Ким Харрисон - The Good, The Bad, And The Undead

My eyes were fixed upon my bag with its pain amulet clear across the room, but my head snapped up at his words. "No!" I protested as my vision swam at the quick movement. "I said I was going to talk to him and that he was the witch hunter. Kisten must have done that, because my note is here somewhere. I saw it!" Kisten had replaced my note?

I stumbled in confusion as Edden pulled me forward. Kisten had replaced my note, giving Nick the only number that would bring the FIB out here. Why? Had it been to help me, or simply to cover his betrayal of Piscary?

"Kisten?" Edden questioned. "That's the living vamp you don't want me to shoot, right?" He took the blue FIB blanket someone held out and draped it over my shoulders. "Come on. I want to get you upstairs. We can figure this out later."

Leaning heavily on him, I tugged the blanket closer, wincing as the rough wool hurt my hands. I wouldn't look at them, thinking they were nothing compared to the smut on my soul for having invoked that black charm Quen had taught me. I took a slow breath. What did it matter if I knew black charms? I was going to be a demon's familiar.

"My God, Morgan," Edden said as he put the two-way back on his belt. "Did you have to blow a hole in his wall?"

"I didn't," I said, focusing on the carpet three feet in front of me. "It was Quen."

More officers clattered down the stairs and into the room, a hoard of official presences suddenly making me feel like an alien. "Rachel, Quen isn't here."

"Yeah," I said, shivering violently as I looked over my shoulder at the pristine carpet. "I probably imagined it all." The adrenaline was gone, and fatigue and nausea pulled at me. People were moving quickly around us, making me dizzy. My arm was a solid ache. I wanted my bag and the pain amulet in it, but we were moving in the wrong direction, and it looked as if someone had dropped an evidence card by it. Swell.

My mood darkened even further when a woman in an FIB uniform stopped us short by dangling my gun in front of Edden. It was in an evidence bag, and I couldn't stop my hand from reaching out. "Hey, my splat gun," I said, and Edden sighed, not sounding at all happy.

"Tag it," he said, his voice laced with guilt. "Put Ms. Morgan as a positive ID."

The woman looked almost frightened as she nodded and turned away.

"Hey," I protested again, and Edden kept me from following her.

"Sorry, Rachel. It's evidence." He ran a quick look over the surrounding officers before whispering, "But thanks for leaving it where we could find it. Glenn couldn't have downed those living vamps without it."

"But…" I stammered, seeing the woman disappear upstairs with my splat gun. The dust was worse here, and I swallowed hard so I wouldn't cough and make myself pass out.

"Let's go," Edden said, sounding tired as he tried to pull me forward. "I hate to do this, but I should get a statement from you before Piscary wakes up and presses charges."

"Presses charges? For what?" I jerked out of his grip, refusing to move. What in hell was going on? I had just tagged the witch hunter, and I was the one being arrested?

The nearby officers were carefully listening, and Edden's round face went even more guilty. "For assault and battery, slander, trespassing, illegal entry, malicious destruction of private property, and whatever else his pre-Turn lawyer can come up with. What did you think you were doing, coming down here and trying to kill him?"

I struggled to speak, affronted. "I didn't kill him, though he by God deserves it. He raped Ivy to get me to come here so he could kill me because I found out he was the witch hunter!" I reached up with my good hand as if it could sooth the raw ache of my throat from the outside. "And I have a witness willing to testify that Piscary contracted it to kill the victims. Is that enough for you?"

Edden's brow rose. "It?" He turned to look at Piscary, surrounded by nervous FIB officers until the I.S. ambulance got there. "Which it would that be?"

"You don't want to know." I closed my eyes. I was going to be a demon's familiar. But I was alive. I hadn't lost my soul. Focus on the positive.

"Can I go?" I asked as I saw the first of the stairs past the hole in the wall. I had no idea how I was going to make it up all of them. Maybe if I let Edden arrest me, they would carry me up. Not waiting for his permission, I pulled away and held my arm close as I limped to the ragged hole in the wall. I had just tagged Cincinnati's most powerful vampire as a serial murderer, and all I wanted to do was throw up.

Edden took a step to catch up, still not having answered me. "Can I at least have my boots?" I asked as I saw Gwen taking pictures of them, carefully making her way through the room, her video camera recording everything.

The FIB captain started, looking down at my feet. "You always tag master vampires in your bare feet?"

"Only when they're in their pj's." I clutched the blanket around myself miserably. "Want to keep it sporting, you know."

Edden's round face broke into a grin. "Hey, Gwen! Knock it off," he said loudly as he took my elbow and helped me wobble to the stairs. "This isn't a crime scene. It's an arrest."

"Hey! Here!" I shouted, sitting straighter on the hard ballpark seat and waving to get the attention of the wandering vendor. It was almost a good forty minutes before the game was scheduled to start, and though the stands were starting to fill, the vendors weren't very attentive.

I squinted and held up four fingers as he turned, and he held up eight in return. I winced. Eight bucks for four hot dogs? I thought, passing my money down. Oh well. It wasn't as if I had bought the tickets.

"Thanks, Rachel," Glenn said from beside me as the paper-wrapped package hit his hand, thrown by the vendor. He set it on his lap and caught the rest since my arm was in a sling and obviously not working. He handed one to his dad and Jenks on his left. The next he gave to me, and I passed it to Nick on my other side. Nick flashed me a thin smile, immediately looking down to where the Howlers were warming up.

My shoulders slumped, and Glenn leaned closer under the excuse of unwrapping my hot dog and handing it to me. "Give him some time."

I said nothing, my gaze riveted to the highly manicured ballpark. Though Nick wouldn't admit it, a new ribbon of fear had slid between us. We'd had a painful discussion last week where I had apologized profusely for having pulled such a massive amount of ley line energy through him and told him it had been an accident. He insisted that it was all right, that he understood, that he was glad I had done it since it saved my life. His words were earnest and heartfelt, and I knew to the depths of my soul he believed them. But he would only rarely meet my eyes anymore, and he worked hard to keep from touching me.

As if to prove nothing had changed, he had insisted on our usual weekend sleepover last night. It had been a mistake. The dinner conversation was stilted at best: How was your day, dear? Fine, thank you; how was yours? We followed that with several hours of TV where I sat on the couch and he sat on the chair across the room. I had hoped for some improvement after retiring at an ungodly early one o'clock in the morning, but he pretended to fall asleep right away, setting me almost to tears when he moved away from the touch of my foot.

The night was brilliantly capped off at four in the morning when he woke from a sound sleep in a nightmare. He all but panicked when he found me in bed with him.

I had quietly excused myself and took the bus home, saying that as long as I was up, I should make sure Ivy got home all right and that I'd see him later. He hadn't stopped me. He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands and hadn't stopped me.