The Good, The Bad and The Undead. Ким Харрисон

three more drops of my blood onto it to invoke the spell. It soaked in quickly, as if the spell pulled the blood from my finger. I extended the charm to him, thinking of the time I had been tempted to stir a black spell. I survived, but came away with my demon mark. And all I’d done was look at the book. Black magic always swings back. Always.

      “It’s got your blood in it,” he said in revulsion. “Make another, and I’ll put mine in it.”

      “Yours? Yours won’t do squat. It has to be witch blood. Yours doesn’t have the right enzymes to quicken a spell.” I held it out again, and he shook his head. Frustrated, I gritted my teeth. “Your dad used one, you whiny little human. Take it so we can all move on with our lives!” I thrust the amulet belligerently at him, and he gingerly took it.

      “Better?” I said as his fingers encircled the wooden disk.

      “Um, yeah,” he said, his square-jawed face suddenly slack. “It is.”

      “Of course it is,” I muttered. Slightly mollified, I hung the rest of my amulets in my charm cupboard. Glenn silently took in my stash, each hook carefully labeled thanks to Ivy’s anal-retentive need to organize. Whatever. It made her happy and was no skin off my nose. I closed the door with a loud thump and turned.

      “Thank you, Ms. Morgan,” he said, surprising me.

      “You’re welcome,” I said, glad he had finally dropped the ma’am. “Don’t get any salt on it, and it should last for a year. You can take it off and store it if you want when the blisters go away. It works on poison ivy, too.” I started to clean up my mess. “I’m sorry for letting Jenks pix you like that,” I said slowly. “He wouldn’t have if he had known you were sensitive to pixy dust. Usually the blisters don’t spread.”

      “Don’t worry about it.” He stretched for one of Ivy’s catalogs at the end of the table, pulling his hand back at the picture of the curved stainless-steel knives on special.

      I slid my spelling book away under the center island counter, glad he was loosening up. “When it comes to Inderlanders, sometimes the smallest things can pack the hardest punch.”

      There was a loud boom of the front door closing. Stiffening, I crossed my arms before me, only now recognizing that it had been Ivy’s motorcycle tooling up the road a moment before. Glenn met my eyes, sitting straighter as he recognized my alarm. Ivy was home.

      “But not always,” I finished.

       Five

      Eyes on the empty hallway, I motioned for Glenn to stay seated. I didn’t have time to explain. I wondered how much Edden had told him, or if this was going to be one of his nasty but effective ways to smooth Glenn’s edges.

      “Rachel?” came Ivy’s melodious voice, and Glenn stood, checking the creases in his gray slacks. Yeah, that would help. “Did you know there’s an FIB car parked in front of Keasley’s?”

      “Sit down, Glenn,” I warned, and when he didn’t, I moved to stand between him and the open archway to the hall.

      “Yuck!” Ivy exclaimed, her voice muffled. “There’s a fish in my bathtub. Is it the Howlers’? When are they coming to get it?” There was a hesitation, and I managed a sick smile at Glenn. “Rachel?” she called out, closer. “Are you in here? Hey, we should go out to the mall tonight. Bath and Bodyworks is re-releasing an old scent with a citrus base. We need to hit the sample bottles. See how it works. You know, celebrate you making rent. What is that you have on now? The cinnamon? That’s a nice one, but it only lasts three hours.”

      Would have been nice to have known that earlier. “I’m in the kitchen,” I said loudly.

      Ivy’s tall, black-clad form strode past the opening. A canvas sack of groceries hung from her shoulder. Her black silk duster fluttered after her boot heels, and I could hear her looking for something in the living room. “I didn’t think you would be able to pull the fish thing off,” she said. There was a hesitation, then, “Where in hell is the phone?”

      “In here,” I said, crossing my arms uneasily.

      Ivy pulled up short in the archway as she saw Glenn. Her somewhat Oriental features went blank in surprise. I could almost see the wall come down as she realized we weren’t alone. The skin around her eyes tightened. Her small nose flared, taking in his scent, cataloging his fear and my concern in an instant. Lips tight, she put her canvas bag of groceries on the counter and brushed her hair out of her eyes. It fell to her mid-back in a smooth black wave, and I knew it was bother, not nerves, that had prompted her to tuck it behind an ear.

      Ivy had once had money, and still dressed like it, but her entire early inheritance had gone to the I.S. to pay off her contract when she quit with me. Put simply, she looked like a scary model: lithe and pale, but incredibly strong. Unlike me, she wore no nail polish, no jewelry apart from her crucifix twin black chain anklets about one foot, and very little makeup; she didn’t need it. But like me, she was basically broke, at least until her mother finished dying and the rest of the Tamwood estate came to her. I was guessing that wouldn’t be for about two hundred years—bare minimum.

      Ivy’s thin eyebrows rose as she looked Glenn over. “Bringing your work home again, Rachel?”

      I took a breath. “Hi, Ivy. This is Detective Glenn. You talked to him this afternoon? Sent him to pick me up?” My look went pointed. We were going to talk about that later.

      Ivy turned her back on him to unpack the groceries. “Nice to meet you,” she said, her tone flat. Then to me, she muttered, “Sorry. Something came up.”

      Glenn swallowed hard. He looked shaky but was holding up. I guess Edden hadn’t told him about Ivy. I really liked Edden. “You’re a vampire,” he said.

      “Ooooh,” Ivy said. “We’ve got a bright one here.”

      Fingers fumbling around the string of his new amulet, he pulled a cross from behind his shirt. “But the sun is up,” he said, sounding as if he had been betrayed.

      “My my my,” Ivy said. “And a weatherman, too?” She turned with a snide look. “I’m not dead yet, Detective Glenn. Only the true undead have light restrictions. Come back in sixty years and I might be worried about a sunburn.” Seeing his cross, she smiled patronizingly and pulled out from behind her black spandex shirt her own, extravagant crucifix. “That only works on undead vamps,” she said as she turned back to the counter. “Where did you get your schooling? B-movies?”

      Glenn backed up a step. “Captain Edden never said you worked with a vampire,” the FIB officer stammered.

      At Edden’s name, Ivy spun. It was a blindingly fast motion, and I started. This wasn’t going well. She was starting to pull an aura. Damn. I glanced out the window. The sun would be down soon. Double damn.

      “I heard about you,” the officer said, and I cringed at the arrogance in his voice, which he was using to cover his fear. Even Glenn couldn’t be stupid enough to antagonize a vamp in her own house. That gun at his side wasn’t going to do him any good. Sure, he could shoot her, and kill her, but then she’d be dead and she’d rip his freaking head off. And no jury in the world would convict her of murder, seeing as he killed her first.

      “You’re Tamwood,” Glenn said, his bravado clearly scraped from a misplaced feeling of security. “Captain Edden gave you three hundred hours of community service for taking out everyone on his floor, didn’t he? What was it he made you do? A candy striper, right?”

      Ivy stiffened, and my mouth dropped open. He was that stupid.

      “It was worth it,” Ivy said softly. Her fingers were shaking as she set the bag of marshmallows gently on the counter.

      My breath caught. Shit. Ivy’s brown eyes had gone black as her pupils dilated. I stood, shocked at