Hotter Than Hell

by Kim Harrison

  “Rache!” Jenks yelled from the rearview mirror, and my attention jerked from the truck in front of me.

  “What!” I shouted back, startled. I wasn’t anywhere near to hitting it.

  Pixy dust, green and sour, sifted from him to vanish in the breeze. “For the fairy-farting third time, will you shift the air currents in this thing? The wind is tearing my wings to shreds.”

  Warming, I glanced at the dust leaking from the tear in his wing. “Sorry.” Rolling my window halfway up, I cracked the two back windows. Jenks resettled himself, his dust shifting to a more content yellow.

  “Thanks. Where were you?” he asked.

  “Ah,” I hedged. “My closet,” I lied. “I don’t know what to wear tonight.” Tonight. That would be a good time to bring it up. Trent would have three months to think about it.

  Jenks eyed me in distrust as a kid in a black convertible wove in and out of traffic, working his way up car length by car length. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Trent’s girls are coming back tomorrow, right?”

  The pixy knew when I lied. Apparently my aura shifted. “Yes,” I said, trying for flippant. “I can use the time off. Trent is more social than a fourteen-year-old living-vampire girl.” Though he could text just as fast.

  Jenks’s wings blurred. “No money for three months . . .”

  My grip on the wheel tightened, and I took the on-ramp for the bridge. “I’ve got your rent, pixy. Relax.”

  “Tink’s little pink rosebuds!” Jenks suddenly exploded, his wings blurring to invisibility. “Why don’t you just have sex with the man?”

  “Jenks!” I exclaimed, then hit the brakes and swerved when the kid in the convertible cut off the truck ahead of me. My tires popped gravel as I swung on the shoulder and back to the road again, but I was more embarrassed about what he’d said than mad at the jerk in the car. “It’s not like that.”

  “Yeah?” he said, a curious silver tint to his dust. “Watching you and Trent is like watching two kids who don’t know how their lips work yet. You like him.”

  “What’s not to like?” I grumbled, appreciating the thinner traffic on the bridge.

  “Yeah, but you thought you hated him last year. That means you reallylike him.”

  My hands were clenched, and I forced them to relax on the wheel. “Is there a point to this other than you talking about sex?”

  He swung his feet to thump on the rearview mirror. “No. That’s about it.”

  “The man is engaged,” I said, frustrated that my life was so transparent.

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Well, he will be,” I shot back as the bridge girders made new shadows and Jenks’s dust glowed like a sunbeam. Will be again.

  Jenks snorted. “Yeah, he lives in Cincy, and she lives in Seattle. If he liked her, he’d let her move in with him.”

  “They’ve got a kid,” I said firmly. “Their marriage will solidify the East and West Coast elven clans. That’s what Trent wants. What everyone wants. It’s going to happen, and I’m not going to interfere.”

  “Ha!” he barked. “I knew you liked him. Besides, you don’t plan love, it just happens.”

  “Love!” Three cars ahead, horns blew and brake lights flashed. I slowed, anticipating trouble. “It’s not love.”

  “Lust, then,” Jenks said, seeming to think that was better than love anyway. “Why else would you explode that ball? A little overly protective, yes?”

  My elbow wedged itself against the window, and I dropped my head into my hand. Traffic had stopped, and I inched forward into a spot of sun. I was not in love. Or lust. And neither was Trent, despite that I’m-not-drunk kiss. He’d been alone and vulnerable, and so had I. But I couldn’t help but wonder if all the engagements this last month were normal or if he was trying to get out of the house. With me.Stop it, Rachel.

  A horn blew behind me, and I inched forward a car length. Trent had his entire life before him, planned out better than one of Ivy’s runs. Ellasbeth and their daughter, Lucy, fit in there. Ray, too, though the little girl didn’t share a drop of blood with him. Trent wanted more, but he couldn’t be two things at once. I had tried, and it had almost killed me.

  My gaze slid to my shoulder bag and the golf ball tucked inside. “The explosion was probably the same thing affecting the 71 corridor,” I said. “Not because I overreacted.”

  Jenks sniffed. “I like my idea better.”

