Kim Harrison - The Undead Pool

“I’ll tell them you are romancing the cure of our genetic damage from him. and you will leave him as a broken ruin when you have it. They’ll believe me. You’re halfway to ruining him already.”

Al would know, but he wouldn’t say anything. My heart pounded. “Then okay. You can take them, but I don’t want them killed. Any of them.”

The mystics in me wailed. I reassured them, even as I felt a pang. Gone. I’d be invisible to them. They’d be like lost children in the night, but they’d be alive.

“That is acceptable,” Newt said as she looked at us. Together Trent and I nodded. I felt funny, my knees weak, and standing before her thus with our hands intertwined, I felt a bond stronger than any church could bestow fall about us. “You might want to be unconscious for this,” she added, and Trent cried out as her staff swung to strike me right between the eyes.

With a sharp thud of pain, the world blessedly went away.

A lion coughed as if clearing his throat, making me shiver in the cool morning air and sending my white dress to bump about my legs. Lucy’s hand was slightly damp and sticky in mine as she tugged toward the ice cone stand, singing a nonsense rhyme in time with her leaping jumps that sent a tingle of wild magic sparking between us. Newt had cursed my soul to keep the mystics and the Goddess from recognizing me, but I could still feel the trails of self they left. The line was alive, but I couldn’t be a part of it, share it. It was a constant reminder of what I’d lost—and it hurt, especially at night. Maybe that’s why Newt was crazy.

Trent and Ray were beside me, the more reserved girl concentrating on her toddling steps. It was a rare day in July, perfect weather to be at the zoo and early so the girls weren’t cranky yet. Jenks was doing recon somewhere, Jonathan was behind us with the empty stroller, and Ivy and Nina were at a nearby stand looking for a sunhat. Now that the undead were again awake, Felix was back in Cormel’s iron grip. It should have been a relief, but Felix’s mystic-induced sanity was showing signs of collapse. The why of which was worth thinking about.

But today was too beautiful to worry about the undead, and I squinted up at the sky as Lucy jumped up and down, demanding blue ice. Trent crouched, waiting for Ray to touch the colorful pictures to tell him which one she wanted. “Blue, blue, blue!” Lucy shouted, and I smiled at his patient deferment.

“Noted,” he said, taking her hands and calming her. “No one gets any ice until Ray decides. It’s hard to choose when you’re talking. Give her a moment.”

Eyelids squeezed closed, Lucy made a herculean effort to be quiet, sweet in her white dress and sun hat. It lasted for all of five seconds, until bursting, she opened her eyes wide and began to tell Ray the colors, trying to push her sister along.

Smiling, Trent stood and pulled out his wallet. Jonathan waited behind us in the shade, irking me as he watched with his nose in the air and that distasteful look on his face. “You’re really good with them, you know,” I said as Ray splayed her hands over all the colors and beamed up at Trent with her cute little-girl squint.

“I’ve had practice. CEOs around a table are worse,” he said, then turned to the man tending the cart. “Can you make one with stripes of colors?” he asked, and the man nodded, but then Trent’s expression shifted to a frown. “I thought I had more cash than that,” he said and handed the man a card. “Sorry, is this okay?”

Nodding, the man took it, but it was obvious he thought we were goobers. Who uses a platinum card to buy two ice cones?

Lucy clung to the cart, eyes on the cones set out of her reach as the man ran the card. Nina’s laugh caught my attention, and I turned. She’d gotten Ivy to put on a big floppy hat with peacock feathers draped down the back, and when Nina begged, Ivy fell into a seductive poise, trying it out. Nina screamed in delight and reached for another so they could vogue together. Ivy flushed, but she was smiling, and I turned away before she knew I was watching. I was so happy for her.

My smile faded, and I vowed Cormel wouldn’t screw it up. They owed me for saving their miserable undead lives. They all owed me, and if they pushed, I’d remind them of that.

Turning, I scanned the open courtyard hemmed in by eateries. Jenks should be back by now. It was starting to get busy, but if we stayed away from the kids’ area, we should be okay. It had been an interesting week, what with the undead waking up and their gorging serving to bring everyone back in line with an eerie suddenness. I’d tried to contact Al, only to have him crack my mirror and prove my idea wrong that he still cared and had abandoned me to protect his assets. I also didn’t like that the blue butterfly chrysalis I’d found among the broken shards had gone black, the tiny movements inside making Jenks shed a worried dust.

Trent had been in the national news all week, and not in a good way. I suspected that his invite today was to help him establish a new, homey image now that Ellasbeth was being painted as the wronged woman.

I didn’t mind being a part of his publicity program, and the man did need protection. People were still terrified of genetic research, and the fact that he’d come out of the closet as an elf a few months ago wasn’t helping. Two years ago, I would have been right there with them, hammering on his gates and demanding access to his files before he shredded them. Knowledge made all the difference, I thought, then changed my mind. Trust, maybe. But research could be stolen, perverted, twisted. Maybe they were right to protest.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said, handing the silver card back to Trent. “Do you have another card?”

Ooooh, ouch.

“Ahhh,” Trent hedged, looking back at Jonathan in the shade of the pergola. In a stiff motion, Jonathan rose, stalking forward with the warmth of a zombie.

“I’ve got this,” I said, reaching into my bag, and Trent fidgeted as I handed over a five. “Oh, for Tink’s toes,” I muttered as I took the ices and handed them to the girls. “You’d think I’d just hamstrung you.”

“It’s not that,” he said as he handed Jonathan the card. “Jon, see what’s going on.”

The girls looked tiny as they clustered about the tall man, and Ray clamped a hand on his pant leg for balance. “Yes, Sa’han,” he said, carefully disentangling Ray’s fingers and transferring them to Trent’s hand.

“I don’t mind paying.” Jonathan was headed for the ATM, and I scanned the courtyard. It suddenly felt exposed, vulnerable. Where in hell was Jenks?

Trent’s tight expression eased and he gave me a surprising sideways hug as he turned us back to the twin stroller parked beside the bench in the shade. “I don’t mind you paying,” he said softly, his words making a tingling path down my entire side since he hadn’t let go. “I simply want confirmation as to why the card isn’t working.”

My thoughts went to the newscasters, their eyes alight and their words fast as they smelled blood in the air surrounding the Kalamack estate. I had a good idea as to why his card wasn’t working. “Maybe it’s just a glitch.”

“Doubt it.” Expression neutral, he let me go to help Lucy up onto the bench before she spilled her cone trying to do it herself. “This might end with burgers at the pool.”

I lifted Ray to sit beside her sister, taking a moment to tug her dress straight over her tights. “That sounds good to me. I missed my Fourth of July picnic.” I sat, straddling the bench so I could watch Jonathan and the courtyard at the same time. Trent, who had to show a more dignified bearing, sat on the other side of the girls, his back to most of the zoo and the long-range scopes of the news vans that had followed us here. They weren’t allowed in without prior arrangements, and I think that was why we were here.