by Kim Harrison
Shoving my increasing dislike away, I extended my hand across the corner of the table. “It’s a pleasure, Ms. Walker. I’m sure you know we can use all the help we can get. Mia Harbor turning rogue has us in a tight spot.” Jenks smirked, and I flushed. I was trying to be nice. So sue me. I hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. It was obvious I couldn’t bring Mia in if she resisted.
The older woman took my hand, and I tensed, searching for any sensation of her siphoning off my aura or emotions. Her eyes were a rich brown, and with the bone structure of a supermodel and her wrinkled but clear complexion, she was classically alluring.
“You can call me Cleo,” she said, and I drew my hand away before I shuddered. Her voice was as exotic as the rest of her, a low slurry of warmth insinuating a promise of naughty but nice. God, the woman was like a vampire. Maybe that was what was putting me on edge.
That I had pulled away was not missed by Edden or Ms. Walker, and a faint, knowing smile curved the edges of her mouth up. “It’s good to meet you,” she said, shifting to lean forward. “I’ll help find little Mia, but I’m here for you. Your reputation is worth investigating.”
My fake smile faded, and Edden, hunched over and guilty, started to play with his drinking glass. Slowly I turned to him, calming my anger before the banshee noticed it. But she did anyway.
The cool woman put her elbows charmingly on the table and eyed him almost coyly. “You lied to get her here?”
Edden glanced at me, then back down to the river. “Not at all,” he grumped, his neck going red. “I stressed certain things is all.”
Stressed certain things, my ass. But I smiled at the woman, keeping my hands below the table, as if she’d soiled them with her touch. “Is this because I survived Holly’s attack?” I asked.
“In large part, yes,” she said, lacing her fingers together and propping her chin on them. “Would you mind if I felt your aura?”
I stiffened. “No. I mean yes, I would mind,” I amended. “I don’t trust you.”
Edden winced, but Ms. Walker laughed. The comfortable sound of it made the waiters just out of earshot look up, and my stomach clenched. She was too perfect, too assured. And her eyes were dilating like a vampire’s.
“Is that why you brought your pixy?” she said, the first hint of distaste wrinkling her nose as she grimaced at Jenks. “I won’t be sampling your aura, Ms. Morgan. I simply want to run my fingers through it. Find out why you survived an attack from a child banshee. Most don’t.”
“Most don’t have a black banshee tear in their pocket,” I said stiffly, and the woman made a small sound of interest.
“That’s why…,” she said, and it was as if an until-now hidden tension slipped out of her. “The emotion went sour as she killed you, and finding a sweet source, one familiar—”
“Holly took that instead,” I finished for her. Jenks’s heels were tapping out a distress signal, and I twitched my fingers to acknowledge it. He had seen the woman lose her tension, too. She’d been afraid of me, and now she wasn’t. Good. It would make taking her down easier if it came to that. Stop it, Rachel. You can’t tag a banshee.
The woman sat upright in her chair and sipped her tea with a thousand years of grace. She and Ceri would get along famously. “Even so, your aura is extremely tight,” she said as she set it down. “If I hadn’t known you were recovering from an attack, I’d say you were insane.”
That was just rude, and when Jenks shifted uncomfortably, Ms. Walker’s eyes went from him to me, squinting softly in the bright light. “Your pixy didn’t tell you a tight aura is a sign of instability?”
Knowing she was goading me, I let my anger dissipate before I smiled back. “He’s my business partner, not my pixy,” I said, and Edden miserably shrank into his chair while we had our polite, sophisticated catfight.
Jenks, though, couldn’t help himself, and he rose with his hands on his hips. “Why should I tell Rachel what a tight aura means? She’s not insane. She had a massage today and it condensed it down. Lighten up—you hag of a washerwoman.”
“Jenks!” I exclaimed, but Ms. Walker took it in stride. What is up with him?
Ignoring Jenks but for a warning twitch of her fingers, she focused on me, her brown eyes going black. I clamped down on my sudden fear. This woman could probably kill me as we sat, and she would get away with it though Edden sat two feet away. “I don’t care what they say you are,” she said, her low voice entirely devoid of anything but scorn. “We are more powerful than you. That you survived was a fluke.”