  Traffic was almost back up to speed, and I shifted lanes to get off at the exit just over the bridge. We passed under a girder, and a sheet of tingles passed over me. Surprised, I looked up at the sound of wings, not seeing anything. Why are my fingertipstingling?

  “Dude!” Jenks exclaimed. “Did you feel that? Crap on toast, Rache! Your aura just went white!”

  “What?” I took a breath, then my attention jerked forward at the screech of tires. I slammed on the brakes. Both I and the car ahead of me jerked to the left. Before us, a car dove to the right. Tires squealed behind me, but somehow we all stopped, shaken but not a scratch.

  “I bet it was that kid,” I said, my adrenaline shifting to anger. But then I paled, eyes widening at the huge bubble of ever-after rising up over the cars.

  “Jenks!” I shouted, and he turned, darting into the air in alarm. The bubble was huge, coated in silver-edged black sparkles with red smears of energy darting over it. I’d never seen a bubble grow that slowly, and it was headed right for us.

  “Go!” I shouted, reaching for my seat belt and scrambling to get out of the car. No one else was moving, and as Jenks darted out, I reached for a line to make a protection circle. But I was over water. There was no way.

  Turning, I plowed right into someone’s door as it opened. I scrambled up, frantically looking over my shoulder as the bubble hit my foot. “No!” I screamed as my foot went dead. I hit the pavement and fell into the shadow of the car. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Brownish-red sparkles flowed into me instead of air, and my ears were full of the sound of feathers. I couldn’t see. There was no sensation from my fingers as I pushed into the pavement. There was simply nothing to feel.

  My heart isn’t beating! I thought frantically as the sound of feathers muted into a solid numbness. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I was being smothered in brown smog. Panicked, I looked again for a line, but there was nothing. What in hell was it?! If I could figure that out, I could break it.

  A slow roaring grew, painfully loud until it cut off with a soft lub. A sparkle drifted before me, then another. I wasn’t breathing, but I wasn’t suffocating, either. Slowly the roaring started again, rising to a crescendo to end in a soft hush.

  It’s my heart, I realized suddenly, seeing more sparkles as I exhaled as if in slow motion, and with that, I knew. I was trapped in an inertia dampening field. There’d been an accident, and a safety charm had malfunctioned. But why had it risen to encompass all of us? I thought, reaching deep into my chi and pulling together the ever-after energy I’d stored there. I couldn’t make a protection circle without linking to a ley line, but I sure as hell could do a spell.

  Separare! I thought, and with a painful suddenness, the world exploded.

  “Oh God,” I moaned, eyes shut as the light burned my eyes. Fire seemed to flash over me and mute to a gentle warmth. Panting, I cracked my eyes to see it had only been the sunbeam I was lying in. Sunbeam?I’d fallen into the shade. And where are the cars?

  “Rachel!” a familiar, gray voice whispered intently, and I pulled my squinting gaze from the overhead girders to my hand. Ivy was holding it, her long pale fingers trembling.

  “How did you get here?” I said, and she pulled me into a hug, right there in the middle of the road.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” she said, the scent of vampiric incense pouring over me. Everything felt painfully sharp, the wind cooler, the sunlight brighter, and the noise of FIB and I.S. sirens louder, the scent of Ivy sharp in my nose.

  The noise of the FIB and I.S. sirens louder? Confu
sed, I patted Ivy’s back as she squeezed me almost too hard to breathe. I must have passed out, because there was a barricade at the Hollows end of the bridge. Most of the cars were gone. I.S. and FIB vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances had taken their place, all their lights going. It looked like a street party gone bad with the cops from two divisions and at least three pay grades mucking about. Behind me was more noise, and I pushed from Ivy to see.

  Her eyes were red rimmed; she’d been crying. Smiling, she let me go, her long black hair swinging free. “You’ve been out for three hours.”

  “Three hours?” I echoed breathily, seeing much the same behind me at the Cincy end of things. More cars, more police vehicles, more ambulances . . . and a row of eight people, their faces uncovered, telling me they were alive, probably still stuck in whatever I’d been in.

