Dead Witch Walking (36 page)

I shivered. Feeling it, Ivy turned her head. “Are you all right?” she shouted.

“Yeah,” I said into her ear so she could hear me. “Yeah, I am. Thanks for coming to get me.” I pulled her hair out of my mouth and looked behind me.

I stared, riveted. Three horsemen stood on the ribbon of moonlit road. The hounds were milling about the horses’ feet as they pranced with nervous, arched necks. I had just made it. Chilled to the core of my soul, I watched the middle rider touch his brow in a casual salute.

An unexpected pull went through me. I had bested him. He knew and accepted it, and had the nobility to acknowledge it. How could you not be impressed by someone that sure of himself. “What the hell is he?” I whispered.

“I don’t know,” Jenks said from my shoulder. “I just don’t know.”

M
idnight jazz goes very well with crickets,
I thought as I sprinkled the chopped tomato on the tossed salad. Hesitating, I stared at the red globs among the leafy green. Glancing out the window at Nick standing before the grill, I picked them all out and tossed the lettuce again to hide what I had missed. Nick would never know. It wasn’t as if it would kill him.

The sound and smell of cooking meat pulled at me, and I leaned past Mr. Fish on the sill to get a better look. Nick was wearing an apron that said “Don’t stake the cook, cook the steak.” Ivy’s, obviously. He looked relaxed and comfortable as he stood at the fire in the moonlight. Jenks was on his shoulder, darting upward like fall leaves in the wind when the fire spurted.

Ivy was at the table, looking dark and tragic as she read the late edition of the
Cincinnati Enquirer
in the light of a candle. Pixy children were everywhere, their transparent wings making shimmering flashes when they reflected the moon, three days past full. Their shouts as they tormented the early fireflies broke into the muted roar of Hollows’ traffic, making a comfortable mix. It was the sound of security, reminding me of my own family’s cookouts. A vamp, a human, and a posse of pixies were an odd sort of family, but it was good to be alive in the night with my friends.

Content, I juggled the salad, a bottle of dressing, and the steak sauce and backed out the screen door. It slammed behind me, and Jenks’s kids shrieked, scattering into the graveyard. Ivy looked up from the newsprint as I set the salad and bottles beside her. “Hey, Rachel,” she said. “You never did tell me how you got that van. Did you have any trouble taking it back?”

My eyebrows rose. “I didn’t get the van. I thought you did.”

As one, we turned to Nick, standing at the grill with his back to us. “Nick?” I questioned, and he stiffened almost imperceptibly. Full of a questioning speculation, I grabbed the steak sauce and eased up behind him. Waving Jenks away, I slipped an arm around Nick’s waist and leaned close, delighted when his breath caught and he gave me a look of surprised speculation.
What the heck. He was a nice guy for a human.
“You stole that truck for me?” I asked.

“Borrowed,” he said, blinking as he remained carefully unmoving.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling as I handed the bottle of steak sauce to him.

“Oh, Nick,” Jenks mocked in a high falsetto. “You’re my hero!”

My breath slipped from me in bother. Sighing, I let my hand drop from around Nick’s waist and stepped back. From behind us came Ivy’s snort of amusement. Jenks made kissing noises as he circled Nick and me, and fed up, I darted my hand out.

Jenks jerked back, hovering in surprise as I almost got him. “Nice,” he said, darting off to bother Ivy. “And how’s your new job going?” he drawled as he landed before her.

“Shut up, Jenks,” she warned.

“Job? You have another run?” I asked as she shook open the newsprint and hid behind it.

“Didn’t you know?” Jenks said merrily. “Edden arranged it with the judge to give Ivy three hundred hours of community service for taking out half his department. She’s been working at the hospital all this week.”

Eyes wide, I went to the picnic table. The corner of the paper was trembling. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked as I angled my legs past the bench and sat across from her.

“Maybe because they made her a candy striper,” Jenks said, and Nick and I exchanged dubious looks. “I saw her on her way to work yesterday and followed her. She has to wear a short pink and white striped skirt and a frilly blouse.” Jenks laughed, catching himself as he fell off my shoulder. “And white tights to cover her perky little ass. Looks real good on her bike.”

A vampire candy striper?
I thought, trying to picture it.

A chortle slipped from Nick, quickly turned into a cough. Ivy’s knuckles as she gripped the paper turned white. Between the later hour and the relaxed atmosphere, I knew it was hard for her to keep from pulling an aura. This wasn’t helping.

“She’s at the Children’s Medical Center, singing and having tea parties,” Jenks gasped.

“Jenks,” Ivy whispered. The paper slowly dropped, and I forced my face into a careful impassivity at the black hazing her.