She stood amid Edden’s protests, but I sat, frozen in fear. Who I am? She knew. She knew I was a proto-demon.
Standing above me, Ms. Walker closed her eyes and breathed deep, sucking in my fear like a drug. Jenks rose up in a clattering of wings.
“Stop,” he intoned as he hovered between us, and the woman’s eyes flashed open. “Leave Rachel’s aura alone or I will kill you.”
Ms. Walker’s eyes went even blacker, and my fear slid deeper and twisted. She had Ivy’s eyes, full of an unsated hunger. She was a predator chained by her own will, and she didn’t mind letting herself off the leash once in a while. But not me. She wouldn’t have me. I wasn’t prey. I was a hunter.
While Edden winced, the woman gathered up her small handbag. Today’s paper was folded up next to it, and my gut clenched. Great, she knew I’d been shunned, too. As she looked at Jenks, her disgust poured forth. “Bug,” she said simply, hiding her eyes behind a pair of dark glasses. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping in a hole in the ground?”
“Shouldn’t you be extinct, like the rest of the dinosaurs?” he snarled back. “Want some help getting there?” he added, and I cleared my throat even as I bristled at her racial slur.
“Ms. Walker,” Edden was saying, having stood up and moved to her side of the table. “Please. The FIB could really use your help, and we would be most grateful. Ms. Morgan and her associate’s opinions aside, one of your own is accused of murder.”
The elegant woman stopped two steps from the edge of the revolving ring, her eyes hidden. “I’ve seen what I’ve come to see, but I’ll look for little Mia tonight. It’s unlikely she’s left her city, and I’ll inform you when I’ve dealt with her.”
Dealt with her? I didn’t like the sound of that. By his expression neither did Jenks.
“In return, any assistance you can give me in streamlining the adoption process will be appreciated,” she finished, turning away and accepting the hand of a nearby waiter to make the step to the unmoving core of the building.
Adoption? Alarmed, I stood up. “Whoa, wait up,” I said caustically, and the woman turned back with cheeks flushed in anger. “Adoption? You mean Holly? Holly has a mother.”
Edden’s hands went loose at his sides, his posture becoming threatening without his making one overt move. “Ms. Walker, we never discussed you taking the child.”
The woman sighed before she stepped back down to our level, moving with crisp, precise motions. “The child can’t be held by anyone other than another banshee until she gains control,” she said with a wave of her hand, as if we were simpletons. “Almost five years. What are you going to do, put her in a bubble?”
“You are underestimating the child’s control,” Edden said. “Her father holds her.”
Interest arched her eyebrows, and she took her sunglasses off. “Does he really?”
Great. Now she really wanted Holly. It was almost impossible to engender a child under the laws of humanity, and now Ms. Walker thought Holly was special. Mia wasn’t going to live out the week, and Remus would probably die defending them if we didn’t find them first.
“It’s not Holly,” I said quickly. “It’s her dad. There’s a wish involved.”
Edden turned to me with accusation in his expression, and I shrugged. “I found out yesterday. I was going to tell you.”
Ms. Walker’s eyes squinted in the glare, making wrinkles at the corners, and Jenks smiled wickedly as a flash of worry c
rossed the banshee’s face before she hid it away. “Your own son hospitalized, Captain Edden,” she said, as if it might make us want to give the child to her. “You yourself, Ms. Morgan, attacked and nearly killed. How many lives will you sacrifice before you accept it? I can control her. You can’t. In return, I will give the child a home.”
“Temporarily,” I said, and Ms. Walker’s smile twitched.
“If Mia is cooperative.”
Like I believe that would happen?
“Ms. Walker,” Edden said, his earlier fluster washed away, leaving his usual hard-assed self. “We all want what’s best for Holly, but neither Mia nor Remus has had due process yet.”
