by Kim Harrison
The unlucky man had clearly been hijacked by Dr. Cordova in his quest to dissuade the newspeople. She looked pissed as she chewed him out in front of an FIB van, her arms pointing wildly. We had recaptured Eloy, so I don’t know what her problem was. The sound of Ivy’s footsteps drew my attention, and Jenks flew in to make nervous circles around me.
“What are you doing?” she hissed at Trent as she reached for me. “Look at her. She’s going into shock. And you have her sitting on a bench? What are you doing here anyway?”
“He’s saving my ass,” I said, smiling up at her until my face hurt. “Hi, Ivy,” I added, then hissed in pain when she tried to slide her shoulder under my arm and lift me. “Ow! Ow!” I cried out, and Jenks let a burst of yellow dust slip from him.
“Watch it!” he shouted, but Ivy had jumped back, her eyes going black as she pulled her hands from me.
Trent had gotten to his feet, and as I listed sideways, he propped me back up with a single, obvious finger as I tried to breathe, my ribs hurting. “Her ankle is broken,” Trent said as he held my shoulder, and Ivy’s eyes went even wider. “Her ribs are bruised, and her hand has suffered major damage. She’ll be fine, but—”
“She needs an ambulance!” Ivy hissed, dropping her pain amulet around my neck and carefully scooping me up. My shoulders slumped at the quick relief. It didn’t get rid of everything, but it at least took the edge off.
“She didn’t want one!” Trent said loudly.
“When does Rachel ever know what she wants?” Ivy said, her pace jarring as she walked away with me. I looked back, giving him a painful bunny-eared kiss-kiss as Ivy toted me away. The last I saw of him, he was standing beside that bench looking disgusted, his suit askew and the radio in his hand, probably wondering how he was going to get home. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Thanks for watching her, cupcake,” Ivy said dryly to Jenks, and he clattered his wings aggressively.
“Hey! I got you as soon as I could!” Jenks exclaimed as he flew alongside. “You were the ones who let him get away.”
“No ambulance,” I protested as she carried me, wincing when she took the curb hard. “I want to see Eloy get in a van, and then go home. My gun is still down there, too. And my bag.”
“You can get your gun later,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “I’ve already got your bag in one of the FIB cruisers. Do you think you could work with these guys just once without finishing a run needing stitches?”
Jenks laughed, and Ivy started in with unusually cheerful chatter as she led me to the waiting ambulance, her topics ranging from the celebration pizza party Glenn had invited us to, all the way to Dr. Cordova’s unique vocabulary that she’d shared with everyone when Eloy had gotten away. I let her words wash over me, soaking them in and thinking they were better than a bubble bath. She’d been worried on finding the shaft empty except for my shoulder bag, and I couldn’t help but feel loved.
The ambulance guys were great, patching me up and making me feel less like a battered woman and more like a battle-weary warrior. They even let me keep the door open as they gave me a shot for infection and wrapped my ribs—fortunately not broken, and my ankle—which was. I wanted to watch and make sure the van that Jenks told me Eloy was in left with no incidents. I wasn’t the only one.
Dr. Cordova stood by her car and watched, too, getting in and slamming her door before she drove off in the opposite direction.
We had gotten him, but I felt empty. It wasn’t the victory I had wanted.
It looked like it wasn’t the victory Dr. Cordova had wanted, either.
Chapter Twenty-six
Silvers, grays, blacks, and browns had taken over Glenn’s apartment, Daryl’s touch turning the open floor plan from a rather sterile place of uncomfortably mixed styles to something pleasantly relaxed. It was masculine, calming and powerful, I mused as I sat on the overindulgent, black leather couch with my ribs taped and my ankle propped up, smiling as I took with my left hand the plate of pizza Wayde handed me. It had just come out of the oven and was too hot to eat, but the hamburger, tomatoes, and bacon set my mouth watering.
In the few months that Daryl had been living with Glenn, she had completely redecorated his space. If I had to choose, I’d say it was soft modern, having simple lines and clean surfaces, but mixing in plush and lavish textures. The couch I was drowning in was about the only thing left from his original furnishings. I’d be worried that the unemployed woman was taking over his life, but in all honesty, the place looked so great that I’d let the warrior dryad redecorate any time she wanted.
