by Kim Harrison
“I think it’s a chunk of a scrying mirror,” I said, and Jenks hummed his wings.
“No fairy-assed way!” he said, clearly not seeing what that meant.
Demon magic, hidden bodies deformed into increasingly familiar shapes, blood slowly being changed into something else. The scattershot amulet I’d used was keyed to the man’s hair. Clearly he wasn’t under the floor, which meant the man’s structure had been changed right down to the genetic level enough to match the woman and to ping on a scattershot charm. They really were trying to make a demon. They were trying to make a demon out of a witch by using the questionable success of each previous victim and layering it on the next. And by the looks of this corpse, they might be getting close.
“There’s blood on it,” I said, my fingers trembling as I handed it back. “If it’s not hers, it belongs to one of her captors. We can use it to make a locator charm and find them instead of an empty room.”
Glenn shifted in excitement, but I felt awful as I looked down at the woman and silently thanked her. She’d been forcibly abducted, experimented on, and tortured. Yet she had given us a clue, hiding it with her body and hoping we were clever enough to find it, recognize it, and then use it.
“Let me smell,” Nina said. “I can tell you what species it is.”
There were voices in the hall, and, grimacing, Glenn quickly broke the seal and held it under her nose. Nina jumped as the scent hit her, and Jenks and I watched as the two consciousnesses fought for control, eyes closing and hands trembling. It was the elder vampire who looked out at us when Nina’s eyes opened again. “Human,” the undead vampire said through Nina, a ribbon of excitement in her voice. “It belongs to one of the captors. We have a chance. Finally we have a chance.”
I looked at the ruined woman under our feet and silently thanked her again. A chance. That was all I needed.
Eleven
The kitchen was overly warm and smelling of chili, the black square of night past the blue-curtained window dark, clear, and frigid. The waning moon had a harsh crystal clarity to it that matched my mood, cold and hard. A waning moon wasn’t the best time to be making spells, but I didn’t have much choice. That I’d gotten them done before midnight made me feel better.
Bis and Belle were on top of the fridge having an impromptu reading lesson, Jenks was in the garden, and Wayde was upstairs getting some wolfsbane to spike the chili with. With all that, I should’ve been in a good mood, but the memory of what we’d found under the floor of the museum kept my motions quick and my shoulders tense.
I’d been in the kitchen since getting home from the museum. My feet hurt from being on them all day, but the new set of scattershot amulets was already at the FIB and I.S. Glenn, who had brought us home, had waited for them. I’d also made more batches of sleepy-time charms.
The cookies I’d wanted to bake had turned into flicking the oven on and cracking it to warm the space. Not efficient, I know, but Jenks had been nearly blue with cold by the time we’d gotten back from the museum basement. I wasn’t going to risk him getting chilled and possibly slipping into a stupor he might not wake from until spring. His kids had enjoyed the updraft until their papa had warmed up enough to yell at them from the salt and pepper shakers on the back of the stove. I could hear them in the back living room, arguing over a moth one of them had dug out of a crack. Jenks’s kids were kind of like cats, playing things to death.
The kitchen was warm, but I was cold as I finished injecting the last of the splat balls with the sleepy-time potion. It wasn’t the night seeping in around the kitchen window frame, but the cold from the memory of the woman curled up in the fetal position, twisted and broken, buried under a slab of cement and a demon curse. What they’d done to her was so horrific that they’d tried to bury it—and yet I’d found her.
My jaw clenched, I held the tiny, empty blue ball up to the light as I injected another portion of potion into the specially designed paintballs. Slowly the ball inflated, and I pulled the needle out, being careful not to get any potion on me despite my plastic gloves. Waking up to a bath of saltwater and Jenks laughing at me was not my idea of a good time.
It had been the last, and setting the empty syringe down, I wiped the ball off on a saltwater-soaked rag before I dried it and dropped it with the rest in Ceri’s delicate teacup. It was overflowing with little blue balls. Maybe I’d gone overboard, but I wanted to nail these bastards, and thanks to the two would-be assassin elves last year, I now had two splat guns to fill.
