Chapter 21

Dark had fallen by the time Falin pulled onto Cardinal Avenue. If I’d been afraid my night blindness would be an impediment, I needn’t have worried—the scene was ablaze with light. Literally.

“They haven’t gotten the fire out?” I said, staring through the front windshield. An effort had been made to clear the narrow suburban street, but official vehicles, from ambulances to cop cars with their lights flashing and, of course, fire trucks, clogged the way forward. We were nearly a block away, which was about as close as we’d get in the car, so I couldn’t make out any details, but from what I could see, the fire had to be huge. And raging out of control.

Falin made a noncommittal noise as he pulled off the side of the road, his tires brushing the sidewalk, but he said nothing. He popped the trunk, and I followed him to the back of the car, where he grabbed his gun with holster and his badge from a bolted-down lockbox. Shrugging into the shoulder holster, he nodded toward the mess of lights and flame before striding down the sidewalk.

Oh, please let this be a normal fire. But I knew it wasn’t. Even before I saw it, I knew it wasn’t just a fire. After all, the other agent had said there were figures dancing in the flames.

Falin had to badge his way through the crowd of onlookers that had gathered at the edge of the police barricades. People muttered as they shuffled aside, barely opening a path. I stuck close to Falin’s heels. I had no official reason to be here, so if we got separated there was little chance I’d make it past the police line.

“This is your kind’s fault,” a man said behind me.

I didn’t realize the comment was directed at us until I heard someone spit. Falin stopped, looked at the wet spot on the leg of his pants, and then turned. His face was carefully blank, but I knew him well enough to see the icy anger in his eyes.

“Is there something I can help you with?” There was nothing menacing about the words, and Falin’s tone, while low, was polite enough, and yet the man stumbled back as if threatened. Hell, I felt like taking a step back myself.

“No, I—” The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I’m just saying they were a nice family. Never did nothing to the fae.”

Family? I glanced toward the scene ahead of us. I still couldn’t make out more than the general shape of the fire, but judging by what I could see of the houses on either side of us, it looked like a nice neighborhood. A family neighborhood.

“Little Sam was only three,” a woman’s voice said, but I wasn’t sure where in the crowd she’d spoken from. “And Molly was a sweet girl, for a teenager.”

Dread clawed at my stomach. We hadn’t seen the scene yet. It could be anything. Hell, it could still be a natural house fire. But if the fire had been caused by Glitter . . .

I touched Falin’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t need a second prompting. He grabbed my elbow and marched us through the crowd. He still held up his badge, but he was less polite to those who didn’t move fast enough, bodily moving them aside with his arm and shoulders as he cleared a path. A grumble of mutters followed in our wake, most antifae sentiments.

The cop manning the barricade looked frazzled when we reached him, which wasn’t terribly surprising as it was his job to control access to the scene, but with as many different agencies as appeared to have responded, figuring out who was authorized to enter wasn’t an easy task. From what I could make out in the flame-lit darkness, the full alphabet soup of law enforcement and emergency services had made an appearance. The perimeter cop stepped aside when Falin flashed his badge, and then, after writing down Falin’s information for the log, glanced at me.

“Craft is with me,” Falin said, giving my arm a tug so I had no choice but follow him past the barrier.

The cop didn’t try to argue. He’d clearly given up on controlling access and was simply acting as a record keeper. I handed him my card for his log and kept moving.

Falin paused to scan the scene ahead of us. We were across the street from the blaze, numerous official vehicles between us and the burning house. Groups of officials congregated in small clusters on the opposite sidewalk, but I couldn’t make out any features to differentiate the groups. Between the fire and the strobes from police, fire, and ambulances, the light was too chaotic for my poor night vision to process details, at least at this distance. Falin clearly didn’t share my difficulty, but tugged me toward one group hovering around the back of several open ambulances. With each step, the air pushed heat against us, like a tide rushing out from a fire I could still only see raging somewhere beyond the vehicles.

I was expecting paramedics, but as we got closer, I realized most of the figures were too bulky with protective suits, helmets, and air tanks. Firemen. And not all of them were outside the ambulances—several sat in the backs of the vehicles or on the gurneys, oxygen strapped over soot-darkened faces, paramedics tending to blistering burns and . . . other wounds.

