Chapter 22

“Alex.” The caller had stopped using that loud whisper and I could clearly make out Rianna’s familiar voice.

I was still behind the potted tree, reeling from Death’s ambush appearance, and now more unsure than ever about, well, everything. But I couldn’t hide forever.

Rolling my shoulders and straightening my back, I marched out from behind the fake tree. Rianna stood in the center of the room I was supposed to be searching. Which I was doing a bang-up job on considering I’d been totally oblivious to the fact there were other people in the room for the last however many minutes. When Rianna saw me, she hurried forward but stopped short still several feet away.

“I’d ask where you’ve been, but I think asking what the heck were you doing is a lot more appropriate,” she said, her gaze sweeping over me.

I frowned, glancing down at myself. From what I could tell, I looked presentable. Death and I had hardly touched, so my clothes weren’t in disarray. I glanced back at her in confusion.

“You’re flushed, but your eyes, Alex. If you were anyone else, I’d say you look like you’d seen a ghost—but that wouldn’t be unusual for you. What happened?”

I shook my head. Rianna was one of the few people who knew about Death, but only because we’d been roommates for so many years and she was a fellow grave witch so could see him if she tried. But I wasn’t about to talk about what had—or what hadn’t—happened, or about his warning.

“So you found Michael?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, but before we accost a random person who might have just decided to take a break from his wife, it would be good if we could confirm he really is being ridden. Do you think you’ll be able to tell?”

Without opening my shields? Obviously not or I’d have noticed the rider on the street when Kingly died. But if I gazed across planes, I’d probably be able to see something. “It’s worth a shot. Lead the way.”

We headed upstairs and walked through two dining rooms to where Falin waited in a small recess. He gave me a once-over as I approached and a nerve over his temple twitched. I froze. Can he tell I was with Death? Falin and I weren’t together. He couldn’t even talk to me in a casual conversation. But I still didn’t want to hurt him. How did things get so complicated?

I stepped around Falin and glanced into a bright dining room filled with large picture windows, sun-brewed iced tea in tall pitchers on the sills, and paintings of lemons in brilliant shades of yellow on the walls. Every table was filled, but it took only a moment for me to spot our quarry. He sat alone, a tinted glass in front of him but no food. Good, maybe that means he hasn’t eaten yet. Which if this was our guy, would give us plenty of time to get the Anti–Black Magic Unit down here to contain him.

But first to confirm he was being ridden.

I cracked my shields, simultaneously erecting the protective bubble around my psyche. The confusing array of planes flooded my vision. The wooden tables decayed, the chairs so dilapidated I had to work hard to believe the patrons could sit in them. Aetheric energy whirled in wispy spirals in the air, making the witches in the crowd obvious not only because of the magic I could see on their persons, but because the Aetheric hugged close to them, as if it wanted to be used. I blinked, forcing my eyes to focus past that to the people themselves. Most glowed a crisp yellow, the color I associated with humans. One was blue, which I didn’t see often and had recently learned indicated a feykin—a human with fae blood. Beside me, Falin’s soul was brilliant silver—fae.

Michael, though, his soul was different. I saw a hint of human yellow, but mostly it was dark as if it had been dunked in tar, only the smallest halo of dull light escaping that shiny, slick blackness. Even from across the room, staring at it made my skin crawl.

I slammed my shields shut and blinked as I waited for my eyes to readjust. Between the extra shield and the short exposure, the damage was minimal, the room only slightly dimmer than before.

“It’s him,” I whispered. “Let’s call the ABMU.” And hope they take us seriously.

“I don’t know if we have time.” Rianna pointed to where a waitress plopped a black billfold in front of the rider, a credit card sticking out the top—which meant not only had he already eaten, but he’d paid.

Crap.

“Can you arrest him?” I asked, looking at Falin.

“Technically, yes, but as he appears to be human, it would be unadvisable for the FIB to take him into custody.”

Which was a long way to say no.

