The Undead Pool

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.”