Pale Demon. Kim Harrison

      To the guy who knows how I take my tea …

      Contents

      One

      “Brown or green for the drapes, Rache?”

      Two

      Trent rose to his feet, stupidly staring at the tree…

      Three

      Hollows International wasn’t a huge airport, but it was busy…

      Four

      If looks could kill, my face would show the imprint…

      Five

      Anarrow slice of early-afternoon sun made it into the front…

      Six

      “Rache!” Jenks shrilled, scaring the crap out of me as…

      Seven

      The faint smell of cinnamon, blood, and wine drifted forward…

      Eight

      The hum of the engine shifted, becoming deeper. It stirred…

      Nine

      “Trent!” I shouted, hammering on the bathroom door. It was…

      Ten

      My grip on the wheel tightened until my knuckles hurt.

      Eleven

      “Um, Jenks?” I said, taking a stumbling step back into…

      Twelve

      The warmth of the sun on my face turned into…

      Thirteen

      If it wasn’t for the lack of an ocean, I…

      Fourteen

      Heart pounding, I ran back down the corridor. I hit…

      Fifteen

      It was the changing sound of the engine that woke…

      Sixteen

      The sun was almost up, and I stretched beside the…

      Seventeen

      “The intention was for me to say good-bye,” I said,…

      Eighteen

      I’d already used the glass-and-tile shower in the front bathroom,…

      Nineteen

      Istared at the closed door, hearing a muttered conversation behind…

      Twenty

      Ileaned forward over the backseat to look up at the…

      Twenty-One

      “Isaid pipe down!” Vivian said crossly when the room reacted…

      Twenty-Two

      Trent bowed his head as the auditorium erupted in noise.

      Twenty-Three

      Sliding, I hit the red soil face-first, eyes clenched shut…

      Twenty-Four

      The transition was smoother this time as we crossed merely…

      Twenty-Five

      Frightened, I stood amid a smattering of exclamations. Some were…

      Twenty-Six

      The dry hush of sliding coals woke me, and I…

      Twenty-Seven

      The discordant jangle of San Francisco’s broken ley lines flooded…

      Twenty-Eight

      The vivid maroons and contrasting golds of the carpet had…

      Twenty-Nine

      The rasp of the side door opening was loud, and…

      Thirty

      Iscreamed, raw and pained, and it was real. My agony…

      Thirty-One

      Ilooked at my hands as they pressed the cookie cutter…

      Thirty-Two

      Trent’s long black car pulled up to the curb, a…

      Acknowledgments

      Other Books by Kim Harrison

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      One

      “Brown or green for the drapes, Rache?”

      Jenks’s voice slid into my dozing state, and I opened an eyelid a crack to find him hovering inches from my nose. The sun was hot, and I didn’t want to move, even if his wings provided a cold draft. “Too close. I can’t see,” I said as I shifted in the webbed lounge chair, and he drifted back, his dragonflylike wings humming fast enough to spill a red-tinted pixy dust over my bare middle. June, sunbathing, and Cincinnati normally didn’t go together, but today was my last day to get a tan before I headed west for my brother’s wedding.

      Two bundles of fabric were draped over Jenks’s arms, spider silk most likely dyed and woven by one of his daughters. His shoulder-length curly blond hair—uncut since his wife’s death—was tied back with a bit of twine to show his angular, pinched features. I thought it odd that a pixy able to fend off an entire team of assassins was worried about the color of his drapes.

      “Well,” I hedged, not more confident in this than he was, “the green goes with the floor, but I’d go with the taupe. You need some visual warmth down there.”

      “Brown?” he said, looking at it doubtfully. “I thought you liked the green tile.”

      “I do,” I explained, thinking that breaking up a pop bottle for floor tile was ingenious. “But if you make everything the same color, you’ll wind up back in the seventies.”

      Jenks’s wings dropped in pitch, and his shoulders slumped. “I’m not good at this,” he whispered, becoming melancholy as he remembered Matalina. “Tell me which one.”

      I cringed inside. I wanted to give him a hug, but he was only four inches tall. Small, yes, but the pixy had saved my life more times than I had spell pots in my kitchen. Sometimes, though, I felt as if we were worlds apart. “Taupe,” I said.

      “Thanks.” Trailing dull gold dust, Jenks flew in a downward arc to the knee-high wall that separated my backyard from the graveyard. The high-walled graveyard was mine, too, or Jenks’s, actually, seeing that he owned the deed, but I was the one who mowed the lawn.

      Heartache took me, and the sun seemed a little cooler as I watched Jenks’s dust trail vanish under the sprouting bluebells and moss, and into his new bachelor-size home. The last few months had been hard on him as he learned to live without Matalina. My being able to become small enough to help him through that first difficult day had gone a long way in convincing me that demon magic wasn’t bad unless you used it for a dark purpose.

      The breeze cooled the corner of my eye, and I smiled even as I dabbed the almost tear away. I could smell the newly cut grass, and the noise of a nearby mower rose high over the distant hum of Cincinnati, across the river. There was a stack of decorating magazines beside my suntan oil and a glass of melted iced tea—the lull before the storm. Tomorrow would be the beginning of my personal hell, and it was going to last the entire week, through the annual witches’ conference. What happened after that was anyone’s guess.

      Nervous,