The Undead Pool (The Hollows #12)

“Who is to say what we are, Ellasbeth,” Trent said coolly. “In the meantime, I’ll be partaking of another elven tradition of demon discourse.” His tone was far too blasé for my liking. Ceri had followed that tradition, only to end up Al’s slave for a thousand years.

An awkward silence grew, and Jenks shrugged when our eyes met. Trent stood, taking Lucy and handing Ellasbeth her purse. “The wave feels like wild magic,” he said. “It resonates with Rachel’s aura and seeks her out. Bancroft might give us something to investigate, a new direction to think about. Everything circles back, Ellasbeth. Quen can drive you and the girls home.”

Silent, the woman rose with Ray, lips pressed into a thin line and her feet unmoving. “So, who is Bancroft?” I asked as I began gathering up the toys.

“Just a man.” Trent handed Lucy to Quen and motioned for the unmoving Ellasbeth to head for the front of the church. “He knows more about the Goddess than anyone.”

“He’s a priest?”

“If you can be a priest in a land with no church. Wild magic was said to live in the space between spaces in the lines. It sounds as if it’s leaking from your line. He might know why, and then we can stop it.”

Sure, it sounded easy, but I was willing to bet someone would be dead before it was over.

Ellasbeth still hadn’t moved. Trent’s arm fell, and he looked expectantly at her. Clearly frustrated, Ellasbeth waved at the pixy kids wreathing her, all of them shrilling good-bye to the girls. “I think Bancroft meeting Rachel is an excellent idea,” she said. “Rachel, you will come out and give Bancroft your experiences firsthand, won’t you?”

Distrusting this, I fumbled for a moment, then managed, “Ah, yes, of course.”

Trent eyed her suspiciously as he handed his keys to Quen. “Good. It’s a date then. Quen, you and Ellasbeth can take the girls home in the SUV. I’ll go to the ever-after with Rachel and talk to Al. If I need a way home, I’ll call.”

Looking pained, Quen took the keys. “Certainly, Sa’han.”

Things were happening fast, and I stood there with my arms full of toys.

“It’s good to have you home again,” Trent said, giving Quen an honest smile. Lucy wiggled, demanding attention, and he focused on her in Quen’s arms, his voice rising as he said, “And you, too, Lucy. It’s been too quiet without you and your sister.”

I smiled as the little girl gave him a sloppy kiss and shouted, “Good night!”

“It’s good to be home,” Quen said, his expression fixing to a bland nothing as he turned to Ellasbeth. “Will we be needing to stop somewhere on the way home, Ms. Withon?”

“Actually, I do need a few things,” Ellasbeth said as she took a step to the hallway. “But it can wait. The girls need to go down for their naps. Trenton, can I have a word with you?”

Looking resigned, Trent edged past me and into the hall. “What?”

Quen worked hard to hide his smirk as she click-clacked into the sanctuary, Ray on her hip and dragging Trent behind her.

“Sorry about all this,” I said to Quen as I tucked Lucy’s flyaway hair behind an ear and gave her a tickle under her chin.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, his tone making it clear he wasn’t entirely sure. “You will keep him safe?”

“Always.” But I couldn’t help but worry over how Al was going to react with me dropping in with his most favorite elf.

Our attentions flicked to the hallway as Trent’s voice rose in a hushed anger, and I felt myself warm. “She has saved my life more times than you have rings for your fingers, Ellie. I’m not going to let her go alone to tell a demon that wild magic is leaking from her ley line. She needs someone to watch her back, and pixies can’t be in the ever-after until sunset. I’m going. End of discussion.”

On second thought, Al probably wasn’t going to care about Trent once he found out that wild magic was not only leaking from my line but crossing Cincinnati to find me. Maybe we should just go out to the Loveland line and see it for ourselves.

Nine

The engine’s thrum muted as we got off the interstate. I tried not to listen to Trent’s phone conversation as the wind noise dropped, but my car wasn’t that big. It wasn’t as if Trent minded talking to Quen with me listening, but I knew Trent wasn’t happy that Quen had called in the first place, prompted by Trent’s text that our visit to Al’s had been nixed in exchange for a personal visit out to my ley line. If Trent had wanted to turn it into a committee decision, he would have called.

