an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.
We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books
The quality paperback had arrived – and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy.We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.
So wherever you see the little bird – whether it’s on a piece of prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force or historical masterpiece, a serial-killer thriller, reference book, world classic or a piece of pure escapism – you can bet that it represents the very best that the genre has to offer.
www.penguin.co.uk
Join the conversation:
Twitter Facebook
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, Block D, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Gauteng 2193, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England
www.penguin.com
First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2011
First published in Great Britain by Berkley UK 2012
Copyright © Kalayna Price, 2011
Cover illustration © Aleta Rafton
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-141-97245-9
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgments
To Jessica Wade, who believes in Alex and my story and who worked with me to make sure that story was told. There are not thanks enough for everything you’ve done for me through the process of getting this book out on shelves. And to the entire team at Roc, who makes this series possible.
To my fabulous agent, Lucienne Diver, for believing in my voice and getting the books out to the world.
To the Tri Mu: Christy, Nikki, Sarah, Vert, and Vikki, and to George for your encouragement and honest critiques.
To all the speakers and instructors at the Writer’s Police Academy. I took great liberties with what you taught me, but you gave me a solid base from which to spring.
To my friends and family, who encourage and support me, and to the artists, authors, and musicians who inspire me.
And to the readers. This story is for you, and I hope you enjoy Alex’s continuing adventure.
Thank you all. You all mean more to me than I can say.
BERKLEY UK
Kalayna Price is a writer, painter and hoop dancer residing in the Carolinas. She draws ideas from the world around her, her studies into ancient mythologies, and her readings of classical folklore. Her stories contain not only the mystical elements of fantasy, but also a healthy helping of action, a dash of romance, a bit of gritty horror, some humour and a large serving of mystery. To find out more, please visit her at www.kalayna.com
To Kist,
who keeps me fed and watered, and who
is always quick with the emotional duct tape
when everything is falling apart
When I first straddled the chasm between the land of the dead and the world of the living, I accidentally raised the shade of our recently deceased Pekinese. The former champion dog floating around our backyard resulted in my father shipping me off to a wyrd boarding school. Seventeen years later, I still reached across that chasm, but now I got paid to do it.
“That isn’t a body, John,” I said, staring at the open black bag. “It’s a foot.” A pale, bloated, waterlogged foot.
John Matthews, personal friend and one of the best homicide detectives in Nekros City, nodded. “It’s a left foot, to be precise, and I have two more back at the morgue. What can you tell me?”
I frowned and nudged the toe of my boot at a clump of grass sprouting between chunks of loose gravel. My business cards read: ALEX CRAFT, LEAD PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR AND GRAVE WITCH FOR TONGUES FOR THE DEAD. I was actually the owner and only employee of the firm, but that was beside the point. I raised shades and gave the living a chance to question the dead—for a fee. My work tended to take me to a lot of graveyards, the occasional funeral home, and to the Nekros City morgue. The parking pit for the Sionan Floodplain Nature Preserve was most definitely not my typical working environment. Nor was a single severed appendage my typical job.
“Sorry, John, but I need more than a foot to raise a shade.”
“And I need some better news.” His shoulders slumped as if he’d deflated. “We’ve been scouring this swamp for two days and we’re turning up more questions than answers. We’ve got no IDs for the vics, no obvious causes of death, and no primary crime scenes. You sure you can’t give me anything?” As he spoke, he shoved the flap on the body bag farther open with the butt of his pen.
The foot lay in a sea of black plastic. The sickly scent of rot filled the humid afternoon air, coating the inside of my nose, my throat. The bloodless skin had sloughed off the exposed ankle, the strips of yellowish flesh shriveling. My stomach twisted and I looked away. I’d leave the physical inspection to the medical examiner—my affinity for the dead was less for the tangible and more for the spectral. Memories hid in every cell of the body. Memories that my grave magic could unlock and give shape as a shade. Of course, that depended on having enough of the body—and thus cells—at my disposal for my magic to fill in the gaps. I didn’t need to cast a magic circle and begin a ritual to know I couldn’t pull a shade from the foot. I could sense that fact, the same way I could sense that the foot had belonged to a male, probably in his late sixties. I could also sense the nasty tangle of spells all but dripping from the decaying appendage.
“The foot is saturated with magic. Some pretty dark stuff from the feel of it,” I said, taking a step back from the gurney and the sticky residual magic emanating from the foot. “I’m guessing you already have a team deciphering the spells?”
“Yeah, but so far the anti–black magic unit hasn’t reached any conclusions. It would really help if we could question the victim.”
But that wasn’t going to happen with such a small percentage of the body. “You said you had a matching foot back at the morgue? Maybe if we assemble all the parts, there will be enough to—”
John shook his head. “Dancing jokes aside, unless this guy had two left feet—literally—neither of the other feet belong to him.”
Three left feet? That meant at least three victims. “You’re thinking serial?”
