The Hollows Series Books 1-4. Kim Harrison

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СКАЧАТЬ Seeing me watching him, he barked out a hail. The other two started to converge, loping forward with an unhurried grace. I swallowed hard. I was dog chow. That’s it. Dog chow. Game over. Hit the reset button.

      Spinning, I grabbed the door handle and jerked it up. I dove in, slamming the door behind me. “Drive!” I shouted, turning to look out the back window.

      The man’s long face took on a tinge of disgust as he glanced behind him in his rearview mirror. “Are they with you?”

      “No! Does this thing move, or do you just sit in it and play with yourself?”

      Making a low noise of irritation, he accelerated smoothly. I spun in my seat, watching the Weres come to a halt in the middle of the street. Horns blew from the cars forced to stop for them. Turning back around, I clutched my fish canister and closed my eyes in relief. I was going to get Ivy for this. I swear, I was going to use her precious maps as weed block in the garden. She was supposed to pick me up, not send some FIB flunky.

      Pulse slowing, I turned to look at him. He was a good head taller than me, which was saying something—with nice shoulders, curly black hair cut close to his skull, square jaw, and a stiff attitude just begging for me to smack him. Comfortably muscled without going overboard, there wasn’t even the hint of a gut on him. In his perfectly fitting black suit, white shirt, and black tie, he could be the FIB poster boy. His mustache and beard were cut in the latest style—so minimal that they almost weren’t there—and I thought he might do better to lighten up on his aftershave. I eyed the handcuff pouch on his belt, wishing I still had mine. They had belonged to the I.S., and I missed them dearly.

      Jenks settled himself at his usual spot on the rearview mirror where the wind wouldn’t tear his wings, and the stiff-necked man watched him with an intentness that told me he had little contact with pixies. Lucky him.

      A call came over the radio about a shoplifter at the mall, and he snapped it off. “Thanks for the ride,” I said. “Ivy sent you?”

      He tore his eyes from Jenks. “No. She said you’d be here. Captain Edden wants to talk you. Something concerning Councilman Trent Kalamack,” the FIB officer added indifferently.

      “Kalamack!” I yelped, then cursed myself for having said anything. The wealthy bastard wanted me to work for him or see me dead. It depended on his mood and how well his stock portfolio was doing. “Kalamack, huh?” I amended, shifting uneasily in the leather seat. “Why is Edden sending you to fetch me? You on his hit list this week?”

      He said nothing, his blocky hands gripping the wheel so tight that his fingernails went white. The silence grew. We went through a yellow light shifting to red. “Ah, who are you?” I finally asked.

      He made a scoffing noise deep in his throat. I was used to wary distrust from most humans. This guy wasn’t afraid, and it was ticking me off. “Detective Glenn, ma’am,” he said.

      “Ma’am,” Jenks said, laughing. “He called you ma’am.”

      I scowled at Jenks. He looked young to have made detective. The FIB must have been getting desperate. “Well, thank you, Detective Glade,” I said, mangling his name. “You can drop me off anywhere. I can take the bus from here. I’ll come out to see Captain Edden tomorrow. I’m working an important case right now.”

      Jenks snickered, and the man flushed, the red almost hidden behind his dark skin. “It’s Glenn, ma’am. And I saw your important case. Want me to take you back to the fountain?”

      “No,” I said, slumping in my seat, thoughts of angry young Weres going through my head. “I appreciate the lift to my office, though. It’s in the Hollows, take the next left.”

      “I’m not your driver,” he said grimly, clearly unhappy. “I’m your delivery boy.”

      I shifted my arm inside as he rolled the window up from his control panel. Immediately it grew stuffy. Jenks flitted to the ceiling, trapped. “What the hell are you doing?” he shrilled.

      “Yeah!” I exclaimed, more irate than worried. “What’s up?”

      “Captain Edden wants to see you now, Ms. Morgan, not tomorrow.” His gaze darted from the street to me. His jaw was tight, and I didn’t like his nasty smile. “And if you so much as reach for a spell, I’ll yank your witch butt out of my car, cuff you, and throw you in the trunk. Captain Edden sent me to get you, but he didn’t say what kind of shape you had to be in.”

      Jenks alighted on my earring, swearing up a blue streak. I repeatedly flicked the switch for the window, but Glenn had locked it. I settled back with a huff. I could jam my finger in Glenn’s eye and force us off the road, but why? I knew where I was going. And Edden would see that I had a ride home. It ticked me off, though, running into a human who had more gall than I did. What was the city coming to?

      A sullen silence descended. I took my sunglasses off and leaned over, noticing the man was going fifteen over the posted limit. Figures.

      “Watch this,” Jenks whispered. My eyebrows rose as the pixy flitted from my earring. The autumn sun coming in was suddenly full of sparkles as he surreptitiously sifted a glowing dust over the detective. I’d bet my best pair of lace panties it wasn’t the usual pixy dust. Glenn had been pixed.

      I hid a smile. In about twenty minutes Glenn would be itching so bad he wouldn’t be able to sit still. “So, how come you aren’t scared of me?” I asked brazenly, feeling vastly better.

      “A witch family lived next door when I was a kid,” he said warily. “They had a girl my age. She hit me with just about everything a witch can do to a person.” A faint smile crossed his square face to make him look very un-FIBlike. “The saddest day of my life was when she moved away.”

      I made a pouty face. “Poor baby,” I said, and his scowl returned. I wasn’t pleased, though. Edden sent him to pick me up because he had known I couldn’t bully him.

      I hated Mondays.

       Two

      The gray stone of the FIB tower caught the late afternoon sun as we parked in one of the reserved slots right in front of the building. The street was busy, and Glenn stiffly escorted me and my fish in through the front door. Tiny blisters between his neck and collar were already starting to show a sore-looking pink against his dark skin.

      Jenks noticed my eyes on them and snorted. “Looks like Mr. FIB Detective is sensitive to pixy dust,” he whispered. “It’s going to run through his lymphatic system. He’s going to be itching in places he didn’t know he had.”

      “Really?” I asked, appalled. Usually you only itched where the dust hit. Glenn was in for twenty-four hours of pure torture.

      “Yeah, he won’t be trapping a pixy in a car again.”

      But I thought I heard a tinge of guilt in his voice, and he wasn’t humming his victory song about daisies and steel glinting red in the moonlight, either. My steps faltered before crossing the FIB emblem inlaid in the lobby floor. I wasn’t superstitious—apart from when it might save my life—but I was entering what was generally humans-only territory. I didn’t like being a minority.

      The sporadic conversation and clatter of keyboards remind me of my old job with the I.S., and my shoulders eased. СКАЧАТЬ