The Hollows Series Books 1-4

I put the pepper in the sink and leaned against the counter. “Trent runs biodrugs,” I said, hearing the ugliness anew as I said it. “If he knew I was going to try and tag him with that, he’d kill me quicker than the I.S.”

“But he doesn’t.” Ivy drew another line. “All he knows is you think he runs Brimstone and had his secretary murdered. If he was worried, he wouldn’t have offered you that job.”

“Job?” I said, turning my back to her as I washed the pepper. “It’s in the South Seas—running his Brimstone plantations, no doubt. He wants me out of the way, that’s all.”

“How about that,” she said as she capped her pen by pounding it on the table. Startled, I spun, flinging drops of water everywhere. “He thinks you’re a threat,” she finished, making a show of brushing away the water I had accidentally hit her with.

I gave her a sheepish smile, hoping she couldn’t tell she had me on edge. “I hadn’t thought about it that way,” I said.

Ivy went back to her map, frowning as she dabbed at the stains the water had made on her crisp lines. “Give me some time to check around,” she said in a preoccupied voice. “If we can get ahold of his financial records and a few of his buyers, we can find a paper trail. But I still say it’s just Brimstone.”

I yanked open the fridge for the Parmesan and mozzarella. If Trent didn’t run biodrugs, then I was a pixy princess. There was a clatter as Ivy tossed one of her markers into the cup beside her monitor. My back was to her, and the noise startled me.

“Just because he has a drawer full of discs labeled with diseases once helped by biodrugs doesn’t mean he’s a drug lord,” Ivy said, throwing another. “Maybe they’re client lists. The man is big into philanthropy. Keeps half a dozen country hospitals running alone with his donations.”

“Maybe,” I said, unconvinced. I knew about Trent’s generous contributions. Last fall he had been auctioned off in Cincinnati’s For the Children charity for more money than I used to make in a year. Personally, I thought his efforts were a publicity front. The man was dirt.

“Besides,” Ivy said as she leaned back in her chair and tossed another one of her markers into the cup in an unreal show of hand-eye coordination. “Why would he be running biodrugs? The man is independently wealthy. He doesn’t need any more money. People are motivated by three things, Rachel. Love …” A red marker clattered in with the rest. “Revenge …” A black one landed next to it. “And power,” she finished, tossing in a green one. “Trent has enough money to buy all three.”

“You forgot one,” I said, wondering if I should just keep my mouth shut. “Family.”

Ivy grabbed the pens out of the cup. Leaning back in her chair to balance on two legs, she started tossing them again. “Doesn’t family come in with love?” she asked.

I watched her from the corner of my sight. Not if they were dead, I thought, my memories turning to my dad. In that case, it might come under revenge.

The kitchen went silent as I sprinkled a thin dusting of Parmesan on the sauce. Only the clacks of Ivy’s pens broke the stillness. Every single one went in, the sporadic rattles getting on my nerves. The pens stopped, and I froze in alarm. Her face was shadowed. I couldn’t see if her eyes were going black. My heartbeat quickened, and I didn’t move, waiting.

“Why don’t you just stake me, Rachel?” she said in exasperation as she flipped her hair aside to show me irate brown eyes. “I’m not going to jump you. I said Friday was an accident.”

Shoulders easing, I rummaged loudly in the drawer for a can opener for the mushrooms. “A pretty freaking scary accident,” I muttered under my breath as I drained them.

“I heard that.” She hesitated. A pen landed in the cup with a rattle. “You, ah, did read the book, right?” she asked.

“Most of it,” I admitted, then went alarmed. “Why, am I doing something wrong?”

“You’re ticking me off, that’s what you’re doing wrong,” she said, her voice raised. “Stop watching me. I’m not an animal. I may be a vampire, but I still have a soul.”

I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t even mouth an answer to that. There was a clatter as she dropped her remaining markers in the pencil cup. The silence grew heavy as she pulled her maps to her. I turned my back on her to prove I trusted her. I didn’t, though. Putting the pepper on the cutting board, I yanked open a drawer and banged noisily about until I found a huge knife. It was too big to cut peppers, but I was feeling vulnerable and that was the knife I was going to use.

“Uh …” Ivy hesitated. “You’re not putting peppers on that, are you?”

My breath slipped from me and I set the knife down. We probably wouldn’t have anything on our pizza but cheese. Silently, I put the pepper back in the refrigerator. “What’s a pizza without peppers?” I whispered under my breath.

“Edible,” was her prompt response, and I grimaced. She wasn’t supposed to hear that.

My eyes traveled over the counter and my assembled goodies. “Mushrooms okay?”

“Can’t have pizza without them.”

I layered slices of slimy brown atop the Parmesan. Ivy rattled her map, and I snuck an unhelped glance at her.