Seeing that I had a can of pop beside me, Wayde went back into the kitchen. Ivy was already in there, Daryl was on the far end of the couch with me, and Jenks was buzzing about, waiting for the vegetarian pizza to come out since too much animal fat gave him the Hershey squirts. His words, not mine. Glenn was fiddling with the TV, jumping among stations to find the evening news and the official explanation of what had happened at the library. So far it had been sports scores, pig prices, and the latest Cincy scandal. I’d been sitting here with my foot up for almost two hours while Glenn and Ivy made the pizza and decompressed. I wanted to get up, but I didn’t think I could, the couch was so plush and I’d had enough time to stiffen up. Besides, my ribs hurt, and it was easier to do nothing.
The soft hum of Jenks’s wings brought my attention up from the TV, and I took the napkin he held. “Here, Rache,” he said, landing on the arm of the opulent couch. “Big FIB detective had a royal hissy fit last time he found pizza sauce on his leather.”
“Hey, that wasn’t me,” I said, turning to Glenn.
“You were the one in the chair,” Glenn said as he stood and ambled into the kitchen. Ivy was just taking the veggie pizza out, setting the hot pizza stone on a thick pad stuffed with thyme, and it smelled wonderful.
Plate on my lap, I tried to lever myself up with my good hand and shift my back to the arm of the couch so I didn’t have to twist so much to see the kitchen. It was harder than it should have been, but I managed. “It was game night,” I said, catching my pizza before it slid off the plate. “It could have been anyone.”
Glenn didn’t say anything, and I watched the play of emotions as Ivy took a slice of vegetarian pizza and left the kitchen, her napkin dramatically waving as she handed the plate to Daryl, sitting on the edge of the couch, before going to her own chair and waiting pizza. We’d been coming over for game night for a few weeks now as Ivy and Glenn tried to get Daryl more socialized. The woman wasn’t healthy, and even the excitement of Jenga could set off her asthma. My thoughts went to her, Ivy, and Glenn, and then I wished they hadn’t. I wanted them to be okay, but still . . . there was a new space that hadn’t been there before.
Most of Daryl’s species had been wiped out in the industrial revolution, though there were some signs that they were coming back in the mountains—now that we weren’t cutting down hundred-year-old trees anymore. Frail, pale, and sensitive to pollution, the woman didn’t get out much. She was a warrior, though, and for all her delicate beauty and flowing clothes, I’d seen her pin Glenn with a cheese knife to his throat when she thought he was cheating.
My eyes went to the ozonator Glenn had put in last month, the machine purifying the air and leaving it with the smell of a thunderstorm. It seemed to help, and now that I noticed, all the new furnishings were eco oriented, with no petroleum or synthetic anything to make her condition worse. Method to her redecorating madness, perhaps?
Jenks spilled a silver dust and rose an inch before dropping back down. “Daryl, turn it up!” he exclaimed as BRIMSTONE BUST AT LIBRARY flashed up on the screen and the lady announcer in her lavender suit began talking. The pretty, petite warrior woman licked her fingers and snatched up the remote, knowing how to work it as if she’d been born with one in her hand. Magic, technology—sometimes I failed to see the difference.
The announcer’s voice became loud and I leaned forward, straining over the hum of Jenks’s w
ings. “If you tried to use the downtown branch of the library this afternoon, chances are good that you were turned away as the FIB and the I.S. took part in a rare combined effort to catch one of the country’s slipperiest Brimstone distributors.”
“Brimstone?” Jenks shouted, and I shushed him.
“In a late hour of action, officials stormed the lower levels of the downtown branch of the Cincinnati library. The chase ultimately covered almost two city blocks through some of Cincinnati’s old bioshelters, created during the Turn, until Eloy Orin was apprehended trying to emerge from Central Ave.’s access doors.” The woman turned to the attractive, gray-tinged man sitting beside her and smiled. “Brimstone in the library? It gives new meaning to the phrase ‘hooked on reading.’ Right, Bob?”