Taking off the gloves, I crouched before the open cupboard under the center island counter and pulled out the one I hadn’t filled yet. When not in my shoulder bag, I kept my splat guns at ankle height in a set of nested bowls. The smooth, heavy metal filled my hand, and I stood, enjoying the weight in my palm. It was modeled after a Glock, which was why it was cherry red. The coven of moral and ethical standards had worked hard to keep these from needing to be licensed. Sometimes, what humans didn’t know saved us a lot of trouble.
“Can I help?” Bis said from behind me and atop the fridge, and I turned from throwing away the old charms still in the hopper.
“No, but thanks,” I said, seeing him there with Belle, a sheet of Ivy’s paper, and a pencil. The fairy was too embarrassed to tell Jenks she didn’t know how to read, so Bis was helping her.
The tight sound of Jenks’s wings prompted a flurry of motion, and I watched Bis jam the wad of paper into his mouth and Belle yank a hand of homemade cards from under her leg. Bis suddenly had a hand of cards, too—looking tiny in his craggy fist—and I rolled my eyes when he threw a card down on the pile as Jenks flew in.
“Hey, I got the last of the toad-lily flowers you wanted,” Jenks said as he dropped a bundle of them on the counter. “The best of the lot. They’re done. Trust me.”
“Thanks,” I said, tapping the hopper on the counter to get the balls to settle. “Here’s hoping I won’t need any more before spring.”
“The Turn take it, it’s colder than Tink’s titties out there!” he exclaimed as he made the hop-flight to the stove. “Think we’re going to have snow early this year?”
Belle tossed her cards down as if having lost, and Bis began shuffling. “I’ve never s-seen snow,” the fairy hissed dubiously. “Are you sure it’s safe? We’ve always wintered in Mexico.”
“It’s safe.” Jenks strutted to the edge of the oven, and his hair rose in the heat. “My kids even have snowball fights.”
I chuckled, remembering it. They’d gone after me, and I’d nearly fried them, thinking they were assassins. It was funny now, but I’d been furious at the time.
The larger fairy frowned as she picked up the cards Bis dealt her. “You’re making it up,” she said, and Bis shook his head.
“It’s true!” he said, his red eyes wide. “You can bring the snow inside and play with it before it melts.”
I finished filling the hopper, replaced it in the gun, removed the air canister, and took up a firing position, my feet spread wide and my elbows locked. Holding the gun up as if I was going to shoot, I aimed it into the dark hall. Maybe someday we’d actually get lights put in. I glanced at Jenks doing warm-up exercises with his feet an inch off the warm porcelain. Maybe not.
A sudden soft scuffing in the hall turned into Wayde, and he stopped short as he saw the gun pointed at him, his eyes wide as he put his hands up in mock surrender. “All right, all right. I’ll tone the chili down!”
My arms dropped, and he smiled. “Sorry,” I said, then held up the empty air cartridge in explanation. “No propellant.”
He made a growl of a response, shuffling in and edging to the bubbling pot of chili. A fragrant wash of steam rose when he took the cover off and sprinkled in some wolfsbane. He was still grumpy because I’d gone down into the museum basement, but he, Ivy, and Jenks had since had a private conversation, and we seemed okay again, especially now that I was taking
him seriously.
“You know that stuff is toxic, right?” I said.
Wayde snorted, looking comfortable in my kitchen. “I know what I’m doing.”
My gaze slid to Jenks, at the sink getting the mud off his boots, and I confined my answer to a slow “Uh-huh.” Wayde had been raised in a band tour bus by his older sister. I didn’t want to know where he’d gotten his empirical knowledge of toxic drugs.
“Not that spoon!” I exclaimed when he took a ceramic one from the counter, but it was too late, and he’d already dunked it in his chili and given it a quick stir. “I’ve been spelling with that one,” I said as I took it from him and dropped it in the sink. Jeez, I’d have to wash it twice, first to get the grease off it, then any residual charm.
“It looked clean to me,” Wayde said as he took the wooden one I gave him.
“You haven’t been using that one, have you?” I asked.
