The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(27)
Author: Kim Harrison

They were silent. Slowly the tension rose. But I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut if a little information might keep someone out of the hospital.

“Everyone, if you don’t recognize her, this is Rachel Morgan,” Edden said, and I could breathe again when they turned away. “I asked her to come in and give us some ideas on how to handle the issues falling to us right now as the I.S. takes care of an internal problem.”

There was a rising muttered complaint, and Edden held up a hand, then scrambled to catch Jenks as he slipped backward down the slanted podium. “Morgan is a former I.S. runner, and if she says you’re lucky, Callahan, you’re lucky. Rachel, what should he have done?”

I sat up, glad I’d pulled something professional from my closet today. “Not follow.”

They all protested, and my eyes squinted. You can lead a troll to water . . .

“She’s right!” Jenks shrilled, cutting off most of the grousing. “The woman is right! Righter than . . . a pixy in a garden.” He belched, wings moving madly as he tilted to the side.

I wondered if I should stand, then decided to stay where I was. “If you don’t have the skills or strength to back up your badge—and I’m sorry, but your weapons won’t do it—it’s best to just let them go. Unless they’re threatening someone, that is. Then you’re going to have to work hard to distract them until they remember the law can put them in a cage.”

Damn, even the women cops were looking at me like I was a hypocrite. “I don’t care if you don’t like it,” I said. “One vampire is enough to clear this entire room if he or she is angry enough. The master vampires will bring them in line.”

“But they aren’t,” said a woman who had clearly, judging by her bedraggled appearance, come in off the night shift. Around her, others nodded. “No one has been able to contact an undead vampire within the Cincinnati or Hollows area since yesterday afternoon.”

Surprised, I looked at Edden, becoming uneasy when he nodded. “How come this is the first I’m hearing about it?” I said, suddenly very awake. If the master vampires were incommunicado, that’d explain the increase in living-vampire crimes. For all the loving abuse the masters heaped upon their children, they did keep the bad ones in line when no one else could.

Edden straightened from his concerned hunch over Jenks. “Because we agree with the I.S. that it would cause a panic. The masters aren’t dead, they’re sleeping, and so far, it’s confined to the Cincy and Hollows area. The I.S. tried bringing in a temporary master vampire from out of state to handle things yesterday, and she fell asleep within five hours.”

I bit my lip, processing it. All the undead sleeping? No wonder the I.S. was down.

“Which brings me back to you, Rachel,” he said, and my head snapped up. “I originally asked you here to give us options for dealing with aggressive Inderlanders, but I think we’ve gone beyond that. What’s your Inderland take on the situation? Are the misfired charms and the sleeping undead vampires linked?”

Silence descended as everyone looked at me. That they were linked was obvious. The real question should be, was any of this intentional or simply a natural phenomenon, and if deliberate, was the goal to put the masters out of commission, create havoc with misfired charms, or both? If someone was creating the wave, it could be stopped. If it was a natural effect, it was going to be up to me—seeing as the wave was coming from my line.

Nervous, I picked up my shoulder bag and got to my feet. Jenks saw me coming, trying to sit up as his one wing refused to function, swearwords falling from him as his heels flipped up and he toppled backward down the podium. “Upsy-daisy,” Edden said as he caught him slipping off the edge, and Jenks giggled, his high voice clear in the dead air.

“Why would she help us? She’s a demon,” someone muttered, and Edden frowned.

“Because she’s a good demon, Frank,” he said, voice iron hard as he held Jenks gently in his cupped hand. Giving Edden a wry smile, I held my bag open and he dropped Jenks inside.

“Hey!” the pixy protested, and then, “Tink’s little pink dildo, Rache! Haven’t you gotten rid of those condoms yet? They got a shelf life, you know.”

I flushed, handing the bag to Edden as I turned. That awful map was behind me, and I shifted until I wasn’t behind the podium, not liking the feeling of separation I got behind it. “That the waves, the sleeping undead, and the vampire violence are linked is obvious,” I said, half turning to glance at the map. “I don’t know how to stop the waves, but until we figure it out, there are a few things that can be done to minimize the damage from the superpowered waves.”

“Superpowered?” someone in the back questioned, and I nodded.

“According to, ah, a reliable source, the misfires are actually an overexpression of what the charm is supposed to do, so a charm intended to clean grease removes the fat not just from the counter but from the person who invoked it. Fortunately, the waves appear to impact only charms invoked right when the wave is passing over them. Those already running aren’t affected.”

Most of them were staring at me in bewilderment. It was frustrating. Another witch would know exactly what I was talking about, and I wondered how charismatic Edden’s public relations person was. This was going to go down hard in the Inderland community. “You might want to work with the I.S. and get an early warning detector out to Loveland where the waves are originating. If you tell people not to invoke any magic ahead of a wave, that will probably minimize or eliminate probably ninety percent of the magic misfires.”

“What about the vampires?”

Good question. “Which brings me to the vampires. It’s a good bet that the increase in crime is simply a combination of the heightened fear brought on by the misfires and the masters being asleep and unable to curtail it. Take out one of the three legs, and the stool will fall. If you wake the undead up, the violence will stop. Curtail or eliminate the misfires, and the violence will probably diminish. Fear is a trigger to bloodlust, and the fewer misfires, the less fear there will be to trigger a twitchy vampire.”

Again silence fell, but it was the quiet of thinking. “So who’s making the waves?” someone asked.

Good question number two. “I’d guess someone who would benefit from the chaos. Someone trying to hide a crime? Or a firm specializing in disaster recovery?”