The Undead Pool

“I didn’t see you complaining at the time,” said the cop next to him, and the first officer turned to stare him down.

“Callahan!” Edden said, shouting over the sudden ribbing. “Since you volunteered. Let’s hear what happened on your Inderlander encounter and how you dealt with it.”

“Well, sir, I believe the woman bewitched me,” he said slowly. “My partner and I were responding to a misfired charm up by the zoo when we spotted two suspects outside a window, trying to break in. I politely asked them if they had lost their keys. They ran; we followed. One got away. When I tried to apprehend the other, she got all . . . sexy like.”

Hoots and whistles rose, and Jenks, deep into his honey drunk, gyrated wildly.

“Eyes black and coming on to me like one of those legalized prostitutes down in the Hollows,” he continued. “It was enough to embarrass a man.”

Jenks almost spun right off the table and I hid my eyes, mortified.

“I don’t see an arrest,” Edden said as he leafed through a clipboard.

“You get yourself some vampire ass, Callahan?” someone shouted, and the man cracked an almost-not-there grin.

“When I turned around, she was gone,” Callahan said.

A woman made a long “awwww,” and I smiled. They had a good group. I missed that.

“She wasn’t going to bang you, she was going to smack you into next week,” I said, and Edden hid a cough behind rubbing his mustache. “That is, if you were lucky.”

Callahan turned in his chair to give me an irritated look. “And you would know how?”

I shrugged, glad everyone was looking at me and not Jenks making a wobbly flight to the podium. “Because when a vampire gets sexy, they’re either hungry or mad. Cornering her was a mistake. You’re lucky. You must have left her an out. She was smart and took it.”

They were silent. Slowly the tension rose. But I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut if a little information might keep someone out of the hospital.

“Everyone, if you don’t recognize her, this is Rachel Morgan,” Edden said, and I could breathe again when they turned away. “I asked her to come in and give us some ideas on how to handle the issues falling to us right now as the I.S. takes care of an internal problem.”

There was a rising muttered complaint, and Edden held up a hand, then scrambled to catch Jenks as he slipped backward down the slanted podium. “Morgan is a former I.S. runner, and if she says you’re lucky, Callahan, you’re lucky. Rachel, what should he have done?”

I sat up, glad I’d pulled something professional from my closet today. “Not follow.”

They all protested, and my eyes squinted. You can lead a troll to water . . .

“She’s right!” Jenks shrilled, cutting off most of the grousing. “The woman is right! Righter than . . . a pixy in a garden.” He belched, wings moving madly as he tilted to the side.

I wondered if I should stand, then decided to stay where I was. “If you don’t have the skills or strength to back up your badge—and I’m sorry, but your weapons won’t do it—it’s best to just let them go. Unless they’re threatening someone, that is. Then you’re going to have to work hard to distract them until they remember the law can put them in a cage.”

Damn, even the women cops were looking at me like I was a hypocrite. “I don’t care if you don’t like it,” I said. “One vampire is enough to clear this entire room if he or she is angry enough. The master vampires will bring them in line.”

“But they aren’t,” said a woman who had clearly, judging by her bedraggled appearance, come in off the night shift. Around her, others nodded. “No one has been able to contact an undead vampire within the Cincinnati or Hollows area since yesterday afternoon.”

Surprised, I looked at Edden, becoming uneasy when he nodded. “How come this is the first I’m hearing about it?” I said, suddenly very awake. If the master vampires were incommunicado, that’d explain the increase in living-vampire crimes. For all the loving abuse the masters heaped upon their children, they did keep the bad ones in line when no one else could.

Edden straightened from his concerned hunch over Jenks. “Because we agree with the I.S. that it would cause a panic. The masters aren’t dead, they’re sleeping, and so far, it’s confined to the Cincy and Hollows area. The I.S. tried bringing in a temporary master vampire from out of state to handle things yesterday, and she fell asleep within five hours.”

I bit my lip, processing it. All the undead sleeping? No wonder the I.S. was down.

“Which brings me back to you, Rachel,” he said, and my head snapped up. “I originally asked you here to give us options for dealing with aggressive Inderlanders, but I think we’ve gone beyond that. What’s your Inderland take on the situation? Are the misfired charms and the sleeping undead vampires linked?”