The rider pulled Michael’s wallet out of his back pocket and put the credit card away. Damn it, he was about to leave.

“It looks like we’re moving on to plan B.”

Rianna cocked her head to the side. “We have a plan B?”

“Nope, we’re winging it. I’ll try to keep him here as long as possible, you contact the ABMU.”

Falin clenched his jaw, but I shot him a glare that said if he was going to object he better be ready to take action himself. He didn’t say a thing. Fine.

I glanced at Michael, who was finishing off the last of his drink. He’d leave any second. How long would it take the officers to arrive? Hopefully I’d need to distract him for only a little while. I started toward the dining room, but paused. Death’s urgent request for me to leave nagged at me. I knelt, retrieving my dagger. Then, balancing the pommel and hilt in my palm, I let the flat of the blade rest along the underside of my forearm. It wasn’t the safest way to hold a dagger, especially one that liked to sink into flesh, but as long as I kept my arm turned, all but the decorative scrolling on the cross guard, which showed on either side of my wrist, was hidden from the rider and the rest of the patrons, whom I didn’t want to panic by stalking through the room armed. Falin frowned, his eyes betraying more than a little anxiety, but he didn’t say a thing or try to stop me as I walked into the dining room.

And by walked I meant sashayed.

I might be tall to the point of lanky, but I had killer boots and a great outfit and I knew how to draw an eye or two. Hell, I’d made an art out of meeting guys at bars. I could distract one joyriding body snatcher. After all, he’d hired sex workers while in previous bodies, so he couldn’t be that hard to pick up.

“This seat taken?” I asked, letting my voice go husky as I gave Michael my best come-hither smile.

The rider looked up through Michael’s eyes. Well, up to a certain extent, at least. His gaze made it as far as my chest and then sort of got stuck, like I’d applied superglue to my cleavage.

“Now it is,” he said, motioning me to sit.

And this would be the winging it part.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” I said, dropping my gaze and drawing a small circle on the table with my index finger. “Sitting here all alone, it looked like you needed company.”

“Did it now?”

I looked up through my lashes, aiming for coy. The smile he wore showed a lot of teeth and reminded me of a predator who’d just spotted dinner. Except I’m the one hunting.

At least I hoped so.

I wanted to shrink away from the hungry look in his eyes, but I couldn’t afford to back down. I had to buy us time. I forced a demure smile to my lips and my finger stopped moving in random swirls as I traced the rune for luck on the table—not that I put any power behind it. Beneath the table, I clutched the hilt of my dagger tighter, but I ignored the buzz of excitement it sang at the edge of my consciousness. The dagger was a last resort. Michael was a victim and I had no intention of hurting his body if I could help it.

“Perhaps we should go somewhere more private?” the rider asked, reaching across the table.

He doesn’t waste any time, does he? I couldn’t let him walk out of here and risk losing him, but I sure as hell couldn’t leave with him, so what was I supposed to do? While I sat there undecided, his hand slid over mine, stopping the half finished rune for focus.

It had to be my imagination, but I swore that under the blistering heat of human skin I could feel something cold, hateful. I jerked my hand away before thought caught up with action.

“Buy a girl a drink first?” I said, but my voice shook, my smile wobbling.

And he wasn’t buying it.

His eyes narrowed, a dark film sliding across his iris, glimmering darkly like oil on water before disappearing again. I shivered, I couldn’t help it.

“Who are you?” he asked, the words precise and cold with none of the hunger from earlier. Oh, but the predator was still there, he was just looking at a different kind of prey now. “I’ve seen you before. You’re the witch from outside Motel Styx.”

“And you’re the one who was wearing James Kingly’s body when he went over the edge.”

The rider stared at me through Michael Hancock’s eyes. The shock showed first, and then he threw his head back and laughed.

That scared me worse than anything else he might have done. My muscles clenched, my legs bracing to jump from the chair, to run for cover. But we were in a crowded room. He wouldn’t do anything stupid. Would he?