“Bring me up to speed,” Falin said, flashing his badge to one group of men.

They glanced at his badge, then at Falin and me. More than one man shuffled, as if uncomfortable, but after a moment a large man in his early forties stepped forward.

He pursed thick lips, studying Falin’s badge. “FIB, huh? You think this is fae related?”

“I don’t know yet. Tell me what you know.” Falin paused, and then added, “Chief.”

The man nodded, indicating Falin had been correct that he was, indeed, the fire chief. He gave a brief summation of the callout and the time the first trucks arrived. “The house was already engulfed, so my men got hoses on it immediately. As more trucks arrived, we got hoses on the surrounding houses to keep the fire from spreading, but focused on getting as much water as we could on the Wilson residence. The fire didn’t respond to mundane or magical intervention, and the neighbors were convinced the family was still inside. A couple of my men decided to play hero and rush in, but they didn’t make it far.” He jerked his head to the men being treated by the medics. “They found the two adult residents, both unconscious. After bringing them out, we realized many of their wounds had nothing to do with the fire. Both were rushed to the hospital and they’re stable. About then was when my early teams rushed back out of the house. That’s when we started seeing forms in the flame. At first we thought it was the kids trying to escape, but the shapes were twisted, evil.” He shivered, the movement making his jowls quiver. “And the men who went in and made it back out? Well, they might as well have gone in wearing only their skivvies for all the protection their suits provided. They also suffered wounds that weren’t caused by fire. I don’t know what’s in there or what caused the fire, but we can’t put it out and we can’t enter. The best we can do is try to contain it until it burns itself out.” He stopped, his hard gaze locking on Falin. “That is, of course, unless the FIB know how to stop it.”

The dread that had been clawing at me since we first heard about the fire turned icy and sank low in my belly.

Falin said nothing, just gave a vague gesture to acknowledge the chief’s words and then started making his way around the vehicles. I followed, my steps heavy as if the dread had sunk all the way to my heels and weighed them down.

We stepped around the last fire truck, and I finally got my first unobstructed view of the scene. Firemen rushed about on the sidewalk and lawn. Most of the trucks had already run out of water, but there was a hydrant one house down, and several men braced the hose, controlling its jet of water. Fire witches chanted at the edge of the lawn, though I wasn’t sure if they were trying to diminish the flame or, as the chief said, just trying to contain it to the one house.

And beyond them, the fire raged, uncontrolled.

I couldn’t make out anything that made me think of a house. It looked like the earth had opened and bellowed out a ball of fire, the flame reaching for the sky. The heat of it beat against my bare face, my arms. Sweat broke out on the back of my neck, trickled down my spine. I couldn’t breathe, the air was too hot, almost thick with the heat. I coughed, unable to look away from the flames. Then I saw the shapes the chief had mentioned.

The figures were nothing distinctive, just shadows among the flames. If someone had said it was nothing more than an illusion from the flickering firelight, I might have believed it, but the more I stared, the more I thought I saw stretching hands with curved talons and gaping mouths with jagged fangs. I tore my gaze away.

And found Falin staring at me, not the fire.

“What do you see?” he asked in a voice barely above a whisper, and I realized why he hadn’t objected, even once, to me following him all the way to the front of a potential crime scene. I could see through glamour, and he was one of the few people who knew that fact.

Taking an overheated gulp of air, I braced myself for lowering my shields in a location with a possibility of fresh corpses nearby. Releasing the breath, I pried apart the vines enclosing my psyche.

As if the wind blowing across from the land of the dead had snuffed it out, the fire vanished, the heat disappearing between one heartbeat and the next, and, in my eyesight at least, the street turned significantly darker. The sweat forming on my skin chilled, and I shivered.

“Glamour. It’s all glamour.”

I let my senses stretch. The fire chief had indicated that the two children were still inside, but no grave essence clawed at me. If they were in there, they were alive. Thank goodness. But how much longer could they last in that inferno?

