Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(70)
Author: Kim Harrison

"I don’t know if I should thank you or not," she said, her purse over her shoulder. Her hair was mussed and her clothes were wrinkled. She was far away and distant from the trendy, polished coven member I remembered from the grocery store this last spring. The confidence was still there, though.

She stuck out her hand, and I took it, feeling an odd sense of peace when her small fingers met mine. "I’ll say it, then," I said. "Thank you. For helping." Hesitating, I pulled my attention from Pierce trying to talk to the hotel pixies. "I’m glad you saw everything."

Vivian squinted as she ran a hand over her tangled, car-trip hair. "I have to tell them."

I nodded, thinking she looked positively bedraggled. "Good. Maybe they’ll begin to understand the inherent problems in shunning black magic to the point of ignorance."

My gaze went to Pierce. I didn’t know what to think anymore. My world had gone from black and white to shades of gray a long time ago, and there were no answers, easy or otherwise. I couldn’t condemn Pierce for trying to kill Al by using magic unless I condemned myself for having tried to kill Ku’Sox with the same. Sure, Ku’Sox was bad, but so was Al. That Al was important to me wasn’t a good enough reason. Everyone was important to someone.

A deep breath went in and out of Vivian, and she couldn’t meet my eyes. "They’re afraid. Hell, Rachel, I’m afraid. We’re at such a disadvantage. They’re going to want to bury everything and hope we don’t have to deal with it for another generation."

My gaze flicked back to Pierce. It worked last time. Why try anything new?

Clearly having heard her, Pierce turned, a mix of determination and irritation on his face. "That’s what I’ve abided by all along, and look where it got me."

Hands in her pockets, Vivian shrugged. She was one of six and the youngest.

I carefully lifted my bridesmaid’s dress out and shut the trunk with a thump, hearing the solid sound echo. It was as if the world was still asleep, here on the verge of a new day. "They should be afraid," I said as I draped the dress over my arm. "It’s not going to go away. They have to do something." I hesitated, hoisting my duffel bag in my free hand. "Besides giving me a lobotomy, that is."

Vivian rocked back as her cab pulled up and the doorman opened the door for her. "Well, thank you," she said, chuckling ruefully. "It’s been an education." Her gaze went to Pierce, now standing beside me and trying to take my suitcase. "If I don’t get the chance to see you alone again, good luck."

Good luck. I’d need it. "Oh! Wait!" I said as she started to turn away, and I let Pierce take my bag, then made him hold my dress, too. "I’ve got something for you," I said, head down as I rummaged in my shoulder bag.

Vivian paused, and I held my breath in annoyance until my searching fingers found the little Mobius-strip pin. "This is yours," I said as I handed it over, feeling flustered for some reason. "I didn’t magic it or anything. I thought you might want it back. Seeing as you don’t have one…anymore."

A huge smile spread across her face as she took it, pleasure and real gratitude in her expression. "Thanks," she said softly, her smooth fingers curving over the pin possessively. "I’ll probably have to give it up because you touched it, but thank you. Brooke-" Her words broke off and her gaze dropped. "Brooke gave me hell for losing it."

There were new wrinkles at the corners of her eyes when she looked up, and a deep sadness. Leaning forward, she gave me a hug, her fist holding her pin, pressing hard into my back. She wasn’t very tall, and I was again struck by how someone so slight could be so powerful.

"Thanks," she whispered as she stepped back, her eyes flicking to mine as if embarrassed. She had smelled like redwood, and I wondered if she had sensed the stink of burnt amber on me when she turned and headed for her cab, her eyes unable to meet mine.

The door thumped shut behind her, and she waved, looking worried as the car pulled away. The sound of the engine was muffled in the rising fog, and it was just Pierce and me standing outside a squat hotel in the middle of San Francisco, the doorman waiting for the keys so he could park my mom’s car.

Pierce had my stuff, so I handed the attendant my keys along with a couple of bills, and the guy thanked me, his suspicions easing. Pierce’s eyes widened at the amount, but he was probably still running on eighteenth-century gratuities, and I don’t think a nickel would have done it. The car vanished in the same way as the first, and I looked at the hotel, almost losing my balance as I ran my eyes up to the brightening sky. The thought of earthquakes slipped through me, and I took my garment bag back from Pierce. It would be just like the coven to destroy an entire building to get to me.

My lethal-amulet detector hung conspicuously from the side of my bag as I headed to the double doors with my dress over my arm. It felt like I was entering a war zone.

A minor shiver lifted through my aura as I passed over the threshold, and my shoulders dropped. Pierce grunted as he felt it, too, and I was guessing it was a rather expensive calming charm, temporary, to be sure, but effective.

"This looks nice," I said as I looked over the deep reception/living room designed in solid blocks of color that were rich and sophisticated. The ceilings weren’t that high, but they were decorated to hide the retrofitted earthquake support. To my right was the reception desk where the night clerk was talking to Ivy. Trent was standing before it chatting amicably to the manager. He must have been dropping hundred-dollar bills again because the man in the suit was almost bowing and scraping. Ivy, though, was having trouble, clearly not happy with the woman behind the desk. Jenks was snarling something at her, a red dust pooling on her keyboard.

"Trouble," Pierce muttered as he set my bag down and put his hands behind his back, feet spread wide as he scanned the place.

"Of course there’s trouble," I said as Ivy stepped from the desk. Her eyes were black, and her motions were edging into that eerie vampiric quickness. Jenks’s wings were clattering in anger, and I sighed, knowing what was coming.

"They lost our reservation!" Jenks shrilled. "The Tink-blasted hotel didn’t hold the room. ‘So sorry,’" he said in a high falsetto. "’Nothing we can do.’ We drove two thousand miles, and we don’t have a room! No one in the city does because of the convention!"

Ivy’s lips were pressed tight, her anger in check. Las Vegas must have helped. "I made that reservation through Rynn Cormel’s secretary," she complained.

"It was a good thought," I said as I tried to think, but I was too numb. "We’ll find something." A park bench. Maybe the parking lot of the local Wally World. Yeah, that’d be safe. I could wear my bridesmaid’s dress and fit right in with the kooks.