the living room. I would have thought it amusing but for Jenks unmoving on her palm. Limping, I followed them.
“No, love,” the tiny woman directed as Ivy went to set Jenks on a cushion. “The end table, please. I need a hard surface to cut against.”
Cut against? I thought, moving Ivy’s magazines off the table and onto the floor to make room. I sat down on the closest chair and tilted the lamp shade. My adrenaline was fading, leaving me light-headed and cold in my flannel pajamas. What if Jenks was really hurt? I was shocked he had actually killed two fairies. He had killed them. I had put people in the hospital before, sure, but kill someone? I thought back to my fear as I huddled in the dark next to a tense vampire and wondered if I could do the same.
Ivy set Jenks down as if he were made of tissue paper, then backed to the door. Her tall stance hunched, making her look nervous and out of place. “I’ll check outside,” she said.
Mrs. Jenks smiled, showing an ageless warmth in her smooth, youthful features. “No, love,” she said. “It’s safe now. We have at least a full day before the I.S. can find another fairy clan willing to breach our lines. And there’s not enough money to get pixies to invade other pixies’ gardens. It just proves fairies are uncouth barbarians. But you go search if you like. The youngest bairn could dance among the flowers this morning.”
Ivy opened her mouth as if to protest, then realizing the pixy was entirely serious, she dropped her eyes and slipped out the back door.
“Did Jenks say anything before he passed out?” Mrs. Jenks asked as she arranged him so his wings were awkwardly splayed. He looked like a pinned bug on display, and I felt ill.
“No,” I said, wondering at her calm attitude. I was nearly frantic. “He started in like he was reciting a sonnet or something.” I pulled my pajama top tighter to my throat and hunched into myself. “Is he going to be all right?”
She sank to her knees beside him, her relief obvious as she ran a careful finger under her husband’s swollen eye. “He’s fine. If he was cursing or reciting poetry, he’s fine. If you told me he was singing, I’d be worried.” Her hands slowed their motion over him, and her eyes went distant. “The one time he came home singing, we nearly lost him.” Her eyes cleared. Pressing her lips together in a mirthless smile, she opened the bag her children had brought.
I felt a flush of guilt. “I’m really sorry about this, Mrs. Jenks,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for me, this never would have happened. If Jenks wants to break his contract, I’ll understand.”
“Break his contract!” Mrs. Jenks fixed her eyes on me with a frightening intensity. “Heavens, child. Not over a little bit of a thing like this.”
“But Jenks shouldn’t have to fight them,” I protested. “They could’ve killed him.”
“There were only three,” she said, spreading a white cloth next to Jenks like a surgical kit, laying bandages, salve, even what looked like artificial wing membrane on it. “And they knew better. They saw the warnings. Their deaths were legitimate.” She smiled, and I could see why Jenks had used his wish to keep her. She looked like an angel, even with the knife she held.
“But they weren’t after you,” I insisted. “They were after me.”
Her head shook to send the tips of her wispy hair waving. “Doesn’t matter,” she said in her lyrical voice. “They would have gotten the garden regardless. But I think they did it for the money.” She nearly spat the word. “It took a lot of I.S. money to convince them to try my Jenks’s strength.” She sighed, cutting out portions of the thin membrane to match the holes in Jenks’s wing with the coolness of someone mending a sock.
“Don’t fret,” she said. “They thought that because we had just taken possession, they could catch us off balance.” She turned a smug eye to me. “They found out wrong, didn’t they?”
I didn’t know what to say. The pixy/fairy animosity went far deeper than I had imagined. Being of the mind-set that no one could own the earth, pixies and fairies shunned the idea of property titles, relying upon the simple adage might makes right. And because they weren’t in competition with anyone but each other, the courts turned a blind eye to their affairs, allowing them to settle their own disagreements, up to and including killing each other, apparently. I wondered what had happened to whoever had the garden before Ivy rented the church.
“Jenks likes you,” the small woman said, rolling up the wing membrane and packing it away. “Calls you his friend. I’ll give you the same title out of respect for him.”
“Thanks,” I stammered.
“I don’t trust you, though,” she said, and I blinked. She was as direct as her husband, and just about as tactful. “Is it true you made him a partner? For real and not just a cruel prank?”
I nodded, more serious than I had been all week. “Yes, ma’am. He deserves it.”
Mrs. Jenks took a pair of tiny scissors in hand. They looked more like an heirloom than a functional piece of equipment, their wooden handles carved into the shape of a bird. The beak was metal, and my eyes widened as she took the cold iron and knelt before Jenks. “Please stay asleep, love,” I heard her whisper, and I watched in astonishment as she delicately trimmed the frayed edges of Jenks’s wing. The smell of cauterized blood rose thick in the shut-up room.
Ivy appeared in the doorway as if having been summoned. “You’re bleeding,” she said.
I shook my head. “It’s Jenks’s wing.”
“No. You’re bleeding. Your foot.”
I straightened, squashing a flash of angst. Breaking eye contact, I swung my foot up to look at its underside. A red smear covered my heel. I had been too busy to notice.
“I’ll clean it up,” Ivy said, and I dropped my foot, shrinking back. “The floor,” Ivy said in disgust. “You left bloody footprints all over the floor.” My gaze went to where she pointed to the hallway, my footprints obvious in the growing light of the new day. “I wasn’t going to touch your foot,” Ivy muttered as she stomped out.
I flushed. Well … I had woken up with her breathing on my neck.
There was a thumping of cupboard doors and a rush of water from the kitchen. She was mad at me. Maybe I ought to apologize. But for what? I already said I was sorry for hitting her.
“You sure Jenks is going to be okay?” I asked, avoiding the problem.
The pixy woman sighed. “If I can get the patches in place before he wakes up.” She sat back on her heels, closed her eyes, and said a short prayer. Wiping her hands on her skirt, she took up a dull blade with a wooden handle. She set a patch in place and ran the flat of the blade along the edges, melting it to Jenks’s wing. He shuddered, though didn’t wake. Her hands were shaking when she finished, and pixy dust sifted from her to make her glow. An angel indeed.
“Children?” she called, and they appeared from everywhere. “Bring your father along. Josie, if you would go and make sure the door is open?”
I watched as the children descended upon him, lifting him up and carrying him out through the flue. Mrs. Jenks wearily got to her feet as her eldest daughter packed everything away in the bag. “My Jenks,” she said, “sometimes reaches for more than a pixy ought to dream for. Don’t get my husband killed in his folly, Ms. Morgan.”
“I’ll try,” I whispered as she and her daughter vanished up the chimney. I felt guilty, as if I were intentionally manipulating Jenks to protect myself. There was a sliding clatter of glass into the trashcan, and I rose, glancing out the window. The sun was up, shining on the herbs in the garden. It was way past my bedtime, but I didn’t think I could go back to sleep.
Feeling weary and out of control, I shuffled into the kitchen. Ivy was on her hands and knees in her black robe, swabbing up my footprints. “I’m sorry,” I said, standing in the middle of the kitchen with my arms