The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(117)
Author: Kim Harrison

“How do you know that?”

Finished, I rocked back and slowly stood, deciding to keep the knife. “Because I stopped Ku’Sox from doing the same thing. It must have given Landon the idea.”

She started to move, and I shook my head. “Stay put.”

“I didn’t know that was his plan,” Ellasbeth said, peeved but flicking nervous glances at the man Trent had downed. “I never meant it to get this out of hand. I only wanted to scare you, Trent. I’m so sorry.”

Trent’s white face wasn’t going away. Lucy was singing as she sat on his hip, and his expression became frightened as his eyes met mine. “I can’t,” he said, those two words almost tearing him in two.

“Daddy, where’s Ray-Ray?”

I swallowed hard as I remembered him forcing Lucy into my arms and demanding I leave, Trent willingly becoming Ku’Sox’s slave to save her. “Don’t worry about it,” I said softly, and Ellasbeth looked between us, her lips pressed as she tried to figure it out. “Jenks is getting Ivy. Get them both out of here.”

“What?” Ellasbeth said as I pulled her to her feet. “Hey!”

Angry, I took out a little of my misplaced aggression on her, pinching her shoulder and getting in her face. “You want to be tied up again?” I said sharply, and her anger flashed to fear. “Then get out of here.”

The man at my feet moved, and I pulled out my splat gun and shot him in the back. With a little sigh, he collapsed. Ellasbeth looked at him, then me, standing before her with a gun in one hand, a knife in the other. Slowly I handed the knife to Trent, who double-sheathed it with his own longer knife. “I suggest you go fast and quiet,” I added.

“Where’s-s-s-s-s Ray-Ray!” Lucy bubbled, clearly not frightened, but hey, the girl had been kidnapped three times now.

Smiling, Trent jiggled her on his hip. “Shhh, Lucy. We have to be quiet to go find Ray.”

The little girl bounced happily, then suddenly concentrated on her fingers until she got them to snap. The flying rocking horse exploded into a puff of pink smoke, and the little girl laughed, delighted. If we survived this, I was going to have to talk to Al about the spells little girls should and shouldn’t know.

But she was being way too loud, and as Ellasbeth darted around the room gathering her purse, her coat, her heels . . . whatever, I turned to Lucy, worried they wouldn’t get down that first crucial hallway. Trent wasn’t having much luck as Lucy kept making and exploding winged horses into little pink clouds “Lucy?” I said suddenly. “Do you want to play hide-and-seek?”

Trent sighed as Lucy stopped bouncing, her eyes going wide as she covered them. “Shhh,” she whispered, then flung her hands from her, smacking Trent in the face as she cried out, “Here I am!”

Smiling, I tugged her sweater straight. “That’s right. But you have to be quiet to find Ray. Shhhh. Ready?”

Trent’s free hand touched my waist, and I froze.

“Rachel . . . I . . .”

The door opened and I spun, relaxing when Jenks darted in, Ivy shutting the door softly behind herself.

“Just go,” I said, resisting the urge to straighten his hat after Lucy knocked it. “Ivy and I have this.”

Ellasbeth shrugged her long coat, looking at us as if jealous. “You can’t stop him without elven magic.”

“Watch us,” I said, my confidence faltering.

Jenks’s wings hummed. “Guys, my pixy sense is tingling.”

Trent stiffened. “It’s the curse. He’s starting it.”

“Then you’d better get going,” I said, shoving him to the hallway. “Ellasbeth, where are they?”

The woman’s lips pressed together. Ivy’s eyes shifted to black, and Jenks’s wings clattered a warning. But then Lucy giggled, and Ellasbeth’s shoulders slumped. “He’s across the hall,” she said. “But you can’t stop him. He’s got like six men in there.”

Jenks snickered, and my eyes flicked to the one who had been guarding her. I was going to miss Trent’s help, but hell, I’d been doing this long before I learned he was worth my trust. And to be honest, it would be easier if I wasn’t worrying about him.

Ready, I looked at Ivy, waiting by the door. Jenks was hovering at her shoulder, and I knew we had this. “Go,” I said, and Trent shifted Lucy on his hip.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes glinting as he hesitated briefly in front of me before putting a hand on Ellasbeth’s back and hustling her out the door and down the hallway. We followed them in case there was trouble. Lucy was whispering loudly, but I didn’t think it would make it past the thick doors and soundproofed walls.

“Just like old times,” Jenks said, and I couldn’t help my smile as I checked my hopper.

“Old times,” I scoffed, relishing the adrenaline scouring through me. “We’ve only been doing this for three years.”

“Yeah, but for a pixy, that’s like a decade.”

Ivy was testing the edge of the knife Trent had given her. Her head came up and she tossed it, catching it again to hold it properly. She looked at the door and then cocked her head. “After you, Jenks?”

Jenks shrugged. “I can’t open it. It’s a manual.”

“Manual it is,” the vampire said, and with a soft grunt, she planted a side kick on the lock, exploding the door inward.

Chapter 26

The thick, supposedly kick-proof door took two blows of Ivy’s boot before the lock broke free of the studs and the door slammed into the opposite wall. Men shouted, and Ivy dove in, hands in fists and screaming. Jenks was a hot sparkle of dust after her, and I followed as the thuds of fists into flesh exploded into the snap of a wrist or knee and a masculine bellow of outrage.

Yep, it was going to be one of those days.

I slid to a halt in the well-appointed, low-ceilinged, brightly lit room, half of it arranged as a dining room with a small kitchenette, the other half a comfortable living room complete with big TV and two couches. Ivy was rising from the man she’d just downed, her eyes full and black and her shirt torn. She grinned at the two men by the couch, beckoning them forward.

“Rache!” Jenks shouted in warning, and I ducked, falling to a crouch and spinning with my leg extended to hit the man coming out of the bathroom. He was good, stumbling to avoid contact and going down into a controlled fall and rolling free of me.

I stood up—right into the arms of another man. He smelled like cheese as his arms wrapped around me, pinning my back to his front. Bad idea; I flung my head back, breaking his nose. The man bellowed but didn’t let go, and my eyes widened as the first man pointed a handgun at me.