The Undead Pool. Kim Harrison

my heart, I realized suddenly, seeing more sparkles as I exhaled as if in slow motion, and with that, I knew. I was trapped in an inertia dampening field. There’d been an accident, and a safety charm had malfunctioned. But why had it risen to encompass all of us? I thought, reaching deep into my chi and pulling together the ever-after energy I’d stored there. I couldn’t make a protection circle without linking to a ley line, but I sure as hell could do a spell.

      Separare! I thought, and with a painful suddenness, the world exploded.

      “Oh God,” I moaned, eyes shut as the light burned my eyes. Fire seemed to flash over me and mute to a gentle warmth. Panting, I cracked my eyes to see it had only been the sunbeam I was lying in. Sunbeam? I’d fallen into the shade. And where are the cars?

      “Rachel!” a familiar gray voice whispered intently, and I pulled my squinting gaze from the overhead girders to my hand. Ivy was holding it, her long pale fingers trembling.

      “How did you get here?” I said, and she pulled me into a hug, right there in the middle of the road.

      “Thank God you’re all right,” she said, the scent of vampiric incense pouring over me. Everything felt painfully sharp, the wind cooler, the sunlight brighter, the noise of FIB and I.S. sirens louder, the scent of Ivy prickling in my nose.

      The noise of the FIB and I.S. sirens louder? Confused, I patted Ivy’s back as she squeezed me almost too hard to breathe. I must have passed out, because most of the cars were gone. I.S. and FIB vehicles, fire trucks, and ambulances had taken their place, all their lights going. It looked like a street party gone bad with the cops from two divisions and at least three pay grades mucking about. Behind me was more noise, and I pushed from Ivy to see.

      Her eyes were red rimmed; she’d been crying. Smiling, she let me go, her long black hair swinging free. “You’ve been out for three hours.”

      “Three hours?” I echoed breathily, seeing much the same behind me at the Cincy end of things. More cars, more police vehicles, more ambulances . . . and a row of eight people, their faces uncovered, telling me they were alive, probably still stuck in whatever I’d been in.

      “You weren’t in a car, so I made them leave you,” she said, and I turned back to her, feeling stiff and ill.

      My bag was beside her, and I pulled it closer, the fabric scraping unusually rough on my fingertips. “What happened? Where’s Jenks?”

      “Looking for something to eat. He’s fine.” Her boots ground against the pavement as she stood to help me rise. Shaking, I got to my feet. “He called me as soon as it happened. I got here before the I.S. even. They’re telling the media an inertia dampening charm triggered the safety spells of every car on the bridge.”

      “Good story. I’d stick with that.” I leaned heavily on her as we limped to the side of the bridge and into the shade of a pylon. “But those kinds of charms can’t do that.”

      “Rache!” a shrill pixy voice called, and I looked up, blinding myself as Jenks dropped down from the sun. “You’re up! See, Ivy. I told you she’d be okay. Look, even her aura is back to normal.”

      Well, that was one good thing, but I was starting to see a pattern here, and I didn’t like it. “You got out okay?” I asked, and he landed on Ivy’s shoulder.

      “Hell, yes. That wasn’t multiple spells. I watched the whole thing. It was one bubble, and it came from that black car with the jerk-ass driver.”

      Hands shaking, I leaned on the cool railing. Two medical people were headed our way, and I winced. “Oh crap,” I whispered, grabbing Ivy’s arm as they descended on us, medical instruments flopping from pockets and their tight grips.

      “I’m okay. I’m okay!” I shouted as the first tried to get me to sit back down, and the second started flashing a light in my eyes. “It was just an inertia dampening charm. I think it was so big ordinary metabolic functions couldn’t break it. I got out using a standard breakage charm. And get that light out of my eyes, will you?”

      “A breakage charm?” the one trying to fit a blood pressure cuff on me said, and I nodded, glad that ambulance teams were required by law to have at least one witch on staff and he knew what I was talking about.

      “I’m willing to try anything,” the first said, turning to look at the line of people.

      “They’re going to wake up thirsty,” I said, but they were already striding back to the people under the sheets with a new purpose. Thankful that Ivy hadn’t let them put me in that horrible line, I gave her arm a squeeze. “Thanks,” I whispered, and her fingers slipped from me.

      “It works!” came an exuberant cry, and a cheer rose as a man sat up, groggy and holding a hand over his eyes.

      I was so glad that I wasn’t going to be the only one to wake up from this. “Where’s my car?” I asked as I scanned for it, and Ivy winced.

      “I.S. impound, I think.”

      “Swell.” My keys were still in it, and tired, I looked in my bag to make sure I still had that golf ball. “Okay, who out here owes me a favor?”

      Jenks rose up from Ivy’s shoulder, turning in midair to look toward Cincinnati. “Edden.”

      Nodding, I gathered myself, and as Ivy hovered to catch me if I stumbled, we shuffled that direction. I was surprised. As a captain of the street force of the FIB, or Federal Inderland Bureau, Edden didn’t get out much, but this had happened six blocks from their downtown tower, and with both human and Inderland Security fighting for jurisdiction, he’d want to make sure the I.S. didn’t sweep anything under the carpet.

      The chaos was worse on the Cincy side of things and they were still moving cars out. Unfortunately none of them was mine. Behind the blockade were even more official vehicles, and behind them, the expected news vans. I sighed, trying to hide my face as a helicopter thumped overhead. Three hours?

      But the shadows on the road agreed with the lapse of time, and as we looked for Edden, I thought back to that inertia bubble. Safety charms didn’t grow that big, and it wasn’t a cascading reaction of one triggering another, either. It had been a misfired charm in a morning of them. What the Turn was going on?

      “Found him,” Jenks said, darting away, and Ivy angled to follow his shifting path through the people. It was tight, and I leaned closer to her, not wanting to be bumped. Everything felt uncomfortably intense, even the sun.

      “I’m sorry I scared you,” I said as I pressed into her to avoid a harried medic looking for a sedation charm for some poor woman. Her husband was fine; she was having hysterics.

      “It wasn’t your fault.”

      No, it was never my fault, but somehow I always got blamed, and upon reaching the blockade, I dug in my bag for my ID. Ivy had already flashed hers, and after comparing the picture to my face, the two officers let me past. Jenks was hovering over Edden like a tiny spotlight, and I limped a little faster. There were definite advantages to being a noncitizen, but only if you were four inches tall.

      Captain Edden had put on a few pounds since taking over the Inderland Relations division after his son had quit. His ex-military build made the stress weight look solid, not fat, and I smiled as he took off his sunglasses, his eyes showing a heavy relief that I was no longer out cold on the pavement. Standing beside an open car door, he finished giving two officers direction before turning to us.

      “Rachel!” he exclaimed, thick hand finding my shoulder briefly in a heartfelt squeeze. “Thank God you’re okay. That wasn’t you, was it? Trying to stop something worse, maybe? You would not believe my day. The I.S. is so busy with misfired charms that they don’t even care we’re out here.”

      “Wasn’t me this time,” I said as we came to a halt in an open patch of concrete. “And why is everything automatically my fault?”

      The bear of a man gave me a sideways hug, filling me with the scent of coffee and aftershave.