Chapter 2

I arrived at Nekros City Central Precinct fifty-five minutes later. Fall had finally realized it was running late and overcompensated with a cold front that knocked the temperature from the mid-eighties to the mid-forties overnight. Half the city seemed to have raided their stash of winter clothing, so for once no one gave me a second look when I pulled a jacket from the passenger side of my car before heading into the building. I might not have been particularly cold now, but once I embraced the grave—assuming that was why I’d been called—I’d have a chill it would take me hours to shake.

Central Precinct was an austere multipurpose building holding most of the city’s important law enforcement entities, from the crime lab and DA’s offices on the upper floors, to the main police station on the ground floor and the morgue in the basement. I passed through security without issue, which despite the fact I’d done so a hundred times since I first started working on retainer for the police, was a relief. I’d half expected to be stopped in the front lobby. While nothing had officially ended my retainer status with the NCPD, I’d been told in no uncertain terms that my services wouldn’t be requested unless the brass decided it was absolutely necessary. Add to that the fact that John had always been my first contact, and I wasn’t sure what I might be walking into. I just hoped this sudden call from Jenson was the start of something good.

I took the elevator down to the basement. Fluorescents lit the long hall leading to the morgue, flooding it with a harsh light that simultaneously washed out color while making everything still seem cast in shadows. The thud of my boots on the linoleum bounced along the walls as I walked, making the area feel hollow and abandoned. I’d never liked the ambiance of this hallway, and as on edge as I was now, if zombies had shambled out of the large morgue doors, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Though zombies weren’t likely. What I was really afraid of were faeries.

Oh, I know, who is afraid of Tinker Bell, right?

Me, that’s who.

Okay, so I wasn’t afraid of all fae, but ever since I’d learned I was fae and I’d gained the attention of the Faerie courts, life had gotten a lot more complicated. I was currently unaligned, something that just didn’t happen in Faerie, and the courts didn’t like it. I was also a planeweaver, which meant I could not only see and interact with multiple planes of existence, but I could tie those planes together. I was the first since the age of legends, and every court wanted to add me to their numbers. Personally, I was more interested in maintaining my freedom, so I reserved a healthy amount of caution when it came to fae and Faerie.

And Jenson was fae.

Or at least half fae.

I’d assumed Jenson was independent fae, but you know what they say about assumptions. If he was court fae . . . this could end very badly for me.

Alex, you’re freaking yourself out. After all, if one of the courts was going to snatch me away to Faerie, they surely wouldn’t do it in front of dozens of cops at Central Precinct. Besides, as far as I could tell, Jenson hid his heritage even deeper than I did.

With that thought in mind, I took a deep breath and pushed open the morgue door.

Jenson waited in the center of the room with his back toward the door. It was early, so I expected at least one medical examiner and some morgue attendants to be present, but the room was empty aside from the plainclothes police detective.

I stopped, frowning. Tamara Greene, the lead ME and one of my closest friends, wasn’t there, of course—she had the next few days off to prepare for her wedding and then she’d be off on her honeymoon—but I’d expected someone else to be there. After all, people didn’t stop dying just because the ME took time off.

“Jenson,” I said, not trying to hide the suspicion in my voice. At my calf, the enchanted dagger hidden in my boot buzzed lightly, either sensing danger or just responding to my own nervousness. The magic imbued in the fae-wrought weapon made it somewhat aware and reactive to my surroundings, which had saved my neck in the past, but it was also bloodthirsty, so I was never sure if it could warn me of danger or if it just liked to be drawn and would use any excuse it found. I didn’t draw it now, at least, not yet.

Jenson turned. He wore the glamour that made him look human, hiding the oversized jaw and tusks that marked him as part troll. Surprisingly, he looked relieved when he saw me, though all he said was, “Craft,” as he gave me a curt nod and then headed for the cold room where the bodies were kept.

Okay, if he planned to pull out a body, he’d definitely called me here for a ritual, but this was not the way these things worked.

“What’s going on, Jenson?” I asked, but I didn’t move any farther into the large room. “And where is everyone.”

“Mandatory seminar.” He emerged pushing a sheet-topped gurney. “We have only about forty-five minutes, so do your thing fast.”

