four-story brick, originally built for university upperclassmen. It had seen its last finals party years ago and was now reduced to this.

      The black letterboxes attached to the porch were dented and ugly, some having obviously been broken into. I got my mail from the landlady. I had a suspicion she was the one who broke the boxes so she could sort through her tenants’ mail at her leisure. There was a thin strip of lawn and two bedraggled shrubs to either side of the wide steps. Last year, I had planted the yarrow seeds I had gotten in a Spell Weekly mail promotion, but Mr. Dinky, the landlady’s Chihuahua, had dug them up—along with most of the yard. Little divots were everywhere, making it look like a fairy battlefield.

      “And I thought my place was bad,” Jenks whispered as I skipped the step with dry rot.

      My keys jingled as I balanced the box and unlocked the door at the same time. A little voice in my head had been saying the same thing for years. The odor of fried food assaulted me as I entered the foyer, and my nose wrinkled. Green indoor/outdoor carpet ran up the stairs, threadbare and fraying. Mrs. Baker had unscrewed the lightbulb in the stairway again, but the sun spilling in the landing window to fall on the rosebud wallpaper was enough to find my way.

      “Hey,” Jenks said as I went upstairs. “That stain on the ceiling is in the shape of a pizza.”

      I glanced up. He was right. Funny, I never noticed it before.

      “And that dent in the wall?” he said as we reached the first floor. “It’s just the right size for someone’s head. Man … if these walls could talk …”

      I found I could still smile. Wait until he got to my apartment. There was a dip in the living room floor where someone had burned out a hearth.

      My smile faded as I rounded the second landing. All my things were in the hall.

      “What the devil?” I whispered. Shocked, I set my box on the floor and looked down the hall to Mrs. Talbu’s door. “I paid my rent!”

      “Hey, Rache?” Jenks said from the ceiling. “Where’s your cat?”

      Anger growing, I stared at my furniture. It seemed to take up a lot more space when it was jammed into a hallway on her lousy plastic carpeting. “Where does she get off—”

      “Rachel!” Jenks shouted. “Where’s your cat?”

      “I don’t have a cat,” I all but snarled. It was a sore spot with me.

      “I thought all witches had a cat.”

      Lips pursed, I strode down the hall. “Cats make Mr. Dinky sneeze.”

      Jenks flew alongside my ear. “Who is Mr. Dinky?”

      “Him,” I said, pointing to the framed, oversized picture of a white Chihuahua hanging across from my landlady’s door. The butt-ugly, bug-eyed dog wore one of those bows parents put on a baby so you know it’s a girl. I pounded on the door. “Mrs. Talbu? Mrs. Talbu!”

      There were the muffled yaps of Mr. Dinky and the sound of nails on the backside of the door, shortly followed by my landlady screeching to try and get the thing to shut up. Mr. Dinky redoubled his noise, scrabbling at the floor to dig his way to me.

      “Mrs. Talbu!” I shouted. “Why is my stuff in the hall?”

      “Word’s out on you, Hot Stuff,” Jenks said from the ceiling. “You’re damaged goods.”

      “I told you not to call me that!” I shouted, hitting her door with my last word.

      I heard the slamming of a door from inside, and Mr. Dinky’s barking grew muffled and more frenzied. “Go away,” came a thin, reedy voice. “You can’t live here anymore.”

      The flat of my hand hurt, and I massaged it. “You think I can’t pay my rent?” I said, not caring that the entire floor could hear me. “I’ve got money, Mrs. Talbu. You can’t kick me out. I’ve got next month’s rent right here.” I pulled out my soggy check and waved it at the door.

      “I changed your lock,” Mrs. Talbu quavered. “Go away before you get killed.”

      I stared at the door in disbelief. She had found out about the I.S.’s threat? And the old lady act was a sham. She shouted clear enough through my wall when she thought I played my music too loud. “You can’t evict me!” I said desperately. “I’ve got rights.”

      “Dead witches have no rights,” Jenks said from the light fixture.

      “Damn it, Mrs. Talbu!” I shouted at the door. “I’m not dead yet!”

      There