Wings a blur, Jenks grinned and opened his mouth. Ivy rolled the paper. Quicker than sound, she slammed it at him. The pixy darted up into the oak, laughing.

We all turned at the creak of the wooden gate by the front walk. “Hello-o-o-o. Am I late?” came Keasley’s voice.

“We’re back here!” I shouted as I spotted Keasley’s slow moving shadow making its way across the dew-wet grass past the silent trees and bushes.

“I brought the wine,” he said as soon as he was closer. “Red goes with meat, right?”

“Thanks, Keasley,” I said, taking the bottle from him. “You didn’t have to do that.”

He smiled, extending the padded envelope tucked under his arm. “This is yours, too,” he said. “The delivery man didn’t want to leave it on the steps this afternoon, so I signed for it.”

“No!” Ivy shouted, reaching across the table to intercept it. Jenks, too, dropped from the oak, his wings making a harsh clattering. Looking annoyed, Ivy snatched it out of his grip.

Keasley gave her a dark look, then went to see how Nick was doing with the steaks.

“It’s been over a week,” I said, peeved as I wiped my hand free of the condensation from Keasley’s wine. “When are you going to let me open my own mail?”

Ivy said nothing, pulling the citronella candle closer to read the return address. “As soon as Trent stops sending you mail,” she said softly.

“Trent!” I exclaimed. Worried, I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, thinking about the folder I’d given Edden two days ago. Nick turned from the steaks, his long face showing concern. “What does he want?” I muttered, hoping they couldn’t tell how agitated I was.

Ivy glanced up at Jenks, and the pixy shrugged. “It’s clean,” he said. “Open it up.”

“Of course it’s clean,” Keasley grumbled. “You think I’d give her a spelled letter?”

The envelope felt light in my grip as I took it from Ivy. Nervous, I slid a freshly painted nail under the flap, tearing it. There was a bump inside, and I shook the envelope over my hand.

My pinky ring slid out and fell into my grip. My face went slack in shock. “It’s my ring!” I said. Heart pounding, I looked at my other hand, frightened to not see it there. Eyes rising, I took in Nick’s surprise and Ivy’s worry. “How…” I stammered, not remembering even having missed it. “When did he—Jenks, I didn’t lose it in his office, did I?”

My voice was high, and my stomach tightened when he shook his head, his wings going dark. “You didn’t have any jewelry that night,” he said. “He must have taken it afterwards.”

“Is there anything else?” Ivy asked, her tone carefully neutral.

“Yeah.” I swallowed, and slipped my ring on. It felt odd for a moment, then comfortable. Fingers cold, I pulled out the thick slip of linen paper smelling of pine and apples.

“ ‘Ms. Morgan,’ ” I read softly in unease. “ ‘Congratulations on your newfound independence. When you see it for the illusion it is, I’ll show you true freedom.’ ”

I let the paper fall to the table. My thick feeling of disquiet that he had seen me sleeping broke apart in the knowledge that that was all he did. My blackmail was tight. It had worked.

Slumping, I put my elbows on the table and dropped my forehead into my hands in relief. Trent had taken the ring from my sleeping finger for one reason only. To prove he could. I had infiltrated into his “house” three times, each one more intimate and unguarded than the last. That I could do it again whenever I wanted was probably intolerable to Trent. He had felt the need to retaliate, to show that he could do the same. I had gotten to him, and that went a long way toward ridding myself of my angry, vulnerable feeling.

Jenks darted down to hover over the note. “The sack of slug salt,” he said, and angry pixy dust sifted from him. “He got past me. He got past me! How the hell did he do that?”

Steeling my face, I picked up the envelope, noticing the postmark was the day after I had escaped him and his dogs. The man worked fast. I’d give him that. I wondered if it had been him or Quen who did the actual pilfering. I was betting it was Trent.

“Rache?” Jenks landed on my shoulder, probably concerned at my silence. “You okay?”

I glanced at Ivy’s worried expression across from me, thinking I ought to be able to get a laugh out of this situation. “I’m gonna get him,” I bluffed.

Jenks flitted up and away, his wings clattering in alarm. Nick turned from the grill, and Ivy stiffened. “Whoa, wait a moment,” she said, flicking Jenks a look.

“No one does that to me!” I added, clenching my jaw so I wouldn’t smile and ruin it.

Keasley’s brow furrowed. Eyes pinched, he sat back.

Ivy went paler than usual in the candlelight. “Slow down, Rachel,” she warned. “He didn’t do anything. He just wanted to get the last word. Let it go.”

