The Undead Pool

“Yeah?” I squeaked, feeling something sort of peel off me with the pinch of a scab lifting away. The mystics, probably. “Look at that!” I said, pointing at the crystal. It had hazed purple. “Dude, it’s the same color as her eyes!”

The tapping hesitated. “You’ve seen her eyes?” Landon asked bitterly.

I really needed to learn how to keep my mouth shut. “Ah, in a dream?” I said, and he resumed the tapping beat, jealousy making his motions fast.

“Ta na shay, mourdeana,” he said, sounding almost vindictive.

Jenks’s wings fluttered, and I shuddered at the feel of them on my neck. “Whoa. Anyone else feel that?” he asked.

Ivy gasped, and my eyes shot to the hummingbird. It lay on the table, wings moving but never taking to the air. A quick look with my second sight showed it was flaming with a white aura. Landon’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed as if he hadn’t thought this was going to work. “Rache . . .” Jenks whispered. “This don’t feel right.”

I was tending to agree with him. Landon was sweating, and we all jerked when the hummingbird lurched into the air, never leaving the tiny space in which it had been placed. The head wasn’t quite level, and it truly didn’t look alive.

“It’s working,” Landon whispered. “My God, I’ve never seen this strong a connection.”

My eyes dropped from the bird, now leaking blood from the wound it had died from, to the curled and knotted hair in the center. It was a place of honor. My jaw clenched. There was no way you could put a person into a glyph this size, but hair was often used as a bridge.

“Landon,” I said in warning, and his smile became ugly.

“Ta na shay, eram!” he said, his anger and jealousy spilling over into his voice.

I gasped as a scintillating flow of mystics poured through me, my defenses as effectual as a sieve as they danced through the spaces around them with the sound of wings and spinning wheels made of purple eyes. I wasn’t connected to a line. I was a line, the living energy existing in the spaces between mass, chiming to the sound of my aura.

“Oh shit . . .” I breathed, and my hands clenched on the cushions as the bird’s wings stilled and it hit the table.

“Rachel?” Ivy said, leaning close, but I couldn’t see her, my vision unable to process anything as something seemed to play with my aura, caressing it.

You’ve come home. The alien thought lifted through me. Become. Tell me what you’ve seen.

“No,” I whispered, feeling the presence begin to pull me in, the edges of my awareness become fuzzy. No, I thought, and the whirling eyes of the Goddess’s thoughts turned to me, purple feathers shedding from it at my defiance to leave it unblinking.

“Get out!” I screamed, shifting my aura sideways until the mystics sort of stepped left and were gone.

I took a huge breath, head snapping up to see Bis atop the table, the spell scattered as he hissed at Landon, wings spread wide. The man was scrunched in his chair, facing down a very pissed Ivy and Jenks. “I’m okay!” I said, and Ivy turned, the relief in her overwhelming. “I’m okay.” But my hands were shaking, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to sleep again.

“It was an accident!” Landon was saying. “Look, she’s okay.”

Jenks hovered before him as Ivy came to look into my eyes. “I might be a pixy, but I know enough magic to know that you used her hair! You meant to do that!”

“No. No I didn’t. It’s never worked before!”

Shaky, I stood up. “You need to leave.”

“But you called me. Ta na shay, eram,” a high-pitched voice said, and I spun.

“Holy shit!” Jenks swore, and I stared, Landon forgotten, at the little boy standing before me. He was in a hospital gown, ashen and thin with that ugly ID band on his wrist and pale-rimmed holes in his skin where the IVs once were. His hair had been lovingly arranged, and I recognized the amulet pinned to his coat from the morgue. He wasn’t alive, and as I tried to figure out what to say, he shuffled forward, no expression, no nothing. My middle ached, as if something was being pulled from it.

“I remember this dream,” the boy said, head down. “There you are,” he lisped, shuffling three steps before falling over and hitting the floor with a thud. Ivy reached for him, her face pale as she drew back. “It’s time to become,” he said to the floor.

Horrified, I scrambled to put the chair between us. Holy crap, it was like the night of the living dead in my living room! Jenks was on my shoulder, and Bis flew into the rafters, hissing.

“Rachel?” Ivy said, eyes black and freaking out. “Where did he come from?”