“Good,” the man said, wind in his hair. “Keep an eye on the news. Rachel has talked to the FIB and there’s going to be a public announcement in the next half hour. Whenever you hear sirens, don’t do any magic for an hour.

“No,” Trent said as he fiddled with the level of the window. “If it’s already running, the charm will be untouched. Don’t shut them down.” His eyes flicked up and away. “Ah, me too. See you tonight, Ellie,” he said, then ended the call.

Not Quen, then. I’d wondered. His tone hadn’t been quite right. Eyes fixed firmly on the road, I took a yield, my little car straining at the unusually steep dirt road as the paved road quickly became very country. Sighing, Trent checked his e-mail before tucking the phone away. “Thanks for coming with me,” I said, noticing his ears were red on the rims. “I know you wanted to talk to Al.”

“I like this just as well. A trip to your line will probably result in more information.” Smiling, he reached across the small space, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze.

Eyes firmly on the road, I pulled into the parking lot at Loveland Castle. Smile never dimming, Trent took his hand back, and I exhaled, glad that no one was here. There were posted hours, but the castle itself was seldom locked up, open to the public from dawn to dusk. The antitheft and vandalism hex on the door wasn’t legal, but the local cops probably appreciated it, not wanting to police such a lonely, trouble-inviting place.

Gravel popped as I put the car in park and turned the engine off. For a moment, we sat. Slowly the chatter of the unseen river and the haze of insect sound became obvious. Reluctant to get out of the car just yet, I looked past the crumbling icon to one man’s idea of perfect nobility to the never-finished garden, tall with weeds and terraced with crumbling stone.

I’d fought Ku’Sox there, surviving with the help of Quen and Etude, Bis’s dad. It was becoming increasingly hard to live with the fact that my errors could end up with others getting hurt, and as Trent undid his seat belt and got out, I stifled the urge to tell him to stay in the car.

He could take care of himself, but after three months of watching his back, I found it hard not to be protective.

We’re just going to look at my line, I told myself, hastening to follow him. No harm ever came from just looking at the ever-after.

Worried, I brought up my second sight, but as expected, my line was humming with a peaceful reddish haze, the glowing twenty-by-three-by-two horizontal column hovering at chest height. Hands on his hips, reminding me of Jenks, Trent stood with his feet in the knee-high grass and scanned the open area between the fallow garden and the hidden river. He looked good there in the sun in his faded jeans and pullover shirt that he’d gone shopping with the girls in, and a sudden thought of waking up to find him between my sheets flitted through me and was gone—chased away by the memory of Ellasbeth.

“Your line appears fine,” he said, then strode into the meadow for a closer look.

Embarrassed, I unfocused my attention even more, almost losing my vision of reality as I concentrated on the ever-after. A gritty red haze overlaid itself across the quiet green, making the trees look black. My tennis shoes brushed through the dry grass, sending up puffs of imaginary ever-after dust as I followed him. Sending a thought out, I connected more firmly to the line, letting the force of it pour through me, shocking me awake. Still it felt okay, and I carefully tasted the energy, hearing the pure sound/color and calling it good.

I’d created this line by accident when sliding through realities. It carried the taint of my aura, differentiating it from everyone else’s and making line jumps possible. But the memory of burning my aura off was still too new for me to try line jumping again, especially with Bis sleeping until sundown.

Slowly I came to a weed-shushing halt beside Trent. “It looks fine,” he said, squinting at it in the sun. “When was the last wave?”

“Ivy said one went through about five this morning.” Not that it made much difference. We had yet to find a pattern to them. Most Inderlanders except pixies and elves would’ve been asleep right about then. Was it just luck, or was someone trying to minimize the misfires?