“Don’t say that too loud,” John said, his gaze flashing to a passing pair of crime scene technicians headed toward the dense old-growth forest. “No official determination yet, but, yeah, I’m thinking serial.” His grizzly bear–sized form sagged further and his mustache twitched as he frowned. The mustache had been a thick red accent to his expressions as long as I’d known him, but in the weeks since he’d woken from a spell-induced coma, slivers of gray had joined the red. He pushed the flap of the body bag closed. “Park rangers found the first foot yesterday morning when they were checking the paths after the recent flooding. We got wardens and cadaver dogs out here, and the second foot turned up. When we found the third, I pulled some strings to hire you as a consultant.”
“Do you want me to stick around? Wait and see if your guys find more of the body?”
“Actually”—John rubbed a hand over his head, wiping away the sweat glistening on his spreading bald spot—“I was hoping you’d join the search.”
I hesitated. I probably even blanched. Wandering around with my shields down sensing every dead creature most definitely was not my idea of a good—or safe—time.
John didn’t miss my pause. “You’ve located DBs before,” he said. DBs as in dead bodies. “And the paperwork you signed covered the possibility of searching the swamp, so you’ll be paid for your time.”
I opened my mouth to respond—while I might have qualms about opening my psyche to whatever might be in the floodplain, we both knew I’d risk it—but I was interrupted before I could answer.
“What’s wrong, Craft?” Detective Jenson, John’s partner, asked as he stepped around the side of a black SUV. “Don’t want to get those tight pants dirty tramping through the swamp? Got another TV appearance to run off to? Or maybe your magic eye license doesn’t allow you to do any good old-fashioned legwork.”
I glared at him, and I had to unclench my gritted teeth to answer. “Way to be hypocritical, Jenson, insulting me and in the same breath asking me to use magic to help.” The term “magic eye” was derogatory slang for a witch PI.
“I’m not asking you for anything.” He leaned back on his heels and crossed his arms over his chest. “And I think this city has seen enough of your magic lately, what with the way they keep rebroadcasting that interview with you getting all touchy-feely with a ghost.”
“What’s wrong? Jealous?” I asked, cocking a hip and tossing curls out of my face. Okay, so I was goading him, but he was being an ass. A few days ago I’d participated in the first studio interview of a ghost, and to keep said ghost visible I’d had to remain in contact with him, but I’d most certainly not gotten “touchy-feely” or any such crap.
John cleared his throat. “That’s enough.” He glanced between us, then turned to his partner. “Get Alex some hip waders and let the wardens know we’ll be joining them.”
Jenson sneered at me—an expression I returned—and said, “Sure. Boots for the two-legged corpse hound. I’ll get right on that.” He disappeared around the side of the SUV.
I stared at the spot where he’d been standing. “What a jerk.” Things hadn’t always been so antagonistic between us. In fact, we’d almost been friends. Then a month ago his attitude had gone to shit. The change coincided perfectly with John’s taking a spelled bullet aimed at me. Coincidence? Doubtful.
“I don’t know what’s going on between you two,” John said, turning back toward me, “but let’s not forget we’ve got three severed feet and no leads. Now, before we go in there, I suggest turning your shirt inside out.”
“You what?”
John waved a tech over to take custody of the bagged foot; then he scooped my purse off the ground, where I’d set it earlier. He handed the red bag to me and nodded toward his car.
“The park rangers warned us when we started searching that the local fae delight in leading hikers astray. The unwary can end up wandering through the same patch of land for days. Pixie-led, they call it. Turning your shirt inside out is supposed to confuse their magic.”
I glanced down at my tank top, the shirt clinging to me in the afternoon heat. “Are you thinking fae are involved in the murders?”
John’s mustache twitched. “That’s another thing you shouldn’t say too loud.”
“Right.” I ducked inside John’s car to shimmy out of the top. Not that I thought reversing it would really protect me against fae magic. The fae relied mostly on glamour—a belief magic so strong, it could reshape reality, at least temporarily.
By the time I’d re-dressed, Jenson had dropped off a pair of hip waders for me. They were a thick, waterproof one-piece with suspenders and attached boots. I stepped into them, pulling the brown material up over my clothes. They nearly reached my collarbone.
“We aren’t seriously planning to wade chest-deep, are we?” I asked as I adjusted the suspender straps.
John, who’d also suited up in a pair of waders, handed me a plastic bottle of water. “Nah. With the speed the water is retreating, we’d be in danger of getting swept away. If you sense the bodies in the deep water, we’ll have to send a team out. Ready?”
I nodded and followed him toward the closest path into the floodplain. John collected a couple of officers as we trekked into the forest, and I wasn’t the least bit disappointed when Jenson didn’t join us. The forest canopy filtered the sun, but the humidity under the trees hung heavy, making the air thick. Sweat coated my skin, and my blond curls clung to my cheeks and neck. I cracked the seal of my water bottle, but took only one long swig—no telling how long we’d be hiking.