“Uh, no?” he said, telling me he had, and I sighed, my eyes closing in a long blink as I looked out the kitchen window at the night, vowing that he was going to taste it before anyone else. The worst it would do to him would make him go to sleep. Maybe.
I opened my eyes when Jenks flew to the fridge. “Whatcha playing?”
“Pixy sticks,” Belle said, then slammed her hand down on the pile and yelled, “Squish!”
“Aw, pigeon poop!” Bis said, throwing his cards down. “Are you cheating?”
“If I was-s, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Wayde was smiling. It had been his idea for Bis to teach her how to read, and he knew the game was just a subterfuge to hide what they were really doing. “Any word yet on the amulets you sent out?”
I watched him blow on a spoonful of chili, and when he didn’t fall down after tasting it, I pushed myself from the counter and started cleaning up my mess. “No. Nothing from either the FIB or the I.S.” I looked at the clock on the stove behind him, then moved a dirty pot to the sink. It hit with a clang, and Wayde jumped.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked suddenly. “You’re going in angry, and you shouldn’t be going in at all.”
“Dude!” Jenks exclaimed from the fridge, a hand of cards half his size in his awkward grip. “We talked about this!”
Wayde was standing before the oven, that spoon in his hand like it was a baton. “No,” he said. “I think I’m within my rights here. I want to hear from Rachel why she thinks the I.S. and FIB can’t do this without her. She made the charms. Enough already.” He dropped the spoon back in the pot and turned to face me, his stance awkward and belligerent. “It’s as if you’re taking this personally. It’s not your mother out there.”
Taking a deep breath, I leaned my elbows against the counter, almost the entire length of the kitchen between us, glancing at Jenks to tell him that it was okay and to chill. “No, it’s not my mother. But she was someone’s daughter. She had hooves, Wayde. And fur.” Pushing up from the counter, I ran a hand over it to brush the fir needles into my palm. Calm. Cool. Collected.
Faced with my nonchalance, Wayde lost some of his bluster, and he replaced the lid with hardly a sound. “It’s dangerous going in already vulnerable.”
“You should have seen Hot Stuff a year ago,” Jenks said. “At least now she takes the time to plan things out.”
A soft tapping of boots in the corridor, then Ivy breezed in with a clipboard of several color-coded pages. “Any word yet?” she said as she sat before her computer. She took a deep breath, read the tension in the air, and looked at me, her eyes starting to go black and her posture suddenly very still.
“Or at least she lets Ivy plan it,” Jenks said snidely.
“Splat!” Belle shouted, and Bis slammed his hand down, barely beating her.
“You guys keep changing the rules!” Jenks exclaimed. Dropping his cards, he flew to Ivy, circling her in an annoying pattern until she flicked a long finger at him.
“What are we talking about?” the sultry vamp said as she leaned back and stuck the end of a pen between her teeth. I was pretty sure she’d sated her hunger yesterday, but the crime scene had probably put her on edge.
Jenks landed on the top of her monitor, and I turned my back on them to rinse out my rag. “Rachel taking an active part in this run,” the pixy said. “Going in angry.”
“It’s how the woman rolls,” she said, and I tried to ignore the ribbing as I wiped the counter down. “She shouldn’t be going in at all, but she is. We’ll adapt.”
“Yeah, the angrier she gets, the more the bad guys suffer,” Jenks said, his pride obvious. “And they are going to suffer this time, baby!”
I frowned, unable to meet Wayde’s disapproving eyes as I tucked Jenks’s toad-lily flowers in a cupboard to dry. I wasn’t proud of that part of my personality—especially since I didn’t have much magic anymore to back up what came out of my mouth. “I’m not angry,” I said, shutting the cupboard with a thump.
“Yes, you are.”
“I am not angry!” I shouted.
Bis made a small noise from the fridge, and Ivy looked up from her computer. Her eyes going to Jenks, she clicked her security back on, stood, and stretched. “Excuse me,” she said, and left. Bis followed, clinging to the ceiling like a chagrined bat, Belle in a crook of his tail.
“Jenks!” Ivy shouted from the hall.