The TV changed to a shot of Central Ave., bright under a low sun. The picture was blurry, clearly taken from some distance. “Look!” Jenks exclaimed, hovering to block the TV. “Rache! That’s you!”
I leaned forward to see a figure in a red shirt being carried out by a man in a suit, Trent, obviously. “Good God, I look Brimstoned,” I said, hoping this wouldn’t be syndicated out to the West Coast. My mom would pee her pants, then call her neighbors to brag.
“Which is why you’re sitting,” Ivy said. “Eat your pizza. You’ve hardly touched it.”
“Quiet,” Wayde muttered from the kitchen. “I didn’t get a chance to see this.”
“You didn’t miss anything,” I said as I lifted my wedge of pizza while the announcer gave a brief history lesson on the tunnels and how there was no record that they connected with the library.
Again Wayde shushed me, his eyes bright. “She’s talking about you!”
I chewed quietly, not excited. Most times my name made the news, I had to hide in the church for two weeks.
“Though sources haven’t verified it, witnesses claim that Cincinnati’s very own demon witch Rachel Morgan was on the scene. Phone calls to the firm she calls one-third her own have gone unanswered—”
“Because I’m eating,” I muttered, shushed by both Daryl and Wayde.
“But Vampiric Charms is known to have worked with the FIB in the past.”
“Oh, crap!” I exclaimed as the thirty-second video of me wearing nothing but an FIB coat flashed up on the screen. I didn’t care if the important bits were being blocked out. I looked awful, my hair wild and the coat riding up to show my fuzzed ass.
“Whoa! I didn’t know the station had that,” Glenn said, and I flushed.
“Trent’s in the background,” Jenks said, and horrified, I looked to see the elf, his eyes averted.
“Oh God. Can we please turn this off?” I pleaded, and Daryl worked the remote to turn the volume down, her little mouth drawn up as she laughed at me.
Glenn stood behind Ivy, a beer in one hand, smiling at last. “Thank you, Rachel, Ivy, and Jenks,” he said, raising the bottle in salute. “You were the difference between success and failure. Good tag.”
Ivy shifted in her chair and raised her glass above her head, clinking with him. “I wish I’d been there at the end. I would’ve enjoyed smacking Eloy under the flag of justice.”
I would have enjoyed smacking Eloy a little more, too, and as the announcer flirted with her male counterpart, I set my pizza aside. Caught not once but twice with my own magic, I thought as I spun Trent’s ring on my pinkie. But at least we’d gotten him. My smile faded as the memory of the-men-who-don’t-belong surfaced. If their radio had been working, things might have turned out differently. I might not be so banged up, for instance. They had left, and that was just . . . wrong.
Focus blurring, I remembered Trent’s casual acceptance of everything, his matter-of-fact recitation of all the things wrong with me before the ambulance personnel had their look and confirmed it. He hadn’t panicked when finding me beat up and broken. Instead, he quietly sat beside me and looked for the-men-who-don’t-belong. A part of me thought I should be mad that he let me sit there in pain, but I wasn’t. He’d known what was wrong with me before the ambulance personnel had. Nothing had been life threatening, but finding the-men-who-don’t-belong had been then or never. Besides, I had told him no ambulance.
Head down, I spun the ring on my finger, squinting as I noticed that one of the three bands had turned black. It was a three-charm spell, I thought in surprise. It still had some power.
Wayde wandered out of the kitchen with a plate of pizza in one hand, pop in the other, and looked over the seating arrangements. Seeing the Were at a loss, I shifted my legs so he could sit between me and Daryl. “Thanks,” he said as he sank and a puff of vampire- and dryad-scented air rose. “I still don’t believe that you eat pizza,” he said to Glenn as he inched himself forward and out of the cushion trap to set his plate on the coffee table. “You’re okay, FIB man. You can run with me anytime.”
Glenn gave him a look, his expression one of wondering mistrust. “Thanks.”
Ivy picked a pepperoni off her pizza and gave it to Glenn. He was still standing over her, watching his bust through the newscaster’s eyes. “You should tell everyone at the FIB you eat pizza,” Ivy said. “It will do wonders for your street cred.”