“That is where the first foot was found,” John said after we’d been walking for half an hour. He nodded ahead of him to where yellow crime tape ringed the path. “The second was found about a quarter mile farther up the path; the third a mile or more to the south. We’re not sure yet if the recent flooding unearthed shallow graves or if the bodies were dumped farther upstream and floated into the floodplain, but with the speed the water is retreating, every passing minute increases the chance of our evidence washing away. We need to find those bodies.”
And that was my cue.
I unclasped my silver charm bracelet. Among other charms, the bracelet carried the extra shields that helped buffer the excess of grave essence always trying to drag my psyche across the chasm to the land of the dead. Of course, that was the very chasm I now needed to traverse. As soon as the silver charms lost contact with my skin, a frigid wind lifted around me—the chill of the grave clawing at my remaining mental shields. I cracked those shields, imagining the living vines I visualized as my personal mental wall slithering apart, opening small gaps to my psyche.
The world around me lost the rich hues of life as a gray patina covered everything. My vision doubled as I saw both the land of the dead and the land of the living. In my grave-sight, the trees darkened, withering, their thick green leaves turning brown, and the officers’ clothing decayed, the cloth becoming threadbare and moth-eaten. Under those mottled rags, their souls shimmered bright yellow. I looked away.
Unfortunately, opening my shields exposed me to more than just the land of the dead. The Aetheric—the plane in which raw magic existed—snapped into focus around me in swirls of brilliant red, vivid blues, and every other color imaginable. The magic twisted, tauntingly close, but I ignored the raw energy. It wasn’t supposed to be visible, even with my shields open. Witches didn’t physically interact with the Aetheric plane. It wasn’t possible. Or at least it shouldn’t have been. But I’d been able to see the Aetheric, to reach it, ever since the Blood Moon a month ago.
Being able to do something didn’t mean I should. Or that it was safe.
I ignored the colors, forcing my eyes to focus on the decaying forest as I reached out with my senses, feeling for the grave essence leaking from the dead. And there was no shortage of dead in the floodplain.
The grave essence from a dead doe reached for me like cold wind trying to cut into my skin. And to think I was hot a minute ago. Her remains were no more than fifty yards from where I stood, but I pushed my senses farther, skimming over the traces of small animal bodies and not letting the grave essence sink into my being. I trekked deeper into the floodplain, my magic flowing around me.
The path washed out not far from where the first foot had been found, and the mud made squishing, sucking sounds under my boots until even that gave way to dark water. Foliage, simultaneously healthy and decaying, withered as my gaze moved over it, and I hoped my attention didn’t damage the plants. I’d once crumbled a set of stairs when my powers pushed the land of the dead into reality.
“Anything?” John asked, trudging behind me.
Yeah, lots of things. Small animals mostly. Not exactly what we were looking for. I waved him off and kept walking. The water splashed up to the knees of my waterproof suit as I waded through it, my steps slow, both from the water rushing around me and because I was concentrating on feeling the grave essence while holding it at bay so I didn’t accidentally raise any shades.
Something … I turned in a small circle, reaching with my mind, my power. Yes, there was something. My power told me it was touching a body, a human body. Male. And I felt a female too. And … two more males?
“This isn’t good.”
John stopped beside me. “You found something?”
“Bodies. And I hope I’m wrong, but I’m sensing four different essence signatures.”
“A fourth victim?”
I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t answer. I wished I could close my eyes and concentrate just on the feel of the bodies, to get a better sense of where they were located, but it was hard enough to navigate the flooded forest with my eyes open. I waded farther in, the water lapping up to my midthighs. I slipped once, and only John’s quick reflexes kept me from landing on my ass in the murky water.
“We might be getting too deep,” John said as one of the officers, the shortest in our group, lost his footing and slipped forward in the current. He dug in his toes and righted himself a moment later.
I shook my head at John. “We’re almost there.” I could feel the bodies just ahead.
The rushing water broke around a fallen tree a couple of yards in front of us. The ancient hardwood’s giant roots stretched out in every direction, dirt still covering them, so the root-ball formed a massive mound. The tree hadn’t fallen in this particular flood—moss covered the mound and saplings clung to the root-packed earth. The grave essence emanated from somewhere around that tree, and not only grave essence but a dark knot of magic.
I stepped closer, searching with both my power and my eyes. Then I saw them.
“Feet.”
“Where?” John asked, looking around.
I pointed. In a hollow near the base of the tree was a neatly stacked pile of bloated and decomposing feet. John’s bushy eyebrows drew together, his mustache twitching downward as he frowned. He mopped sweat off his forehead before tilting his head to the side and giving me a confused look.