“You never did tell me what you did with Francis,” she said.

“I left him in his open trunk. Someone will douse him in saltwater. I think I broke his car. It doesn’t accelerate anymore, no matter what gear I put it in and how loud I race it.”

Ivy laughed and my skin crawled. As if daring me to object, she rose, coming to lean against the counter. My tension flowed back. It doubled when she eased herself up with a controlled slowness to sit on the counter beside me. “So,” she said, opening the bag of pepperoni and provocatively placing a slice in her mouth. “What do you think he is?”

She was eating. Great.

“Francis?” I asked, surprised she had to ask. “He’s an idiot.”

“No, Trent.”

I held my hand out for the pepperoni and she set the bag on my palm. “I don’t know, but he isn’t a vamp. He thought my perfume was to cover up my witch smell, not—uh—yours.” I felt awkward with her that close, and I dealt the pepperoni like cards onto the pizza. “And his teeth aren’t sharp enough.” Finished, I put the bag in the refrigerator, out of Ivy’s reach.

“They could be capped.” Ivy stared at the refrigerator and the unseen pepperoni. “It would be harder to be a practicing vamp, but it’s been done.”

My thoughts went back to Table 6.1, with its too helpful diagrams, and I shuddered, disguising it in my reach for the tomato. Ivy bobbed her head in agreement as my hand hovered over it in question. “No,” I said confidently, “he doesn’t have that lack of understanding of personal space every living vamp I’ve met besides you seems to have.”

As soon as I said it, I wished I could take it back. Ivy stiffened, and I wondered if the unnatural distance she put between herself and everyone had everything to do with her being a nonpracticing vamp. It must be frustrating, second-guessing your every move, wondering if your head prompted it or your hunger. No wonder Ivy had a tendency to fly off the handle. She was fighting a thousand year instinct with no one to help her find her way. I hesitated, then asked, “Is there a way to tell if Trent is a human scion?”

“Human scion?” she said, sounding surprised. “There’s a thought.”

I sent the knife through the tomato to make little red squares. “It sort of fits. He has the inner strength, grace, and personal power of a vampire but without the touchy feely. And I’d stake my life that he’s not a witch or warlock. It’s more than him lacking even the barest hint of a redwood smell. It’s the way he moves, the light in the back of his eyes.…” I went still as I recalled his unreadable green eyes.

Ivy slipped off the counter, pilfering a pepperoni off the pizza. I casually moved it to the other side of the sink and away from her. She followed, taking another. There was a soft buzz as Jenks flew in through the window. He had a mushroom in his arms almost as large as himself, bringing the smell of dirt into the kitchen. I glanced at Ivy, and she shrugged.

“Hey, Jenks,” Ivy said as she moved back to her chair in the corner of the kitchen. Apparently we’d passed the “I can stand right next to you and not bite you” test. “What do you think? Is Trent a Were?”

Jenks dropped the mushroom, his tiny face shifting with anger. His wings blurred to nothing. “How should I know if Trent is a Were?” he snapped. “I didn’t get close enough. I got caught. Okay? Jenks got caught. Happy now?” He flew to the window. Standing beside Mr. Fish with his hands on his hips, he stared into the dark.

Ivy shook her head with a look of disgust. “So you got caught. Big freaking deal. They knew who Rachel was, and you don’t see her whining over it.”

Actually, I had thrown my tantrum on the way home, which might have accounted for the odd noise Francis’s car was making when I left it in the mall parking lot in the shade of a tree.

Jenks darted to hover three inches before Ivy’s nose. His wings were red in anger. “You have a gardener trap you in a glass ball and see if it doesn’t give you a new outlook on life, Little Miss Merry Sunshine.”

My bad mood slipped away as I watched a four-inch pixy confront a vamp. “Knock it off, Jenks,” I said lightly. “I don’t think he was a real gardener.”

“Really?” he said sarcastically, flying to me. “You think?”

Behind him, Ivy pretended to squish Jenks between her finger and thumb. Rolling her eyes, she returned to her maps. A silence grew, not comfortable, but not awkward, either. Jenks flitted down to his mushroom and brought it to me, dirt and all. He was dressed in a loose, very casual outfit. The flowing silk was the color of wet moss, and the cut of it made him look like a desert sheik. His blond hair was slicked back and I thought I smelled soap. I’d never seen a pixy relaxing at home. It was kind of nice.

“Here,” he said awkwardly, rolling the mushroom to a stop beside me. “I found it in the garden. I thought you might want it. For your pizza tonight.”

“Thanks, Jenks,” I said, brushing off the dirt.

“Look,” he said as he backed away three steps. His wings were a confusing flash of motion and stillness. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I was supposed to back you up, not get caught.”