  “You weren’t in a car, so I made them leave you,” she said, and I turned back to her, feeling stiff and slightly ill.

  My bag was lying beside her, and I pulled it closer, the fabric scraping unusually rough on my fingertips. “What happened? Where’s Jenks?”

  “Looking for something to eat. He’s fine.” Her boots ground against the pavement as she stood to help me rise. Shaking, I got to my feet. “He called me as soon as it happened. I got here before the I.S. even. They’re telling the media an inertia dampening charm triggered the safety spells of every car on the bridge.”

  “Good story. I’d stick with that.” I leaned heavily on her as we limped to the side of the bridge and into the shade of a pylon. “But those kind of charms can’t do that.”

  “Rache!” a shrill pixy voice called, and I looked up, blinding myself as Jenks dropped down from the sun. “You’re up! See, Ivy. I told you she’d be okay. Look, even her aura is back to normal.”

  Well, that was one good thing, but I was starting to see a pattern here, and I didn’t like it. “You got out okay?” I asked, and he landed on Ivy’s shoulder.

  “Hell, yes. That wasn’t multiple spells. I watched the whole thing. It was one bubble, and it came from that black car with the jerk-ass driver.”

  Hands shaking, I leaned heavily on the cool railing. Two medical people were headed our way, and I winced. “Oh, crap,” I whispered, grabbing Ivy’s arm as they descended on us, medical instruments flopping from pockets and their tight grips.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay!” I shouted as the first tried to get me to sit back down, and the second started flashing a light in my eyes. “It was just an inertia dampening charm. I think it was so big ordinary metabolic functions couldn’t break it. I got out using a standard breakage charm. And get that light out of my eyes, will you?”

  “A breakage charm?” the one trying to fit a blood pressure cuff on me said, and I nodded, glad that ambulance teams were required by law to have at least one witch on staff and he knew what I was talking about.

  “I’m willing to try anything,” the first said, turning to look at the line of people.

  “They’re going to wake up thirsty,” I said, but they were already striding back to the people under the sheets with a new purpose. Thankful that Ivy hadn’t let them put me in that horrible line, I gave her arm a squeeze. “Thanks,” I whispered, and her fingers slipped from me.

  “It works!” came an exuberant cry, and a cheer rose as a man sat up, groggy and holding a hand over his eyes.

  I was so glad that I wasn’t going to be the only one to wake up from this. “Where’s my car?” I asked as I scanned for it, and Ivy winced.

  “I.S. impound, I think.”

  “Swell.” My keys were still in it, and tired, I looked in my bag to make sure I still had that golf ball. “Okay, who out here owes me a favor?”

  Jenks rose up from Ivy’s shoulder, turning in midair to look toward Cincinnati. “Edden.”

  Nodding, I gathered myself, and as Ivy hovered to catch me if I stumbled, we shuffled that direction. I was surprised. As a captain of the street force of the FIB, or Federal Inderland Bureau, Edden didn’t get out much, but this had happened six blocks from their downtown tower, and with both human and Inderland Security fighting for jurisdiction, he’d want to make sure the I.S. didn’t sweep anything under the carpet.

  The chaos was worse on the Cincy side of things and they were still moving cars out. Unfortunately none of them were mine. Behind the blockade were even more official vehicles, and behind them, the expected news vans. I winced, trying to hide my face as a helicopter thumped overhead. Three hours?

  But the shadows on the road agreed with the lapse of time, and as we looked for Edden, I thought back to that inertia bubble. They didn’t make them that big, and it wasn’t a cascading reaction of one triggering another, either. It had been a misfired charm in a morning of them. What the Turn was going on?

  “Found him,” Jenks said, darting away, and Ivy angled to follow his shifting path through the people. It was tight, and I leaned closer to her, not wanting to be bumped. Everything felt unusually intense, even the sun.

  “I’m sorry I scared you,” I said as I pressed into her to avoid a harried medic looking for a sedation charm for some poor woman. Her husband was fine; she was having hysterics.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  No, it was never my fault, but somehow I always got blamed, and upon reaching the blockade, I dug in my bag for my ID. Ivy had already flashed hers, and after comparing the picture to my face, the two officers let me past. Jenks was hovering over Edden like a tiny spotlight, and I limped a little faster. There were definite advantages to being a noncitizen, but only if you were four inches tall.