He doesn’t see them? I pointed again, but I wasn’t wearing gloves, so I didn’t want to contaminate the scene. Trying to figure out the differences between what I could see and what he could see was impossible while staring over multiple planes of reality, so I closed my mental shields, blocking my psyche from the land of the dead—and whatever other planes it touched. My grave-sight faded. The gray coating of the world washed away, as did the swirls of the Aetheric. And so did the feet.
I blinked as I clasped my shield bracelet back around my wrist. Releasing my grave-sight made dark shadows crawl over my vision—I couldn’t peer across planes without paying a price—but when I squinted I could make out the hollow where I’d seen the feet. An empty hollow. Or, at least, it looked empty, but I could still feel the grave essence and the taint of magic lifting off the dead appendages. The essence raked at my shields like icy claws, trying to sink under my skin, into my mind. I shivered. The feet were definitely there.
“John, we have a problem,” I said, leaning back and trying to shove my hands in my jean pockets—which were blocked by the rubber hip waders. I dropped my hands by my side as everyone looked at me. “There’s a pyramid of feet stacked in that hollow. I counted four and at a guess, they are all lefts.”
One of the uniformed officers stepped forward. He lifted a long sticklike object with a glass bead on the end. Spellchecker wand. He waved the wand over the hollow. The bead flashed a deep crimson to indicate malicious magic, but the glow was dim, the magic only traces of residual spells.
Stepping back, the officer shook his head. “No active spells, sir.”
I stared at the empty-looking hollow. “If they’re not hidden behind a spell, it has to be glamour.”
“Crap,” John said, and turned toward the cop beside him. “Someone get the FIB on the phone. We’ve got a situation.”
The FIB, as in the Fae Investigation Bureau. Glamour was exclusively fae magic, which meant John had just lost jurisdiction.
I slouched in the front of John’s police cruiser, one foot on the dash, one hanging out the open door. I’d rather have been out of the car—or more accurately, out of the floodplain. The FIB had arrived and ruffled the cops’ feathers. In turn, the cops dashed around, trying to look busy. I was just trying to stay out of the way. But being in the car made me claustrophobic. Actually, if I was honest with myself, it was more than that. Ever since the Blood Moon, being locked inside a car made me jumpy and made my skin itch. I had a sinking suspicion the sensation had something to do with the iron content in the metal. No wonder Falin drove that hot plastic convertible.
The thought of Falin Andrews made my gaze twitch toward the rearview mirror and the two FIB agents reflected in it. I’d met Falin a month ago when he’d been working undercover as a homicide detective on the Coleman case. In truth he was a FIB agent—and a fae—and during the course of the case he’d ended up under my covers as well. But I hadn’t heard from him in several weeks. As the two FIB agents approached, I could see there was no shock of long blond hair or a towering swimmer’s build among the agents who’d responded to John’s call. I wasn’t sure yet if I was grateful or disappointed.
“Miss Craft?” A woman in a tailored black power suit approached the car.
Here we go. I nodded, jerking my foot from the dash as I stood.
“I’m Special Agent Nori.” She didn’t extend her hand. “You were the one who found the remains in the hollow?”
Again I nodded, sliding my hands into my back pockets. It had been nearly an hour since I’d released my grave-sight, and my vision was returning to normal, but I still squinted as I studied Agent Nori. She was a couple of inches shorter than me in her fat-heeled pumps, but she stood completely straight, making the most of her height. She wore her dark hair slicked back like shiny black armor and her piercing eyes were set close enough that her sharp features seemed to come to a point in the front of her face. Or at least, that’s what she looked like currently. Being an FIB agent meant she was probably, but not necessarily, fae. What she might look like under her glamour was anyone’s guess. I could have dropped my shields and found out, but one, it would have been rude, and two, and perhaps more important, my eyes glowed when my psyche peered across planes, so she would have been able to tell. I wanted to get out of here without any trouble.
“Can you tell me how you were able to pierce the glamour?” she asked, which was exactly the question I’d feared. Luckily I hadn’t been waiting idly. I’d been planning my answer.
“I was helping the police search for the remains of the … remains, by using my grave magic. The glamour didn’t hide the grave essence emanating from the feet.” I left out that I’d been able to see them. Fae didn’t tend to like it when people could see through glamour. You could lose your eyes for less.
She pressed her lips together and jotted something on her notepad. “So you followed this … essence? Then what?”
“I tracked where the grave essence originated. I could feel that the body parts were there. That no one else was able to see the feet was a good hint we might be dealing with glamour.” All true—just not all of the truth.
Agent Nori clicked her pen closed. “Miss Craft, when you realized glamour was involved, you didn’t for a moment think it might have been more prudent to inform the FIB rather than let the mortals blunder around the scene?”
I bristled at the insult toward John and his team. I had a lot of friends in the Nekros City Police Department. Placing a hand on my hip, I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “They hired me.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure they appreciate your help, Miss Craft. Your services will no longer be needed.” She turned, gravel crunching under her pumps as she walked away. A few feet past the car, she glanced back over her shoulder. “You realize, of course, that this means we’ll have to look into the independent fae in the area.” The smile that spread across her face made her brilliantly red lips stretch to flash a lot of white teeth, but it wasn’t a happy smile.