Silence descended as everyone looked at me. That they were linked was obvious. The real question should be, was any of this intentional or simply a natural phenomenon, and if deliberate, was the goal to put the masters out of commission, create havoc with misfired charms, or both? If someone was creating the wave, it could be stopped. If it was a natural effect, it was going to be up to me—seeing as the wave was coming from my line.

Nervous, I picked up my shoulder bag and got to my feet. Jenks saw me coming, trying to sit up as his one wing refused to function, swearwords falling from him as his heels flipped up and he toppled backward down the podium. “Upsy-daisy,” Edden said as he caught him slipping off the edge, and Jenks giggled, his high voice clear in the dead air.

“Why would she help us? She’s a demon,” someone muttered, and Edden frowned.

“Because she’s a good demon, Frank,” he said, voice iron hard as he held Jenks gently in his cupped hand. Giving Edden a wry smile, I held my bag open and he dropped Jenks inside.

“Hey!” the pixy protested, and then, “Tink’s little pink dildo, Rache! Haven’t you gotten rid of those condoms yet? They got a shelf life, you know.”

I flushed, handing the bag to Edden as I turned. That awful map was behind me, and I shifted until I wasn’t behind the podium, not liking the feeling of separation I got behind it. “That the waves, the sleeping undead, and the vampire violence are linked is obvious,” I said, half turning to glance at the map. “I don’t know how to stop the waves, but until we figure it out, there are a few things that can be done to minimize the damage from the superpowered waves.”

“Superpowered?” someone in the back questioned, and I nodded.

“According to, ah, a reliable source, the misfires are actually an overexpression of what the charm is supposed to do, so a charm intended to clean grease removes the fat not just from the counter but from the person who invoked it. Fortunately, the waves appear to impact only charms invoked right when the wave is passing over them. Those already running aren’t affected.”

Most of them were staring at me in bewilderment. It was frustrating. Another witch would know exactly what I was talking about, and I wondered how charismatic Edden’s public relations person was. This was going to go down hard in the Inderland community. “You might want to work with the I.S. and get an early warning detector out to Loveland where the waves are originating. If you tell people not to invoke any magic ahead of a wave, that will probably minimize or eliminate probably ninety percent of the magic misfires.”

“What about the vampires?”

Good question. “Which brings me to the vampires. It’s a good bet that the increase in crime is simply a combination of the heightened fear brought on by the misfires and the masters being asleep and unable to curtail it. Take out one of the three legs, and the stool will fall. If you wake the undead up, the violence will stop. Curtail or eliminate the misfires, and the violence will probably diminish. Fear is a trigger to bloodlust, and the fewer misfires, the less fear there will be to trigger a twitchy vampire.”

Again silence fell, but it was the quiet of thinking. “So who’s making the waves?” someone asked.

Good question number two. “I’d guess someone who would benefit from the chaos. Someone trying to hide a crime? Or a firm specializing in disaster recovery?”

Or a demon, I thought, thinking this was just the thing to amuse a bored sadist. Newt, though, had seemed genuinely concerned. Damn it to the Turn and back, I didn’t have enough clout to work another deal with the demons. I’d barely survived the last one.

Edden rubbed his face, starting at the feel of his bristles, and I wondered how long he’d been here. The officers, too, were getting fidgety, and it felt as if I should wrap this up.

“In the meantime, it might be a good idea to block off access to some of the smaller parks to minimize large gatherings. Or better yet, Edden, have you given any thought to installing a curfew? Blame it on the magic misfire, not the vampires.”

Edden winced. “Ye-e-e-es. Cincinnati has more people on the street at night than the day. We saw a drop last night except for gawkers, but even they became scarce when the vampires took over the streets.”

An officer at the edge sat up. “What if we just shut down the buses? We wouldn’t have a repeat of what happened out at the university.”

“What happened at the university?” I asked, then put a hand in the air. “Never mind. You could always put a cop on the buses going from the Hollows to Cincinnati. That would probably take care of most of it.”

Callahan made a bark of laughter. “And where do you expect to get the manpower, missy? We’re double shifting as it is.”