My thing?

“Uh, back up. One, there is paperwork that needs to be signed before I begin, and two, why do we have to complete the ritual before the seminar is over?” I didn’t add that I hadn’t yet agreed to take the case. “And where is John?”

Jenson’s jaw locked, his lips screwing together in a scowl. I met the expression with my own level stare. Until I knew more about what was going on, I wasn’t raising any shades. I didn’t like the situation. It felt wrong. And the hurried secretiveness worried me.

Our silent stare down lasted only a moment before Jenson growled, a low rumbling that didn’t sound like it should have emerged from anything human-shaped. Then he shook his head and let go of the gurney.

“There is no paperwork, and there can be no witnesses. As you might have guessed, I didn’t invite you down here for a sanctioned ritual.” He sighed. “I walk a fine line here, Craft. And this case . . .” He shook his head.

“You think fae are involved?”

He winced and looked around as if afraid someone might overhear. “Let’s just say I have a bad feeling, but I hope I’m wrong. You going to raise this shade or what?”

I frowned at him. Jenson was not quite asking me for a favor. One that could be dangerous on several levels. Without approval of the family or authorization from the cops, raising a shade at the morgue was illegal. Also, I was attempting to limit myself to one ritual a week for the sake of my eyesight. The previous day’s ritual may have ended up being a short one—the police tended to respond quickly to shots fired—but even a truncated ritual did a number on my eyes. I’d be willing to break that self-imposed—and rather new—rule of one ritual a week to begin mending fences with NCPD, but for an unsanctioned ritual for Jenson . . . ?

“Does John know about this?”

Jenson shook his head. “My fears aren’t a human concern.”

Right. Great. I worried my bottom lip. Jenson could get into as much trouble as I could if we were discovered, so clearly he thought questioning this particular victim was important. And goodness knew the firm could use the money.

“Okay . . .” I trailed off and took a tentative step into the room. Jenson didn’t strike me as a big risk taker, so I had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity. Reaching ever so lightly with my senses, I let that part of me with an affinity for the dead stretch to the corpse on the gurney. It was a female, a couple of years younger than me, but if I wanted to know more about who she’d been or how she’d died, I’d have to raise her shade. Or ask. “Why her? What is it about this case?”

Jenson’s frown deepened. “Things aren’t adding up at the crime scene. No sign of a break-in. Doors and windows locked from the inside. No disturbance or blood outside the apartment, but dozens of bloody tracks inside that don’t lead to any exits.” He stared at the sheet-covered figure, as if she might sit up and explain what had happened. Which, if I performed this ritual, she would. Or at least, her shade, a collection of all the memories from her life given shape by my magic, would.

“The killer could have had a key and locked up after he or she left. Maybe showered before leaving?”

Jenson’s head shot up. “Don’t you think we’ve considered that, Craft? Something is off about this case. I should alert the FIB, but no one wants the case hijacked over speculation. And besides, we don’t need any more bad press in this city.”

It took me a second to realize the “we” Jenson referred to was the fae, not the police. And he was right. The fae, or really any of the magical community, definitely didn’t need another mysterious case laid at their feet, which was exactly what would happen if the media caught wind of the FIB—the Fae Investigation Bureau—taking over a murder case.

In the last several months Nekros had seen the mysterious death of a governor, grisly ritual murders, rips directly into the Aetheric plane, disembodied body parts, ghouls, and a series of murders disguised as suicides. The city was teetering on a precipice. One more blow and the whole city might topple into chaos. Well, maybe at this point, it would be better to say further chaos.

“So if her shade indicates the fae are involved . . . ?” I started.

Jenson met my gaze. “I’m duty-bound to alert the FIB, but let’s hope that’s not the case.” He looked tired, but earnest. If this was anything other than what he’d indicated, I’d seen no hint of deception from him. “Now what do you want in exchange for raising the shade?”

“I have a standard fee if you want to hire me.” I’d even be willing to do it at the rate I charged the Nekros City Police Department, which was less than a ritual for private clients, but I didn’t add that. Not yet.

