Pale Demon
A stirring instalment of the urban fantasy-thriller series starring Rachel Morgan. A pacey and addictive novel of sexy bounty-hunting witches, cunning demons and vicious vampires.Condemned and shunned for black magic, Rachel Morgan has three days to get to the annual witches’ conference and clear her name, or be trapped in the demonic ever-after . . . forever after.But a witch, an elf, a living vampire, and a pixy in one car going across the country? Talk about a recipe for certain disaster, even without being the targets for assassination.For after centuries of torment, a fearsome demon walks in the sunlight – freed at last to slay the innocent and devour their souls. But his ultimate goal is Rachel Morgan, and in the fight for survival that follows, even embracing her own demonic nature may not be enough to save her.
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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.
