I wasn’t sure how spiders fitted into his equation, but I padded back to the van while he pounded on the shower door. Ivy got the engine going, and when I jumped into the front passenger seat, she leaned over to crack the window for me. The dusky scent of incense slipped over me, familiar and rich with undertones only my subconscious had been aware of before. Comforting.

The thump of a metal door closing pulled my attention to the lot. Jenks slipped into the van, clearly upset. Fifteen feet behind him I saw Nick, beard gone and hair dripping, spotting his gray sweats. He was moving better, head up and looking around. I had been right that the shoes were too small; he was still barefoot, the sneakers dangling from two fingers.

“You’re too good to him, Rachel,” Ivy said softly. “You should be spitting mad, and you aren’t. He’s a liar and a thief. And he hurt you. Please,” she whispered. “Think about what you’re doing?”

Don’t worry about it, I thought, enduring the indignity of thumping my tail in an effort to convey I wasn’t going to let Nick back into my life. But when the memory of his battered body and his will to remain silent against drugs and pain returned to me, I had a hard time staying angry with him.

Eighteen

“Good God,” I whispered, sitting on the van’s cot and looking at my legs, horrified. They were hairy—not wolf hairy, but an I-couldn’t-find-my-razor-the-last-six-months hairy. Utterly grossed out, I took a peek at my armpit, jerking away. Oh, that’s just…nasty.

“You okay, Rachel?” came Ivy’s voice from the front of the moving van, and I snatched up my long-sleeve black shirt and covered myself, though a heavy curtain was between me and the rest of the world passing at an awkward start-and-stop thirty-five miles an hour.

“Fine,” I said, hurriedly slipping into it and wondering why my nails were the right length, though they’d lost their polish. My red frizz was longer though, bumping about past my shoulders, where it had been before Al cut a chunk out of it last winter. I had a feeling my extra-hairy condition might be laid at the feet of Ceri. She had twisted the curse to switch me back, and apparently they hadn’t shaved in the Dark Ages.

I was thankful as all hell that Jenks, Jax, and Rex were in Kisten’s Corvette behind us. Getting dressed in the back of a van was bad enough. Doing it with pixies watching would have been intolerable. I’d done that before. I didn’t want to do it again.

Shuddering at the long red hair on my legs, I shook out a pair of socks, wishing I had footies. My face scrunched up as I put them on. This was going to change as soon as I found ten minutes to myself in the bathroom with a bottle of Nair. Why Jenks had shown up smooth as a baby’s butt was beyond me. Maybe pixies didn’t have hair except atop their heads.