At my words, Jenson’s eyes widened ever so slightly in surprise, and for the briefest moment he cocked his head to the side as if he was the one looking for a catch. Then his features went carefully blank—the expression of someone who thought he was cheating the other out of a good deal. Digging his wallet out of his back pocket, he pulled out several large bills.

I didn’t cross the room. Not immediately at least. Something here doesn’t add up. In folklore, fae would sometimes pass glamoured leaves or rocks off as money. At sunset or dawn the glamour would vanish. That practice was, of course, illegal, but Jenson was acting rather suspicious. I had to check.

Cracking my shields, I let my gaze travel through planes of reality. I’d recently discovered that I could pierce glamour when my shields were down. Unfortunately, I hadn’t yet learned how to discriminate which levels of reality I peered into, so as my shields opened, colorful tendrils of magic from the Aetheric plane popped into view and the room around me appeared to decay as my psyche touched the land of the dead.

I glanced at the money Jenson still held toward me. It withered in my gravesight, but it didn’t change into anything else, so it was real. Slamming my shields shut, I pushed the other layers of reality away. The momentary touch made the room dimmer, but that might have been more a reaction to the loss of Aetheric color than damage. Or at least I hoped so. Stepping gingerly across the room, I accepted the money.

Jenson studied me as I folded the bills and shoved them in my back pocket. He still looked like he’d just dodged a bullet by paying me in cash—what did he expect I’d want? Of course, the currency of Faerie was largely debts and power, so maybe he’d expected me to ask for a boon. But I lived in mortal reality.

And I planned to keep it that way.

“There is still paperwork to sign.”

Jenson scowled. “We don’t have time to waste discussing all the reasons that is a bad idea.”

As this was an active police case, my raising the shade could be seen as interference. Without either police or family authorization, it was my ass on the line if we were caught. There was no way I was going any further without paperwork.

My expression clearly spoke for me, because after a moment Jenson let out a breath and said, “I’ll sign something acknowledging I hired you. After the ritual. My word. Nothing official or specific, mind you, but something that will cover you legally. Now can we get moving?”

As a fae’s word was fairly well unbreakable, I accepted with a nod, but then Jenson looked uncertain as he glanced first at the gurney in front of him and then around the room. He’d seen me raise shades before, but only once or twice. Like I said, John was my typical contact with the police. Or Tamara, if I had family authorization to see a body in the morgue.

“The center of the room would be best,” I said, nodding in that direction as I dug through my purse for a tube of waxy chalk.

Jenson pushed the gurney to the spot I’d indicated. “There might be a second one,” he said, stepping back.

“A second what? Body?” I asked as I duckwalked, dragging the chalk along the linoleum floor to form the physical outline of my circle. “Another shade will cost more.”

“Fine, we’ll sort that out if it comes to it. Can you do that any faster?”

I didn’t bother answering that question. “Are you going to set up the camera?”

“I don’t want any record of this. Things get out sometimes.”

I cringed. Yeah, I knew that firsthand. I’d become infamous a couple of months back because of a leaked recording made right here in the morgue.

I finished the circle and stood. “Well, then, I’ll get started.” I tapped into the energy stored in the obsidian ring I wore, intending to activate my circle, but as I began channeling magic into the circle I stopped and looked around. “Detective, mind your toes.”

Jenson glanced down at where his shoes crossed the thin chalk line. Then he backed up, color crawling to his cheeks. Nodding, I closed my eyes.

Channeling energy into the waxy line, I activated my barrier and it sprang up around me. The barrage of grave essence fell away so that I could feel only the essence lifting from one corpse, the girl in the circle with me. I kept additional shields in charms on a bracelet I wore, so I removed it first, then I opened my personal shields.

I’d always imagined my outer shield as a knotted wall of vines—maybe I’d watched Sleeping Beauty too often as a child—but I’d always found a living shield helped guard me from the touch of the grave best. I let those thorny vines slither apart now, opening the shield, but simultaneously I envisioned a thin, clear barrier springing up between my psyche and the world. This shield was new, one I’d had to fashion after I’d begun accidentally merging reality. It helped keep my powers from reaching out and pulling layers of the world into contact with one another, but the real trick was keeping it thin enough that my grave magic could still pass through it.

