The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)(86)
Author: Kim Harrison

Nodding, I sat back in my chair. More proof that demon and wild magic had a common source, perhaps?

Moving quickly, Landon scribed a plate-size circle on the coffee table, the sand hissing down with a smooth motion that spoke of years of practice. A triangle went around it so that the edges touched in three places, and then a second circle around that, nesting the three glyphs together. The clear crystal went into one of the spaces between the outer circle and triangle, a knotted bit of hair in the centermost space. If it was like demon magic, he’d probably want to put something in the tiny space above it.

“Ah . . .” Landon looked up, hesitating. “I need something that just died. The fresher the better.”

“I take it back,” Jenks said. “This is nothing like summoning a demon.”

“You want a corpse?” Ivy said, aghast.

“No!” Pointy ears reddening, Landon grimaced. “A bug. A fly. Anything that was once living. She needs something to animate. Unless you want to volunteer to be a vessel?” he said. “That’s what Bancroft did.”

My chin lifted. No wonder Trent hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Using dead things was usually black magic.

Jenks took to the air, his dust an eerie green. “Jumoke killed a hummer at sunset. I’ll be right back.”

Okay, I really wasn’t liking this. “Your goddess converses with you through zombies?” I said, and Landon scowled, ignoring me as he used a magazine card to fix the sand that Jenks’s wing draft had displaced. “I said, your goddess converses with you through zombies?” I said louder, and Jenks came back in, saving him from answering.

“It’s been dead for about an hour,” the pixy said, dropping it with a tiny thud.

“Perfect. The neurons will still be active.”

I watched, distaste growing, as Landon casually moved the tiny thing to the top of the triangle, setting it inside the larger circle, but outside of the smaller one. “And you questioned my morals?” I muttered.

Bis resettled himself, and I wasn’t surprised when I felt Landon’s tap on my ley line out back. My nose wrinkled. It really wasn’t my line, but no one else ever used it. It was Newt’s, actually. My unease grew when Landon’s eyes found mine with a fevered intensity, the spilled sand lines seeming to ripple into themselves as he murmured, “Ta na shay. Ta na shay, enmobeana. Ta na shay, mourdeana. Ta na shay, eram. Ta na shay.” His breath whispered the words into nothing, but the awkward rhythm he was tapping continued, sort of a three-beat, two-beat, three-beat, three-beat.

Shoulders stiffening, I twisted my lips as something not altogether unpleasant slowly crept through me.

“Ah,” Jenks said as he hovered beside Ivy. “Should your auras be glowing like that?”

“My aura is glowing?” I said, panicking.

“Yes,” Landon said, the rhythm never hesitating. “That means it’s working. Quiet. Ta na shay, enmobeana.”

I jumped when Jenks alighted on my shoulder. “His is glowing too, Rache. I think it’s okay. Oh. Hey, it quit!”

“Yeah?” I squeaked, feeling something sort of peel off me with the pinch of a scab lifting away. The mystics, probably. “Look at that!” I said, pointing at the crystal. It had hazed purple. “Dude, it’s the same color as her eyes!”

The tapping hesitated. “You’ve seen her eyes?” Landon asked bitterly.

I really needed to learn how to keep my mouth shut. “Ah, in a dream?” I said, and he resumed the tapping beat, jealousy making his motions fast.

“Ta na shay, mourdeana,” he said, sounding almost vindictive.

Jenks’s wings fluttered, and I shuddered at the feel of them on my neck. “Whoa. Anyone else feel that?” he asked.

Ivy gasped, and my eyes shot to the hummingbird. It lay on the table, wings moving but never taking to the air. A quick look with my second sight showed it was flaming with a white aura. Landon’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed as if he hadn’t thought this was going to work. “Rache . . .” Jenks whispered. “This don’t feel right.”

I was tending to agree with him. Landon was sweating, and we all jerked when the hummingbird lurched into the air, never leaving the tiny space in which it had been placed. The head wasn’t quite level, and it truly didn’t look alive.

“It’s working,” Landon whispered. “My God, I’ve never seen this strong a connection.”

My eyes dropped from the bird, now leaking blood from the wound it had died from, to the curled and knotted hair in the center. It was a place of honor. My jaw clenched. There was no way you could put a person into a glyph this size, but hair was often used as a bridge.

“Landon,” I said in warning, and his smile became ugly.

“Ta na shay, eram!” he said, his anger and jealousy spilling over into his voice.

I gasped as a scintillating flow of mystics poured through me, my defenses as effectual as a sieve as they danced through the spaces around them with the sound of wings and spinning wheels made of purple eyes. I wasn’t connected to a line. I was a line, the living energy existing in the spaces between mass, chiming to the sound of my aura.

“Oh shit . . .” I breathed, and my hands clenched on the cushions as the bird’s wings stilled and it hit the table.

“Rachel?” Ivy said, leaning close, but I couldn’t see her, my vision unable to process anything as something seemed to play with my aura, caressing it.

You’ve come home. The alien thought lifted through me. Become. Tell me what you’ve seen.

“No,” I whispered, feeling the presence begin to pull me in, the edges of my awareness become fuzzy. No, I thought, and the whirling eyes of the Goddess’s thoughts turned to me, purple feathers shedding from it at my defiance to leave it unblinking.

“Get out!” I screamed, shifting my aura sideways until the mystics sort of stepped left and were gone.

I took a huge breath, head snapping up to see Bis atop the table, the spell scattered as he hissed at Landon, wings spread wide. The man was scrunched in his chair, facing down a very pissed Ivy and Jenks. “I’m okay!” I said, and Ivy turned, the relief in her overwhelming. “I’m okay.” But my hands were shaking, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to sleep again.

“It was an accident!” Landon was saying. “Look, she’s okay.”

Jenks hovered before him as Ivy came to look into my eyes. “I might be a pixy, but I know enough magic to know that you used her hair! You meant to do that!”