Kim Harrison: Pale Demon

“Quen won’t allow me to leave Cincinnati unless you come with me,” Trent said, clearly bothered. “He says you’re raw but enthusiastic.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Okay,” I said, swinging my legs to the broken patio again. “I think I’ve got it now. You say you want to join forces to help me—poor little me—but it’s only because Quen won’t let you go by yourself. How come? You planning on speaking out against me if I don’t sign your lame-ass paper? I knew there was a reason I liked Quen.”

“Will you forget about that contract?” he said, starting to look cross. “It was a mistake to try to bully you, and I’m sorry. My need to get to the coast is a private matter. You’re simply a means to get me there. An escort.”

He was sorry? I thought, shocked by the admission. From the wall, Jenks flew up in a burst of orange. Clearly, he’d heard it, too.

“Please,” Trent said, scooting to the edge of his chair. “Rachel, I need your help.”

From the gate came the faint, familiar sound of a metallic click and a puff of air. Behind Trent, a little blue ball at chest height flew right where he would have been had he not leaned forward. It hit the tree, exploding in a familiar splat of sound as a piercing whistle echoed through the garden.

Trent stared at me, then the wet mark, his eyes wide.

Shit, we are under attack.

Trent rose to his feet, stupidly staring at the tree and the foaming yellow mass of magic.

“Get down!” I shouted as I yanked him off balance. He started to fall, and still sitting, I pulled him toward me, bracing myself and levering his weight over me and to the patio on my far side. He hit the hard pavers with a gasp, eyes wide and hair askew. I was already reaching a quick thought out to the ley line in the backyard. Power flowed in, familiar but painful in my rush, and before Trent had tossed the hair from his eyes, the word rhombus whispered through my mind. In an instant, I relived the five-minute process to make a protection circle.

The semi-invisible barrier sprang up around us, me at its center as in all undrawn circles. Trent sat up, his head even with my shoulder. “Stay down!” I hissed, and we both jerked as two more splats hit my circle, their magic making little dimples of color on my black-and-gold aura. Beyond it, the pixies were moving in the graveyard, and I cursed my stupidity. I’d told Jenks to keep his kids centralized, effectively shutting down our first line of defense.

“Jenks!” I shouted as I stood, my circle inches from the top of my head, and reached for my robe, jamming my arms into the sleeves.

Jenks was gone, but his gold-dust trail still glittered, showing that he had flown straight up, getting the sitch. A shrill pixy chirp drew my attention to the front gate. My eyes met the would-be assassin’s, and the attacker ducked.

“There!” I shouted, and more pixies arrowed toward the attacker.

Frowning, I fumed as I tied my robe. “Get in the church,” I all but growled at Trent. “Put yourself in a circle.”

“Rachel.”

I turned, angry as I took in his tightly pressed lips and angry green eyes as he managed to be ticked that I’d pulled him to safety even as the attacker fled. “They were aiming at you, not me!” I said. “Get in the church!”

Not waiting to see if he did as I’d told him, I ran for the gate, gasping as I broke my circle and took the energy into myself. My bare feet were almost silent on the slate path, and my jaw clenched. My splat gun would have been handy right about now, but Al had melted it two months ago and no one would sell me a replacement.

Heart pounding, I shoved on the worn, rough wood of the gate, adrenaline sending it crashing into the bushes.

“Ms. Morgan, look out!” shrilled a pixy, and I jerked back at the puff of air.

“Crap!” I exclaimed as I fell against the fence and the gate smacked back into the door frame. Looking the way I’d come, I saw there was a new splat on the ground between me and the empty lounge chair. Miracle of miracles—Trent had actually listened to me and gone inside. The slightly itchy feeling in the back of my mind might have been him setting a circle. Or it might have been the assassin setting up a trap.

A dark-haired pixy landed on the fence, his hands in fists as they rested on his hips. “He’s running now, Ms. Morgan,” Jumoke said, and I gave him a quick, grateful smile.

I smacked the gate open again and ran through it, Jumoke flying just over my head. A passel of pixies trailed behind, shouting encouragement. The man who’d shot at me was indeed running, and a wicked grin spread across my face.

He was fast. I was faster, and I raced after his slim, dark form as he headed for the street. My fingertips grazed the man’s shirt as we reached the sidewalk, and heart pounding, I fell on him. He had time for one yelp of surprise, and I clenched my eyes against the coming cement.

We hit with a jar that knocked my breath away, and I scrambled for a new grip, sunglasses falling off. “You tap a line…and you won’t…wake up…until next week!” I panted when I caught my breath. Oh God. My elbow was vibrating all the way up to my skull, but he’d taken most of the impact. Scrambling, I put my knee in the small of his back and twisted his arm around his own neck, ready to snap his wrist if he moved. The pixies were everywhere, talking so fast I couldn’t understand them, but I caught the words “intruder” and “Papa.” Just where was Jenks, anyway?

The man wasn’t moving, and after some vigorous “encouragement” he let go of his splat gun and the pixies worked as a team to drag it out of his reach. It looked like mine, right down to the cherry red color. And the blue splat balls? They were almost my trademark.

“You trying to frame me for assaulting Trent?” I exclaimed, and he only grunted. “What you got in your splat balls, Jack? Maybe we should find out together? Real personal like?”

Breathing hard, the man tried to look at me, the anger obvious in his green eyes. Green eyes, blond hair, lanky build, tan: Was he an elf? An elven assassin? Not a very good one, though. And where the hell was Jenks?

The sound of running feet pulled my head up. There was a second man, and I could do nothing. Damn it, he was getting away!

“Are you after Trent or me?” I shouted at the guy under me and, furious, I thunked his forehead into the cement.

The man’s eyes showed his pain. “Why do you even care?”

Huh?

There was a squeal of ultrasonic sound, and Jenks’s kids dropped back to make room for their dad. “Two of them!” Jenks exclaimed, dropping silver sparkles and a zip strip from my charm cupboard to hit the man’s back. “Trent’s in the kitchen. You want me to get her?”

Her? I slipped the zip strip around the man’s wrist and ratcheted it tight, immediately feeling better. “Jack” didn’t move as his maybe-contact with a ley line was severed, telling me he hadn’t been prepared to use one to begin with, but better safe than sorry. I was spared the decision of what to do by the sound of Ivy’s cycle at the far end of the street. Jenks darted away with a second zip strip, leaving his kids to sweetly tell me what I ought to do to the man under me. He moved when the subject of wasps entered the conversation, and I yanked on his arm.

Ivy’s bike slowed as Jenks’s dust glittered over her, then she gunned it, roaring past me and aiming for the woman fleeing over the lawns. Ivy was a tad more protective of me than Jenks, and with a silent fury she ran the woman down, using her foot like a jousting pole. Wincing, I watched the woman take a mouthful of grass as she slid to a front-face halt. Jenks’s children left me, and the woman slowly sat up, her hands in fists over her head as they surrounded her, bright sparkling spots of potential death in the sunshine.