I searched the house with both my senses and my sight that currently reached across planes and pierced glamour. Unless a fae had, for unknown reasons, decided to summon a glamoured fire on this family, this had to be the result of a Glitter user’s fears. I’d seen one other Glitter crime scene, and I’d heard accounts of two Glitter-glamour attacks, but I would never have guessed glamour could do so much damage. In my gravesight, the houses on either side of the Wilson residence were dilapidated, decayed, but the Wilson house was devastated. The glamoured fire appeared to have reduced the house to little more than rubble and ash. A few walls still stood, but most had crumbled. It was worse, I knew, seeing it across the planes, but still, the damage was beyond repair.

I shook my head, and my eyes skittered over a soft yellow glow emanating from somewhere in the center of the ruins, behind a wall that looked far more solid than the ones around it. I stopped, trying to focus on the glow. I could catch only small glimpses, but it looked like a . . .

“Soul. Falin, someone is still alive in there.” I squinted. “Maybe two someones. The kids.” I stepped toward the house.

Falin caught my arm, stopping me.

“What are you doing? They’re still alive in there, but who knows for how much longer.” I tried to jerk my arm away, but he held on tight.

He pulled me closer to him and dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. “You can’t just walk into a burning building.”

“But it isn’t burning. The fire is glamour.” And I couldn’t see it anymore. Couldn’t feel the heat or smell the smoke. It no longer existed for me, or at least, it didn’t as long as I gazed across planes.

“Okay, so you can break the glamour, but did it do real damage to the building?” He pointed to the crumbling rubble pile that had once been a house. “What if the ceiling collapses on you?”

I hadn’t considered that.

I stopped trying to jerk my arm away and turned back to try to study the glints of soul light. How much longer could the kids survive in there? How had they survived this long? I had to find out what was happening.

I let more of my psyche cross over to the land of the dead. Cold wind whipped around me, tousling my hair and ripping at my clothes. Now that I wasn’t struggling, Falin dropped my arm and stepped back, flexing his hand as if I’d burned him. As open as my psyche was, it was more likely I’d chilled him.

“Roy,” I said, not caring if my voice carried to those watching. Then I waited.

Roy had once told me that normally I looked much like any other living mortal to ghosts, until I straddled the chasm between the living and the dead. Then I lit up like a beacon. I only hoped he was paying attention.

I’d almost given up on him responding when I saw a pale shadow begin to materialize beside me. I’d never been straddling the chasm when a ghost appeared before—usually they either suddenly appeared or they walked into the area where I was. I knew there were multiple layers to the land of the dead. On one notable, and nearly deadly, occasion, I’d traveled down to the place where the living world was nothing but gray ash. But usually my psyche only brushed the uppermost layer where the living world was reflected as a slightly decaying version of mortal reality. Now I saw Roy push up from the deeper layers, becoming more solid and real as he emerged. Icelynne followed close behind.

“Heya, Al. What’s happen—?” He cut off abruptly as he caught sight of the scene around me.

I wasn’t sure if he could see the fire or not, but as it didn’t exist in the land of the dead, I knew it couldn’t hurt him. I pointed toward the house. “There are two kids in there. Can you go check on their condition, and as you go, see if you can find the safest route I could travel?”

Roy glanced from me to the house, and then shrugged. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, and then trudged toward the rubble.

Falin grunted behind me, and I turned to find him giving me a dubious look. “Did you just send your ghost to check the integrity of the structure?”

“Maybe.” I knew Falin couldn’t see Roy—I hadn’t expended the energy to manifest him—but he knew about the ghost. And it seemed like a good idea to me. If I couldn’t enter the house, why not send someone who couldn’t be hurt by the house falling down on him to check on the kids?

“How can someone who can walk through walls tell if the house is safe?” Falin asked, and I sighed.

“Ghosts don’t actually walk through solid objects. They just look like they do. In reality, if they pass through what we see as a closed door or wall on our plane of existence, that object doesn’t exist on their plane,” I said, turning back to the house. Then I frowned as Roy sprinted across the yard toward me. “That was fast.” Which was either good news, or very, very bad news.

“You failed to mention the reaper in there,” Roy sputtered as soon as he was in yelling range. “I’m not going to go advertise I exist and get sent on to the hereafter.”

Crap. Roy called all soul collectors reapers, as in Grim Reaper. And if a collector was there, the kids were about to die.