I didn’t balk. I’d recently learned I was feykin, but she couldn’t know that. Could she? Plastering on my own smile, I said, “I guess so.”
She left the small gravel parking lot, no doubt headed back to the place where I’d found the pyramid of feet. As I turned to slide into the car again, movement at the tree line caught my eye. While my eyesight had recovered significantly, I’d been in touch with the land of the dead and the grave quite a bit, so at first all I could see was a moving man-shaped mesh of colors. But as the figure drew closer, I quickly realized that while male was the right gender, he wasn’t human, but fae.
He hunched, his stringy legs never fully straightening as he slunk closer. Even bent, he stood a head taller than me—and I’m not short. He had the same features as a human, but they were all slightly off. His wide eyes were dark, and overly recessed in his skull, but not from illness. His pale skin was the color of a worm’s belly, as if he had never been exposed to daylight, and his hawkish nose extended nearly a hand’s width from his face, almost hiding the thin lips and pointed chin.
Even now, seventy years after the Magical Awakening, it was rare to see an unglamoured fae. The fae had come out of the mushroom ring, as some put it, because they were fading from memory and thus the world. They needed human belief to anchor them to reality, but aside from the fae celebrities and politicians, a human was likely to see an unglamoured fae only in a venue that profited from showcasing the fae’s differences. Most of those places were little better than tourist traps.
I glanced behind me. Across the parking pit, two officers huddled around the van that had been established as a temporary headquarters for the investigation. Well, at least I’m not completely alone. Of course, just because the strange fae looked creepy and was near the place where we’d found feet masked in glamour, that didn’t make him guilty. It did make him a suspect, though. Or possibly a witness.
“Can I help you?” I yelled the question louder than needed, but I wanted to ensure that the officers also heard me. They would want to question the fae.
He paused, then hurried forward in a blur of movement. He crossed from the far edge of the parking lot to the front of John’s car before my heart had time to crash in a loud, panicked beat. The cops yelled something I didn’t catch above the blood rushing in my ears.
“Can I help you?” I asked again, not daring to look away from someone who could move as fast as this fae. I slid back a step, and then another, the movement far too slow.
“Are you daft?” he asked, his thin lips splitting with the words to reveal pointed teeth.
I blinked at him, startled, but not because of the implied insult in his words, or because of the threat in his expression. No, my shock came at the sound of his voice. The voice that emerged from that thin, awkwardly threatening body was a rich, deep baritone that made even such an angry question sound musical. He had the kind of voice that, in the old folktales, would have drawn children and young women from their beds. Unfortunately, most of those stories didn’t end well.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, taking another step back. Across the parking pit, gravel crunched under the cops’ running steps. Close. Maybe not close enough.
“Those feet were hidden for a reason.” The fae’s gaze moved over my head, and his eyes narrowed. “This is your fault, and you will regret your actions,” he said. Then, as the cops neared us, he turned, dashed back to the tree line, and disappeared.
“So, the cops couldn’t find him?” Holly, my housemate and best friend, asked as her fork slid smoothly through the slice of triple-chocolate cheesecake sitting in the center of the table.
I nodded. “He issued his threat that I would regret leading the police to the feet, and then he ran. Once he reached the tree line, he might as well have been gone.” I’d been jumpy for hours after leaving the floodplain, but today, in the afternoon sun, my tension seemed foolish. “The only thing I regret at the moment is that the FIB took over the case.”
Holly shot a conspiratorial glance at the third person at the table, my other best friend, Tamara, and then leaned forward. “Did you-know-who show?”
I frowned at my fork. “You-know-who” would be Falin, the only FIB agent the three of us knew on a first-name basis. Well, actually, I knew him a lot better than just that. Even so, two days after we’d closed the Coleman case, he’d taken off without so much as a good-bye.
I stabbed the cheesecake with a little more force than the smooth texture required. “He’s probably working some far more important case,” I said, then swallowed the bite of cheesecake without tasting it. “Good riddance. He’d complicate things.”
Holly pulled the cheesecake away from me. “Okay, so I know we have to eat this before it melts—whose idea was it to meet for lunch at an outdoor café anyway?—but don’t scarf it. These kinds of calories have to be savored.”
Tamara murmured in agreement and brandished her fork. “Oh, I’m in calorie bliss over here,” she said. “And today was Alex’s location choice.”
I shrugged. “I raised a shade to settle an insurance claim this morning. The family refused to believe their father had left a chunk of his estate to an illegitimate son’s widow, so I spent over two hours graveside while the shade verified the will line by line. I was cold. Besides, it’s not half as hot as it was a couple of weeks ago. The mid-nineties are practically a blessing in August.”
