The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(40)
Author: Kim Harrison

I jumped when Trent leaned close, whispering, “Close the deal. Make a sure end to it.”

I almost cried at his words. He knew I had no choice, even if it meant the end of the undead, and he didn’t think any less of me. I had to trust Landon. Shoulders tense, I faced Cormel again. “I’ll do it, but I want your word that this pays my and Ivy’s debt in full. Everything. And when Felix walks into the sun, there’ll be no retaliation and no more demands for your souls.”

Felix’s cries cut off with a strangled suddenness. Cormel’s lips twitched, and I remembered the aide rushing off. Anger radiated from him as he pushed forward until I put up a hand and he stopped that same eight feet back. Pixy dust glittered in his hair, and I knew Jenks was hovering above us in the dark. I could see the lines of worry around Cormel’s eyes, feel the tension in him, the overwhelming need he was trying to hide. Cormel wanted his soul. Nothing would stand in his way—not now that he might be so close. “There will be no tally of debt made until I have my soul,” he said, and I shook my head.

Nina’s shoe scraped the cement behind me, and Trent touched my elbow before dropping back to make sure that she woke as herself and not Felix.

Hands on my hips, I moved forward until Cormel could’ve reached out to throttle me. I was safe enough, seeing that he knew I was far more malleable when he hurt others than when he hurt me. And besides, Jenks was up there somewhere. “Your soul was never mentioned in the original agreement. I said I’d find a way for you to keep your soul. I’ve done that.”

“And you refuse to implement it!” Cormel shouted.

“Because it’s going to send you into the sun!” I said, hearing Trent shushing Nina and trying to get her to stand up. “Are you blind? I’m trying to help you!”

Cormel was silent. His eyes flicked to Trent and Nina, then deeper, to his people ringing us. Finally his eyes touched upon the Hollows, and then rose to the sky. I wondered if he was saying a curse to a God who had allowed this to happen—or just looking for Jenks.

“Cormel,” I said, soft, so my voice wouldn’t shake as my knees were. “I’ll fix Felix’s soul to him, but only because you’re forcing me, and even then only if you agree that when it’s over, we’re done. That neither I nor Ivy owe you anything. No retaliation. Nothing.”

Cold and unyielding, he stood before me as those who trusted him listened. “Not until we all have the security of our souls will I call it done.”

Frustrated, I backed up a step, wanting to look at Trent but not daring to take my eyes off Cormel. “Did you not hear Felix?” I said, looking from him to the scared vampires behind him. “Your own people have doubts, enough that an entire camarilla stood up to you to stop me from even trying. The elves think you can’t survive with your souls either. That’s why they taught me the charm to fix a soul to an unwilling body in the first place. They want you to kill yourselves so they can step into the vacuum of power you will leave behind.”

Cormel’s eyes flicked behind me, and I heard Trent sigh.

“It wasn’t Trent who told me the charm, it was Landon,” I griped. “Cormel, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but listen to me,” I pleaded, but Cormel turned to look behind him at his people. “We can’t always have what we want. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

He sniffed, unable to believe I might know what I was talking about. “You gained this knowledge of fixing souls from the dewar?”

I hesitated, wondering if it had been a mistake bringing up the elves, but if Cormel had followed me here, then he knew who’d been going in and out of my church. I nodded, heart pounding. He was making a decision. I could tell. And I probably wasn’t going to like it.

“Prove to me that a soul of the undead can again be fixed. Do that, and I will call the debt you and Ivy have accumulated null.”

I shivered at his expression, both riven with a coming pain and hopeful that I might be lying. “It will send Felix into the sun,” I breathed, and those in the front whispered my words in a rising wave to those in the back, gaining strength and fear as it went.

Cormel dropped his head. His eyes were a normal brown when they met mine again. “He’s halfway there already,” he said in regret. “We will do this at my house.”

Trent scuffed forward with Nina, but I didn’t move. I was not going to go under the ground with him. I might never come back up. “No,” I said, and Cormel jerked to a halt.

“Are you suggesting we fix his soul here?” he said bitterly, indicating the cold darkness. “I won’t do this here, nor at your church, nor at any elf holding,” he finished, grimacing at Trent.

We needed a neutral place, and unfortunately one was staring at me just across the open grass. “Luke and Marsha’s,” I suggested, and I swear I heard Jenks dart off to check it out.

Cormel grimaced, but it was nearby, and I might even be able to sit down. “Neither one of them is my child.”

“But you have enough pull with their masters or you wouldn’t have used them in the first place to try to kill Ivy.”

The master vampire thought about that for a moment, his lips twitching when Nina regained her balance and glared at him, her fear for Ivy overpowering her fear of him. “Clear the building,” he said gruffly, gesturing. “Make sure the apartment in question is secure.”

The vampires began to break up, some jogging to the apartments, but most simply vanishing into the night. Cormel waited, as still as, well, the undead, the wind moving the hem of his coat the only motion about him. Frowning and tucking the bottle back in my shoulder bag, I turned to Trent. Nina jerked away, snarling when I tried to take her other arm, and I backed off.

“You sure you don’t have any other ideas?” I asked Trent as we started across the grass, Nina’s aggressive stalking held in check by the vampires around and behind us.

“Not any you’re going to like,” he said. “You never know. It might work just fine.”

Or it might kill Felix outright, I thought, but I didn’t say it as we made our way to the road. But I’d do anything for Ivy. What happened after that was not going to be my problem.

Chapter 9

Felix sat on the couch not four feet from me, not breathing, not moving, creeping me out as he stared with red-rimmed, hungry eyes while I wiped the glass coffee table with a salt-soaked rag. The three heavies by the door weren’t helping, even if the undead vampire was bound and gagged. I wished Cormel would get up here so we could get on with it.