I took off at a run. As Falin couldn’t hear Roy, he hadn’t been anticipating my sudden dash and his surprise bought me a several-yard head start. Add in the fact he had to contend with the heat from the glamoured fire, and he didn’t have a chance of stopping me. Nor did the firemen and cops yelling behind me.

I passed the charred wound that had once been the front door and then slowed. Ahead I could see hints of yellow glinting through chinks in the wall, but I couldn’t see the collector—the wall was still too intact. Let it be Death. If the collector was Death, he would listen to me. Let me try to save the kids. One of the other collectors? I was far less confident.

I needed to hurry. That said, I really didn’t want to get buried alive if the house collapsed. After all, the fire was still raging, even if I couldn’t see it.

Maybe if I could get the collector’s attention? I opened my mouth to call out, but then stopped. I didn’t have a single name to call out with—not even for Death. And the collectors were unlikely to respond to the monikers I’d given them. No, I’d have to make it to that room.

I glanced around. Sooty ash drifted from the ceiling above me and crumbled down the walls. The question was, how much of what I could see reflected mortal reality. Walking into a wall that was decayed in the land of the dead but still solid in reality would not only hurt, it could cause a deadly collapse. But if I sealed my shields so I saw only the mortal plane, I’d also see—and more important, feel—the fire. And that was assuming I’d be able to see anything at all with my shields closed.

I chewed at my bottom lip. I had an extra shield I’d spent the last few months erecting. In my mind’s eye, I saw it as a bubble around my psyche, as clear as glass but nearly impenetrable. It helped me gaze across planes without touching and merging them. But if I dropped that shield . . . I might cut a swath across reality, leaving a trail of other planes in my wake, but I’d be able to move through the house trusting my eyes—if I stumbled into something that reality disagreed with, my power would weave the planes so what I saw existed.

Probably.

I’d never actually tested that theory. Usually if I merged planes, I did it accidentally.

“I hope this works,” I muttered, popping the dome shield.

The wind from the other side of the chasm picked up, stirring the ash around me in a small whirlwind. The house creaked. I tensed. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

When the house didn’t topple down onto my head, I took a tentative step forward. Nothing changed, and I let out the breath I’d been holding. Just get to the kids, Alex.

With that less than stellar mental pep talk, I began picking my way through the rubble, moving as quickly as I dared. The shields in my charm bracelet still held, buffering me from some of the torrent of realities around me, but with my main shield cracked and my dome popped, the grave pricked at me, distant corpses calling to my wyrd magic. Color also washed over the world, the Aetheric plane attempting to push into reality. I pointedly ignored both as hard as possible, focusing on the building.

I stumbled twice. The house quaked as reality shifted and the wall I tumbled into crumbled down to what I saw in the land of the dead. Maybe this wasn’t the best plan. But, if the ceiling did fall, it would disintegrate around me—hopefully before crushing me.

I finally reached the oddly intact wall. It wasn’t just one wall, but an entire room, complete with door. I paused before reaching for the handle. The door looked ready to fall off its hinges in my sight, but something had preserved this section of house, and I was guessing it was in a lot better shape than my gravesight indicated. If I pulled this small intact section into contact with what I saw across the chasm, I might destabilize the whole house. While I had a decent chance of surviving a small collapse, the structure would not crumble harmlessly around the kids.

Which meant I needed my shield back.

It took precious seconds to erect the shield. Through the rotted door, I could see one of the yellow glows dimming—I didn’t have much time. As soon as the bubble formed around my psyche, I grabbed the doorknob and twisted, throwing open the door.

The room beyond was a small bathroom, and while it was hard to be sure in my gravesight, it appeared that it hadn’t taken so much as smoke damage. A teenage girl huddled in the large claw-foot tub in the corner of the room. Molly. She clutched a smaller figure to her, who I was guessing had to be the three-year-old the neighbor had mentioned. Sam hid under a blanket, which almost completely concealed him so that if my gravesight hadn’t shown it as moth-eaten and rotted, it would have masked the glow of his soul. The boy glowed a brilliant yellow in the gaps of the blanket, but his older sister’s glow was dull, dwindling.

Death waited beside the tub.

He looked up as I burst into the room. Then his eyes closed, his head sagging. “You shouldn’t be here, Alex.”

