by Kim Harrison
“Easy,” Trent whispered as I pulled my bag forward.
If that ugly thing touched me, I’d let Felix’s soul out right here and now, regardless of how hard it had been to catch. “We have it,” I said, and my fingers dipped into my bag to find the gritty, cool feel of the bumpy glass. I held it aloft, then jerked it back when Cormel began to shake. “It took all five of us, but we’ve got it.”
“And you call us unfeeling animals,” he rasped, eyes black. “No wonder he grieves!”
Swallowing hard, I held it tight to my middle. Cormel watched as if it was his own soul I held. “I can fix it to him,” I said, but I wasn’t sure he was listening anymore as he stared at the bottle. “But it will send him into the sun.” Please believe me. I don’t want to have to do this.
Felix’s screams had become more insistent, and clearly upset, Cormel leaned to speak to one of his perfectly dressed aides, not a drop of blood on his coat or a scuff on his polished shoes. “Of course he is in pain!” he said when the man scuttled away. “Give him his soul, Rachel, or Ivy will suffer.”
I had known it would be no other way, and as Trent stood behind me smelling of broken leaves and snapped twigs, I pulled myself straight. “Fine,” I snapped, knowing my doubt over Ivy’s condition was a more powerful goad than seeing her here before me tied up. “I’ll do it!” I added, “But I want to see her first.”
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.
I jumped at the thump from the bedroom, but Jenks gave me a thumbs-up before darting to the open kitchen. Trent, too, had started, and he turned from the vampire graffiti sprayed o
n the inside of the closed blinds. His eyes roved over the space, evaluating the lifestyle of the average living vampire, calculating the difficulty of getting out of here in a pinch, generally doing his warlord/businessman elf thing.
Apart from the ominous jagged and swirled vampire graffiti, the apartment looked the same as when I’d last seen it. I wondered if Marsha and Luke were still alive and running. It was possible, seeing that the real intent behind it all had been to get Ivy involved.
“Hey, Trent. Be a pal, would you?” Jenks called, and Trent went into the kitchen to take the top off a jar of peanut butter. It had been an exhausting night for everyone, but I thought it interesting that he’d asked Trent. He’d never asked me to help with anything remotely connected to his admittedly high caloric needs.
Must be a bro thing, I thought as I tossed the rag into the sink in the kitchen. Jenks rose up and down on a column of silver, peeved that I’d startled him. We were all on edge as we waited for Cormel’s thugs to give him the all clear so he could come up, making me wonder if there was a charm or a spell I hadn’t found the first time I was here.
My fingers were cold, and I knelt with the low table between me and Felix. I could feel him watching as I brought the bottle out of my shoulder bag and set it on the table. Felix’s eyes turned a savage black, but he didn’t move. My heart thudded, making things worse. This was so dumb. Where in the hell was Cormel?
My head snapped up when the man searching the bedroom ghosted out with a vampiric quickness, his nose wrinkling at the smell of burnt amber. Vampires didn’t generally like burnt amber—thank God. My thoughts swung to Ivy, who’d never said much either way, something I appreciated. Nina was downstairs waiting for her—which didn’t sit well with me.
I knew Ivy could take care of herself, but not when she was suffering from internal injuries and was weak. But Nina loved Ivy. That made her dangerous as she’d do anything to be with Ivy, up to and including killing her. Vampire logic didn’t make sense to me.
The hiss of a match drew my attention as Trent lit a huge pale green candle. “Better?” he said as he waved the match out. He looked odd in someone else’s kitchen. I should stop being selfish and tell him to go save the world with Ellasbeth. He has a daughter with her, for God’s sake. Why am I letting him endanger himself like this?
But I needed his help, and I forced myself to smile even as Felix began a weird growling hiss. “Better, thanks,” I said as the clean scent of sea foam overpowered both the scent of sulfur from the match and the reek of burnt amber rising from all three of us. Leave it to a female vampire to have a candle that could outstink the ever-after.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Trent said as he sat in the closest chair. His eyes were on Felix, but all I could think was, This is a mistake.
“I don’t like being forced,” I said softly, and he gave my shoulder a squeeze before picking up the bottle and giving it careful scrutiny. In front of us, Felix groaned.
“No one does,” he said as the vampire began to pant through the gag, black eyes bulging in anger. “Don’t blame yourself for what follows.”
Maybe. Uneasy, I took the bottle from Trent and set it back on the table to get Felix to settle down. I prided myself on being able to find a way out of just about anything, but not this time. Cormel was going to get his way—to the letter of the law and no further. My eyes flicked to Felix, and my jaw clenched. Ivy, I will not let this happen to you.
My bag of scribing salt hit the glass table with a gentle hush and I dug deeper. Jenks’s wings clattered, an instant of warning before voices rose in the hall. It was Cormel, and Trent stood when the unassuming-looking man came in without even a knock, flanked by three more of his heavies and an aide. I stifled a shiver as we made eye contact, but he was already frowning over Trent’s presence. How many guys did Cormel need, anyway?
Conversation low to the point of inaudibility, Cormel toured the apartment, making me uneasy as he circled to finally settle at the most comfortable chair between the gas fireplace and the shuttered window. He wasn’t exactly behind me, but I didn’t like it, and the Möbius strip clinked loudly when I set it down. Felix was staring at me again, and Cormel steepled his fingers, smiling at me, making me shudder. Do I stay where I am with Cormel just outside my easy sight, or turn and put Felix out of my sight?