Missy? I was losing them. “That’s another thing. The I.S. can’t be completely down, just disorganized, and if there’s something the FIB is good at, it’s organization. Has anyone thought to ask the witches or Weres in the I.S.’s runner division to sit in with you in your cars or walk the streets with you? Mixed-species partners are encouraged in the I.S. for a reason. I’d think having someone next to you who can smell vampires a block away is worth looking into. Besides, if the I.S. is down as far as you say it is, the witches and Weres are probably ready to take things into their own hands. You give them a well-structured outlet, they’ll jump at it.”

Edden shifted from foot to foot behind me. My jaw tightened as they just stared at me. “Fine,” I said sarcastically. “Last night I watched a woman blow a hole in a vampire because she lost faith in the I.S.’s ability to protect her. If you don’t get a hold of this, and I mean now, you’re going to have an entire city of vigilantes out gunning for vampires, good or bad. Or you can swallow your pride and not only show the witches and Weres your stuff, but demonstrate to a frightened demographic that you can work with other species instead of killing them.”

“O-o-o-okay!” Edden said as he put a hand on my shoulder, and I jumped. “Thank you, Rachel. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and ideas with us this morning. Gentlemen? Ladies? Smart decisions.”

It was clearly his catchphrase to release them, and disgusted, I dropped back as the assembled officers began to collect themselves. Their expressions were a mix of distrust and disgust, ticking me off.

“If you’re interested in a joint effort of I.S. and FIB, tell Rose to put your name on a list,” Edden said loudly over the noise. “If your name is on the joint-effort list, it won’t be on the double-duty list. It’s as easy as that, people. Keep it safe!”

“That’s not fair, Captain . . .” someone complained, and Edden turned away. His expression was pained as he handed me my bag, Jenks still sleeping his honey drunk off inside.

“Think they’ll go for it?” I asked.

“Some will to get out of pulling double duty. A few more will because they’re curious.”

“Good,” I said as the room emptied and he began to take down his map. “I meant it when I said the witches and Weres will try to pull the I.S. together, but most of the top bosses there are the undead. They’ll lose a lot of time organizing unless they agree to work with the FIB.”

His expression was sour, and he wouldn’t meet my eyes as he rolled the map into a tube.

“Edden, you need their help,” I pleaded. “It’s not just an issue of manpower or officer safety. Right now the living vampires are skittish, but if their masters don’t wake up soon, we’re going to have more abductions and blood rapes than graffiti and trash parties at the university.”

Map in one hand, he gestured with the other for me to head to the hall. “I’m taking names and will make a call. The rest is up to them. Not everyone with a badge is an Inderland bigot.”

Edden’s eyes were pinched as I fell into step beside him. I knew he missed Glenn, and not just because the Inderlander Relations division that Glenn had been in charge of had tanked when he’d quit the FIB. “I read your report,” he said. “Why was Kalamack with you last night?”

Wow, word gets around fast. “His girls come back tomorrow. It was a thank-you dinner.”

Edden’s eyebrows rose knowingly. “At a bowling bar?”

I smiled as we made our way to the front of the building. “They have great burgers.”

“Yeah?” Edden tapped the rolled map on his chin. “And he stood back and let you work.”

“Yup,” I lied cheerfully. I’d thought Trent had been trying to stop me, but he’d only wanted to borrow my gun. Not that he was a slouch with the elven magic, but he didn’t have a license to throw charms around as I did. Magic could be traced back to its maker, even a ley line charm, and if the FIB thought I’d shot the vampires, then Trent’s name wouldn’t even make the papers. He had surprised me, and I liked being surprised.

And the kiss . . . A tingle raced through me. Slowly my smile faded. Ellasbeth didn’t know what she had.

The noise in the reception hall swelled as we entered, and Edden sighed at the angry people at the front desk, none of them listening to the officers trying to get them to take a form and go sit in the chairs to fill it out. I could understand why they were upset, seeing as all the chairs were occupied and the take-a-number dispenser they’d put up was only six numbers different from when I’d come through about an hour ago.

“Thanks for this, Rachel.” Edden halted before the glass doors. “You got your car?”

I carefully opened my shoulder bag, easily finding my keys by the light of a snoring pixy. “Thanks, Edden,” I said, shaking the pixy dust off them so they wouldn’t short out my ignition. “It was worth the early morning. Speaking of which, you need to go home.”

