Kim Harrison - The Undead Pool

Blanching, I remembered the demon behind the barrier, writhing in pain as he lived his entire existence backward and forward in ten seconds flat.

“No!” Al said, and this time, I did nothing as he jerked me away. “Newt, we must go. Spells to weave, curses to twist. A student’s work is never done!”

There was alarm under his cheerful words, but Newt gestured as if she didn’t care, turning to look at the red smear where the sun had once been. “Study hard, Rachel,” she said, her staff hitting the earth to pinch the rocks and make them skip. “Come again soon. I’m having a party next week when the purple grass flowers. It’s beautiful then, when the wave hits them and sends them all crashing into one another.”

Al pulled me back another step, and I walked backward to watch Newt sketch out another circle. “How much power does it take to do that?” I asked, pitying her.

“Enough to make you crazy,” Al said. “Go home and leave Kalamack alone.”

My feet were edging my ley line, and I felt its warmth spill into me. “Yeah, whatever,” I muttered, deciding it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tell him I needed to get home so I could pick out what I was going to wear tonight with Trent.

“Rachel.”

“Ow?” He was pinching my arm, and at my dark look, he let go. Anger had tightened the corners of his eyes peering at me over his blue-smoked glasses. His lips pulled back in a grimace, and I fidgeted, halfway home but realities away. “Give me a break, Al. If I alienate him, I’ll never get the countercurse so you all can escape the ever-after. You can understand he’s a little reluctant after you collectively suggested to off him for the hell of it.”

Behind him, Newt gestured, and another demon contorted on the ground. Al squinted at me, clearly not happy. “You don’t have enough money to survive the fallout if you fail. And neither do I.”

My heart thudded. “Tell me about it.” I stood, waiting for him to jump me home. I could shift realities by myself, but I’d be marooned at Loveland Castle and have to beg a jump home from Bis.

Al shoved me into the line. My anger vanished, turning to worry as I felt the line take me. At least I knew no one was gunning for Trent or me. Almost I wished there was.

Death threats I could handle. Saving the world had always been a little trickier.

I vy?” I shouted as I pushed my socks around in my top dresser drawer. “Have you seen my white chemise with the lacy fringe?” The black slacks and short, snappy matching jacket I’d picked out for tonight’s job needed something to alleviate the stark security look. Finding something that said work without tacking on fashion dork was harder than it sounded.

Jenks flew into my room, his wings clattering loudly. “The last time I wore it, I put it back where I found it,” he said as he came to a pixy-dust-laced halt on my dresser.

Eyeing him sourly, I held up a pair of big hooped earrings, and together we evaluated the effect. They got rid of a large chunk of security, and at Jenks’s thumbs-up, I slipped them on. Not only did they look nice, but with my shower-damp hair back in a hard-to-grab braid, Jenks could use them to do his pixy surveillance . . . thing.

Ivy’s voice filtered back from the kitchen. “Your bathroom?”

Scuffing my flat shoes on, I went to check. Even with a quick shower to get the stink of ever-after from me, I was doing good for time, but Trent was usually early.

“And you think you don’t like him,” Jenks said as he followed me across the hall. “It’s just Trent, for Tink’s toes. Who cares what you look like? No one is supposed to notice you.”

“I never said I didn’t like him,” I said as I remembered Al’s warning.

Wearing security black hadn’t bothered me at first, but after three months of it, being professional had gotten old. If it were a date, I’d wear my red silk shirt and maybe the jeans that were a shade too snug to eat in. Gold hoops and a white chemise would have to do, and I rifled through the dryer, finally finding it hanging up behind the door.

“Out!” I said firmly to Jenks. “You too, Bis,” I added, and Jenks jerked into the air, leaving behind a flash of black sparkles like ink as he spun to the glass-door shower.

“Bis! Damn it, you creepy bat!” Jenks swore, and the teenage gargoyle made a coarse guttural laugh like rocks in a garbage disposal. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Practicing,” the gargoyle said, his color shifting back to his neutral pebbly gray. Bis hung from the ceiling with his clawlike fingers, his dexterous, lionlike tail with the white tuft wrapped around the showerhead for balance. He was the size of a cat, and I’d be worried about him pulling out the plumbing if he weren’t exceptionally lightweight. He had to be for his leathery wings to be able to keep him in the air. I’d felt his presence the instant I entered the bathroom, easily spotting him in the shower practicing changing his skin tone to the pattern of the tile. The mischievous kid had taken a liking to startling Jenks, knowing it made the pixy mad.

“I mean it,” I said, chemise in hand as I pointed to the door. “Both of you, out.”

Still laughing, Bis swooped out, intentionally making the back draft from his wings spin Jenks’s flight into a dangerous loop before he darted out after him. I couldn’t help my smile as I listened to Jenks complain to Ivy as I put the chemise on instead of the flat cotton tee.

“Much better,” I whispered as I evaluated the results, and grabbing my jacket, I headed for the hall, ambling to the kitchen at the back of the church. Ivy looked up from her slick new laptop as I entered, her eyes skating over my outfit in approval. Her old tower and monitor were gone, and an overindulgent, high-def screen she could plug her laptop into now took up a good portion of the thick country-kitchen farm table pressed up against the interior wall. Her high-tech efficiency went surprisingly well with my herbs and spell-crafting paraphernalia hanging over the center counter. The single window that overlooked the kitchen garden was a black square of night. Al’s chrysalis and Trent’s old pinkie ring sitting under a water glass were the only things on the sill now that most of the dandelions were done. The radio was on to the news, but thankfully there’d been no new reports of misfires. Maybe it was over. I sighed, and as if feeling it, Ivy took the pencil from between her teeth. “Nice balance.”

Pleased, I dropped my jacket onto my bag on the table as I made my way to my charm cupboard. “Thanks. I don’t know why I even bother. I’ll probably be spending the night sitting outside a boardroom door.” Standing before the open cupboard, I fingered my uninvoked charms to find two pain amulets. Both Bis and Ivy were looking at her maps, the gargoyle’s gnarly claws spread wide to maintain his balance on the awkwardly flat surface. He really was a smart kid, and I’d been toying with the idea of giving him my laptop so he’d stop using Ivy’s—but then I’d have to use Ivy’s, and that was no good either.

“What’s up?” I asked, and she stuck the pencil back between her teeth, spinning the topmost map for me to see.

Bis looked worried, and with one hand at my hip, the other on the table, I leaned over the map showing Cincinnati and the Hollows across the river, color coded like a zip-code map to show the traditional vampire territories. Everyone looked to Rynn Cormel as the last word in vampire law, but lesser masters handled their own problems unless things got out of hand. Squabbles were common, but the number of red dots on Ivy’s map wasn’t good. Every section had at least one violent crime within the last twenty-four hours, probably ignored in the current chaos.