The Undead Pool (5 page)

There was the bare hint of a mossy scent coming from Al, so faint I thought I might have imagined it. I must have done something, because his gaze slid to mine, making me shiver at his eyes, again back to their normal goat-slitted redness thanks to a costly spell. “That's your aura,” he said flatly, and I began breathing again. “Your aura alone, and very little of it,” he added. “You hardly tapped it, indeed. You say it made a crater?”

“And knocked me on my ass,” I whispered, wishing the black smut wasn't there at all, but I'd become so used to doing curses that I didn't even consciously accept the smut anymore. It just kind of happened. “This is dumb,” I said, depressed, and Al snuffed the flame with his hand. “What could you do just knowing the aura of a practitioner, anyway? Even if it did show something, I can't comb the city with my second sight trying to find a match.”

Al took the still-hot crucible up in his bare hand. “You're missing the point, itchy witch,” he said, tossing the entire thing into the fire. “Once you know a person's aura, you simply tune yours to it as if it was a ley line and pop in.”

He was smiling with a wicked gleam in his eye, and I sat up, seeing the beauty in it. “That's how you always find me,” I said, and his devious expression blanked.

“Stop!” he said, hand up. “Don't even think to try it. You or your gargoyle don't have the sophistication to differentiate between auratic shades to that degree. Line jumping is one thing, jumping to an aura is something else. It's like saying the sunset is red when it's thousands of shades.”

I could see his point, but hell, I knew Ivy's aura pretty well. And Jenks's.

“Student!” I started as his hand hit the table inches from me, and irate, I looked up. “What did I say?” he asked, leaning over me, his smile nasty.

“Not to think about it,” I said calmly, but I was, and he knew it.

Back hunched, he spun away. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Go ahead and burn another line into existence. Let me draw up the papers to annul our relationship first. I'm not paying for another one of your
life lessons
. Have you seen my insurance premiums? My God, you're more expensive than a seventeen-year-old working on his third car.”

I had precious little ever-after income from my tulpa at Dalliance—which went to Al, incidentally—but he'd never mentioned insurance before now, meaning it had to be embarrassingly costly. “I'm not thinking about it,” I said softly, and he looked at me over his shoulder, slowly spinning to gather the rest of the spelling equipment and lovingly set each precious piece back in its proper spot.

“So if the ball wasn't an assassination attempt and I did the diversion charm correctly, then why did it misfire?” I asked as he slid the curse book away and locked the cabinet.

“It didn't.” He slid the key into a pocket, and I felt a tweak on my awareness as the little bump of fabric vanished. “It was overstimulated, not misfired.”

My lips pursed as I saw the news reports in a new way. Not misfired, but overpowered? “But I'm better than that!” I protested.

His back was to me, and he lined his chalk up with the rest. “Yes, you are.”

It was a soft murmur, and I crouched before the fire to pull the crucible out before it tarnished too badly—since I was the one who'd probably have to clean it. “Then why? Al, we had thirty misfires over a twenty-mile stretch in the span of an hour. Ivy worked it out. Whatever it is, it's moving almost forty-five miles an hour.”

“Ivy, eh?” he said. “I'll take that as a fact, then. Perhaps whatever disturbed the energy flow is gone.”

My gut hurt, and I set the fire iron aside. “Al, the misfires are coming from Loveland.”

There was a telling instant of silence, and then Al turned away, his shoes scraping softly. “Your ley line is fine.”

“What if it isn't?” I stood, afraid to tell him that my aura had gone white. If it was overstimulation, then probably everyone's had.

“You fixed it.” Eyes averted, he sat in his chair, fingers steepled. “Your line is fine!”

I pulled his coat from the bench, the crushed velvet smooth against my fingers. On the mantel, Mr. Fish swam up and down, his nose against the glass, ignoring the pellets. I didn't say a word. Just stood there with his coat over my arm.

“You want to go look at it?” he finally asked, and I held his coat out. “Okay, we'll go look at it,” he conceded, and I quelled a surge of anxiety. This close to sunset, there'd be surface demons, but I was more afraid of what my ley line looked like.

