Read Online The Undead Pool by Kim Harrison - Free Book Online Page A

afraid of what my ley line looked like.
    â€œThank you,” I said, and he grumbled something under his breath, shoving his arms in the sleeves and leaning to throw another log on the fire to keep it going until he got back.
    â€œThere are no monsters under your bed, Rachel, or in your closet.”
    Mood improved, I waited as he checked the buttons on his sleeves and fluffed the lace at his throat. “I found Newt in my closet once.”
    He gave me a sideways look and grabbed a mundane oil lamp from a shelf. Nose wrinkling, he did an ignition curse and the lamp glowed. “Damn surface demons. If it’s not the sun burning your aura off, it’s the surface demons harrying you at night.” He stood poised, arms wide. “Well, let’s go! I’ve got things to do tonight that don’t involve you and your pathetically slowly evolving skills.”
    I felt better as I came forward to stand with him on the elaborately detailed circle of stone he used as a door. I must have done something right. Sure enough, I felt his satisfaction as the line took us, his kitchen dissolving into nothing as he flung us back to the surface and some place distant from his underground home.
    Reality misted back into existence with a gentle ease that made it hard to believe that we had moved. A red-tinted haze struck me, and the gritty wind. Squinting, I turned to the sun still hanging over the horizon. The heat of the day continued to rise from the dry, caked earth, but I could feel a chill in the fading light. Red soil looked as black as old blood in the shadows.
    We were at Loveland Castle, and the slump of rock that was all that was left of it here in the ever-after loomed behind us. My ley line hummed at chest height, looking, as Al sourly informed me, as right as rain in the desert, and could we go home now?
    Arms about my middle, I spun. Almost unseen in the distance were the crumbling towers of Cincinnati. Nothing but dry grasses and the occasional scrubby tree filled the space between here and there. And rocks. There were rocks. It was the savanna in a decade-long drought.
    Except for that odd green circle . . .
    â€œWhat is that?” I whispered as I realized there was a figure upon the grass, withering on the ground, and Al grunted as he followed my gaze.
    â€œMother pus bucket,” he muttered, head down as he began stomping toward it. “She’s at it again.”
    â€œShe?” But Al hadn’t stopped, and I hastened to catch up. Oh God, it’s Newt, I thought as I saw her unmistakable silhouette standing just outside the circle of green, her arms raised, bare where her androgynous robe had slipped to her elbows. She had short, spiky red hair today, a squat, cylindrical cap done in shades of black and gold atop her head, the colors repeated on her sash and slippers and stained red with the setting sun. A black staff was in her hand as she gestured and chanted at the figure on the living green, crazy as a loon in spring.
    â€œWhat is she doing?” I said, shocked more from the green grass than anything else.
    â€œCalibration curse,” he said softly. “Maybe she heard about the misfires.” And then he raised his voice. “Newt, love! What has the poor devil ever done to you?”
    Clearly knowing we were here, the demon shifted her staff to both hands and held it level before her to pause in her magic. Within the fifteen-foot circle, the surface demon looked up, his thin chest heaving as he panted. His aura looked almost solid, the hatred from his eyes clear. There was a sword at his feet, the red light of the sun gleaming cleanly on it, and as I watched, a sun-brown hand crept out and gripped it.
    â€œIt exists,” Newt said, her voice feminine even if the rest of her looked ambiguous. “It’s an affront. What will happen to them when the ever-after collapses? That’s what I want to know. Poor fools.”
    Fear rippled through me, and