The delighted shrieks of pixy children filtered in through my open window to soften my mood. Very few pixies could manage to raise a family in the city. Jenks was stronger in spirit than most would ever know. He had killed before to keep his garden so his children wouldn’t starve. It was good to hear their voices raised in delight: the sound of family and security.

“Which scent was it, now?” I murmured, fingers hovering over my perfumes as I tried to remember which one Ivy and I were currently experimenting with. Every so often a new bottle would show up without comment as she found something new for me to try.

I reached for one, dropping it when Jenks said from right beside my ear, “Not that one.”

“Jenks!” I clutched my towel closer and spun. “Get the hell out of my room!”

He darted backward as I made a grab for him. His grin widened as he looked down at the leg I accidentally showed. Laughing, he swooped past me and landed on a bottle. “This one works good,” he said. “And you’re going to need all the help you can get when you tell Ivy you’re going to make a run for Trent again.”

Scowling, I reached for the bottle. Wings clattering, he rose, pixy dust making temporary sunbeams shimmer through the glittering bottles. “Thanks,” I said sullenly, knowing his nose was better than mine. “Now get out. No, wait.” He hesitated by my small stained-glass window, and I vowed to sew up the pixy hole in the screen. “Who’s watching Glenn?”

Jenks literally glowed with parental pride. “Jax. They’re in garden. Glenn is shooting wild cherry pits straight up with a rubber band for my kids to catch before they hit the ground.”

I was so surprised, I almost could ignore that my hair was dripping wet and I was wearing nothing but a towel. “He’s playing with your kids?”

“Yeah. He’s not so bad—once you get to know him.” Jenks vaulted through the pixy hole. “I’ll send him inside in about five minutes, okay?” he said through the screen.

“Make it ten,” I said softly, but he was gone. Frowning, I shut the window, locked it, and checked twice that the curtains hung right. Taking the bottle Jenks had suggested, I gave myself a splash. Cinnamon blossomed. Ivy and I had been working for the last three months to find a perfume that covered her natural scent mixing with mine. This was one of the nicer ones.

Whether undead or alive, vampires moved by instinct triggered by pheromones and scent, more at the mercy of their hormones than an adolescent. They gave off a largely undetectable smell that lingered where they did, an odoriferous signpost telling other vamps that this was taken territory and to back off. A far cry better than the way dogs did it, but living together the way we were, Ivy’s smell lingered on me. She had once told me it was a survival trait that helped increase a shadow’s life expectancy by preventing poaching. I wasn’t her shadow, but there it was anyway. What it boiled down to was, the smell of our natural scents mingling tended to act like a blood aphrodisiac, making it harder for Ivy to best her instincts, nonpracticing or not.