The tall grass smelled wonderful, and I tugged at a knee-high tuft of it as I listened to the crickets. I breathed deep, smelling the hot grass and the July heat rising up from the earth, enjoying how it mixed with Trent’s scent of shortbread and wine—making me wish we were here for some other reason than checking for telltale signs of wild magic.

“I’m going to check it out from the inside,” Trent said, startling me.

“I’m starting to think you like the smell of burnt amber,” I said, and he surprised me with his sudden flash of embarrassment.

“It’s more to do with not having Quen lurking about,” he admitted as he strode right into my line, reminding me that he had one running through his office and probably was used to the idea. “The ever-after is very . . . I don’t know. Clean in a way? Uncluttered?”

That’s not how I’d describe the ever-after. It was uncomfortable, the sun was too bright, the wind too cutting, and the grit got into everything. And it smelled. The only things able to survive on the surface for any length of time were the indigenous gargoyles, who slept during the day, and surface demons, who weren’t really demons at all.

But the nasty things wouldn’t be out in the daylight, and I watched Trent look over Loveland’s lush setting, knowing he was seeing it as if standing in the ever-after himself.

His thought-provoking harrumph pulled me closer, and I dipped my hand right into the line to feel the energy push against it, sort of like wind except that the flowing sensations came from all directions, not just one. I played with it, cupping the energy and trying to pull it from the line only to have it spill back into its course as if it was magnetized.

Trent turned at my intrusion, a startled look on him. “There’s someone on the surface.”

“Surface demon?” I blurted, stepping into the line so as to see better. Immediately the sensation of gritty wind strengthened as the clean, moist heat of the summer meadow was entirely replaced by the sucking heat of the desert.

“No, it’s a girl!” he said, and my concern focused to a sharp point.

Newt, I thought even before I saw her. “I don’t see . . .” I hesitated, finding a dancing figure in white just across the shallow riverbed, jumping to catch something over her head. “Oh. Ah, I think that’s Newt.”

Trent’s attention jerked to me. “Newt?” he said, clearly doubtful. “Mmmm. Maybe we should show our respects.”

Jeez Louise, he wanted to go over? I’d just gotten the burnt-amber stink out of my hair. But my immediate refusal to shift realities faltered. If anyone could give me an answer about wild magic, it might be Newt. As the ever-after’s only female demon, and not entirely sane all the time, she was a font of information—if you could figure it out.

“Why not,” I said, reaching out to find his hand. “I’ll do it.”

He started, his grip becoming firmer as he gave me an appreciative smile. Shifting realities wasn’t hard when you were standing in a ley line. Any trained elf could do it, and witches. No one did because up until recently, it usually resulted in being kidnapped and forced into slavery. It was like stepping through a door where line jumping was like a transporter. This, I could do. But so could Trent.

Eyes closed, I felt the line’s resonance, making minute changes to my aura to match it exactly. A weird titillating feeling raced through me as I tried to hold on to everything and shift Trent’s aura at the same time. With an odd inward sensation, I felt my insides shrink to nothing, taking us with it. The line became my world, and I snapped a protection bubble into place, the shimmer on it the same as the line’s.

All that was left was to artificially shift my aura to push us back out, and with a jerk, reality re-formed. My balance was off, and I lurched until Trent caught my arm. The red glare of the ever-after sun slammed into me, and the gritty wind lifted through my hair. “I love it here,” I whispered sarcastically.

Trent was smiling, making me wonder why until he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Most shifts like that would cost someone their soul,” he said softly.

Uneasy, I scanned the horizon, watching the heat shimmer up from the rocks. “It still might,” I said, then began to walk toward the lithesome shape Newt made dancing in the heat. As I watched, a lump of dusty rock seemed to shake itself, evolving into a tall figure in a top hat, crushed green velvet tails furling as he spun to see us. Al. Great.

“Is that . . .” Trent said as he slid down the shallow incline that was the river in reality.

“Yep.” This was so not what I wanted, but we’d been spotted, and leaving would only bring him barging into my church. “Don’t tell him about the wild magic following me, okay?” I whispered as Trent scrambled up the other side and extended a hand to help me up.

“Not a problem.”