“Uh-uh,” Holly said, and made a production of sipping her iced latte. But though we were at an outdoor café, it was a café in the middle of the Magic Quarter—Nekros City’s center for all things magical and witchy. This café boasted the very best charms available for keeping customers cool and comfortable regardless of the temperature. And despite her protests, Holly wasn’t so much as breaking a sweat in her crisp courtroom-ready suit. “So, was there anyone else interesting?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively.
“Hardly.” I had to reach across the table to get to the cheesecake, but that didn’t stop me.
“Oh, come on.” Holly pushed the plate forward. “It’s been a month since I’ve seen you pick up a guy. You’ve always accused me of being a workaholic, but ever since your business picked up, all you do is raise the dead.” She set down her latte, pulled out her hair clip, and shook her red locks free. Then she smoothed her hair back again and twisted it effortlessly into a slick bun. She looked every inch the hotshot public prosecutor she was—less obvious was the fact that she was a witch in her own right. “I have court again this afternoon, but after that my caseload will be lighter. Let’s go barhopping tonight. You need to get out.”
I made a noncommittal noise and focused on my once again empty fork.
“She is out,” Tamara said, though I had the feeling her coming to my defense had more to do with her new disapproval of barhopping—a stance she’d taken about the same time the large diamond engagement ring had appeared on her finger—than with my current social habits.
Holly wasn’t exactly wrong. Business was good. Really good. In fact, it was better than it had ever been. But business wasn’t why I’d stopped barhopping. For years I’d chased away the chill that clung to me after raising shades with a stiff drink and a warm body—preferably a guy I’d never see again after our encounter. That prospect didn’t appeal to me anymore. Besides, somewhere between temporarily swapping life forces with a soul collector and discovering I was part fae a month ago, my body temperature had changed, and now most people felt blisteringly hot to the touch. There was a short list of guys who could touch me without causing us both discomfort. Actually it was a very short list. As in a list of two. That I knew of, at least. One guy had disappeared and the other … Well, that situation was complicated. It was time to change the subject.
I turned to Tamara, who, as well as being my friend, was the chief medical examiner for Nekros City. “So did the FIB take everything out of house?”
“Not yet. So far everyone is ‘cooperating.’ We’ll see how long that lasts. Honestly, though, I’m out of my league. I have seven left feet in the freezer, and I have no idea how they were severed from the legs. There are no tool marks, so I’m inclined to believe the dismemberment is connected to the snarl of magic clinging to the feet, but I’ve had no luck discerning any individual spells.” She shook her head, her lips thinning as her eyes moved past us. She was one of the foremost sensitives in the state. If neither she nor the anti–black magic unit was having any success, the spells must have been rare and powerful. She shook her head again. “Maybe I’m losing my edge. I also have three bodies on the slab with no clear cause of death. All the evidence points to their hearts simply ceasing to beat, but why? I still don’t know. I need to run some more tests.” Her gaze fixed on the cheesecake. “I paid for a third of that slice. I expect to eat my third, so don’t you hoard it.”
“Take it, girlfriend,” Holly said, pushing the plate across the table. “Sounds like you two need it more than me. All the cases I’m working for the DA are pretty dull.”
She updated us on the case she’d be trying in court this afternoon. As she spoke, a shadow caught my eye. We were in the outdoor seating area of a café on a busy corner in the Magic Quarter, so one more passing person shouldn’t have snagged my attention. Of course, this wasn’t just any random stranger.
“That’s him,” I hissed.
Holly fell silent and Tamara twisted in her chair. “Who? Where?”
“The fae from the floodplain. He’s over by the magazine rack.” I pointed at the newsstand across the street. The fae, with his strange slumped stance and hawkish nose, held a copy of what looked suspiciously like Fae Weekly—a gossip rag—but his attention wasn’t on candid pictures or exaggerated articles. His gaze locked with mine, and I swallowed hard.
“The police issued a BOLO, be on the lookout, on him, right? As a person of interest in the case? I’m calling the station.” Holly pulled her phone from her clutch, but before she flipped it open, a scream rang out down the street.
For one stalled moment, the café went quiet as all conversation stopped and the patrons turned to look. My gaze tore free of the fae and I whirled around. A block up the street, cars slammed on brakes, horns blaring, and pedestrians ran inside buildings. Tamara jumped to her feet, Holly right behind her.
I glanced back to where the fae had stood, but he’d vanished. Of course, that didn’t mean he was gone. What is going on?
A car swerved, wheels screeching as it braked, and my attention snapped back to the commotion in the street. More screams sounded as people ran, and the air tingled with dozens of charms being activated at once. Then the cause of the panic became sickeningly apparent.