When he looked at me again his eyes glittered with amusement and that slick, oily darkness once again filled his irises.

“It’s almost a shame,” he said. “I wasn’t done with this body yet, but you. You are interesting, and I can’t let you spread your little theory. I’ve never experienced being a female of your kind.” He pulled a revolver, the metal dull in the bright light.

Fight or flight should have kicked in, should have made me bolt or shove the table—which I currently had a death grip on—at him. Instead I froze, unable to move, to think. Even the dagger’s urging didn’t penetrate my fear. The world slowed as he cocked the gun. Lifted it. But not at me.

He shoved the gun under his own chin.

Time finally caught up, and I jumped to my feet. “No!”

Too late. He pulled the trigger and the deafening bang of the gun boomed through the room. The thing inside Michael smiled at me before the body crumbled.

The room went utterly silent, still. Then the first scream sounded, followed by a chorus of screams and chairs screeching as people pushed to their feet. Chaos broke out as diners rushed for the exit. A chair toppled, sending one man sprawling. No one stopped to help him, they just kept running. Falin appeared at my side, grabbing my elbow as he tried to drag me away from the body with the ever-expanding pool of blood forming around it.

“No. It’s not over,” I said tugging away from him, because that thing, that awful, miasmic cloud that was both pure darkness and simultaneously every color, was pouring out of Michael’s body.

“Go,” I whispered, switching my grip on my dagger. Falin still tried to drag me away, but I jerked free. This close, I could feel the rider, feel the dark energy in it, taste the wind blowing through it. Wind I knew. The same never-ending tempest from the land of the dead. “Go, get away from here,” I said, watching the thing lifting out of Michael’s corpse growing larger, thicker.

“You think I’d leave you here alone?” Falin’s daggers appeared in his hands. I doubted they’d touch this thing, but at least he hadn’t drawn a gun.

“How are you going to fight what you can’t see?” I asked, sparing a moment to look away from the growing form.

“Then make me see it.”

I blinked. It was possible. It probably wouldn’t be any harder to manifest the rider than a ghost, its energy didn’t feel that different, just darker, so much darker. I shivered.

It was free of the body now. It had no face, but I could feel it studying me. Behind it, the gray man appeared. He glared at me, his expression a mix of anger and sorrow as he freed the stunned soul of a man who shouldn’t have died. But I didn’t have time to watch the collector. The rider was moving, fast.

I opened my shields, letting the planes of reality wash over me. The thing drew up short, the energy pulsing around it turning uncertain for a moment.

“A grave witch?” It wasn’t so much that the thing spoke as that I felt the words crawl into my head. “What a shining star you are. I’ll enjoy you.”

Then it dove for me. In my grave-sight it had a more defined form, but it wasn’t humanoid. There were no arms to grab, no blows to block. It came at me like a descending fog.

But I was a planeweaver, and like it or not, planes converged through me, making me real, solid, on every plane I touched. The rider slammed into me, no doubt intending to seep into my body, but the impact was physical, knocking me sideways.

I scrambled, trying to keep my footing. The rider drew back. I could feel the thing’s confusion, but that bled to anger before I could get my feet under me.

The rider’s rage poured over me, a psychic assault that rammed my shields and came closer to knocking me on my ass than his physical attack. My charm bracelet heated against my skin as the rider searched for cracks in my defenses. Then it found one.

The rider dove at me again, the attack both physical and psychic as it ripped into the still open wounds where a soul-sucking spell had snaked through me months ago. Disorientation and pain swept over me as it tore into my very soul.

And that was the downside of physically interacting with all planes.

I screamed, driving both the dagger and the fingers of my free hand into the center of the rider’s mass. It was like trying to hold on to sludge, but I didn’t have to grab hold, I just had to pull.

“Welcome to reality, asshole,” I muttered as my power made the creature visible.

