The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(134)
Author: Kim Harrison

Catching her hand before she ran after him, I dug out the little packet of Handi Wipes from my bag. “Jenks!” I shouted, but he was gone. Eyes squinting, I turned to Trent. “What have you two been up to?”

Trent took the packet and pulled one out. “Mmmm. I’ve been helping Newt with Red,” he said as he worked at getting the blue off Lucy’s fingers. “I asked Jenks to watch my back.”

My lips parted, and I looked into the pergola, knowing he was up there somewhere, the chicken. “And why would you think you had to keep that from me?” I asked, but I couldn’t keep the frown off my face.

Lucy twisted and squirmed, and he started on the other hand when I gave him a clean wipe. “I don’t,” he said, wincing. “But she saw you ride Tulpa and she’s embarrassed that she can’t get on Red.” His lips curled into a smile as he let Lucy go and the girl ran to jump in the dust Jenks was sending down. “That stupid horse is balking at everything, and Newt is oblivious to how to handle her. It’s going to be a while before she can get on her.” He chuckled, using the last of the wipe to clean his own hands. “It’s going to be a while before she can touch her.”

I wondered where Newt had the horse, then decided she had enough room. It would be the feed I’d be worried about. “So you’re under investigation for drug trafficking, illegal genetic research, and whatever else they can come up with, and you decide to go to the ever-after? Without me?”

“Of course not.” Trent gave me a sideways glance. “Newt and Red came to me. The animal needed to see the moon. That’s half the problem if you ask me. Soon as Red associates Newt with clean grass, she’ll settle down.”

I rolled my eyes, shifting my leg to sit properly as Ray set her uneaten cone down and went to stand just outside the circle of sparkles sifting down. “Oh, that’s much better,” I said, hoping they had a hidden glen to do this in. “You’re giving riding lessons to demons.”

He rubbed his chin as he watched his girls. “In exchange for storage space for a few machines I don’t want to lose.” Eyes rising, he looked at me. “I could do this for a living. I like horses. I like demons. It’s a perfect fit.”

He was joking, but there was a grain of truth to it, and I threw away Ray’s cone before I reached for the wipes. “I’m sorry. I don’t think they’re going to stop until you lose everything.” Angry, I cleaned my hands, thinking I should have thought this through a little more. We could have done something different, maybe. Tried to hide it. Put off the inevitable. But as Trent took my damp hand in his to still my frustrated motions, I knew that to try to hide it would have only made it worse when the truth came out.

“Not everything, no,” he said. “But I’m not the only one giving things up. I know it was hard abandoning the mystics.”

My jaw clenched, and I tried to quash my gut reaction of heartache. I knew he saw it when his grip tightened. “Does it show?” I said, miserable. I’d been able to see around corners. I’d had thousands of voices telling me of whispers halfway across the city. I’d had a million defenders, ready to turn my wish to reality. It had been godlike. Even if keeping them would’ve made me crazy.

Trent leaned back, his hand still holding mine. “I thought so,” he said softly. “You gave that up. And Al.” He let go of me, his finger tilting my chin up to look at him. “I have my own guilt to chew on.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Sighing, he watched the girls leaping at Jenks’s shifting dust. “I wouldn’t change anything, though I’ll admit that my end of things is turning out to be more challenging than I’d anticipated. But there’s a definite upside that I hadn’t counted on.”

“Like what?” Jenks said as he dropped from his dust to the stroller’s bar. “Is Rachel so good in bed she’s worth losing a fortune?”

“Shut up, Jenks,” I said, and he laughed, sounding like wind chimes.

“I don’t have to do what everyone expects anymore.” Smiling, Trent pulled Ray onto his lap and gentled the tiring girl to him. “I owe you. Forever, Rachel. You freed me.”

Jenks made gagging sounds when I flushed. Freed him? No. He’d freed himself. “You do know freedom is why I quit the I.S., right? And see how that turned out?”

He chuckled, but my smile faltered as I glanced at my wrist and the smooth skin there. My demon mark had vanished without fanfare last week, and with it, my last tie to Al. For some stupid reason, I missed it. Trent, though, was looking at Ivy and Nina trying on hats. “Oh, I think it turned out fine.” His eyes met mine over Ray’s tousled hair, and I felt warm. “A little tiring, perhaps, but okay in the end.”

Beaming, I leaned in, hoping for a kiss. Jenks flew up and out of the way in disgust, but before our lips met, my eyes went over his shoulder to Jonathan. The distasteful man was not at the ATM. No, he was standing between us and Ellasbeth, striding forward under the shade with two men behind her.

Ellasbeth? I thought, freezing. Trent’s lips grazed mine before he realized there was a problem and drew back. Tingles raced through me, not all of them from the spark of wild magic. “Ellasbeth,” I whispered, and he turned, his jaw clenching.

“And she brought friends,” Jenks said snidely. “Trent, monologue or something. I have to cut the cameras or someone’s gonna be in jail tonight for assault.”

“Make it fast.” Trent set Ray in the stroller, buckling her in before standing.

Jenks darted up and away and wild magic prickled over my skin as Trent tapped a line. Pulse hammering, I stood as well. A lion roared as I tapped a line, my chin rising as the energy flowed through me and back to the line, connecting me to everything, to all, to the universe—even if I could see only a hairsbreadth of it now.

“Stop right there!” I said, but Ellasbeth never slowed, motioning for the men and women she’d brought to circle us. Shit, there were more than two. She’d brought at least eight. People in bright shirts and shorts were scattering, running for the edges. “I said that’s close enough!” I shouted as she kept coming.

Ivy and Nina tensed, but we all froze when Jonathan dropped out of the pergola, looking ugly and alien as he knocked the man behind her to the ground and crouching over him with a ball of black death in his hands. Trent grabbed my arm to keep me from moving, and I quailed when a half-heard whisper of promised death passed Jonathan’s lips.