A cold wind picked up around me, whipping my hair. It wasn’t anything that existed in the mortal world but blew across the chasm between the living and the dead. I opened my eyes and focused on the sheet-draped form. My power rushed into it, filling the corpse with my living heat as the chill of the grave swept into me.

The woman’s shade sat up, out of the body. She wore a tank top with a faded cartoon character on it and a pair of men’s boxers. Sleepwear, I guessed. The shade made no sound, showed no emotion. She was far past alarm at being dead, and felt no pain despite the fact she appeared to be covered in small puncture wounds. She was memory given form. Nothing more.

I frowned, studying the wounds. There were several different sizes of punctures, but all were circular and appeared on her body in pairs. Like fang marks.

I glanced at Jenson. “How did you say she was killed?”

“I didn’t.”

Obviously. It was impossible to tell if the wounds were the cause of death, and if they were, if that was because she’d bled out or been injected with something. Vampires, to my knowledge, were a myth. Of course, seventy years ago fae were just myth and folklore, so maybe there were bloodsucking entities out there. But, if she’d been killed by some sort of bloodsucking creature, it—or really they—would have to have been small. Some of the punctures were only a few centimeters apart, others were upward to an inch.

“What is your name?” I asked the shade.

She looked at me, her eyes empty and dispassionate. “Emma Langley.”

“And how did you die, Emma?”

“I was giving myself a pedicure in my room and I heard Jeremy scream,” she said, and I glanced over at Jenson. His face gave away nothing, so I wasn’t sure if the Jeremy she’d mentioned was the killer or another victim. “I went to the living room to see what was wrong and there were snakes, everywhere. He was buried under them. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the fire extinguisher, and tried to clear a path to him, but the snakes wrapped around my legs. I fell, and they were everywhere. Biting me. Pain shot through my arms, my chest, and . . .” She trailed off.

And she died. Or at least lost consciousness. The shade would have stopped recording as soon as her soul left her body.

I studied the bites covering her. They were literally everywhere. I couldn’t have pressed my hand to her skin without touching at least two at once. I shuddered. I’d always had a healthy respect for snakes, but never a fear of them. Emma might change that.

I glanced at Jenson. “What did animal control make of the snakes? Venomous, I’m assuming?” But where would that many snakes have come from?

“There were no snakes when the bodies were found. And there is no trace of venom in the bodies.”

I blinked at him. How—? Well, he’d said he had a bad feeling about this case. That was why I was here after all. I turned back to Emma.

“Do you know where the snakes came from?”

“No.”

“Did you hear anyone enter the house before Jeremy screamed?”

“No.”

Okay . . . I looked to Jenson to see if he had any guidance of where he wanted this interview to go, but he only stared at the shade, frowning.

“Did Jeremy like snakes?” I asked.

The shade shook her head. “He was terrified of them.”

“When was the last time you were in the living room before you heard Jeremy scream?”

A living person would have had to think about it. The shade answered without hesitation. “About forty minutes earlier.”

“And did anything strike you as odd then?”

The question required the shade to extrapolate on the memory, so there was a chance she wouldn’t answer, but I lucked out. Or, more likely, she’d noted the oddity at the time. “Jeremy was anxious. He had two half-started projects laid over the coffee table and was channel surfing. That was why I went to my room early. He was all over the place.”

It sounded like Emma wasn’t the body I needed. I turned to Jenson. “Is Jeremy the second body?”

“Yeah.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to be fast.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that if he’d brought out both bodies in the first place it would have been faster, but instead went through the steps of putting the shade back in her body and reclaiming my heat. I didn’t release the grave. Not yet, at least. Nor did I drop my circle. I’d have to break the barrier to allow the boy’s body into the circle, but with my shields down I needed the circle to protect my psyche.

So I waited.

Jenson emerged a few moments later pushing another gurney. I waited until he was almost to the edge of my circle before dropping the barrier. The cold wind that had been contained with me inside escaped as the circle fell. Jenson stopped, his eyes going wide as the wind rustled his short hair. Equipment rattled somewhere farther off in the room and I could distinctly feel that there were eight bodies still in the cold room—three females and five males. I pushed back against the grave essence clawing at me from those corpses. If I let too much of my attention touch them, we’d have a whole lot more shades than we needed.

