The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(25)
Author: Kim Harrison

“We won’t have to.” Trent stretched and yawned, reminding me that this was his usual down time. “He’s in Atlanta trying to win his position back,” he said as he rolled his shoulders. “He can be here in a couple of hours.”

“It’s not going as well as he’d like?” I prodded, and he smirked.

“Getting old men and women to agree on anything new is like wrangling cats, and he has no practical skills.” He hesitated. “Yet,” he amended. “But things change. I get better reception outside. Back in a second.”

His hand trailing across my cheek raised tingles, and I darted my tongue out to tag a knuckle, making him jump and smile. “Wicked demon,” he muttered, and I watched him leave.

My smile faded fast. I didn’t trust Landon. The last spell he “taught” me nearly killed me. I was sure the demons would have a curse that would do the same thing, and after listening to make sure Trent wasn’t going to walk back in, I pulled my scrying mirror from between my cookbooks and spelling tomes.

The cracked glass was cool, and as soon as I set my hand atop the calling glyph, I felt the hint of connection to the demon collective. Tapping the line out back strengthened it. Heart pounding, I reached out with a soft thread of awareness, lacing my thought with enough regret to choke a horse. We had the same aura resonance, damn it. Al could at least be civil.

Al?

Rage boiled up through the folds of my brain, and I jerked my hand back as the wave crested, threatening to swamp me. His anger fell back into my mirror, and the sudden snap of the cracked glass breaking made me gasp.

“You okay?” Trent shouted from outside.

Shit. “Ah, just dropped a cookie,” I lied, face flaming as I looked at the broken shards. “I’m good!”

But I wasn’t good, and I took the broken pieces to my saltwater vat and dropped them in one by one, watching them ride the currents of their passage to the bottom. They lay there, sending glimmers of light sideways out their broken edges.

Depressed, I stared out the window and watched Trent meet Izzyanna, Jumoke’s young wife. I couldn’t help but wonder if Al was angry because Trent and I reminded him of what he’d lost long before I knew him—a woman he’d once loved enough to risk everything for, give everything for, but was too afraid to fight the anger of two worlds for. Maybe Al was angrier at himself than me.

But as I washed my hands free of the salt water, I didn’t think it mattered.

Chapter 6

The chill of the coming September evening seeped into me, the cold as real and enduring as the damp grit of the earth pressed into my fingers as I lifted the last stone and replaced it in the low wall that separated the graveyard from the more mundane garden. It had been knocked out of place, and though Jenks had permanently taken up residence in the church walls, I knew it would be something he’d want fixed.

Straightening, I wiped my hands off on my jeans and looked at the red light of sunset shining against the familiar stones I mowed around every week. Well, not every week. The grass had gotten long, catching the leaves that had shifted color and dropped early. My weekends were a lot more interesting now that Trent had more free time, and the yard was beginning to show it.

“Sorry, Jenks,” I whispered as my gaze lifted to the church. I knew it bothered him that the graveyard was going fallow apart from a small space Jumoke and Izzyanna had claimed. The garden felt empty, and my mind wouldn’t stop circling over the thought of endings. It was why I was out here moping in the garden. That, and Trent had been underfoot ever since getting up from his noon nap, driving me to distraction as he went over that charm he’d brought.

The bright sparkle of pixy dust glowed at the far side of the garden. It was joined by a second, and the twin trails of dust wound around each other in breathtaking beauty until they both arrowed to me. It was Jumoke and Izzyanna, but my welcoming smile faded when two car doors slammed on the street. Landon. Apparently he’d brought a friend.

Izzyanna reached me first. The little pixy looked about ten, a late age for a pixy to become a bride, but her eyes were as dark as well-turned earth. It wasn’t the typical death sentence that Jumoke’s hair was, but it had obviously prevented a more traditional joining age. Her smile, though, was cheerful, and her eyes shone with an impish humor that balanced Jumoke’s stoic, introverted personality. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a slight swelling at her middle. It was unusual for pixies to be born in the fall, as they wouldn’t make it through the winter. Izzy’s children, though, wouldn’t have to hibernate, and a fall birth would give them a head start in the spring.

“Rachel, your guests are here,” the pixy said, her flush spilling into her dust.

“Guests, huh?” I said, glad she was starting to slow her speech down. The first week she’d been here, I hadn’t understood a word she said. “Who did Landon bring with him?”

Please not the I.S. Anyone but the I.S.

“It’s a woman,” Izzy said, hand protectively over her middle as she hovered backward before me as I headed for the church’s back door.

“Woman?” I said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

Immediately she flew away with Jumoke, winding about themselves and talking so fast and high that it might as well be another language. It wouldn’t be long until the garden was again noisy with life, and that gave me more peace than I would’ve expected. I liked beginnings better than endings.

But it wasn’t meant to last, and I jerked to a stop when I recognized Ellasbeth’s haughty voice coming through the open kitchen window. Ellasbeth? What in hell was she doing here, and with Landon?

“She is a demon!” Ellasbeth exclaimed, her tone accusing. “Your father made her!”

“He did not make her. He enabled her to survive. There is a difference.” Trent’s voice was soft in anger, and I stayed where I was, my hand reaching for the back door faltering.

“Which might get you killed if it gets out,” she huffed, and I stiffened.

“Is that a threat?” Trent’s voice was hard. “Are you sure you want to do that? Again?”

Landon cleared his throat, but the words had been spoken. Crap on toast. Trent had a ruthless streak as wide as Jenks’s. He’d once stopped me from killing Nick, claiming he wanted one clean thing in his life—me. I’d since agreed that killing Nick for the hell of it would have left a mark I didn’t want, but Trent . . . He felt as if he was already lost and had no such compulsion against “doing things for the hell of it.”