The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(45)
Author: Kim Harrison

“B-but you said . . .” I stammered, shocked when I felt the line pull through me and she vanished, leaving the sunshade and the spoiled tea to go bad. The cookies, though, she’d taken.

“This is so messed up,” I whispered as I picked my way to Trent and Al, my jar of nothing tucked under an arm.

Trent took my elbow. “You don’t need to worry about Nick anymore.”

I thought of Newt’s somewhere safe, and I jerked away. “If you ever attack Al again, I’ll never speak to you,” I said.

Huffing in satisfaction, Al sidled closer, his burnt-amber-scented bulk domineering.

“That goes for you too,” I added, shoving him back with a finger on his chest. “Honestly, you’re both an embarrassment, rolling around in the dust, trying to see who has the biggest magic wand.”

Al frowned. “What did the crazy mother pus bucket say?”

I looked out over the baking dirt, trying to see it green and moist. That you loved Ceri so much you made a slave of her for a thousand years because that was the only way you could have her. That the Goddess was real and you all killed her. Not to have sex with Trent. “That someone is pulling wild magic out of the lines and to find out who and stop them,” I said, and Al growled something almost unheard.

“I’ll find out who,” Trent said grimly. “And we will stop them, Rachel.”

I turned my back on the ruined earth and the ugly nothing that the elves and demons had made of the ever-after. That we would find them and stop them was a foregone conclusion. What had me concerned was that Newt, dancing about catching fireflies, could feel the wild magic as well as I.

I wasn’t the only demon sensitized to wild magic. Newt was too.

Ten

Jenks’s kids laughing in the garden was like audible sunshine, keeping me awake as I lay on my bed and stared at my shadowed ceiling. The heavy covers had been kicked off hours ago to leave me chilly under just the sheet, my arms crossed behind my head and my foot moving slowly back and forth to make a moving bump that Rex occasionally patted. It was around four in the morning, but slumber had been elusive and I was beginning to think I might see the sunrise before I dropped off.

“Just go to sleep,” I moaned, and the cat purred.

My mind wouldn’t shut off, circling around and around what had happened in the ever-after. I was sure everything would make sense if I looked at it from the right perspective, but it never moved toward understanding: Newt with her jars of nothing, Nick dead in Newt’s hidey-hole, the feel of wild magic prickling over my skin intensifying as I took Trent’s hand, Al hurting me in his outrage that Trent was going to enslave them through my ignorance, Al spending a thousand years trying to find a way for elves and demons to have kids, Newt being sensitized to wild magic—the same wild magic that had set Al off.

Demons didn’t practice wild magic, but clearly it was a cultural bias, not a physical inability. I thought it telling that Newt believed in the Goddess when much of the elven population didn’t. Was she insane, or just aware of more than the rest of us?

Did Trent believe? I wondered. He was going to sacrifice two goats to her. Was it rote or belief? Did it matter to the Goddess if he believed as long as the goats were dead? Did I believe?

I recalled the scintillating feel of wild magic prickling over my skin like the chime of a bell—and then last spring when a presence had acknowledged me and helped me invoke those elven slave rings. Cold, I pulled the covers up to my chin. And how did sex figure into it? My focus blurred as I pulled the grit-coated memory of Trent to me, imagining how he had looked with the ever-after dust running off him in the shower, the sigh of relief he must have made, the slowly dissipating red puddle under him and the soap bubbles among his toes, the glisten of water on his clean skin, both slippery and firm as he shook his head and the drops went flying. His hair would still look light under the water. I’d seen it once. But his eyes would be a brighter green.

“Oh God, stop it, Rachel,” I moaned, rolling over and burying my head under the pillow. Just how long had it been since I’d been with anyone? Much less someone I loved?

But I don’t love Trent.

My breath grew stale, and in a sudden flurry of motion, I flung the covers off and sat up. Rex dropped down, going to the door with a hopeful chirp of an early breakfast. The oak floor was cold on my toes, and I felt ill from lack of sleep. Pushing my hair back, I looked at my clock blinking a slow four A.M. The sun rose at about ten after five this time of year, and giving up, I reached for my robe, angry almost as I stuffed my arms in the blue terry cloth sleeves and tied it closed around me. Maybe warm milk would help.

The church was silent apart from the pixies outside, and the air was cold on my bare legs as I padded to the kitchen. Ivy and Nina were sleeping, and the mental image of them spooned together, their hair mingling as they shared the same pillow, drifted through me. I smiled and left the kitchen light off. Happiness was happiness wherever you found it.

Warm milk alone wasn’t going to do it, and I quietly got out the hot chocolate mix. The coming dawn let in enough light to see by, and I found things by memory, fingers moving sure in the dim light as Rex twined about my feet and got in my way. Newt’s empty jar sat on the sill next to Al’s chrysalis and Trent’s pinkie ring. I knew it was empty, but it gave me the creeps—the early light catching the edges of the glass and making them glow.

My phone was in my bag, and I eyed it as I got out the sugar. If the pixies were up, Trent would be too. Squinting in the light from the fridge, I smiled as Jenks came in, probably drawn by the activity. “Morning, Jenks,” I whispered as I filled a mug with milk and added the cocoa.

“Can’t sleep?” he said as he perched on the roll of paper towels.

A bright silver dust spilled from him. Morning and evening were truly his time. Feeling fuzzy, I shook my head and looked out the small kitchen window. Most of the red glow in the clouds was from the fires in Cincinnati. Sirens, too, had been a faint, almost nonstop background. Edden hadn’t asked me to come in, and for that I was thankful. Today he’d probably be screaming for help as he tried to cope with rising vampire violence.

“Too much going on,” I said as I put the mug in the nuker and hit go. I leaned back against the counter while the microwave spun, the square of light diffusing into nothing. Trent had once made me hot chocolate. Stop it, Rachel.

The seconds on the microwave counted down, and not wanting to wake up Ivy and Nina, I cut it short. Jenks was a quiet hum of accompaniment as I took the hot chocolate out onto the back porch. The door would thump if I closed it, so I left it open, carefully easing the screen door shut before padding over the slightly damp wood and sitting on the top step, my knees almost to my chin. God, I was tired, but sleep wouldn’t come.