Hands in his pockets, he looked out uneasily at the sunny street, the lack of cars obvious. “Maybe next year.” He again scrubbed a hand over his face, dead tired, and I remembered that he didn’t really have anyone to go home to. “We might find something good in this mess.”

Smiling, I put a hand on his shoulder, leaning in to give him a professional kiss on the cheek and making him redden. I knew he was talking about Inderlanders and humans working together, and I hoped he was right. “Let me know if something changes.”

He nodded, pushing the door open for me, and my hair blew back in the draft. “You too.”

It was almost eleven, right about the time I usually got up, and feeling a faint sense of rejuvenation, I strode into the sun. “You want some coffee, Jenks?” I said loudly, knowing he wouldn’t be up for at least ten more minutes. Junior’s was only a couple of blocks away, and a grande, skinny double espresso, with a shot of raspberry, extra hot with no foam, would have a much-appreciated dose of fat and calories in it. “Yeah, me too,” I said, taking the stairs with an extra bounce to pull a tiny groan from my bag. My car could stay at impound a few minutes more.

But as I took to the sidewalk, my fast pace quickly faltered. The streets were more empty than usual, and the people who were out moved with a fast, furtive pace, very unlike the angry frustration inside the security of the FIB. Pamphlets skated down the gutters, and new graffiti was everywhere. Some of it I couldn’t match to a Were pack, making me wonder if it might be vampire, as odd as it would be. The scent of oil-based smoke was a haze between Cincinnati’s buildings, visible now that the sun was up, and I tugged my shoulder bag higher, uneasy.

No one was meeting my eyes, and the obnoxious men who usually refused to shift an inch out of their way so we could actually—I don’t know—share the sidewalk maybe, were quick to make room as if afraid I might touch them. It wasn’t just me, though. Everyone was getting the extra space. Tempers were short, and there were lots of quick accelerations when the lights turned green. Most telling, the usual sign-toting beggars were off the streets.

The wind lifted through my hair, sending the escaping strands of my braid to tickle my neck, and realizing I’d been out of touch for almost an hour, I turned my phone back on. “Oh,” I said, pace faltering as I saw all the missed numbers. David.

Wincing, I stopped, shifting myself up the steps at Fountain Square to get out of the foot traffic. Guilt swam up from the cracks of my busy life. I was not a good female alpha, too involved in my own life’s drama to include much of anyone else’s, but damn it, when I agreed to it, David had said it was only going to be him. That had been the entire point. He’d added to the pack since then, not that I could blame him. He was a fabulous alpha male, and I was beginning to feel as if I was holding him back.

Sighing, I hit send and tucked my increasingly dilapidated braid out of the way. He answered almost immediately.

“Rachel!” His pleasant voice sounded worried, and I could picture him, his clean-cut features and tidy suit he wore at his job as an insurance adjuster making his alpha status clear. “Where are you?”

Head down, I rested my rump on one of the huge planters, feeling about three inches tall. “Ah, downtown Cincy,” I said hesitantly. “I tried to call yesterday, and then that wave came through and—”

“Ivy said you were at the FIB. I need to talk to you. Do you have some time today?”

Talk to me about me being a lousy alpha, no doubt. “Sure. What’s good for you?”

“She also told me what happened at the bridge yesterday. Why don’t you tell me these things?” he said, adding to my guilt. “Okay, that’s funny. Look up.”

I took my fingers from my forehead, head lifting.

“No, across the street. See?”

It was David, standing at the corner beside a newspaper box and waving at me. He was in his long duster, heavy boots, and wide-brimmed hat, which made him look like a thirtysomething Van Helsing. It suited him more than his usual suit and tie, and being an insurance adjuster wasn’t the cushy, pencil-pushing job it sounded like. He had teeth, and he used them to get the real dirt on some of the more interesting Inderlander accidents. That’s how we had met, actually.

“H-how . . .” I stammered, and he smiled across the street at me.

“I was trying to get to the FIB before you left,” he said, his lips out of sync with his voice. “I’ve got coffee. Grande, skinny double espresso, shot of raspberry, extra hot, and no foam okay?” he said, taking up a coffee carrier currently sitting on the newspaper box.

