Chapters (48)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- The Undead Pool: An Excerpt
- Chapter 2
- About the Author
- Also by Kim Harrison
- Credits
- About the Publisher
The door sighed shut behind me, but the bus didn’t move. I glanced through the door at the driver, and he motioned for me to cross in front of him. Either he was a gentleman or he wanted to see me walk into the church in my beautiful bridesmaid dress and kick-ass boots.
Jenks snickered. Pulling the damp air deeply into my lungs, I ignored the faces pressed against the window, hiked up my dress to keep it from getting dirty, and crossed the one-way street through the fog glowing from the bus’s headlamps.
An usher waited in a pool of humid light, the big, burly guy taking a stance at the top of the stairs before the doors. “I’ll get him,” Jenks said. “You might mess up your hair.”
“Naaaah,” I said, conscious of the bus behind me, now tilting since everyone was on the one side watching. “I’ll do it.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “Will you be okay for a second? I want to do a periphery.”
“Yup,” I said, taking the steps with my dress hitched up high.
Jenks zipped off, and when I reached the landing before the doors, I settled my dress and smiled at the guy. He was dark like Quen, and I wondered if he was one of the Withons’ personal attendants. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said with a soft surfer-boy accent. “The wedding has started. You’ll have to wait and join the party at the reception.”
“You’re not nearly as sorry as you’re going to be if you don’t get out of my way.” I thought it a fair enough warning, but he saw the pretty dress and the present in my hands and assumed flake. Okay, I was a flake, but I was a flake in ass-kicking boots.
I went to edge past him, and he touched my shoulder. Oooooooh, big mistake.
Jenks came back right about then, whooping as I spun, gripping the guard’s wrist and swinging my elbow into his nose without ever dropping the present. “Oh! That had to hurt!” the pixy cried as the man stumbled back, hand over his broken nose, eyes tearing and hunched in pain.
“Sorry,” I said. Shaking out my dress, I drew myself up and pulled on the door. From behind me came a harsh toot from the bus. Framed in the threshold, I turned and gave them all a bunny-eared “kiss-kiss.”
Still, the man wasn’t unconscious, and I ought to move before he remembered to do something. I strolled in, my dress getting me past the hangers-on between the front doors and the christening pool with no resistance save whispers.