The silver gleam of Falin’s blades flashed. He attacked with methodical precision, each movement of his body carving a runnel in the dark mass as the blades sliced through it.

The thing’s scream was more tangible than audible as it roared in fury and pain. I pulled back my own dagger and jabbed the rider again. I didn’t know if it could bleed, if it could die, but it could definitely be hurt.

It reared back, pulling away from me. I tried to hold on to it, to keep it solid, so Falin could see it too, but it slid through my grasp and zipped across the room.

“Where—?” Falin started, his blades stilling.

“There.” I pointed to where its retreating form darted toward the fleeing patrons. We couldn’t let it reach them, to ride another body. It vanished around the corner of the dining room.

I started forward, and my knees locked, my legs collapsing under me. Fuck. The struggle with the rider had lasted less than a minute, but I felt like I’d been through a triathlon followed by a boxing match.

Falin was at my side in seconds, helping me to my feet. I shook my head. “You have to go after it.” The words came out slurred. I sucked down a deep breath. He couldn’t go after it. He couldn’t even see it.

But Rianna could, and her eyes were glowing like green ghost lights. She took one backward glance at me, but she didn’t need to be told to follow it. She broke into a run, Desmond at her side.

I attempted to stumble after it, but would have collapsed again if Falin hadn’t grabbed me. “We have to follow it,” I said, the unspoken “help me” conveyed in my eyes.

He nodded, the daggers vanishing to wherever he kept them—I’d figure that out one day. Then he wrapped an arm around my waist, and we half ran, half hobbled into the hall. We didn’t make it much farther. The stairs had transformed into a jumbled, chaotic traffic jam as people shoved and pushed, trying to get the hell out of the restaurant.

“I lost it,” Rianna said, her eyes still glowing. “It was there, and then gone.”

Damn it. That meant one of two things. If we were lucky, it had retreated farther into the land of the dead to lick its wounds—but I’d never had that kind of luck. Which left option two: it had jumped into a body. Rianna couldn’t see souls while they were inside a body, so it stood to reason she wouldn’t be able to see the rider either.

I scanned the crowd as they jostled for a spot on the stairs. With all the brilliant yellow souls, spotting the one coated in darkness wasn’t hard. It was inside a woman clinging to her husband’s arm. The yellow of her soul dimmed under the tarlike presence vying for control.

“That one,” I said, pointing. “The woman with the red shirt and black hair.”

“Ma’am, we need to speak to you a moment,” Falin said, releasing me so he could hurry toward her. She didn’t turn, didn’t stop. Falin reached the couple and took hold of the woman’s shoulder. “I’m with the authorities, and I need to speak with you.” He flashed his badge too quickly for them to identify which “authority” he might be.

“We didn’t see anything,” the man said, which was a lie—they’d been in the dining room.

His wife clung tighter to her husband’s arm. “I don’t feel so good,” she mumbled, swaying.

Her husband patted her arm. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll be home soon.”

Not likely. The darkness was winning, only the thinnest shimmer of yellow human soul left.

“I can’t let you leave,” Falin said, keeping hold of the woman’s shoulder.

“Please make him let go,” she said, giving her husband a pleading look—a look coated with the oily darkness of the rider.

How had the rider taken over so quickly? Of course, we’d noticed he was gaining control quicker with every victim, but he took her in what, a minute? Two tops. This was bad, very bad.

“Can’t this wait until we’re outside?” the man asked.

I stepped forward. “No, it can’t. Sir, I’d suggest you step back. That’s not your wife.”

The ridden woman turned, a hate-filled gaze aimed directly at me. “You’re becoming a nuisance.” The words emerged from the woman’s throat, but they no longer sounded like her.

“Becky?”

The woman sneered at her husband, pulling away from him. In the same movement, she swung and landed a solid punch in Falin’s stomach.

He grunted as the air was knocked from him, but it didn’t slow him. His daggers reappeared.