“Thank you,” I said, and he grumbled something under his breath, shoving his arms in the sleeves and leaning to throw another log on the fire to keep it going until he got back.

“There are no monsters under your bed, Rachel, or in your closet.”

Mood improved, I waited as he checked the buttons on his sleeves and fluffed the lace at his throat. “I found Newt in my closet once.”

He gave me a sideways look and grabbed a mundane oil lamp from a shelf. Nose wrinkling, he did an ignition curse and the lamp glowed. “Damn surface demons. If it's not the sun burning your aura off, it's the surface demons harrying you at night.” He stood poised, arms wide. “Well, let's go! I've got things to do tonight that don't involve you and your pathetically slowly evolving skills.”

I felt better as I came forward to stand with him on the elaborately detailed circle of stone he used as a door. I must have done something right. Sure enough, I felt his satisfaction as the line took us, his kitchen dissolving into nothing as he flung us back to the surface and some place distant from his underground home.

Reality misted back into existence with a gentle ease that made it hard to believe that we had moved. A red-tinted haze struck me, and the gritty wind. Squinting, I turned to the sun still hanging over the horizon. The heat of the day continued to rise from the dry, caked earth, but I could feel a chill in the fading light. Red soil looked as black as old blood in the shadows.

We were at Loveland Castle, and the slump of rock that was all that was left of it here in the ever-after loomed behind us. My ley line hummed at chest height, looking, as Al sourly informed me, as right as rain in the desert, and could we go home now?

Arms about my middle, I spun. Almost unseen in the distance were the crumbling towers of Cincinnati. Nothing but dry grasses and the occasional scrubby tree filled the space between here and there. And rocks. There were rocks. It was the savanna in a decade-long drought.

Except for that odd green circle . . .

“What is that?” I whispered as I realized there was a figure upon the grass, withering on the ground, and Al grunted as he followed my gaze.

“Mother pus bucket,” he muttered, head down as he began stomping toward it. “She's at it again.”

“She?” But Al hadn't stopped, and I hastened to catch up.
Oh God, it's Newt,
I thought as I saw her unmistakable silhouette standing just outside the circle of green, her arms raised, bare where her androgynous robe had slipped to her elbows. She had short, spiky red hair today, a squat, cylindrical cap done in shades of black and gold atop her head, the colors repeated on her sash and slippers and stained red with the setting sun. A black staff was in her hand as she gestured and chanted at the figure on the living green, crazy as a loon in spring.

“What is she doing?” I said, shocked more from the green grass than anything else.

“Calibration curse,” he said softly. “Maybe she heard about the misfires.” And then he raised his voice. “Newt, love! What
has
the poor devil ever
done
to you?”

Clearly knowing we were here, the demon shifted her staff to both hands and held it level before her to pause in her magic. Within the fifteen-foot circle, the surface demon looked up, his thin chest heaving as he panted. His aura looked almost solid, the hatred from his eyes clear. There was a sword at his feet, the red light of the sun gleaming cleanly on it, and as I watched, a sun-brown hand crept out and gripped it.

“It exists,” Newt said, her voice feminine even if the rest of her looked ambiguous. “It's an affront. What will happen to them when the ever-after collapses? That's what I want to know. Poor fools.”

Fear rippled through me, and I looked behind me to the ley line.
It was collapsing. It was falling apart! I knew it!

“We fixed the line,” Al said, as much for her as for me. “Remember? We had a fine hunt. Rachel's line is within tolerance.”

Surprise showed on Newt's face, and a small rock clinked as she turned to the line behind us. The surface demon hammered at the circle to get out, the heavy blade doing no damage, even if it was as tall as he was. “That's right,” she said, peering at me with her all-black eyes that gave me the creeps. “I forgot, and yet we're both up here in this putrid filth we wallow in.”

The sun turned me red even as I shivered in the chill of the coming night. “What is that?” I asked, looking at the demon, but what I really wanted to know was how there was living grass.

As distractible as a child, Newt turned, beaming. “It's a calibration curse,” she said in delight, oblivious to the anger of the surface demon beating upon it. I could almost see clothes, so distinct was he in the low sun.