The woman made a huff, clearly thinking that due process wasn’t going to enter into it if she found Mia alone. “Of course,” she said, her voice and posture regaining their earlier grace and self-assurance. “Good afternoon, Ms. Morgan, Captain Edden. I’ll send word when I have Mia contained.” Giving us an icy smile, she turned and walked sedately to the elevator, two waiters trailing behind her.
Jenks’s wings clattered as he exhaled and flew back to the table. Red sparkles sifted from him as he stomped from where he’d landed to a small dish of peanut butter that had magically appeared while we argued. Sitting cross-legged on the rim of the plate, he reached over and helped himself with the pair of pixy-size chopsticks he had somewhere on his person. “Damned banshees,” he muttered. “Worse than fairies in your out-house.”
Edden put a hand to the small of my back and directed me back to my chair. “Why do I have the feeling we need to find Mia before Ms. Walker does?” he said worriedly.
Someone had set a glass of rose-tinted water by my plate, and I sat down. Slouching, I took a sip, almost getting a lap of water when the ice shifted. “Because banshee babies are rare and precious,” I said, then wondered if they’d laugh at me if I asked for a straw. “Giving Holly to that woman would be a mistake, banshee or not. I don’t trust her.”
Edden snorted. “I think the feeling was mutual.”
“Yeah, but according to her, I don’t matter.” Maybe it was better to not matter to a banshee. “We have to find Mia before that woman does. She’s going to kill her to get Holly.”
Edden looked at me sharply. “That’s a strong accusation.”
I reached for the bread basket, hoping we still got to eat even if our Most Important Guest had left. “You can wait until Mia is dead, or you can believe me now. But ask yourself who you’d rather have Holly grow up with.” I pointed at him with my pinkie, and he frowned.
“You think so?
Tearing a bit of bread from the loaf, I ate it, thinking it was too dry. “I know so.”
Edden’s eyes shifted to the elevator, then back to me. “It would be easier if we had a locator amulet. Any progress on them?”
I nearly choked, and as I scrambled for words, Jenks chimed up with a cheerful “Yeah—”
My knee smacked the underside of the table, and his wings burst into motion. “I just have to finish them up,” I said. Edden looked from my hot cheeks to the pixy, now silently staring at me. Grunting, the man pushed away from the table, his thick fingers looking out of place on the white linen.
“I’ll send a car to pick them up as soon as you have them done,” he said as he stood. “I know you don’t have the license to sell them, but let me know how much it cost you, and I’ll add it to your check. We’re having a devil of a time finding her. They keep slipping past us.” He rocked back, looking at the elevator again. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I said, helping the dry bread down with a sip of raspberry water, but my thoughts were elsewhere as the squat man tried to catch up with Ms. Walker.
Jenks snickered, settling in and looking more relaxed. “Want me to tell you what he says to her?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Then you want to tell me why you don’t want him to find Mia?” he added.
I brought my gaze back from the elevator. “Excuse me?”
“The amulets?” Jenks licked his fingers free of the peanut butter. “Duh? Marshal invoked them.”
Grimacing, I started brushing the crumbs I had made into a pile. “They’re duds. I screwed up. They don’t work.”
Jenks’s eyes went wide, and his heels swung back and forth. “Uh, yes, they do.”
I didn’t look up from brushing the crumbs off in my napkin. “Uh, no, they don’t,” I mimicked him. “I tried one at the mall, and it was just a hunk of wood.”
But Jenks was shaking his head, dipping for another clump of peanut butter with his chopsticks. “I was there when Marshal invoked them. They smelled okay to me.”
Exhaling, I leaned back in my chair and shook my napkin out under the table. Either the tear Edden had given me was from another banshee, or the amulet I put the potion into was bad. “It smelled like redwood?”
“Absolutely. The amulets even turned green for a second.”
The elevator dinged, and I pulled myself closer to the table. “Maybe the one I invoked was a bad amulet,” I said softly as Edden said good-bye to Ms. Walker, and Jenks nodded, satisfied.
But a faint sense of unease wouldn’t let go as we waited for Edden to rejoin us. There was a third possibility I didn’t even want to think about. My blood wasn’t entirely witch blood, but proto-demon. It was possible that there were some earth charms I couldn’t invoke. And if that was true, then that was one more mark that said I wasn’t a witch, but a demon.