Jenson had stopped moving when my power escaped the temporarily released circle. I focused on him. “I recommend getting that body in here so I can finish,” I said between gritted teeth.

The detective hesitated like he wasn’t sure he wanted to get any closer. Then he seemed to shake himself and he pushed the gurney until it was beside Emma’s. I nodded in acknowledgment and waited for him to retreat from the circle. But he didn’t move.

“Behind the chalk line unless you want to be locked in here with us.”

Jenson looked from me to the faintly drawn circle, and then scurried safely behind the line. That was all I was waiting for. Tapping into the power in my ring, I siphoned it into the circle, making the barrier spring to life around me once again. I all but sighed with relief when the essence clawing at me cut down by well over half. Jenson also looked considerably relieved as the spillover from the land of the dead was once again contained.

I turned my focus onto the new body—Jeremy, theoretically. Letting my senses stretch, I reached with my power, letting my magic seep into the corpse. What I found made me frown.

“He hasn’t been raised before, right?” I asked, taking a step closer to the gurney.

“Of course not. Who the hell would I have gotten to raise him, and why would I be talking to you now if I had another witch?”

True. On both points. Jenson and I were not friends, and Tongues for the Dead boasted the only grave witches for at least a hundred miles, but . . . I siphoned more magic into the boy’s body.

Shades were just memories given shape with grave magic. In the same way that every cell held a complete strand of a person’s DNA, every cell held a complete lifetime of memories, but it took either a whole lot of magic or a massive amount of those strands of memories woven together to form a shade capable of communicating. As bodies deteriorated so did the number of those strands available to use.

This body had so few I’d have believed it was little more than ancient bones if I hadn’t been able to feel that it was a fresh corpse. The only other way I knew of to lose so much of what made a shade a shade was magic. Every time a shade was raised, it wore out some of those strands of memories, which made it terribly irresponsible for grave witches to raise shades for entertainment reasons and why there was currently a bill in front of the Senate making such rituals illegal.

But if Jeremy had never been raised . . .

I closed my eyes and poured more power into the body, letting magic fill in the gaps in the shade. The cold in my body sank deeper, like ice moving through my blood, freezing my bones. Still I pushed harder, feeding the body more magic.

A shade sat up from under the sheet, thin, weak, even in my vision that was so far across the chasm stretching between the living and the dead. Outside my circle Jenson leaned closer, squinting at the nearly transparent shade.

“What’s your name?” I asked the shade.

The shade’s mouth moved, but the only sound inside my circle was the whisper of distant wind and my own heartbeat. Reaching deep inside myself, I pulled on my reserves of power, forcing them into the shade. He solidified ever so slightly. I asked my question again.

“Jeremy Watts.” Even packed with as much magic as I could summon, his words were a barely audible whisper.

“Why can’t it speak?” Jenson asked from outside the circle. “And why is it so see-through?”

I frowned, shivering. Apparently while the shade was barely audible to me, for those not in touch with the dead he was completely silent. Not much I could do about that though. I had nothing left to throw into the shade to strengthen him. I was already expending as much of myself as I dared. If I tried to make the shade any more visible, I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough strength after the ritual ended to walk out of this room.

“The shade is weak. Faded. Whatever happened, it . . . drained him,” I said to Jenson, and then turned back to the shade because I wasn’t going to be able to hold him long. “How did you die?”

“Snakes. I was covered in snakes.”

Well, that confirmed what Emma had said, and I repeated it to Jenson before continuing. “And where did the snakes come from?”

“Everywhere. The couch. The electrical socket. The windows. Then the hammer in my hand transformed into a snake and wrapped around my arm.”

I turned to Jenson to see his reaction before remembering he couldn’t hear the shade. I repeated what Jeremy had said, and Jenson’s face darkened. I could guess what he was thinking. He’d been afraid fae might be involved, and snakes that appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared just as mysteriously—not to mention objects that transformed from inanimate to a deadly creature—sounded a hell of a lot like glamour.