“It doesn't look like the curse I know,” I said.

“That's because it's calibrating space and time, not balance and skills.”

“Space and time?” I breathed as she began chanting. Immediately the demon dropped his sword and fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Neither Al nor Newt seemed to care. “Al,” I almost hissed. “What is she doing?”

Frowning, Al put a fist to his hip. “She's moving a bubble of time into the past. The surface demon is caught up in it intentionally, as a marker.”

That explained the green grass, but how far back had she needed to go to find it? “You can do that?”

“She can.” Al pointed with the lantern, the flame pale in the remaining sun. “By comparing the rate of adjusted time to a known span, we can see if anything is out of balance.”

I shuddered when the sun touched the rim of the earth and bled all over it. Newt thought something was wrong, too. “You do this a lot, right? Like a monthly siren test?”

“No,” she said, and the surface demon behind the barrier scrabbled at the edge, his motions becoming erratic. “It hurts.”

“I'll say,” I whispered.

Newt gave me a sharp look. “Not the demon,” she said sourly. “Me. Pay attention. You might have to do this someday. Each surface demon comes into existence at a specific, known time. This one has a particularly long life: watch now. We're close.”

With no warning, the surface demon vanished, the grass under him springing up as if he'd never been there. Newt set the butt of her staff on the ground, clearly pleased. Beside me, Al fussed with his pocket watch, making a show of opening it. Not knowing why, I looked at it, glancing up to see Newt had a watch locket on a black chain around her neck.

“Ready?” she said, and Al nodded.

I had no idea what to expect, but as Newt pointed at the bubble and indicated “go,” the demon reappeared. I watched in a horrified awe as he flung himself against the barrier, clearly in pain as the green grass grew sparse about him and the sword that had glittered so beautifully tarnished and became dented. With a sudden shock, I recognized it as the one the gargoyle had dropped when he'd come to find out who'd damaged my ley line.

His aura failing, the surface demon fell and a layer of black ash covered him. A bright light crisped the remaining vegetation to ash. Dead-looking sprigs appeared, and then the twisted figure with the tattered aura vanished.

“Mark!” Newt said, and Al nodded sharply, holding his watch out to Newt as the demon hiked her loose-fitting clothes up and came closer. “Perfect,” she said, and Al closed his watch with a snap. “Time and space are moving concurrently, i.e., not shrinking,” she said, seemingly perfectly sane. “Your line isn't impacting the ever-after, but it feels odd at times.”

Scared, I spun to Al. “I told you. I told you something was wrong!”

Newt sniffed as Al frowned at me to shut up. “He didn't believe you?” she said, staff planted firmly before her as the setting sun cast her shadow over both of us. “You should listen to her, Gally. If you had listened to me, we might have survived.”

Al shifted to get out of her shadow, screwing his eyes up at the last of the light. “We're not dead yet, Newt, love.”

Newt's expression became sour. “Oh, so we are,” she said, her gaze dropping to her foot nudging a rock deeper into the grit. “I suppose . . .”

Frustrated, I slumped. “Newt, what's wrong with my line?”

“Nothing is wrong with your line!” Al bellowed.

“He's right,” she said, and his bluster died in a huff. “There's nothing wrong with it, but everyone else's is fine.”

Okay.
I rubbed my forehead. Newt wasn't known for her clarity of decisions, but she was a font of knowledge if you could understand. The concern was in how she might react to whatever she might suddenly remember.

I jumped when Al grabbed my arm and rocked us back a step. “Yes, yes. Everything fine,” he said jovially. “Rachel, ready to go?”

My gaze was fixed on that ring where the grass had been. “That's what the ever-after used to look like,” I said, stumbling when Al gave me a yank.

Newt turned to look at it. “As I said, it hurts.” Her gaze was empty when she turned back. “Why are you here?”

I gave in to Al's tugging when Newt suddenly seemed to have forgotten the last ten minutes. “Ah, Rachel wanted me to check under her bed for monsters,” he said, but I'd found the crazier Newt was, the more information you got, even if it was like teasing a tiger.