The Good, The Bad, And The Undead th-2

by Ким Харрисон

  I smiled, relieved when she met my gaze. "I didn't know you could play," I said, hitching my bag up higher on my shoulder.

  "My mother made me take lessons."

  Nodding absently, I dug the money out of my bag. My thoughts went to the discrepancy between us as I leaned through the piano and handed it to her. Ivy was buying a baby grand piano and my dresser was made of pressboard.

  Head bent over the money, she counted it. "You're missing two hundred," she said.

  Taking a breath, I went into the kitchen. Guilt tugged at me as I dropped my bag on Ivy's antique kitchen table and went to the fridge for the juice. "Edden shorted me," I shouted to the sanctuary, thinking she probably wouldn't leave if we were talking about money. "I'll get the rest. I'm going to talk to the baseball team again."

  "Rachel…" Ivy said from the hall, and I spun, my heart pounding. I hadn't heard her footsteps. She took in my surprise, and a wash of inner pain flickered over her. Edden's freakin' attempt at compensation was in her hand, and I hated everything. Just everything.

  "Forget it," she said, making me feel even better. "I can cover for you this month."

  Again, I finished silently for her. Damn it to hell. I ought to be able to pay my own bills.

  Depressed, I took off my hat and hung it on my chair. My heels were next, and I kicked them off, sending them flying out the archway to land thumping somewhere in the living room. In my stocking feet, I sat slumped at the table and nursed my juice as if it was a beer at closing time. There was an open bag of cookies on the table, and I pulled them closer. Chocolate cream would make everything better if I could get enough into me.

  Ivy stretched to drop the money into the jar atop the fridge. It wasn't the safest place to keep the money we pooled to pay our bills, but who was going to steal from a Tamwood vampire? Saying nothing, she slipped into her chair across from me, the length of the table between us. The fan of her computer whirled up to speed as she jiggled the mouse. My bad mood eased. She hadn't left. She was working at her computer. I was in the same room with her. Maybe she felt safe enough that she could at least listen.

  "Ivy—" I started.

  "No," she said, flicking me a frightened look.

  "I just want to say I'm sorry," I rushed. "Don't go. I'll drop it." How could someone so strong and powerful be so afraid of herself? The woman was a conflicting mass of strength and vulnerability that I didn't understand.

  Her eyes went everywhere but to mine. Slowly her wire-tight posture relaxed. "But it wasn't your fault," she whispered.

  Then why do I feel like crap? "I'm sorry, Ivy," I said, pulling her eyes to mine for a brief moment. They were as brown as chocolate, with no hint of black rimming them. "It's just—"

  "Stop," she said, her gaze going to her hand clutching the table, the nails still shiny from the clear polish she had put on to go to Piscary's. She visibly forced her grip to relax. "I…won't ask you to be my scion again if you don't say anything more." The last was hesitant, disquieting in her vulnerability.

  It was almost as if she knew what I was going to say and couldn't bear to hear it. I would not be her scion—I couldn't. The tie that would bind us would be too tight and take from me my independence. While I knew in the vampire existence that the giving and receiving of blood was not necessarily equated with sex, to me they were the same. And I didn't want to say, "Can we just be friends?" It was trite and degrading, even if to be her friend was all I wanted. She'd take the words as the brush-off most people used them for. I liked her too much to hurt her that way. And I could tell it wasn't a lingering bitterness that prompted her promise. She wouldn't ask me to be her scion because she didn't want the pain of being rejected again.

  I didn't understand vampires. But that's where Ivy and I were.

  She met my eyes with a faltering sureness that strengthened as she saw my silent agreement to ignore what had happened. Her shoulders eased and she regained a wisp of her usual confidence. But as I sat in our kitchen with my feet in the sun, I went cold with the knowledge of how badly I was using her. She was freely giving me protection against the many vampires that would take advantage of my scar—in essence, she was ensuring my free will—and she was willing to overlook that I wasn't paying for it in the usual vampiric fashion. God help me, it was enough to make me hate myself. She wanted something I couldn't give her, and she was content to take my friendship in the hopes that someday I could give more.