  Captain Edden had put on a few pounds since taking over the Inderland Relations division after his son had quit. His ex-military build made the stress weight look solid, not fat, and I smiled as he squinted at me from under his FIB cap, his eyes showing a heavy relief that I was no longer out cold on the pavement. Standing beside an open car door, he finished giving two officers direction before turning to us.

  “Rachel!” he exclaimed, thick hand finding my shoulder briefly in a heartfelt squeeze. “Thank God you’re okay. That wasn’t you, was it? Trying to stop something worse, maybe? You would not believe my day. The I.S. is so busy with misfired charms that they don’t even care we’re out here.”

  “Wasn’t me this time,” I said as we came to a halt in an open patch of concrete. “And why is everything automatically my fault?”

  The bear of a man gave me a sideways hug, filling me with the scent of coffee and aftershave. “Because you’re usually mixed up in it somewhere.” His tone was pleased, but I could see the stress. “I wish it had been you,” he said, his eyes flicking to include Ivy and Jenks as he put an arm over my shoulder and moved us away from the news vans. “The I.S. is giving me some bull about it having been a cascading inertia dampening charm.”

  Jenks rose up, but I interrupted him, saying, “It was an inertia charm, but it was one charm, not a bunch of them acting in concert. It came from about three cars ahead of mine. Probably the black convertible the kid was driving.” I hesitated. “Is he okay?” Edden nodded, and I added, “Nothing came from my car. If it had, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of it.”

  Edden chewed on his lower lip, clearly not having thought it through that far. The I.S. would have, though. Ivy looked tense, and I was glad I had friends who’d sit with me on the hard road and protect me from helpful mistakes. A guy with an armful of bottled water went past, and I eyed it thirstily.

  “If anyone would bother to look,” I said softly, voice edging into accusation, “they could see my safety charm hasn’t been triggered. It’s probably another misfired charm. Have you listened to the news today? No one’s brain dissolved. We got off easy.”

  Edden shook himself out of his funk and looked over the surrounding heads. “Yes, we did. Medic!” he called, and I waved the woman off as she looked up from putting an ice pack on an officer’s swollen hand, probably crushed when they were getting the people out of their cars. “I’m fine,” I
said, and Edden frowned. “I could use some water, though. You don’t know where my car is, do you?”

  Edden’s frown vanished. “Ahh . . .” he said, looking everywhere but at me. “The I.S. took everything south of the midpoint.”

  Jenks’s wings clattered from Ivy’s shoulder. “Hey, hey, hey. Good-bye.”

  Tired, I sighed. I was not going to take the bus for the next twelve months while they figured out whose insurance was going to pay for this.

  “I can get you home . . .” Edden started.

  Ivy put a hand on my arm, pulling me from my souring mood. “It’s okay, Rachel. My car is just off the bridge in the Hollows.”

  That wasn’t the point, and I shivered as Ivy’s hand fell away with the feeling of ice. The light was seriously hurting my eyes, and even the wind seemed painful. It was almost as if my aura had been damaged, but Jenks said it was okay. Why had it gone white, and right before the misfire? “Edden, I had nothing to do with it,” I complained, not entirely sure anymore. “I can’t tap a line over the water, and the I.S. knows it. If I could, I wouldn’t have gotten stuck in that . . . whatever it was. It was all I could do to get out! This is the second misfire I’ve been in today, and I want my car!”

  Edden jerked, his eyes coming to mine from the man with the water. “Second?” He whistled, and the guy turned. “Where was the other one and why haven’t I heard about it?”

  Jenks’s wings hummed, swaggering, if someone flying could swagger, as he landed on Ivy’s shoulder. “Out at the golf course,” he said, and Ivy’s eyes remained steady, telling me he’d already told her. “Someone almost nailed Trent with a ball, and she blew it up instead of deflecting it. Made a new sand trap out on four.”