The Undead Pool

“Not all the time. She was catching mystics,” I said, looking at Trent for confirmation. “Remember? Right before that last wave we got caught up in.”

“She was decidedly not!” Bancroft huffed.

“She was! I have some in a jar on my windowsill.”

Trent leaned across the table, almost shouting to be heard over Bancroft’s loud and continuous denials that anyone could catch the Goddess in a jar. Lucy was right there with him, shouting and banging as she sat on Ellasbeth’s lap. “You kept it?” he asked, his eyes alight.

“Duh. You think I’m going to trash anything Newt gives me? The woman is crazy, not stupid.”

Bancroft shut up when he realized no one was listening to him, and I gathered my hair back and let it go in thought. This had possibilities. “Do you think we can talk to the Goddess directly?” I asked, and Ellasbeth gasped. “Maybe tell her what’s going on so she can maybe, I don’t know, stop parts of herself from wandering off?”

Bancroft’s face was white. “It would take a huge fraction of the Goddess’s attention to even attract her awareness of you. You can’t talk to her as if she was a . . . a . . . person. And you can’t catch her in a jar!”

“Someone is,” I said, and the man put a hand to his chest, sputtering. “The same group of people pulling them out of my line,” I added. Trent glanced at Quen, and the man stood, quietly taking Ray and then Lucy. “Otherwise the mystics would be circling the globe.”

Bancroft stood, the cuffs of his robe shaking. “You cannot capture the Goddess! Who told you that?”

“A demon,” I said flatly, ignoring his conniption fit. I was tired of arguing with people who couldn’t see over the edge of the box they lived in. “The FIB—a human-run institution—figured out how to monitor for the waves yesterday. It’s how we got the misfires under control. Someone is collecting them.”

Spinning, Bancroft threw a hand up into the air. Beside me, Landon was still in thought. Trent was massaging his forehead, and Ellasbeth looked as if I’d spit on the Goddess, not offered up that she was real and touchable. My God. To actually talk to the divine?

But I’d already done that. I just hadn’t believed.

“This is appalling,” Bancroft spouted, face red. “I do not have to tolerate this!”

Trent shot me a look as he stood, but had he seriously expected me to sit here with my mouth shut? “Bancroft. Please. Rachel’s theories often draw on a multitude of practices—”

“They are outrageous and counterproductive!”

And they usually get the job done, I thought, taking a sip of iced tea.

“And because of it, they have a tendency to appear outrageous, but they often lead to flexible solutions,” Trent finished. “Please. Nothing she’s said is false. Don’t end the discussion because you don’t like it.”

I couldn’t help but feel good that Trent had stuck up for me, but my smug smile vanished when Landon noticed it. Bancroft finally sat down, grumbling as he tugged his ceremonial robe straight while Trent opened a new bottle of wine and filled Bancroft’s glass.

“Thank you,” Trent said, adding a drop to his own glass before giving me a tired look. “We’ve determined that the waves are attracted to Rachel. She’s not a mystic magnet. It’s simply because she made the line that they’re escaping from and her aura resonates at the same frequency.”

Still Bancroft frowned, his arms over his chest as he refused to take the drink Trent had topped off. From inside, I could hear Lucy singing, loudly and off-key.

Trent met my eyes and looked away. “I suggest that there’s a high likelihood that the Free Vampires knew that Rachel created the Loveland ley line, hence their choosing it and Cincinnati as their test case.”

Seeing Trent do his boardroom shuffle was kind of cool, and I tried to look more professional. “Which brings up something that you have all avoided like the emperor’s new clothes. Would a vampire faction risk humanity freaking out and attacking all vampires just to further their belief that the undead existence is a blasphemy to the soul? The stuff the living are doing right now without the masters to curb them is as bad or worse than what the masters do themselves. I’m not buying it. Free Vampires are involved, but they don’t know how to work with wild magic. Someone is helping them, and it’s not the witches or demons.”

Bancroft took a long swallow of wine. He looked up, and I could see the first hints of inebriation in his rummy eyes. He was tired, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking as he played with the stem of his wineglass.

“Meaning . . .” Trent said into the silence, taking Ellasbeth’s hand above the table and giving it a squeeze when she reached for him in worry.

“The elves would benefit greatly from an end to the vampires,” I said, point-blank. And when diplomacy fails, you shoot first and run like hell.

Bancroft’s gaze darkened. “I don’t see that at all.”