The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(84)
Author: Kim Harrison

“You know.” Jenks fidgeted. “Jumping to the wrong conclusion, overreacting. Kind of like you used to be.” He looked up, flashing me a sick-looking smile. “I’m sorry for doubting your ability to pick a good . . . uh, work partner on your own. Okay?” He made an ugly face at Bis, flipping him off as he flew backward.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said, hand waving in protest. “I can pick a good work partner? Jenks, you’re my backup, not Trent. That’s not changing.”

Jenks’s nasty expression softened, becoming both full of pride and sorrow. I’d seen him look at his daughters like that, and something in me hurt. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Good luck with that. Can I go now, you stinky piece of bat flesh?”

That last had been directed at Bis, and looking as satisfied as Buddha, he nodded. Immediately Jenks darted off. Tulpa was snapping at his kids, ears pinned and tail swishing.

“Jenks?” I called, faltering when Ivy came to the back door. “We’re going to talk about this later,” I muttered at Bis, and the first hints of unease stole over his softly pebbled features.

Ivy stood behind the screen door, arms over her middle. “What was that all about?”

I slowly climbed the stairs, the weight of three sleepless nights heavy on me. “I don’t know. How’s Nina?”

The screen door squeaked, and Ivy held it for me. “Zonked out and afraid of the dark,” she said, and I thought it one of the most wrong things I’d heard all week—and it had been a week full of wrong. “Landon’s here. He wants to talk to you.

“Landon?” I jerked to a halt just inside the church. “I thought he was in the hospital.”

Ivy nodded, a dark look in her eye. I’d told her what had happened at Trent’s stables and the top of the FIB tower, and seeing as I’d taken care of it in a suitably positive fashion, she was content to let me handle it. But now he was here in my church and I wasn’t sure how I felt.

“What does he want,” I muttered, and Bis hopped to the back of a chair when I leaned to brush the horse dirt off me.

“You want me to get rid of him?” Ivy asked.

Shaking my head, I went to the kitchen for a drink. The lights were high in the sanctuary, and I could hear a pixy buck talking to Landon. The elf wasn’t talking back. “No,” I said as I took a couple of sodas from the fridge. Hesitating, I held one up to Bis, and when he nodded, I grabbed a third. Soda. Landon had watched his boss commit magical suicide and I was going to offer him a pop?

“Want to listen in?” I asked Bis, handing him the three bottles one by one to open for me with one of his long claws.

“Yeah,” he said as he gave me back the first two and kept the last. “I don’t like him.”

“There’s something about him I don’t like, either,” Ivy muttered, her long hair swaying as she leaned to look down the hall.

“That makes three of us,” I said, then wedged off my shoes. Ivy had been looking at them and I didn’t want to track the graveyard through the house.

Ivy made a low noise of discontent as I passed her, and knowing she’d stay out of sight but not out of earshot, I ambled down the dark hall to the bright sanctuary, bottles clinking. Landon was sitting on the couch as I’d seen countless clients, depressed, afraid, perched on the edge of the cushions with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His expression when he looked up at Bis gliding in behind me was about the same, too, sort of a desperate, you’re-my-last-hope kind of a thing, and I shoved my rescue impulse down deep.

Though scrubbed clean from the hospital, he looked out of sorts in a slightly too-large pair of overalls and boots too big for him. His hair was flat, and his eyes red rimmed. A paper grocery bag with EAT RIGHT FOOD emblazoned on it sat beside him, the top rolled down to a ridiculous shortness.

“Hi,” I said as I sat in the chair across from him. Bis had perched himself on the back of his overstuffed chair, the one he’d found at the curb this spring. Magazines were piled on it since the cushion was blown out, but Bis had a tendency to ruin furniture and it didn’t matter.

Landon’s expression was numb as I held the pop out. “You have pixies in your church,” he said as he took it.

“And a gargoyle in the steeple,” I said, nodding toward Bis. The gargoyle was slugging his soda in one go, and I hoped he would contain himself in the coming belch. “They’re part of our security,” I added. “You remember Bis, right?”

Landon hardly looked up, his gaze unfocused on the bottle in his hands. “May your updrafts all be warm.”

“And your downdrafts few,” Bis belched, earning a titter from the ceiling.

Nice. I wished they’d all leave so I could tell Landon his problem wasn’t going to become mine. “I’m sorry about Bancroft,” I said, thinking I could manage civility, holding my expression bland at the memory of his charred bones.

“He died a hero.”

I waited for more, and in the silence, I took a sip of cola and set the bottle down. The soft clink seemed to stir Landon, and he took a deep breath. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” he said as he set his bottle down untasted.

“No, not at all,” I said lightly. “I just figured you’re on a walkabout. It must have been hard getting across the river with the bridges closed.”

Grimacing, he wiggled his fingers to indicate magic. Across the table, Bis had his bottle angled high, a long, sinuous black tongue reaching all the way to the bottom for the last drops. “I came to apologize,” Landon said, hesitating when he noticed Bis.

Wow, an apology, I thought sarcastically. I hadn’t trusted him before, and this only strengthened my suspicion that he was up to something. A man like Landon didn’t cross security lines to make apologies unless he wanted something.

“For what I said earlier,” he said, eyes flicking up to mine. “Just because your aura is black doesn’t mean you’re immoral. I shouldn’t have taken a reading without your permission.”

Thank you, I thought, but didn’t say it. With the crack of snapping glass, Bis took the top off his bottle, jaw moving sideways as he ground it to a pulp. It was a show of aggression intended to cow Landon, and it seemed to be working.

“It was inexcusable and . . .” He hesitated. “I need your help.”

“Uh-huh.” I was so not surprised. I could set aside my dislike for him in order to see an end to this, but I didn’t know what he thought I could do.