I questioned the shade for several more minutes, asking questions Jenson threw at me in rapid succession and repeating the shade’s answers. Jeremy confirmed that—to his knowledge—no one besides him and Emma had been in the house when the snakes appeared. It was his day off work, and he hadn’t gone anywhere that day or even seen anyone besides Emma in the twenty-four hours prior to his death.

By the time Jenson ran out of questions and turned away with a discouraged sneer, I was trembling so hard I nearly fell over my feet standing still. I reached out with my mind to put the shade back, but then paused.

“Emma said you were anxious and distracted before the snakes appeared. Why?”

Despite the fact I hadn’t yet pulled back my magic, it was starting to wear thin and the shade had faded further, so I had to strain to hear him over my chattering teeth.

“I took Glitter.”

“Glitter?” Like the sparkly craft supply? That didn’t make sense. I glanced at Jenson, who turned back toward me, an equally confused look on his face. “What is glitter?”

Jenson just shrugged, but Jeremy answered me. “A drug. A guy gave it to me at the club Art Barn. He said it would up my creativity and focus.”

I repeated this for Jenson, whose frown only deepened. My expression matched his. “You said they ran a tox screen?”

He glanced at the file in his hand, scanning pages before nodding. “Yeah, none of the usual suspects popped in his blood work.” He closed the file. “I’ll have them rerun it—to look for both more exotic venoms and this . . . Glitter.”

I nodded. It sounded like a plan to me. I was just turning back to the shade when outside the morgue and down the hall the elevator dinged to announce it had arrived in the basement.

Jenson’s face drained of color, a hint of panic making his eyes a little too wide.

“Shut it down,” he said, stepping forward, but my circle stopped him, denying him access to the gurneys.

I shuddered as he collided with the edge of my barrier and sent magical shock waves through me. Withdrawing my magic, I released Jeremy, but I couldn’t help feeling we should have gotten more information from him. We would never get another chance. As flimsy as his shade was this time, I doubted I’d be able to raise him again, regardless of how much magic I summoned.

As the depleted shade sank back into the body, my living heat followed the well-worn path back through my psyche into my very being. For a single moment it filled me with warmth, and then it seemed to freeze, falling like an icy rock into my center. I cringed, knowing what was coming. Focusing on my shields, I let the vines grow closed around my psyche again. As the gaps closed, the world went black, my vision fading and then winking out altogether. I fumbled blindly for my charm bracelet and my extra shields. With my shields in place, I dropped the circle, and then hesitated. I hated having to rely on my other senses as my eyes were useless, but with as much magic as I’d expended, I wouldn’t be seeing anything for several hours—not with my natural eyes, at least.

I heard Jenson approach and push one of the gurneys out of the circle, one wheel squeaking as it rolled. Outside, in the hall, high-pitched voices spoke animatedly, drawing closer.

“You want to glamour yourself invisible until you’re out of here?” Jenson asked, his voice a hissed whisper.

“Uh . . .” I started and then stopped. Jenson knew I was fae. He’d realized it before I had. Hell, he’d sensed the change as soon as the spell my father had bound me in had first started breaking down. He could tell I was Sleagh Maith—the ruling line in Faerie—but I had no idea how much more he knew. From his comments over the last few months, it was clear he thought I’d intentionally been hiding my nature. But the truth was, despite Sleagh Maith’s reputation for being great at glamour, I had no clue how to do anything with my fae heritage.

When I didn’t answer—or, presumably, disappear from sight—Jenson growled under his breath. “Well, then, help me with that gurney so we can get out of here.”

I frowned in the general direction I assumed the remaining gurney sat. While my friends were aware of the consequences my grave magic imposed on my eyes, I didn’t exactly advertise, and complete blindness meant I’d really pushed myself. Still, I had my pride, and the main room of the morgue was far from cluttered. It was a straight shot from the circle to the cold room. Jenson had a head start on me, so if I moved carefully, he’d be back out to take the gurney before I ran into the doors . . . Hopefully.

With that thought in mind, I reached out, groping for the push bar of the gurney.

The steel was cold against my palms. And then scorchingly hot.

Then the world fell out from under me.