The Undead Pool

“Ivy will buff out the corners,” I interrupted. “It’s not like we have to do this alone.”

“We still need to figure out how to free the splinter,” he finished. “Your magic is twitchy, and my resources are about to take a nosedive.”

His Goddess-based magic, I mused, pulling my knees up to my chin until I realized it made me look scared. “I can do magic. The trick is to keep them from destroying everything once they’re stirred up.” I rubbed a spot on the coffee table, uneasy when a few mystics arrowed back to me with images of Ivy’s bike weaving through abandoned dented and burned cars down a side street. They were getting better at recognizing her, and every time a wandering mystic saw her, it came back to let me know. If I could get them to individually grasp the concept of time, I might be able to tell how old the image was. “Besides, I saw the containment array yesterday, and it relies on electricity, not magic. Cut the power, and they’re free.”

Trent pushed back from his hunch over the table. Propping an ankle on a knee, he eased into the leather cushions. It lacked a little polish in that he was barefoot, but he more than made up for it when he ran a hand through his hair and stared out the window at nothing. “Maybe. A lot of those pre-Turn mortuaries have secondary power sources. We’d have to cut that along with their mundane connection to the grid.”

“Right,” I drawled, remembering. Mortuaries were the natural choice before the Turn to help move the undead into their next existence, in effect underground minihospitals with all the power needs that went along with it. I had to hand it to Landon. He’d thought this through. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you don’t like my idea,” I said, only half kidding.

“I don’t, but it’s the one that impacts the fewest lives.”

“See?” Jenks said from the mantel. “I’m not the only one who thinks the I.S. and FIB are going to mess it up.”

“I have not said it’s a bad idea,” Trent protested. “Just that it’s not a good one.”

Jenks was laughing again. I would have gotten mad, but Trent was staring at my mouth. If the table wasn’t between us, I think he would have kissed me. The thought was almost as good as actually doing it, and my bad mood vanished.

“Tink’s titties, you’re at it again?” Jenks groaned.

We both turned to the sound of a bike at the front. Thanks to the mystics, I’d been watching Ivy approach the last few minutes, but Jenks darted out to see. Suddenly nervous, I stood. I hadn’t aired out the church because it felt like an apology. Trent was lounging about in Jenks’s old clothes. His underwear was doing the tango with mine in the dryer. She’d understand, but Ivy didn’t handle surprises well.

“That’s Ivy,” I said as I went into the kitchen. “You want anything?” Yep, I was a chicken.

His head was over that legal pad again. Good grief, how much planning could you actually do for a run like this? “I could use another coffee,” he said, and my bare feet padded on the linoleum. “It goes with cookies surprisingly well.”

“It’s just Ivy!” Jenks’s voice echoed back.

“How on earth did she know that?” Trent muttered, and I smiled, pouring coffee into his favorite mug, then poured myself a glass of iced tea.

“Mystics,” I said as I came back in as Ivy’s boots sounded lightly in the foyer. “They’ve been bringing me back images of her the last five minutes.”

Trent’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you want to get rid of them?”

I extended his coffee to him, thinking he looked tired, but he had missed his afternoon nap. “Absolutely,” I said as about half a dozen mystics combined their complaint into one loud voice demanding to know why ice floated and everything else that became solid due to temperature reduction sank.

Trent glanced at the sound of Ivy’s boots in the hallway. “Maybe I should go. We can finish this later.”

“There is no later, there’s only now,” I said, then hesitated, thinking I was starting to sound like Newt. Ice clinking, I stood where I was between him and the doorway. “She’ll be fine,” I said, looking at the empty hallway with a feeling of foreboding. “She knows I’m not hers, but vampire instinct will make her feel attacked.”

“Like I said, maybe I should leave.”

“Rachel? I’m home!” Ivy shouted, Jenks’s voice lost in the sudden clatter of her boots. “You would not believe what the I.S. is trying to pull. Edden—”

Her words cut off, and I met Trent’s eyes, wincing. Surprise!

“Uh . . .” she muttered, still in the hall. “Rachel? Did you and Trent—”

She jerked to a stop in the doorway, her pupils widening as she took in Trent sitting on her couch in Jenks’s old clothes. They darted to me, and I tried to smile. I knew it must have looked kind of sick, but I kept doing it. “You’re here,” she said, meaning Trent.

“Yep!” Jenks said as he darted in, clearly having not told her. “They bumped uglies, did the horizontal fandango . . .”

A silver dust slipped from him as he gyrated. “Stop it, Jenks.”