“He’s good,” Trent said as he shifted to a second chair so he could see both vampires.
“They don’t let you run the United States if you’re not.” Stomach knotting, I reassured myself that I had everything. Salt, rod, little bowl for the egg, the egg itself . . . Nina hadn’t known what color Felix’s soul radiated originally, so the scarf was a neutral black.
“Technically, I was never sworn in, but thank you,” Cormel said as he idly peeped through the blinds from where he sat.
Jenks rose up from the counter, his fingers buried in a torn piece of paper towel. “We doing this or not? I got plans tonight.”
I knew his mood stemmed from worry for Ivy. Cormel let the slat fall and turned to me, black eyes showing his impatience. My heart thudded. Landon was a conniving, backstabbing elf focused on his own redemption. I was reasonably confident the charm before me was going to do exactly what he said—if only because its origins were so nasty—but it was still going to turn and bite me on the ass. I knew it down to my toes. It wasn’t a question of if, but how, and I steadied myself. “Can we clear the room a little?”
Cormel waved impatiently, and his scar-covered aide headed for the door. It creaked open, and the aide jumping back with a cry when a scruffy white dog skittered in, followed by two vampires.
“Rache!” Jenks shouted, and I yanked my bag to me, digging for my original bulky but true strong-magic detection amulet.
“It’s a dog!” I shouted as the two men chased him into the bedroom amid the hoots and derisive comments from the watching thugs.
“Hey!” someone yelped. “Watch it! No! That way!”
Buddy barked and ran back into the living room. His feet were leaving muddy prints on the carpet, and panicked by the reaching hands, he skittered under Trent’s chair. The vampires slid to a stop, unwilling to reach under Trent, sitting with his ankle on a knee and his hands laced. Buddy growled, but it was a frightened noise.
“Relax, it’s a dog,” I said again, trying not to watch Bis crawling in along the ceiling. He’d been downstairs with Nina, and if he was here now, then everything was okay.
“I can tell it’s a dog,” Cormel said sourly as his men clustered around the one who’d been bitten, his hand cradled protectively close. Felix’s eyes had dilated to a full, hungry black. I frowned, anger finally finding a toehold in my anxiety and shoving it down.
“I mean, it’s Buddy, the dog that lives here, not Luke or Marsha under a transformation curse,” I said, and Cormel’s eyes narrowed even as he beckoned to one of his people.
“Remove him,” Cormel said, pointing. “He belongs in the pound.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there, vamp boy.” Jenks darted to the center of the room. “This is his turf, not yours. If someone got bitten, that’s not the dog’s fault.”
Trent dropped his hand below the bottom of the chair, and Buddy stopped growling to sniff it. “He’s probably just hungry,” Trent said, and I watched, surprised when he stood and went into the kitchen. “You hungry, Buddy?” he called, voice high, and Buddy thumped his tail.
“Everyone leave him alone,” I said when Buddy slinked out from under Trent’s chair, skulking into the kitchen when Trent began opening cupboards, looking for his food.
“We don’t have time for this,” Cormel said dryly.
“You want him out, right?” Trent’s expression was calm as he searched. “That’s not going to happen until he trusts you. He’s probably not eaten for days.” His attention went down and he smiled. “You need a bath, Buddy. Where have you been?”
Jenks hovered over them, and I watched a camouflaged Bis inch into the kitchen, intrigued. “Dumpster, b
y the smell of it,” Jenks said, fingers pinching his nose. “And the river. Cats are better, even if they do try to eat you. They at least keep themselves clean.”
Trent found a bag of food and Buddy whined, nails clicking. “Good boy. Here you go.”
The kibble clattered into a salad bowl, and Trent set it down with a disarming look of satisfaction. Jenks on his shoulder and Bis clinging to the ceiling beside the fan only added to the odd tableau. All three watched him eat, and then Trent bent to shake even more into the bowl.
Smiling, I turned away, shock a cold slap when I found Cormel had moved and was sitting in the chair right beside me, staring. Holy shit!
“Right,” I said, smile gone, and Cormel nodded for me to get on with it. “Ah, he needs to be prone,” I said, glancing at Felix, the undead vampire glaring malevolently at me, apparently not appreciating the kindness to stray dogs.
Two of the men by the door came to shift him, seeing that his hands and feet were bound.
“Soon, Felix,” Cormel crooned when Felix began to struggle. “Soon. Give her a chance to work. I’ll remove your gag if you promise not to howl.”
Felix’s eyes were entirely black, but when he nodded, Cormel patted his hands, taking a small jackknife from his pocket and cutting the gag himself. Jenks and Trent hastened back to the living room, leaving Buddy to growl at the vampire inching forward to grab him.
The gag fell away. “She stole it,” Felix said, his voice crawling down my spine as he fixed his unblinking eyes on me. “Make her give it back. It’s mine!”
Cormel patted his shoulder and stood, the knife tucked inside his overcoat along with the gag. “She didn’t steal your soul. She captured it so she could fix it properly.” He turned to me. “Isn’t that right, Morgan?” he threatened.
I nodded, glad when Trent took the chair behind me again. “Keep him there,” I said, not liking Cormel being this close. “If I’m interrupted, his soul will return to the ever-after.”