“God, yes,” I said, and he waved me to stay where I was. Smiling, I ended the call. Not only did he know I liked my coffee, but he knew how I liked my coffee.

Motion easy, the medium-build man loped across the street against traffic, one hand holding the tray with the coffees, the other raised against the cars. Every single one of them slowed to let him pass with nary a horn or shouted curse, such was his assurance. David was the apex of confidence, and very little of it was from the curse I’d innocently given him, accidentally making him the holder of the focus and able to demand the obedience of any alpha, and hence their pack members in turn. He wore the responsibility very well—unlike me.

“Rachel,” he said as he reached the sidewalk and took the shallow steps two at a time. “You look beat!”

“I am,” I said, giving him a hug and breathing in the complicated mix of bane, wood smoke, and paper. His black shoulder-length hair pulled back in a tie smelled clean, and I lingered, recognizing the strength in him in both body and mind. When I’d met him, he’d been a loner, and though he had firmly established himself as a pack leader now, he’d retained the individual confidence a loner was known for.

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said, carefully wedging it out of the carrier as he extended it. “You can hunt me down any day if you bring me coffee.”

Chuckling, he shook his head, his dark eyes flicking down from the huge vid screen over the square, currently tuned to the day’s national news. Cincy was in it again, and not in a good way. “I didn’t want to talk to you over the phone, and I’ve got the day off. You got a minute?”

My guilt rushed back, my first sip going bland on my tongue. “I’m sorry, David. I’m a lousy alpha.” I slumped, the coffee he’d brought me—the perfect coffee he knew was my favorite—hanging in my grip. It was never supposed to have been anything other than the two of us. The larger pack just sort of happened.

Blinking, he fixed his full attention on me, making me wince. “You are not,” he admonished, coffee in hand and leaning against the planter, looking like an ad for Weres’ Wares magazine. “And that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you heard of a group called the Free Vampires?”

Surprised, I relaxed my hunched shoulders. “One of the vamps last night thought I was one, but no. Not really.”

His eyes shifted to the people around us, the motion furtive enough to pull a ribbon of worry through me. It was busy at the square, knots of people clustered around their laptops and tablets, but none nearby. Leaning closer, he dropped his head to prevent anyone from reading his lips. “They’re also known as Free Curse Vampires or Vampires Without Masters,” he said, sending a chill through me. “They’ve been around since before the Turn. That’s their mark there, up on the vid screen.”

My eyes followed his twisting head, only now noticing that the huge monitor overlooking Fountain Square did indeed have a gang symbol spray-painted on it, the huge symbol looking as if a V and a F had been typeset over each other, the leg of the F merging seamlessly with the left side of the V to look elegantly aggressive. It also looked impossible to have gotten it up there.

“Huh,” I said, now remembering seeing it on some of the buses this morning. And in the intersection outside of the FIB. Light poles. Corner mailboxes . . . Concerned, I leaned to pick up one of those flyers, finding it read like wartime propaganda. “How can they survive without a master? I’d think they wouldn’t last a year.”

David watched me shove the flyer in my bag. “Hiding, mostly, maintaining the same patterns that kept all vampires safe before the Turn. It’s not hard to file their canines flat or take day jobs to avoid their kin. It’s sort of a cult following, one not well represented because, as you guessed, they don’t have a master vampire to protect them. We occasionally insure them, seeing as they can’t go to a vampire-based company. There’s been a jump in their numbers the last couple of days. Some of it could be attributed to the undead being asleep, but—”

I choked on my coffee, sputtering until I got my last swallow down. “You know about that?” I asked, my watering eyes darting. We were right next to the fountain so it was unlikely anyone would hear, but Edden had made it obvious that it was privileged information.

Smiling an easy smile, David put his back to the planter and us shoulder to shoulder. “You can gag the news, but you can’t blind an insurance company intent on adjusting a claim. They’re coming out of the woodwork, making me think they’re more represented than previously thought, perhaps the fringe children who aren’t really noticed much and get little protection anyway. They have a statistically improbably high rate of immediate second-death syndrome, which is why I know about them. My boss is tired of paying out on the claims.”