“What?” he shouted, hands on his hips. “She says she’s not angry!”
Damn it, I hadn’t meant to push Ivy’s buttons. “Look,” I said as I brought my attention up to find Wayde waiting. “You haven’t really given this much thought, have you?” I said softly. “What’s really going on here.”
“Now you’re in for it,” Jenks said, hovering backward, enjoying this.
Wayde’s posture shifted, and somewhat uneasy, he said, “I saw the man at the park. You need to back off and let someone else do this.”
More tired than angry, I shook my head. Weres were not known for looking at the big picture, focused more on the here and now. They made great bodyguards and crime scene techs, but not so much so when it came to extrapolating. “HAPA is trying to make a source of demon blood so they can have their own magic. What do you think will happen if they’re successful and humans can do demon magic at will? With a cost they don’t believe in and a risk they can’t see?”
Wayde made a “so what” face at me, but I could see him thinking, and when he seemed to sober, I backed off, satisfied.
“Who is going to control them if they’re successful?” I said, tossing the rag into the soapy water to make it splash. “Who’s going to keep them from wiping us out species by species? Not me. We aren’t prepared for a new demographic of magic-using humans who are sadistic, power hungry, don’t like Inderlanders, and see genocide as an acceptable form of communication.” My head hurt, and I put a damp hand to it, smelling the fresh scent of soap. “At least demons have some sense of fair play.”
I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth, but it was true. Their morals might not match ours, but demons did have them. Demons had them . . . These humans did not. What is wrong with this picture?
“Demons enslave people,” Wayde said. He was taking bowls out of an adjacent cupboard, but hungry was the last thing I was.
“Not as many as you think. And they don’t snatch innocents, only people who have made themselves available.” My head hurt, and I opened my charm cupboard for a pain amulet. “I need to call Trent.”
Jenks flew over from Ivy’s monitor, and his sparkles seemed to make my headache worse. “Why? You think he might side with you?”
My headache eased as my fingers touched the amulet, and I shut the cabinet, Jenks darting out of the way with time to spare. “Yes, I do, actually,” I said calmly as I tucked the amulet underneath my shirt. Trent played in the genetic pool like a lifeguard. He might be able to shed a little light on the situation, maybe give me an ide
a as to how close HAPA might be. Besides, I wanted to know if he was missing any equipment and if he had an antimemory charm.
Wayde shoved a bowl of chili at me, his eyes down and his back hunched. “Here,” he said as I fumbled to take it. “If you’re going to fight bad guys, you might want to eat.”
I looked down at the bowl, then up at him, reading his distress. He wasn’t happy about me working this run—hell, I wasn’t happy about working this run—but he’d help me now instead of hindering me. “Chili? On a stakeout? I’m going to smell like—”
“The back side of a fairy’s outhouse?” Jenks supplied, and I shifted my fingers on the warm porcelain so I could take the spoon Wayde was handing me.
“Thanks,” I said, grateful that Wayde finally understood.
He shrugged, and I wrangled the phone into the hand already holding the spoon. Chili in the other, I crossed the dark hallway to the dimly lit, pixy-noisy living room. Ivy had decorated it, apart from the holes in the couch from Belle’s family trying to kill me last summer. The entire room was in soothing shades of gray and slate, the occasional splash of color keeping it from being bland and depressing. Someone had lit the fire and it was pleasant, even with the shredded pieces of toilet paper drifting down like snow.
“Okay, everyone out!” I said loudly over the pixy shrieks. “Take your fake snow and go! I’ve got to make a call.”
They were good kids, and one of Jenks’s eldest girls corralled the youngest, ushering them out the door. I set the bowl of chili down and plopped morosely into the overstuffed chair. Vampire incense and bits of toilet paper snowflakes rose up. A pixy buck darted in, gathered them up before they could move more than an inch . . . and was gone.
“You going with her?” I heard Jenks say from the kitchen, and I put my heels up on the coffee table and made myself comfortable.
“As far as the parking lot,” Wayde said. “They won’t let me accompany her on an official action, though I might sneak in. You want some of this?”