Better and better.
Twenty-one
I pulled my car into one of the open, back spots at the correctional facility, right under a light, and making a best guess as to where the lines were since they hadn’t plowed the last few inches of snow. The heater was going full blast since Ivy had the window cracked for air, and turning it and the car lights off, I killed the engine and dropped the keys into my bag. Ready to face Skimmer, I sighed, hands in my lap and not moving as I looked at the low building before us.
Ivy sat rigidly still, staring at nothing. “Thank you for doing this,” she said, her eyes black in the dim light.
I shrugged and opened my car door. “I want to know who killed Kisten, too,” I said, not wanting to talk about it. “I haven’t been much help, but I can do this.”
She got out as I did, and the thump of our doors was muffled by the mounds of snow that turned the world black and white under the puddles of security lights in the thickly populated lot—employees, probably, though I supposed they could be visitors; it was a low-security facility. Sure, Skimmer had killed someone, but it had been a crime of passion. That, and being a lawyer, had gotten her here instead of the high-security prison outside Cincinnati.
About a quarter mile back, the hospital was hazy with dusk and falling snow. Seeing the peaceful buildings, I had the sudden idea to take my old stuffed animals to the kids. They’d know how precious they were and would take good care of them. I could pick the toys up tonight when I was looking for that spell book. It would be a good excuse for me to get up there, too.
Ivy was still standing beside her closed door, gazing at the building as if it held her salvation or her damnation. She looked sleek and lanky in her working leathers, all in black, with a biker cap to add some spice. Feeling my questioning gaze on her, she pushed into motion, and we met at the front of my convertible. Together we angled through the parked cars toward the shoveled sidewalk. “I’m sorry to make you do this,” she said, hunched from more than the cold. “Skimmer…she’s going to be ugly.”
I choked back my laughter. Ugly? She was going to be positively poisonous. “You want to talk to her,” I said stiffly, shoving my fear down where I hoped it wouldn’t show.
I had way too much to do tonight to be visiting Skimmer, if not for the information we might get from her, but at least I wouldn’t have to restir the locator charms. The relief that the problem was likely with my blood—not my skills—was starting to outweigh the worry of why the problem was with my blood. Jenks was the only one who knew that the charm
I invoked had failed, and he thought it was a bum amulet. By now, the locator charms Marshal had invoked were in the hands of six FIB guys cruising the city. I doubted they’d come within the needed hundred feet to engage the amulet, but it had improved my standing with them immeasurably.
Dinner with my mom and Robbie later tonight would hopefully give me the book and equipment and I could move forward on stamping out that fire. I’d been concerned that Al might show up and snag whoever was with me now that it was again dark, but he hadn’t done so before finding Pierce, and it was unlikely he would now.
I so wanted to be at my mom’s looking for that book, not here talking to an angry vampire, but I resolutely walked beside Ivy to the low-security Inderland correctional facility. All the safeguards must be on the inside, because the outside looked like a research building, its stucco walls and accent lights shining on low, snow-covered evergreens. It probably made for better neighbor relations, but not being able to see the fences gave me the creeps.
We walked in silence but for our boots on the crushed ice and salt. The pavement gave way to gray sidewalk, and then the glass double doors with visiting hours and rules about what could be brought into the building. My lethal-amulet detector was going to be a problem.
The woman behind the desk looked up from her phone conversation as we entered. Mild alarms were already going off, reacting to my amulets, and I smiled to try to defuse the situation. Redwood, and a faint smell of unhappy vampire, drifted to me. Ivy grimaced, and I swung my bag around to drop it on the desk while we signed in. There was a TV on in the corner, set to the weather map and talking to itself. More snow tonight.
“Rachel Morgan and Ivy Tamwood to visit Dorothy Claymor,” I said, handing her my ID as I noticed the sign asking for it behind her. No wonder the blond vampire wanted everyone to call her Skimmer. “We have an appointment.”