A hulking form lunged onto the hood of a car, which buckled under the beast’s weight. I stared, rooted to the spot. I’d never seen anything like it. I would have said the creature was a wolf, except it was the size of a grizzly bear and covered in shaggy moss green fur. A fae beast. It tipped its head back, its nose working the air. Then its red-tinted gaze swung toward the café. Metal bunched under its claws as it hurled itself off the car.
Oh, crap. “Let’s get out of here,” I said, snagging my purse.
“Two steps ahead of you,” Tamara said, already breaking into a run. The air around her tingled as she activated a charm.
Between one step and the next she vanished behind the invisibility charm. I only wished I had one as well, but the best thing I had was my ability to run. So I did. Fast.
I’d just reached the door of the potion shop next to the café when the air around me chilled. Death appeared in front of me, his tight black T-shirt pulling taut over his muscles as he stepped forward into my path.
Soul collector, Grim Reaper, Angel of Death—whatever you called him, his job was to gather the souls of the dead and dying. Which meant, unless he’d picked a damn funny time for a social call, someone was about to breathe their last.
Who? I mouthed, not wanting to be seen talking to someone no one else could see. Not that anyone on the street was likely to notice amid the panic.
Death looked away, his heavy lids drooping to mask his deep hazel eyes. I turned, looking back at the street. Holly hadn’t run, hadn’t moved.
We were in the center of the Magic Quarter, so magic abounded. Almost everyone—witch, fae, and norm alike—was getting the hell off the street, but a handful of witches had hung back, magic snapping and crackling around them. Holly also held her ground. She stood facing the street. I could see only her profile, but her eyes were closed, her fingers twitching.
She’s crafting a spell.
A web of magic catapulted across the street from one of the pedestrians. It snarled around the beast, but with a shake, the creature shrugged off the spell and kept running. It was headed straight for the café. And Holly.
I turned back to Death. “Not her,” I whispered.
He didn’t look at me.
No! I dashed back through the tables, tripping over toppled chairs in my haste. I reached Holly just as her eyes popped open. She lifted her hands and a ball of fire burst into existence, building between her palms. The rubies she wore on her fingers—gems where she stored raw magic—glittered in the flames, and the ball of fire burst forward.
The fireball exploded against the beast’s chest, the backlash of heat slamming into us. But the beast didn’t stop. It didn’t even pause. Holly’s eyes went wide as she backpedaled. The cool and collected assistant DA was gone. The confident witch? Gone. All that remained was a mortal staring at her doom.
And behind her, Death, his expression grim.
Holly’s legs tangled in a chair, and I grabbed her arm, trying to keep her standing, to get her moving. Too late.
The beast’s red eyes locked on us, and it tipped its head back, releasing a bloodcurdling howl. It was the first sound it had made, and all other sound fell away under that howl. Then the beast was suddenly there, filling the sidewalk. Its breath, thick with the smell of rotted meat, tumbled over us. Holly could hurl fireballs, but I had no offensive magic. Hell, I could barely cast a circle. Grave magic wasn’t exactly effective on things not already dead. But it was all I had, so I reached for it.
I dropped my mental shields so fast that pain stabbed through my head. The street washed out into shades of gray, the concrete crumbling in my sight, and the chairs rusting as the land of the dead snapped into focus. Brilliant wisps of raw magic swirled through the air. The ground throbbed with the signatures and emotions absorbed from those who’d crossed it.
And the beast disappeared.
It simply vanished. A faint shimmering outline remained, but nothing substantial. In the very center of the strange shape hung a clump of glowing magic.
Beside me, Holly screamed and slammed backward into the concrete. The front of her blouse ripped open, rent by unseen claws.
Glamour.
The beast was a glamour surrounding a magical construct.
“Holly, it’s not real!”
She screamed, thrashing under something I could barely see. Around me, the Aetheric thrummed, the swirls of raw magic scattering as someone threw a spell at the beast. The spell hit the construct and then dissolved into the space that the beast only appeared to occupy.
“It’s a glamour!” I yelled as a ring of bloody bites sprouted on Holly’s shoulder.
Holly’s back arched, her arms thrashing at her sides. I reached for her, and the beast’s head snapped up. Unreal eyes focused on me, narrowed. Then it lunged.
I jumped sideways, out of its path. Its flank slammed into my side as it turned, and I stumbled. The thing might look insubstantial, but it had some mass behind it.
Dammit. No, it didn’t.
Glamour was an illusion magic so strong that reality believed it to be true—at least for a while. If you knew something was glamour, and your will was strong enough, you could disbelieve it out of existence.
But it’s hard to disbelieve in an animal actively trying to rip your throat out.
The beast’s gaze locked on me, and again it howled. The sound made me flinch. The urge to hit the ground and cover my ears gripped me, but I couldn’t. Holly’s too-still form lay between the beast and me, far too close to its massive claws. I’d seen what those claws could do to a car. I didn’t want to know what they’d do to a woman. I had to draw it farther from her.