“Don’t,” I said, stepping toward the tub. “Let me take them out.”

The girl’s head snapped up at the sound of my voice. Her wide eyes were sunken, as if she’d suffered a long sickness, her voice weak as she opened her mouth and screamed. The boy in her arms hunched lower, tucking himself against her without turning to look at the new potential danger.

The girl kept screaming, and I had no idea what her mind saw, but I felt the moment the glamour tried to wrap around me, to twist me into the nightmare she imagined. She’s the Glitter user. The glamour slid back off me, my own powers rejecting the version of reality her drug-addled mind had tried to cast me into. And her soul dimmed.

The Glitter was fueling the glamour with her life force, and she was running out.

“It’s time,” Death said, reaching for the girl.

I lunged forward. “No. Wait.”

It was already too late. Death’s hand was in her chest, his fingers grasping her soul. He gave me a small, sad frown, and said, “There was only one path for her after she took the drug.”

He lifted his arm, pulling her dwindling soul free. Her scream cut off, her body sagging. The boy in her arms shifted, but he didn’t move. He didn’t know she was gone. Not yet.

“At least let me question the ghost.” Because I could already feel the hollowness in her corpse—if I could raise a shade, it would be a mere echo, likely too faded to be of use. And we had to find who was distributing this drug. It needed to purged from the street. People couldn’t keep dying in these nightmares, or daymares, or whatever.

Death’s frown deepened. “She’s no restless spirit. She’s tired, ready to move on.” And to accent his point, he flicked his wrist, and Molly’s soul moved on to wherever souls went next.

Damn.

“What about . . . ?” My gaze moved to the boy.

“He’s safe,” Death said, and tension I hadn’t realized had sunk claws into my shoulders loosened. I nodded to acknowledge his words, and he glanced over my shoulder, toward the front of the house.

I finally registered that something about the house had changed with Molly’s death. I couldn’t tell, not directly, but the flames must have vanished as soon as her life force stopped feeding the glamour. Without the barricade of magical fire and creepy shadow monsters, the firemen were entering the house.

It was time to get Sam out, before his sister began to cool and he realized she wouldn’t respond. I stepped forward, approaching the tub. Death reached out, tracing the side of my face, but he didn’t say anything. Which was good. I was mad at him. It probably wasn’t a fair reaction—he was only doing his job. No, not job. He was fulfilling his function in the world. But I was mad, and a little hurt, unreasonable or not, and I didn’t want to talk to him in that moment. So, it was good that after that one, lingering caress, he vanished.

I knelt by the tub. “Hi, are you Sam?”

A tiny hand emerged from under the blanket, lifting it just enough that I could see two brown eyes peering out at me. After a moment, the boy nodded.

“Good to meet you, Sam. I’m Alex, and I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

The boy emerged a little farther from under the blanket. “This is Lancelot,” he said, revealing a teddy bear nearly half his size that he’d been clutching under the blanket. “He’s been protecting me from the bad stuff.”

I looked down at the bear. I expected it to rot away in my gravesight, but it didn’t. Oh, it looked a little haggard, with matted fur and a couple of bald spots, but it looked more well-loved than decayed. He had a small sword made out of tinfoil attached to his paw with an old hair grip, and more tinfoil cupped his head in what I guessed was a makeshift helmet. Curious, I let my ability to sense magic trace over the bear and then the rest of the room—the one and only room in the house to be spared. But there was no magic. No witch magic at least. Just the power of a child’s trust and belief.

I forced a smile. “Lancelot did a good job, baby. Now come on, let’s go.”

Reaching out, I lifted both boy and his brave little bear. Sam wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, but then twisted, looking back at the tub.

“What about, Mol-mol?” he asked, looking at his big sister. “She’s sleeping.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again. I dealt in a business abundant with grieving loved ones, but I wasn’t equipped to explain death to a three-year-old. Or maybe I just wasn’t brave enough to tell a child his sister was gone. Either way, as I carried him out of the room, I simply said, “The firemen will come for her.”

He nodded, accepting that solution. Then he leaned his small head on my shoulder and hugged his bear close.

Belief magic really was the damnedest thing. It could enact a glamour that killed, but it could also guard a small boy who believed in the protection of a teddy bear.