“Don’t hurt her. The rider will just jump to another host,” I yelled as the woman ran, not toward the stair, but back toward the dining room we’d abandoned.

I could all but see Falin’s teeth gritting as the daggers vanished and he gave chase. I stepped in front of the door, blocking it. The woman was a good eight inches shorter than me, but she charged me with the force of a linebacker, knocking me to my ass. A fresh wave of pain burst through me as air rushed out of my body. My dagger fell from my hand, skittering across the floor.

Desmond vaulted over me and tackled the woman. The rider might grant her extra strength, but she was still a small woman and Desmond was several hundred pounds of barghest. She went down.

But it’s hard to pin someone who doesn’t care how badly struggling might hurt or damage her body. She thrashed, beating at the large doglike fae. Falin was there before Desmond did something drastic, like bite off one of her arms.

Falin slapped cuffs on the woman and dragged her to her feet. She went absolutely still. I waited to see if the rider would pour out of her now that its host was captured. It didn’t.

“The ABMU are on their way?” I asked Rianna as she ran her hands over Desmond’s fur, searching for injuries.

“They should be here any minute.”

Score one for the private detectives. Okay, and the FIB. I smiled, dusting myself off. I would hurt like hell in the morning, of that I was certain, but we’d closed our first case. Actually, first two cases.

I walked across the room to retrieve my dagger and the rider watched me, that oil-slicked darkness coating the woman’s blue eyes. They held all the chill of the dead with none of the peace. It made my skin crawl.

“You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” it asked, the voice no longer sounding like the woman’s. It was colder, harsher.

Her husband charged into the room. “What’s going on? Why have you arrested my wife?”

I gave him a piteous look, but didn’t answer. Instead I addressed the rider. “No, I couldn’t let you continue your little spree, so don’t bother jumping bodies. I’ll follow you to anyone.”

“Then it seems we have irreconcilable differences,” it said and without warning, twisted hard. A snap cut through the air as something in the woman’s shoulder ripped. The movement jerked her cuffed arms from Falin’s grasp.

She dashed for the picture window. The second before she flung herself through it, the woman glanced back, the rider grinning at me through her face. Then the earth-shattering sound of smashing glass filled the room. A man screamed. And finally, almost imperceptible compared to the rest, a thud sounded as her body hit the ground.

For a stunned moment, everything slowed. Then my feet moved as if they’d made the decision before my brain had time to catch up. I ran to the window, the others at my heels.

Blood tipped the remaining jagged glass, and outside, below, a woman’s broken body lay half on the sidewalk and half on the grass. The leap had been only one story, but her hands were cuffed behind her back, so there’d been no breaking the fall. Not that having her hands free would have saved her. Judging by the way blood sprayed from her, gushing less with each weakening beat of her heart, the glass had severed an artery.

From my vantage a floor above, I watched the rider pour out of her body. Fuck. But I could do nothing. I was too far away to physically attack the disembodied creature and as soon as it found a body…it had proven human lives meant little to it. And it had plenty of fresh bodies to choose from as it dashed into the crowd. I reached with my grave magic.

Too late.

It jumped into a new body. I cursed. My power couldn’t touch the living. Within seconds a man broke away from the crowd, running the opposite direction as the other patrons. At this distance, and still gazing across planes, all I could make out was that he was male.

Damn.

I glanced at the broken body of the woman who, twenty minutes ago, had simply been a woman having lunch with her husband.

Death stood beside her body, he met my eyes for only a moment before looking away. I swallowed, fighting the burn that always preceded tears. He’d warned me. Told me not to stay, not to get involved. I’d thought he was trying to keep me out of danger. But maybe it was this…this utter waste and destruction of life he’d been trying to prevent.

And I pushed the rider to do it.

I glanced at the fleeing figure of the rider’s new host. Watched him turn a corner and vanish. Not that it mattered. I’d tried the direct approach. Tried to stop a serial killer. Not only had I failed, but now it was my fault that two innocent people were dead.