Death stepped closer to Holly, momentarily attracting my attention as he crouched beside her. No, she can’t be …
I shook my head, and the beast must have sensed my distraction. Its back legs bunched, preparing to attack. And Holly would be caught in its charge.
No! I didn’t believe in the beast. In fact, I knew it didn’t exist, and reality had bent to my will before.
I dove forward, into its attack. I plunged my hands into the misty form just as one of its huge paws landed on Holly’s chest.
“What I see is true,” I whispered, willing with everything in me for reality to agree. To confirm that there was no beast.
Holly screamed, and the street hung on her high-pitched note. Then the beast dissolved.
A cloud of pale mist exploded around me, and a small disk fell from where the clump of magic in the beast’s center had been. It hit the sidewalk with a ping, a sound quickly overwhelmed by dozens of yelling voices. Shouts and screams that I’d zoned out when I’d been facing the construct.
Footsteps rang out over the sidewalk, people heading toward us from every direction. Doors banged open as more people poured onto the street. Holly pushed herself up from the sidewalk, her hand gripping her savaged shoulder.
“Alex? Oh, my God. It’s just gone? Alex, how did you … ?” She threw her arms around me, dragging me down. “Thank you,” she whispered. Her cheek was wet where it brushed my neck.
I stiffened under her touch, her skin hot enough that I winced, but I didn’t pull back. “It wasn’t real.”
Someone in faded jeans, the knees slightly worn, stepped nearer, and Death knelt behind Holly. I stared at him over the top of her head.
“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, the words as much to comfort her as to question Death.
He held my gaze, and then nodded, his dark hair brushing his chin with the movement. “She’ll be fine,” he said, but he frowned.
He stared at the thin cloud of mist hanging in the air around us. If the cloud had been natural water vapor, the midday sun would have evaporated it in minutes, but this mist hadn’t dissipated. It hadn’t even thinned after I’d first disbelieved the beast.
Death reached out and twisted his hand as if he could wrap the mist around his fist. Then he gave a small jerk. The cloud vanished.
I gaped. The thing about soul collectors was that they collected souls. But how could a glamour construct have a soul? Was that thing alive?
I couldn’t ask. Not here. Not with people crowded around us. No one else could see Death.
Death brushed an escaped curl back behind my ear. “Be careful, Alex,” he said. Then he vanished as the first Good Samaritan reached us.
“Is she all right?” a man asked and someone else yelled, “What was that thing?”
An overweight witch in a hat wider than her shoulders lowered her heft to the pavement beside me. “I’m a certified healer,” she said, reaching out to take Holly’s shoulders. “Let me see her.”
I let her strip Holly’s arms off me, and as I felt the tingle of a healing charm being invoked, I slammed my shields back in place. My vision didn’t immediately revert to normal, and I squinted in the bright midday light, which I now perceived as dim and full of shadows. In the dimness, I searched out my purse. I’d dropped it—I didn’t remember when. Sometime between Holly’s fireball and my disbelieving the construct.
I finally spotted the red bag a couple of feet away. As I stooped to grab it, I noticed a small copper disk. The charm from the beast. I pulled a tissue from my purse, and, as inconspicuously as possible, plucked the disk from the sidewalk. Through the thin paper, the spells charged in the disk hummed faintly, but whatever they had been, they were defunct now. The sound of sirens rang in the distance, and I backed away, carrying the disk with me.
Tamara pushed her way through the crowd. She leaned over Holly for several minutes before straightening and glancing around. Her gaze landed on me, and she made her way over to me.
“You okay, Alex?”
I nodded, rubbing my hands over my chilled arms. “She’s okay, right?”
Tamara might not have been a healer or a practicing doctor, but as a medical examiner, she knew injuries and she was definitely familiar with fatal wounds.
“She’s in shock, but her injuries aren’t serious. What the heck were you two doing? Why didn’t you get off the street?”
I didn’t answer. Both Tamara and Holly knew I was on close personal terms with a soul collector, but I wasn’t about to tell Tamara that Death had been here. When I blinked at her without answering, Tamara shook her head.
“You want to tell me what happened?” she asked, sounding more like a cop than an ME—if you hang around enough cops, it rubs off.
“The beast was a glamour. I disbelieved it.” Or at least, it was partially glamour. The magic in the disk felt familiar and definitely witchy, not fae. And then there was that mist that Death vanished. What was that creature? Had that strange fae sent it? He’d warned me that I would regret revealing the feet.
“Yeah, you disbelieved a glamour out of existence. Everyone on this street will probably relate the same thing. But how do you explain that?” Tamara pointed to where Holly and I had faced the beast.
Two feet above the sidewalk was a fist-sized patch of darker air. Swirling colors escaped the dark patch, reaching out of it in amorphic tendrils.
The Aetheric.
I’d merged realities.
I shot Tamara a panicked glance. I couldn’t close the rift—I didn’t know how. We could cover it … Maybe if we moved a table over it, no one would notice.