  I took a slow breath, watching her pretend not to notice my eyes on her as I let the pieces fall into place. I couldn't leave. It was more than not wanting to lose the only real friend I had had in eight years or my desire to help her win the war she fought against herself. It was the fear of being turned into a plaything by the first vampire I ran into in a moment of weakness. I was trapped by convenience, and the tiger with me was willing to lap cream and purr, betting she'd find a way to change my mind. Great. I'd have no problem sleeping tonight.

  Ivy's eyes met mine, her breathing hesitating a bare second as she realized that I'd finally figured it out. "Where's Jenks?" she asked, turning to her screen as if nothing had happened.

  I exhaled slowly, coming to grips with my new outlook. I could leave and fight off every lustful vamp I ran into, or I could stay under Ivy's mantle, trusting I'd never have to fight her off instead. As my dad was fond of saying, a known danger was far better than an unknown one.

  "At Trent's helping Glenn," I said, my fingers trembling as I reached for another cookie. I'd stay. We had an understanding. Or was Nick right, in that I really did want her to bite me but couldn't accept that my "preferences" had slid a little? Surely the former. "I'm off the case. I found a body and word got out a witch was helping the FIB."

  Her eyes met mine over the screen between us, her thin eyebrows high. "You found a body? At Trent's compound? You're kidding."

  I nodded, slumping with my elbows on the table, unwilling to delve any deeper into my psyche right now. I was too tired. "I'm pretty sure it's Dan Smather's, but it doesn't matter. Glenn is more uptight than a pixy in a room full of frogs, but Trent's going to walk." My thoughts shifted from what I was going to do about Ivy to the memory of Dan's mutilated body strapped to the chair. "Trent is too smart to leave anything to connect him to the body," I said. "I don't understand why it was on his property to begin with."

  She nodded, her attention going back to her screen. "Maybe he put it there."

  A wry grimace crossed me. "That's what Glenn thinks. That Trent is the murderer but wanted us to find it, knowing we couldn't link it to him, and therefore making it twice as hard to catch him if he makes a mistake later on. It fits with Sara Jane's reaction. She doesn't know Dan Smather better than her UPS man, but something…" I hesitated, trying to put my feeling into words. "Something isn't right." I thought back to the picture she'd given me. It had been the same photo as the one on his TV. I should've known then that their courtship was contrived.

  I was starting to doubt my own, grudge-laced belief that Trent was responsible for the murders, and that was disturbing. He was capable of murder—I'd seen that firsthand—but the mutilated, bloodless body tied to that chair and tortured was far and away from the clean, fast death he had inflicted upon his head geneticist last spring. Thinking, I reached for a cookie. Biting the head off, I got up to hunt through the fridge to decide what I was going to fix for dinner and let my subconscious work on it. Maybe I'd make something special. It had been a while since I had done more than open boxes and stir things on the stove.

  I glanced at Ivy, feeling guilty and relieved all at the same time. No wonder she thought I wanted more than to be her roommate. Some of this was my fault. Most maybe.

  "So what did Trent do when you found the body?" Ivy asked, mouse clicking as she checked out her chat rooms. "Any guilt?"

  "Ah, no," I said, pushing my uncomfortable feelings aside even as I took a half pound of lean hamburger out of the freezer and set it clunking into the sink. "And the surprise he let slip wasn't that I found
a body but that it was Dan's body. That's why I don't like the idea that he put it there to cover himself. He knows more than he's saying, though." I gazed out the window at the sunlit garden and the glimmers of pixy wings as Jenks's kids fought off a migrating hummingbird from the last of the lobelias. It had to be migrating. Jenks would have killed it before letting competition get a foothold in his garden.

  As the children shouted and called, working together to drive the hapless bird away, my thoughts returned to the worry Trent had let show when I found that ley line running through his office. He had been more upset about me finding that line than finding Dan's body.

  The ley line. That's where the real question lurked. My fingers tingled as I turned, wiping the frost from the hamburger off on a towel instead of my suit dress. I glanced at the window, wondering if I would draw more attention by shutting it or if I should press my luck and hope Jenks's kids were too busy to eavesdrop. Ivy pulled back from her computer screen as she saw my sudden secrecy. Jenks had a big mouth, and I didn't want him knowing of my suspicions of Trent's possible ancestry. He would blab it around, and Trent would hire a plane to "accidentally" drop Agent Orange on the entire block to stop the rumors.