“I’m going back!” I shouted, standing to put some distance between us in case I was yanking her chain too hard and she came after me. “I’ll show him,” I said, waving an arm. “I’ll sneak in. I’ll steal his freaking glasses and mail them back to him in a freaking birthday card!”

Ivy stood, her eyes going black. “You do that, and he’ll kill you!”

She actually thinks I’d go back? Was she nuts?
My chin trembled as I tried not to laugh. Keasley saw it, and he chuckled, reaching for his unopened wine.

Ivy spun with a vamp quickness. “What are you laughing about, witch?” she said, leaning forward. “She’s going to kill herself. Jenks, tell her she’s going to kill herself. I’m not going to let you do this, Rachel. I swear, I’ll tie you to Jenks’s stump before I let you go back!”

Her teeth were a gleam in the moonlight and she was wound tight enough to pop. One more word, and she might make good her threat. “Okay,” I said lightly. “You’re right. I’ll leave him alone.”

Ivy froze. A heavy sigh slipped from Nick at the grill. Keasley’s gnarly fingers were slow as they pulled the foil from the top of his bottle. “Oooh doggies, she got you, Tamwood,” he said, laughing low and rich. “She got you good.”

Ivy stared, her pale, perfect face marred with shock and the sudden realization that she’d been had. A stunned bewilderment, quickly followed by relief and then bother, crossed her. She took a breath. Holding it, her face went sullen. Eyes tight and angry, she dropped back down to the picnic table’s bench and shook out the paper.

Jenks was laughing, making circles of pixy dust to sift down like sunbeams to glitter on her shoulders. Grinning, I rose and went to the grill. That had felt good. Almost as good as stealing the disc. “Hey, Nick,” I said, slipping up behind him. Those steaks done yet?”

He gave me a sideways smile. “Coming right up, Rachel.”

Good. I’d figure everything else out later.

I
’d like to thank the people who suffered through me during the rewrites. You know who you are, and I salute you. But I’d especially like to thank my editor, Diana Gill, for her wonderful suggestions that opened up delightful avenues of thought, and my agent, Richard Curtis.

The following is a
free
excerpt from Kim Harrison’s brand new Hollows novel, BLACK MAGIC SANCTION, available in hardcover February 23, 2010.

One

Tucking my hair back, I squinted at the parchment, trying to form the strange angular letters as smoothly as I could. The ink glistened wetly, but it wasn’t red ink, it was blood—my blood—which might account for the slight tremble in my hand as I copied the awkward-looking name scripted in characters that weren’t English. Beside me was a pile of rejects. If I didn’t get it perfect this time, I’d be bleeding yet again. God help me. I was doing a black curse. In a demon’s kitchen. On the weekend. How in hell had I gotten here?

Algaliarept stood poised between the slate table and the smaller hearth, his white-gloved hands behind his back. He looked like a stuffy Brit in a murder mystery, and when he shifted impatiently, my tension spiked. “That isn’t helping,” I said dryly, and his red, goat-slitted eyes widened in a mocking surprise, peering at me over his smoked spectacles. He didn’t need them to read with. From his crushed green velvet frock, to his lace cuffs and proper English accent, the demon was all about show.

“It has to be exact, Rachel, or it won’t capture the aura,” he said, his attention sliding to the small green bottle on the table. “Trust me, you don’t want that floating around unbound.”

I sat up to feel my back crack. Touching the quill tip to my throbbing finger, my unease grew. I was a white witch, damn it, not black. But I wasn’t going to write off demon magic just because of a label. I’d read the recipe; I’d interpreted the invocation. Nothing died to provide the ingredients, and the only person who’d suffer would be me. I’d come away from this with a new layer of demon smut on my soul, but I’d also have protection against banshees. After one had nearly killed me last New Years, I’d willingly entertain a little smut to be safe. Besides, this might lead to a way to save Ivy’s soul when she died her first death. For that, I’d risk a lot.

Something, though, felt wrong. Al’s squint at the aura bottle was worrisome, and his accent was too precise tonight. He was concerned and trying to hide it. It couldn’t be the curse. It was just manipulating an aura—captured energy from a soul. At least . . . that’s what he said.

Frowning, I glanced at Al’s cramped handwritten instructions. I wanted to go over them again, but his peeved expression and his soft mmmm of a growl to get on with it convinced me it could wait until the scripting was done. My “ink” was running thin, and I dabbed more blood from my finger to finish some poor slob’s name, someone who trusted a demon . . . someone like me.
Not that I really trust Al
, I thought, glancing at the instructions once more.

