The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(104)
Author: Kim Harrison

“Ah, that’s Trent’s car,” Jenks said, and I jerked upright, the cookie I’d just taken a bite from forgotten. “I mean, that’s his horn.”

“Trent?” A sliver of adrenaline sparked through me, pricking the interest of the nearest mystics, their attention diverting from the minute pigment shades in the paint to my rising flush. “How did he get into the Hollows? We’re under lockdown.”

A car door slammed, and Jenks rose higher. “You got me. That’s him, though.”

“Rachel? Rachel!” came echoing from the street. “I have to talk to you!”

Oh. My. God. He came to stop me, I thought, and the mystics hummed at my alarm, confused that it was not based on possible injury, but . . . embarrassment? Trent knew this was a bad idea. Hell, I knew it was a bad idea. But if he tried to stop me, I’d have to admit it, and then I’d have to do it anyway because, as he implied, there really wasn’t another option.

“Crap on toast,” Jenks said as a thunderous booming echoed in the sanctuary as Trent hammered on the door, and I winced. “I’ll let him in before the neighbors call the cops. Not that they’d come,” he finished as he flew off, his dust a bright sparkle.

Trent is here, I thought, my grip on the spatula almost white knuckled. This was my life, my decision. What he wanted didn’t matter. That fact was very clear. Full of a misplaced anger, I dropped the spatula and snatched up the hot pad.

Grimacing, I opened the oven for the last tray of cookies. My brow furrowed at Trent’s voice in the sanctuary, and I intentionally turned my back on him as he stomped down the hall.

“Why didn’t you tell me you had mystics still in you!” Trent shouted. Shocked that he’d raised his voice, I spun, a tray of cookies in my hand. He was still in the clothes he’d been in earlier, his dress slacks wrinkled and the top two buttons undone from his shirt to show a wisp of hair. His sleeves were rolled to different heights and it made him look disarming, even as he glared at me, tips of his ears red.

“You want to say it a little louder, maybe?” I said as I dropped the tray clattering onto the counter. “I don’t think they heard you two streets over.”

He came in, disheveled and upset. A pen poked from his shirt pocket, and I raised my spatula threateningly when he reached out as if to give me a shake. Mystics hummed, the nearest gathering into me, and sensing it, perhaps, he paused. His eyes dropped to the cookies, then rose to Jenks perched on the curtains over the sink.

“You haven’t gone yet . . .” he started, and I shook my head, lips pressed into a line as I wedged a cookie off the tray.

“Not yet,” I said, wrangling it to the cooling rack. “Ivy is settling up with Nina this afternoon, and I’m waiting until sunset so Jenks and Bis can come with us.” Angry that I had to risk them all for something that they had nothing to do with, I used too much force, and a cookie went sailing off the tray and onto the floor. Frustrated, I threw the spatula down. “Why are you here?”

“You can’t go to the ever-after with pieces of the Goddess in you! I know I said it was the only way, but we can think of something else. What if Newt saw you?”

The worry lines at the corners of his eyes pushed the anger from me, and my first biting response died. “We don’t have time for anything else,” I said, feeling numb. “Besides, if I can keep this between Al and me, it will be okay. He won’t turn me in. He’d lose everything.” But a smidgen of fear lingered. I’d seen Al’s hatred of the elves. His emotion was not one filtered through generations but raw. The pain was his own, not a passed-down story.

And yet he had loved Ceri . . .

“It will be fine,” I said as I picked up the cookie and threw it away. “And it’s not any of your concern.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, and I leaned over the counter to him.

“Yes. It. Is.” I took a slow breath, ticked even though I knew he’d made the right decision. We both had. “Mr. Kalamack.”

Shoes scuffing, he sat down with an almost imperceptible sigh. He was facing sideways to me, and I could hear pixies playing in the garden. If it wasn’t for the sirens and faint scent of burning building from across the river, it might almost be a normal day. Slowly the memory of making cookies with Trent surfaced. Tension easing, I resumed moving the cookies to the cooling rack. The memory hadn’t been real in the sense that we’d actually done it—seeing as I’d been trapped in my mind and he had been trying to free me—but he remembered it too, so perhaps it was real after all. The kiss afterward sure had been.

“Your aura is white,” he said, still not looking at me. “How many?” His head turned, and my breath caught. “I can still ask that, can’t I?”

I nudged a cookie to be exactly even with the rest. “It varies. If I tap a line, too many to breathe. Right now, not a lot. Just a few voices. They recognize you from the computer. Congratulations, you’ve been granted the title of trusted singular. I suggest you refrain from wearing hats.”

“Ah . . .” His confusion was sudden and wary, and I managed a wry smile.

“They recognize you as an individual. They weren’t sure from seeing you through the computer. They’ve been ranging about a lot, which makes it easier.” Ranging about, then coming back with confused friends, bombarding me with images, thoughts, and questions about things happening miles away. It was lofty, godlike to know what was going on everywhere. I’m going crazy, and I think I like it.

Jenks’s wings hummed, and he flew from the curtain rod to the cooling cookies. “If you’re not going to fight, I’m going to go rescue your horse from my kids,” he said, and then with a cheerful dust I didn’t understand, he darted out into the garden.

Trent watched him go, looking frustrated as he turned his attention to the spelling pots over the counter. “I vowed I’d never tell you anything you wanted to do was a bad idea,” he said, his low voice pulling at me. “But this isn’t worth the risk. Rachel, look at me!”

I set the spatula down and faced him, cookies and a thousand words unsaid between us. “Why are you here?” I asked softly.

“You can’t let the demons see you with mystics in you. Even Al,” he said, and fear spiked through me. “You don’t understand the depth of hatred they have for us. Especially now that there’re a dozen Rosewood survivors growing up healthy. The demons know they exist. They’re simply ignoring them until their neural nets are mature enough to play with.”