Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond(31)
Author: Kim Harrison

I sniffed, smiling up at Pierce as I wiped my eyes. "Thank you."

"Little Firefly?" he questioned, trying to distract me from my heartache.

"It was the hair, I think," I said, bringing the paper to my nose and breathing deeply the faded scent of pipe smoke. "Thank you, Pierce," I said, giving his hand a soft squeeze. "I never would have found his note if it hadn’t been for you."

The young man smiled, running a hand over my hair to push it out of my eyes. "It isn’t anything I did a’purpose."

Maybe, I mused, smiling brokenly at him, the spell to bring my dad into existence had worked after all-the only way it could, his love bending the rules of nature and magic to bring me a message from beyond his grave. My dad was proud of me. He was proud of me and knew I could be strong. That was all I had ever wanted, and I took a gulp of air.

I was going to start crying again, and, searching for a distraction, I turned to find my mom’s gift. "My mom signed my application," I said, fumbling with the envelope beside me with a sudden resolve. "I’m going to do it, Pierce. My dad said to trust in my abilities, and I’m going to do it. I’m going to join the I.S."

But when I turned back to him with my signed application, he was gone.

My breath caught. Wide-eyed, I looked to the east to see the first flash of red-gold through the black branches. From across the city came the tolling of bells, celebrating the new day. The sun was up. He was gone.

"Pierce?" I said softly as the paper in my grip slowly drooped. Not believing it, I stared at where he had been. His footprints were still there, and I could still smell coal dust and shoe polish, but I was alone.

A gust of wind blew on the fire, and a wave of heat shifted my hair from my eyes. It was warm against me, comforting, like the touch of a hand against my cheek in farewell. He was gone, just like that.

I looked at my dad’s watch and held it tight. I was going to get better. My stamina was going to improve. My mom believed in me. My dad did, too. Fingers shaking, I folded up the paper and snapped the watch shut around it, holding it tight until the metal warmed.

Taking a deep breath, I sent my gaze deep into the purity of the morning sky. The solstice was over, but everything else? Everything else was just beginning.

Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil

When I first began writing the Hollows, there were very few strong female vampire characters making it into print, and when I realized how large a role Ivy was going to play, I decided I needed to develop the social structure of the Hollows vampires from the female point of view. The novella Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil was the perfect chance for me to try out a few of my ideas. I learned a lot, not only about the Hollows vampires-both living and dead-but also about Ivy. The depth of her mental abuse is touched upon here, and it is also here that it’s easiest to see why she stays with Rachel, who is both her crutch and her saving grace. Undead in the Garden of Good and Evil was first published in the anthology Dates from Hell.

ONE

Phone cradled between her shoulder and ear, Ivy Tamwood scooped another chunk of chili up with her fries, leaning over the patterned wax paper so it wouldn’t drip onto her desk. Kisten was bitching about something or other, and she wasn’t listening, knowing he could go on for half her lunch break before winding down. The guy was nice to wake up to in the afternoon, and a delight to play with before the sun came up, but he talked too much.

Which is why I put up with him, she mused, running her tongue across the inside of her teeth before swallowing. Her world had gone too quickly from alive to silent on that flight back home from California. My God, was it seven years now? It had been unusual to foster a high-blood living vampire child into a sympathetic camarilla, taking her from home and family for her last two years of high school, but Piscary, the master vampire her family looked to, had become too intense in his interest in her before she developed the mental tools to deal with it, and her parents had intervened at some cost, probably saving her sanity.

I could keep Freud in Havana cigars all by my lonesome, Ivy thought, taking another bite of carbs and protein. Twenty-three ought to be far enough away from that scared sixteen-year-old on the sun-drenched tarmac to forget, but even now, after multiple blood and bed partners, a six-year degree in social sciences, and landing an excellent job where she could use her degree, she found her confidence was still tied to the very things that screwed her up.

She missed Skimmer and her reminder that life was more than waiting for it to end so she could get started living. And while Kisten was nothing like her high school roommate, he had filled the gap nicely these last few years.

Smiling wickedly, Ivy gazed through the plate-glass wall that looked out on the floor of open offices. Weight shifting, she crossed her legs at her knees and leaned farther across her desk, imagining just what gap she’d like Kisten to fill next.

"Damn vampire pheromones," she breathed, and pulled herself straight, not liking where her thoughts took her when she spent too much time in the lower levels of the Inderland Security tower. Working the homicide division of the I.S. got her a real office instead of a desk in the middle of the floor with the peons, but there were too many vamps-both living and undead-down here for the air circulation to handle.

Kisten’s tirade about prank phone calls ended abruptly. "What do vamp pheromones have to do with humans attacking my pizza delivery crew?" he asked in a lousy British accent. It was his newest preoccupation, and one she hoped he’d tire of soon.

Rolling her chair closer to her desk, Ivy took a swig of her imported bottled water, eyes askance on the boss’s closed door across the large room. "Nothing. You want me to pick up anything on the way home? I might be able to wing out of here early. Art’s in the office, which means someone died and I have to go to work. Bet you first bite he’s going to want to cut my lunch short"-she took another sip-"and I’m going to take it off the end of my day."

"No," Kisten said. "Danny is doing the shopping today."

One of the perks of living atop a restaurant, she thought, as Kisten started in on a shopping list she didn’t care about. Pulling her plate of fries off her desk, she set them on her lap, being careful to not spill anything on her leather pants. The boss’s door opened, catching her eye when Art came out, shaking hands with Mrs. Pendleton. He’d been in there a full half hour. There was a stapled pack of paper in his hands, and Ivy’s pulse quickened. She’d been sitting on her ass going over Art’s unsolved homicides for too long. The man had no business being in homicide. Dead did not equal smart.