  Splitting the difference, I shut the curtains and stood by the window where I could see the shadow of pixy wings should any flit close enough to hear. "Trent has a ley line in his office," I said, my voice hushed.

  Ivy stared at me in the blue-tinted sun. "No kidding? What are the chances of that?"

  She didn't get it. "So that means he must use them," I prompted.

  "And…" Her eyebrows rose in question.

  "So who can use ley lines?" I shot back.

  Her jaw dropped in sudden understanding. "He's human or a witch," she breathed. She got to her feet in a movement so quick, it set me on edge. Coming to the sink, she pushed the curtain aside and shut the window with a thump. "Does Trent know you saw it?" she asked, her eyes black in the dimmer light.

  "Oh, I'd say he does." I went to get another cookie to subtly put some space between us. "Seeing as I had to use the line to find the body."

  Her lips pressed together and her lanky stance went tight. "You put your head on the block again. You, me, Jenks, and his entire family. Trent will do anything to keep this quiet."

  "If he was that worried about it, he wouldn't have risked putting his office on the line," I protested, hoping I was right. "Anyone looking would find it. He could still be Inderlander or human. We're safe, especially if I don't say anything about the ley line."

  "Jenks might figure it out," she insisted. "You know how he'll blab it. He'd love the prestige of finding out what Trent is."

  I snatched a cookie. "What am I supposed to do? If I tell him to keep his mouth shut about the line, he'll only try to figure out why."

  Her fingers drummed on the counter as I ate the short-bread and cream. In an unnerving display of strength, she used one hand to lever herself up to sit atop the cabinets. Her face had come alive, her thin eyebrows creased with the chance to solve the long-running mystery. "So what do you think he is? Human or witch?"

  Returning to the sink, I ran hot water over the frozen meat. "Neither." It was a flat admission. Ivy remained silent, and I turned the water off. "He's neither, Ivy. I would stake my life that he isn't a witch, and Jenks swears he's more than human."

  Is this why I stayed? I wondered, seeing her eyes alight and her mind working with mine. Her logic, and my intuition. In spite of the problems, we worked well together. We always had.

  Ivy shook her head, her features blurred in the blue-curtained dusk, but I could feel her tension rising. "It's the only choices we have. You eliminate everything, and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the answer."

  It didn't surprise me she was quoting Sherlock Holmes. The anal logic and brusque nature of the fictional detective fit right in with Ivy's personality. "Well, if you want to entertain the improbable," I muttered, "you can lump demons in with the possibilities."

  "Demons?" Ivy's tapping fingers stilled.

  I shook my head in bother. "Trent's not a demon. I only mentioned it because demons are from the ever-after and so can manipulate ley lines, too."

  "I'd forgotten that," she breathed, the soft sound sending a shiver down my spine, but she was intent on her thoughts and had no idea how creepy she was getting. "That you're related, I mean. Witches and demons." An affronted snort slipped past me, and she shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. Didn't know it was a sore spot."

  "It isn't," I said tightly, though it was. There had been a flurry of controversy about a decade ago when a nosy human in the field of Inderland genealogy got hold of the few genetic maps that had survived the Turn, theorizing that because witches could manipulate ley lines, we had originated in the ever-after along with demons. Witches aren't related to demons. But much to our embarrassment, science forced us to admit aloud that we had evolved right along next to them in the ever-after.

  Finding funding with that unsavory tidbit, the woman then went beyond her original theory, using the rates of RNA mutation to properly place the time of our en masse migration to this side of the ley lines about five thousand years ago. Witch mythology claimed that a demon uprising had prompted the move, leaving the elves to foolishly wage a losing battle, since they wouldn't leave their beloved fields and woods to be raped of their natural resources and polluted. It sounded like a viable theory, and the elves had lost all their history by the time they gave up and followed suit a measly two thousand years ago.