Al’s spelling kitchen was right out of a fantasy flick, one of four rooms he had retained after selling everything else to keep his demon-ass out of demon-ass jail. The gray stone walls made a large circular space, most of which were covered in identical tall wooden cabinets with glass doors. Behind the rippled glass Al kept his books and ley line equipment. The biological ingredients were in a cellar accessed through a rough hole in the floor. Smoky support beams came to a point over a central fire pit, a good forty feet up. The pit itself was a round, raised affair, with vent holes to draw the cold floor air in by way of simple convection. When it got going, it made a comfortable spot to read at, and when fatigue brought me down, Al let me nap on the benches bracketing it. Mr. Fish, my beta, swam in his little bowl on the mantel of the smaller fire. I don’t know why I’d brought him from home. It had been Ivy’s idea, and when an anxious vampire tells you to take your fish, you take your fish.

Al cleared his throat, and I jumped, fortunately having pulled my quill from the parchment an instant before. Done, thank God. “Good?” I asked, holding it up for inspection, and his white-gloved, thick fingered hand pinched it at the edge where it wouldn’t smear.

He eyed it, my tension easing when he handed it back. “Passable. Now the bowl.”

Passable. That was usually as good as it got, and I set the painstakingly scribed bit of paper beside the unlit candle and green bottle of aura, taking up Al’s favorite scribing knife and the palm-sized, earthen bowl. The knife was ugly, the writhing woman on the handle looking like demon porn. Al knew I hated it, which was why he insisted I use it.

The gray bowl was rough in my hand, the inside cluttered with scratched off words of power. Only the newly scribed name I was etching would react. The theory was to burn the paper and take in the man’s name by way of air, then drink water from the bowl, taking in his name by water. This would hit all four elements, earth and water with the bowl, air and fire with the burning parchment. Heaven and earth, with me in the middle. Yippy skippy.

The foreign-looking characters were easier after having practiced with the parchment, and I had it scratched on a tiny open space before Al could sigh more than twice. He’d taken up the bottle of aura, frowning as he gazed into the swirling green.

“What?” I offered, trying to keep the annoyance from my voice. I was his student, sure, but he would still try to backhand me if I got uppity.

Al’s brow furrowed, worrying me even more. “I don’t like this aura’s resonance,” he said softly, red eyes probing the glass perched in his white-clad fingers.

I shifted my weight on my padded chair, trying to stretch my legs. “And?”

Al’s focus shifted over his glasses to me. “It’s one of Newt’s.”

“Newt? Since when do you need to get an aura from Newt?” I asked. No one liked the insane demon, but she was the reigning queen of the lost boys, so to speak, and knew everything—when she could remember it.

“Not your concern,” he said, and I winced, embarrassed. Al had lost almost everything in his effort to snag me as a familiar, ending up with something vastly more precious but broke just the same. I was a witch, but a common, usually lethal, genetic fault had left me able to kindle their magic. Al’s status was assured as long as I was his student, but his living was bleak.

“I’ll just pop over and find out who it is before we finish this up,” he said with a forced lightness, setting the bottle down with a sharp tap.

I looked at the assembled pieces. “Now? Why didn’t you ask her before?”

“It didn’t seem important at the time,” he said, looking mildly discomforted. “Pierce!” he shouted, the call for his familiar lost in the high ceilings coated in shadows and dust. Mood sour, he turned to me. “Don’t touch
anything
while I’m gone.”

“Sure,” I said distantly, eyeing the green swirling bottle. He had to borrow an aura from Newt? Jeez, maybe things were worse off than I’d thought.

“The crazy bitch has a reason for everything, though she might not remember it,” Al said as he tugged his sleeves over his lace cuffs. Glancing at the arranged spelling supplies, he hesitated. “Go ahead and fill the bowl. Make sure the water covers the name.” He looked at the image of an angry, screaming face scribed into his black marble floor. It was his version of a door in the door-less room. “Gordian Nathanial Pierce!”

I pushed back from the table as the witch popped into the kitchen atop the grotesque face, a dishtowel over his shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. “I’d be of a mind to know what the almighty hurry is,” the man from the early 1800s said as he tossed his hair from his eyes and unrolled his sleeves. “I swan, the moment I start something, you get in a pucker over nothing.”

“Shut up, runt,” Al muttered, knowing to backhand him would start a contest that would end with Pierce unconscious and a big mess to clean up. It was easier to ignore him. Al had snared the clever witch within the hour of his first escape, the demon taking great pains to keep us apart during my weekly lessons until Al realized I was ticked with Pierce for having willingly gone into partnership with Al. Partnership? Hell, call it what it was. Slavery.

