A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(102)
Author: Kim Harrison

He darted out, leaving me blinking as I stared at the ring, among the rest of the charms. A cold feeling was trickling through me. Jenks was wrong. Trent had simply forgotten.

Right?

Chapter Twenty-two

The pool cue slid between my fingers in a steady motion that Kisten had taught me. Squinting in the sun, I pulled back, staring at the one ball perched at the top of a very tight rack. I’d watched Wayde set them up, and he knew what he was doing, jamming everything to the front of the rack before carefully lifting up and away. A tight rack was crucial for a good break. With that you didn’t need a lot of power, just a wee bit of accuracy.

Sending the cue stick forward, I hit the ball, sending it into the others with a satisfying crack. Pixies squealed and scattered, making a rainbow of dust over the sunlit table as I slowly straightened, my smile satisfied but a bit melancholy. The balls rolled and bounced, but none went in. I stepped to the side, my fingertips trailing across the smooth varnish of the bumper. It was cold and hard, not like Kisten’s skin – but I still felt like he was here somehow. Sort of.

"Nice break." Wayde’s eyebrows were high, his estimation of me rising by the looks of it. Smiling my thanks, I extended the cue to him. It was the only decent one we had, but now that the table was again usable, we might invest in a stick or two.

"Jenks, get your kids off the table," I said as I dropped back about four feet to give Wayde some mental as well as physical space. "They’re getting their dust all over it."

Jenks’s wings hummed at a higher pitch, and the three or four pixy bucks watching rose up into the lights. "You never worried about their dust before," Jenks said, darting over to snag his daughter before she got in the way of Wayde’s shot.

His motions quick and sharp, Wayde took aim at the two ball. With a short tap, the ball plunked in, and the cue ball rolled backward a good two feet. I exhaled, recognizing his skill. It wasn’t hard to make a ball back up, but to get it to stop right where you wanted it to line it up for the next shot wasn’t easy.

"You want to play the winner?" I called out to Ivy, lounging on a chair with her back to the wall as she pretended to read a magazine and watch us without being obvious about it. She’d put herself right in the sun, which told me she’d had a rough morning. She sat in the sun only when she was frustrated.

"No."

She didn’t look up, but the pages of her magazine crackled as she turned them. Ivy was casual this afternoon: jeans and a baggy sweater, her hair down and her phone on the table. Though she looked comfortable, there was a quickness to her motions and a slight widening of her pupils that told of a rising excitement. It could have been from her morning with Nina, but it had been almost twenty-four hours since my curses had hit the street, and I was betting it was that. The sun was streaming into the westernmost windows, but it would be dark in a few hours. We could bring in a bunch of bad-behaving humans in the dark, but I’d much rather do this before the dead people came out to play. Especially Felix. I was starting not to like him. His lack of ability was starting to impact Ivy, and I didn’t like it.

From behind me, I heard another ball thunk into a pocket. Spinning, I looked quickly at the table, seeing the nine ball gone and Wayde lining up a bank shot with the five. "You’re good," I said as I sat on the back of the couch and waited my turn.

"I think he’s been sandbagging the last month, Rache," Jenks said as he sifted a gold sunbeam right onto the cue ball.

Wayde stood from where he’d been bending over the felt, stoically waiting for the ball to stop glowing. "The table was crap," he said, eyes meeting mine from under his shaggy bangs. "Pool is a game of absolutes. You can’t play well on a crappy table." With a smooth, unhurried motion, he pulled back and sank the five. "And it was a crappy table."

I couldn’t argue with him, but I had just gotten used to having to compensate for that dip by the far pocket. Sighing, I got up from the back of the couch and went to press my forehead to the cold stained glass, seeing the blurry world through a rose tint. He might clear the table before it was my turn. It made for a lousy evening of play, but I was too antsy to play anyway. The longer it took for my amulets to find HAPA, the more likely they were going to mutilate another innocent. My fingers twitched. Was I a demon, or was I a demon?

The crack of the balls broke the stillness, and I turned around when there was no accompanying thwap of a ball hitting the bottom of a pocket. "Nice of you to get your balls off the table so I have some room to play," I said as I took the offered cue. Wayde smiled at the innuendo, Jenks snorted, and Ivy gave me a one-raised-eyebrow look. I shrugged, refusing to acknowledge the sexual banter that just seemed to flow out of my mouth when I got a cue stick in my hand. I knew it was from Kisten, and it sort of hurt.

Wayde, though, took it in stride, looking cocky as he dropped back a few steps to watch. Nervous, I lined up an easy angle shot to a far corner pocket with the ten. I always had trouble with the ten ball. I didn’t know why. Sure enough, I hit it wrong, and the ball bounced off the tip of the pocket and rolled to the rail. "The Turn take it," I swore softly, frowning as I held the stick out. I was going to get in three shots this game, max.

Wayde ignored the stick, instead moving both the ten and the cue ball back to their original places. "Try it again," he said as the light over the table glistened like gold in his stubbly beard when he pulled back and smiled. "And angle it a little more."

My eyes narrowed at the show of chivalry. "I don’t need your pity handicap," I said, and Jenks flew to Ivy, his wings clattering loudly.

"This isn’t pity," Wayde said as Ivy rattled a page to cover Jenks’s badly whispered comment. "You’re a good shot. You just need to slow down, pay attention."

My hand closed around the cue ball, and I set it down hard where it had come to rest earlier. "Your turn."

"Hey! Watch the slate!" Ivy exclaimed, and the slant to my shoulders shifted.

"Sorry," I said, then turned to tell Wayde to take the stick before I jammed it somewhere, but my jaw dropped when I realized he had moved the cue ball again. "I said, it’s your turn!"

"Line it up." Wayde’s eyes were on the table, not me. "Exhale on the down stroke."

"Yeah, stroke it, baby!" Jenks said, his hips gyrating as he hovered over Ivy.

"Oh my God," I muttered, but then, because I really should have made that shot, I tugged down my T-shirt and bent over the table. I exhaled, sending all the tension out of me, my thoughts about Kisten, my anger at HAPA, my worry over Winona – my new doubt that Trent was simply trying to get me to work for him . . . With a smooth motion, I hit the ball. It hummed over the felt as if pulling my aura with it, barely tapping the ten, shifting the momentum to it and sending it into the pocket with a satisfying little thump.