The Undead Pool

“Rachel?” Ivy said, squinting at me in concern. Jenks watched, horrified, as she iced through me, seeing the world through her thousand eyes. I opened my mouth to speak, but the Goddess’s attention was upon the pixies as she calculated the flow of dust by taking in the air currents and heat patterns. Struggling, I tried again. Landon had crept back out of the hallway, smiling wickedly. Feeling my surge of anger, the Goddess fixed on him.

“You’re a wicked trickster,” I said, but it was the Goddess speaking, and Jenks moaned. Through her, I could see Landon’s betrayal, see his thoughts like the aura spilling from his soul. It had been my hair in the charm. He’d done this knowing she’d eventually take me over, destroy me like the splinter had destroyed Bancroft. He’d convinced Bancroft to do this same thing, I thought, remembering that same glint of satisfaction in him at the top of the FIB building. He murdered Bancroft as surely as if he had slit his throat. God, I had been stupid!

It was Landon, I suddenly realized. Landon was the one helping the Free Vampires eliminate the undead. Landon was a master of wild magic, and he was using them to kill all the master vampires. Bancroft. Trent. All of us were pawns in his game.

“Rachel?”

But a pawn could become a queen if she reached the end and came back again.

Wavering slightly, I turned to Ivy, feeling the Goddess’s attention fracture a hundred different directions to leave me free to breathe and speak. “Um, maybe?” I whispered.

Jenks darted up, frantic. “Rache, she’s in you!” he said. “Kick her out!”

But I couldn’t. She had dug her claws in deep, enjoying seeing mass in a way she never dreamed was real.

You are as I, she thought. But so small. A single identity that holds thousands of thoughts instead of a thousand thoughts holding a single identity. Mass can’t do this.

Her grip on me loosened more, and I took a breath, then another. Jenks’s wings clattered, and I looked at my hands. They were shaking, but I felt the awe of the Goddess in me. They were beautiful in structure, diverse in intent. I’d never noticed.

“I don’t believe it,” Landon said, and my head snapped up. His hatred was etched into his features, and I felt a tiny shock as the Goddess only now linked the facial expression to the emotion. He’d expected me to be taken as Bancroft had been. He’d expected me to be snuffed, destroyed, my single identity holding a thousand thoughts ended—and that pissed her off.

“You’re not wicked. You are ill,” the Goddess said through me.

He opened his mouth, and I smacked him.

My hand met his face in a resounding crack. A burst of ever-after struck him, and he was flung backward, slamming into the wall between two stained-glass windows.

Bis dropped down to Ivy, and Jenks took to the air. I knew my aura was wrong. I couldn’t feel Bis anymore. Unable to stop, I walked to Landon cowering under a window. The Goddess’s eyes were whirling in me, in the line, in the spaces between. The feel of the wood against my feet was exhilarating, and I could feel the pressures shift as my weight was pulled into the earth. It was glorious, and only a fraction of the Goddess’s eyes were on Landon as he gaped at us.

Us? the Goddess thought, a fragment of her awareness seeming to enfold upon itself at the concept of two individuals acting as one.

“You are an ugly dream that should be dreamed no more,” I said, then cocked my head, delighting in the sound of my voice coming back from the rafters. Like errant thoughts, the Goddess mused, finding common ground in how sound moved between empty space and solids.

“Rachel, no!” Jenks cried out as I reached for Landon, and I managed to pull my hand back from the Goddess’s reach to throttle him. “Please, let her go,” he pleaded as he hovered before me.

“You are a worthy dream,” the Goddess said to Jenks, forgetting Landon as I turned to Ivy. She was crying, and I’d never seen her so beautiful. “And you,” the Goddess said through me, and Ivy blinked fast, catching back a sob. “Us. I like us,” the Goddess said aloud, and I felt a smile grow.

“You’re a trickster singular, Rachel Morgan,” the Goddess whispered aloud so she could hear her words come back from the ceiling. I was starting to sound crazy, and Bis had gone chalk white. “Your purpose is to make balance. Mass has meaning through you. I will dream this further and will find my errant thoughts.”

No! I thought. But it was too late, and the Goddess had yanked not only my thoughts but my body into the line.