Oh, I was still impressed with Pierce’s magic that far outstripped mine. His quick one-liners in his odd accent aimed at Al when the demon wasn’t listening still made me smirk. And I wasn’t looking at his long wavy hair, or his lanky build, much less his tight ass. Damn it. But somewhere shortly after seeing him naked under Carew Tower’s restaurant, I’d lost the teenage crush I’d had on him. It might have been his insufferable confidence, or that he wouldn’t admit how deep in the crapper he was, or that he was just a little too good at demon magic, but for whatever reason, that devilish smile that had once sparked through me now fell flat.

“I’m stepping out for a tick,” Al said as he buttoned his coat. “Merely checking something. A tidy curse is a well-twisted one! Pierce, make yourself useful and help her with her Latin while I’m gone. Her syntax sucks.”

“Gee, thanks.” The modern phrases sounded odd with Al’s accent.

“And don’t let her do anything stupid,” he added as he adjusted his glasses.

“Hey!” I exclaimed, but my eyes darted to the creepy tapestry whose figures seemed to move when I wasn’t looking. There were things in Al’s kitchen that it was best not to be alone with, and I appreciated the company. Even if it was Pierce.

“As the almighty Al wishes,” Pierce said dryly, earning a raised-eyebrow from Al before he vanished from where he stood, using a ley line to traverse the ever-after to Newt’s rooms.

In an instant, the lights went out, but before I could move, they flashed back to life, markedly brighter as Pierce took over the light charm.
Alone. How . . . nice.
I watched him meticulously drape his damp dishtowel to dry on the top of the cushioned bench that circled the central fire pit, and then, jaw clenched, I looked away. Standing, I moved to keep the slate table between us as Pierce crossed the room with the grace of another time.

“What is the invocation today?” he asked, and I pointed to it on the table, wanting to look at it again myself but willing to wait. His hair fell over his eyes as he studied it.

“Sunt qui discessum animi a corpore putent esse mortem. Sunt erras,” he said softly, his blue eyes shocking against his dark hair as he looked up. “You’re working with souls?”

“Auras,” I corrected him, but his expression was doubtful.
There are people who believe that the departure of the soul from the body is death. They are wrong,
I silently translated, then took it from him to set it with the bottle of aura, bowl, and the name scribed with my blood. “Hey, if you can’t trust your demon, who can you trust,” I said sarcastically, gathering up the pile of discarded signature attempts and moving them out of the way to the mantle. But I didn’t trust Al, and I itched to look at the curse again. Not with Pierce, though. He’d want to help me with my Latin.

The tension rose at my continued silence, and Pierce half-sat on the slate table, one long leg draped down. He was watching me, making me nervous as I filled the inscribed bowl from a pitcher. It was just plain water, but it smelled faintly of burnt amber.
No wonder I go home with headaches,
I thought, grimacing as I overfilled the bowl and water dribbled out.

“I’ll get that,” Pierce said, jumping from the table and reaching for his dishtowel.

“Thanks, I’m good,” I snapped, snatching the cloth from him and doing it myself.

He drew back, looking hurt as he stood before the fire pit. “I’ll allow I’ve gotten myself in a powerful fix, Rachel, but what have I done to turn you so cold?”

My motion to clean the slate slowed, and I turned with a sigh. The truth of it was, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that the things that had attracted me once now looked childish and inane. He’d been a ghost, more or less, and had agreed to be Al’s familiar if the demon could give him a body. Al had shoved his soul into a dead witch before the body even had the chance to skip a heartbeat. It didn’t help that I’d known the guy Al had put his soul into. I didn’t think I could take another person’s body to save myself. But then, I’d never been dead before.

I looked at Pierce now, seeing the same reckless determination, the same disregard for the future that had gotten me rightfully shunned, and all I knew was I didn’t want anything to do with it. I took a breath and let it out, not knowing where to start. But a shiver lifted through me at the memory of his touch, ages ago but still fresh in my mind. Al was right. I was an idiot.

“It’s not going to work, Pierce,” I said flatly, and I turned away.

My tone had been harsh, and Pierce’s voice lost its sparkle. “Rachel. Truly. What’s wrong? I took this job to be closer to you.”

“That’s just it!” I exclaimed, and he blinked, bewildered. “This is
not
a job!” I said, waving the cloth. “It’s slavery. You belong to him, body and soul. And you did it intentionally! We could have found another way to give you a body. Your own, maybe! But no. You just jumped right into a demon pact instead of asking for help!”

He came around the table, close but not quite touching me. “I swane, a demon curse is the only way to become living again,” he said, touching his chest. “I know what I’m doing. This isn’t forever. When I can, I’ll kill the demon spawn, and then I’ll be free.”