  That humans had developed skill in ley line magic about that time was blamed on the elves' practice of using their magic to hybridize with humanity to stave off the extinction the demons started and the Turn finished. My thoughts turned to Nick, and I slumped. It was just as well witches were so far from humanity that even magic couldn't bridge the gap. Who knew what an uninformed witch/human hybrid skilled in ley lines might do? That the elves had brought humanity into the ley-line-using family was bad enough. The elves' dexterity with line magic had slipped into the human genome as if it belonged. It was enough to make you wonder.

  Elves? I thought, going cold. It had been staring me right in the face. "Oh—my—God," I whispered.

  Ivy looked up, her swinging legs stilling as she took in my expression.

  "He's an elf," I whispered, the thrill of discovery bubbling up making my pulse race. "They didn't die out in the Turn. He's an elf. Trent is a freaking elf!"

  "Whoa, wait a minute," Ivy warned. "They're gone. If any were alive, Jenks would know. He'd be able to smell it."

  I shook my head, pacing to the hallway to look for winged eavesdroppers. "Not if the elves went underground for a pixy/fairy generation. The Turn pretty much did them in, and it wouldn't be hard to hide what survived until the last pixy who knew what they smelled like died. They only live about twenty years or so, pixies I mean." My words tumbled over themselves as I rushed to get it out. "And you saw how Trent doesn't like them or fairies. It's almost a phobia. It fits! I can't believe it! We figured it out!"

  "Rachel," Ivy cajoled as she shifted atop the counter. "Don't be stupid. He's not an elf."

  Arms crossed, I pressed my lips together in frustration. "He sleeps at noon and midnight," I said, "and he's most active at dawn and dusk, just like elves were. He possesses nearly vamplike reflexes. He likes his solitude but is damn good at manipulating people. My God, Ivy, the man tried to ride me down on horseback like prey under the full moon!" I tossed my arms as I gestured. "You've seen his gardens and that artificial forest of his. He's an elf! And so are Quen and Jonathan."

  She shook her head. "They died. All of them. And what would they have to gain by letting even Inderland think they were gone if they weren't? You know how we throw money at endangered species. Especially intelligent ones."

  "I don't know," I said, exasperated with her disbelief. "Humanity was never keen on their history of stealing human babies and substituting their own failing infants. That would be enough for me to k
eep my mouth shut and my head down until everyone thought we were dead."

  Ivy made a noise of doubt deep in her throat, but I could see her belief shifting. "He works ley lines," I insisted. "You said it yourself. Eliminate the impossible, and what's left, no matter how improbable, is the truth. The man isn't human or witch." My eyes closed as I remembered biting both Jonathan and Trent when I had been a mink, struggling to escape. "He can't be. His blood tastes like cinnamon and wine."

  "He's an elf," Ivy said, her voice shockingly flat. I opened my eyes. Her face was alive and alight. "Why didn't you tell me he tasted like cinnamon?" she said as she slipped from the counter, her black ankle boots hitting the linoleum without a sound.

  Self-preservation pulled me a step from her before I knew I had moved. "I thought it might have been from the drugs he had knocked me out with," I said, not liking that the mention of blood had jerked her into motion. The brown of her irises was shrinking behind her widening pupils. I was sure it was from discovering Trent's ancestry and not me standing in her kitchen with my blood pounding and my palms sweating. But still…I didn't like it.

  Mind whirling, I gave her a warning look and put the island counter between us. Okay, so I knew Trent's history. Telling him would certainly get me an audience with him, but how do you tell a serial killer you know his secret without ending up dead?

  "You aren't going to tell him you know," Ivy said, giving me an apologetic look before putting her back against the counter in a blatant show of keeping her distance.

  "I have to talk to Trent. He'll talk to me if I drop this on his plate and serve it up with gravy. I'll be okay. I have that blackmail on him."

  "Edden will slap you with a harassment suit if you so much as call him," Ivy warned.

  My eyes lit upon the bag of sandwich cookies with their little oak tree and clapboard sign. Moving slowly, I slid the bag closer, picking out a figure with all his limbs intact. Ivy's eyes dropped to the cellophane, then rose to me. I could almost see her thoughts aligning themselves to mine. She gave me one of her few honest smiles, letting slip only the barest glimmer of teeth as a wicked yet almost shy look brought her alive.