“My street cred is fine,” he said. “And they already think I’m insane. Seeing that I like working with witches and vampires.”
Jenks hummed over my pizza, and I gestured that he could have it. “But it’s a good kind of insane,” the pixy said as he sat on the crust and used his chopsticks to nibble the tomato sauce.
Glenn made a noise deep in his throat, then headed back into the kitchen, clearly not convinced. Ivy stood with her empty plate and followed him. She was looking a little sultry, and I’d be surprised if she came back to the church with me tonight. Good thing Wayde was here to get me home. It’d be hard to drive with my ankle and wrist messed up.
Wayde choked, and I looked up from my bruised hand when he shouted, “Turn it up!”
Daryl was already reaching for the remote, but Jenks beat her to it, stomping on the button until the announcer’s voice blared, “ . . . tonight when Orin escaped, while being moved to a more secure FIB facility.”
“What?” Ivy exclaimed from the kitchen, and suddenly her scent poured over me as she stood at my shoulder, mouth agape.
“Son of Tink!” Jenks said, and Glenn bellowed for everyone to shut up. He had escaped? How?
“Authorities are asking for your help if you see this man,” the woman in lavender said as her face was replaced by a shot of Eloy, recent by the apparent bruise from where Trent had hit him and the swollen bump on his head from where he’d further slammed his head on the floor. Eloy’s head was cocked and he looked determined, angry, and disdainful. Anger stirred in me. He hadn’t escaped. Someone had broken him out. Eloy had said they were everywhere. The-men-who-don’t-belong, maybe?
“Orin is considered highly dangerous and should not be approached,” she was saying as another picture of him popped up, this time a full-body shot. “Please call one of the numbers below if you see him.”
Two numbers: one for the FIB, the other for the I.S. “Call the I.S.,” Jenks said, hovering before the TV with his hands on his hips. “The FIB can’t even hold their farts.”
“You’re in the way!” Wayde leaned to see around him, but they’d gone back to a wide angle of the studio showing the newscasters sitting side by side.
“Sounds like a dangerous man,” the guy was saying, “evading both the I.S. and the FIB. Let’s hope they get this one soon.”
The woman smiled brightly. “If it were me, I’d be halfway to Brazil. You know how I like my sun. And speaking of sun, is there any sun in our forecast for tomorrow, Susan?”
I stared at the map of the East Coast, with the low pressure dropping down from the Canadian wilds, stunned. Nice segue.
“Glenn?” Ivy said, and I twisted in the couch and saw her staring at an empty kitchen.
Jenks rose on a column of silver sparkles. “He’s in the bedroom, on the phone. Oh, he’s p
issed.”
I grabbed the arm of the couch and tried to get up, failing. Daryl was already halfway across the room. Ivy joined her at the locked door, hammering on it when a polite knock got no result. Her jaw clenched. “Glenn?” she shouted, and Jenks hummed by her ear, telling her to be quiet so he could hear.
I sank back into the cushions, stymied. I could not get up out of this damned couch. Wayde was looking at me, and I stared back. “You going to help me, or just sit there?” I asked, and he sighed and set his pizza down.
Wayde hauled me up, my ribs protesting. My foot was numb from human medicine, and I grabbed the crutch he handed me, hobbling to Glenn’s bedroom door. “What’s he saying?”
“Just a lot of swearing so far,” Jenks said. “He wants to know who approved the move.”
“Dr. Cordova,” Ivy whispered.
“You heard that?” Jenks said, impressed, and she shook her head.
“She was bitching about it under the library,” Ivy said, then frowned, brow furrowed as she listened to Glenn.
“I didn’t approve a transfer!” His voice came clear through the thin walls of the apartment. “I don’t care if Cordova told you to, she’s not your boss, I am!” There was a hesitation, and he growled, “Cordova has been trying to close my division ever since its inception. I think she wanted him to escape.”
At Glenn’s words, I blinked. A sudden thought stabbed through my head, and I staggered, almost falling when my crutch snagged on the rug. Ivy glanced back when Wayde caught me, and I waved her off, stunned as the new thought circled. I think she wanted him to escape.
