Kim Harrison - The Hollows Series Books 1-4

Still, I’d been sent to the Hollows in the rain to collar a leprechaun for tax evasion. How much lower, I wondered, could I sink? It must have been from tagging that Seeing Eye dog last week. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a werewolf? It matched the description I’d been given.

As I stood in the narrow foyer shaking off the damp, I ran my gaze over the typical Irish bar crap: long-stemmed pipes stuck to the walls, green-beer signs, black vinyl seats, and a tiny stage where a wannabe-star was setting up his dulcimers and bagpipes amid a tower of amps. There was a whiff of contraband Brimstone. My predatory instincts stirred. It smelled three days old, not strong enough to track. If I could nail the supplier, I’d be off my boss’s hit list. He might even give me something worth my talents.

“Hey,” grunted a low voice. “You Tobby’s replacement?”

Brimstone dismissed, I batted my eyes and turned, coming eye-to-chest with a bright green T-shirt. My eyes traveled up a huge bear of a man. Bouncer material. The name on the shirt said CLIFF. It fit. “Who?” I purred, blotting the rain from what I generously call my cleavage with the hem of his shirt. He was completely unaffected; it was depressing.

“Tobby. State-assigned hooker? She ever gonna show up again?”

From my earring came a tiny singsong voice. “I told you so.”

My smile grew forced. “I don’t know,” I said through my teeth. “I’m not a hooker.”

He grunted again, eyeing my outfit. I pawed through my bag and handed him my work ID. Anyone watching would assume he was carding me. With readily available age-disguising spells, it was mandatory—as was the spell-check amulet he had around his neck. It glowed a faint red in response to my pinky ring. He wouldn’t do a full check on me for that, which was why all the charms in my bag were currently uninvoked. Not that I’d need them tonight.

“Inderland Security,” I said as he took the card. “I’m on a run to find someone, not harass your regular clientele. That’s why the—uh—disguise.”

“Rachel Morgan,” he read aloud, his thick fingers almost enveloping the laminated card. “Inderland Security runner. You’re an I.S. runner?” He looked from my card to me and back, his fat lips splitting in a grin. “What happened to your hair? Run into a blowtorch?”

My lips pressed together. The picture was three years old. It hadn’t been a blowtorch, it had been a practical joke, an informal initiation into my full runner status. Real funny.

The pixy darted from my earring, setting it swinging with his momentum. “I’d watch your mouth,” he said, tilting his head as he looked at my ID. “The last lunker who laughed at her picture spent the night in the emergency room with a drink umbrella jammed up his nose.”

I warmed. “You know about that?” I said, snatching my card and shoving it away.

“Everybody in appropriations knows about that.” The pixy laughed merrily. “And trying to tag that Were with an itch spell and losing him in the john.”

“You try bringing in a Were that close to a full moon without getting bit,” I said defensively. “It’s not as easy as it sounds. I had to use a potion. Those things are expensive.”

“And then Nairing an entire bus of people?” His dragonfly wings turned red as he laughed and his circulation increased. Dressed in black silk with a red bandanna, he looked like a miniature Peter Pan posing as an inner city gang member. Four inches of blond bothersome annoyance and quick temper.

“That wasn’t my fault,” I said. “The driver hit a bump.” I frowned. Someone had switched my spells, too. I had been trying to tangle his feet, and ended up removing the hair from the driver and everyone in the first three rows. At least I had gotten my mark, though I wasted an entire paycheck on cabs the next three weeks, until the bus would pick me up again.

“And the frog?” Jenks darted away and back as the bouncer flicked a finger at him. “I’m the only one who’d go out with you tonight. I’m getting hazard pay.” The pixy rose several inches, in what had to be pride.

Cliff seemed unimpressed. I was appalled. “Look,” I said. “All I want is to sit over there and have a drink, nice and quietlike.” I nodded to the stage where the postadolescent was tangling the lines from his amps. “When does that start?”

The bouncer shrugged. “He’s new. Looks like about an hour.” There was a crash followed by cheers as an amp fell off the stage. “Maybe two.”

“Thanks.” Ignoring Jenks’s chiming laughter, I wove my way through the empty tables to a bank of darker booths. I chose the one under a moose head, sinking three inches more than I should have in the flaccid cushion. Soon as I found the little perp, I was out of there. This was insulting. I had been with the I.S. for three years—seven if you counted my four years of clinicals—and here I was, doing intern work.

It was the interns that did the nitty-gritty day-to-day policing of Cincinnati and its largest suburb across the river, affectionately known as the Hollows. We picked up the supernatural stuff that the human-run FIB—short for the Federal Inderland Bureau—couldn’t handle. Minor spell disturbances and rescuing familiars out of trees were in the realm of an I.S. intern. But I was a full runner, damn it. I was better than this. I had done better than this.

It had been I who single-handedly tracked down and apprehended the circle of dark witches who were circumventing the Cincinnati Zoo’s security spells to steal the monkeys, selling them to an underground biolab. But did I get any recognition for that? No.

It had been I who realized that the loon digging up bodies in one of the churchyards was linked to the spate of deaths in the organ replacement wing in one of the human-run hospitals. Everyone assumed he was gathering materials to make illegal spells, not charming the organs into temporary health, then selling them on the black market.

And the ATM thefts that plagued the city last Christmas? It had taken me six simultaneous charms to look like a man, but I nailed the witch. She had been using a love charm/forget spell combo to rob naive humans. That had been an especially satisfying tag. I’d chased her for three streets, and there had been no time for spell casting when she turned to hit me with what could have been a lethal charm, so I was completely justified in knocking her out cold with a roundhouse kick. Even better, the FIB had been after her for three months, and tagging her took me two days. I made them look like fools, but did I get a “Good job, Rachel?” Did I even get a ride back to the I.S. tower with my swollen foot? No.

And lately I was getting even less: sorority kids using charms to steal cable, familiar theft, prank spells, and I couldn’t forget my favorite—chasing trolls out from under bridges and culverts before they ate all the mortar. A sigh shifted me as I glanced over the bar. Pathetic.

Jenks dodged my apathetic attempts to swat him as he resettled himself on my earring. That they had to pay him triple to go out with me did not bode well.

A green-clad waitress bounced over, frighteningly perky for this early. “Hi!” she said, showing teeth and dimples. “My name is Dottie. I’ll be your server tonight.” All smiles, she set three drinks before me: a Bloody Mary, an old-fashioned, and a Shirley Temple. How sweet.

“Thanks, hon,” I said with a jaded sigh. “Who they from?”

She rolled her eyes toward the bar, trying to portray bored sophistication but coming off like a high schooler at the big dance. Peering around her thin, apron-tied waist, I glanced over the three stiffs, lust in their eyes, horses in their pockets. It was an old tradition. Accepting a drink meant I accepted the invitation behind it. One more thing for Ms. Rachel to take care of. They looked like norms, but one never knew.