Chapter 24
I didn’t drop PC, but it was a near thing. Wednesday?
I’d lost three days?
“That can’t be true,” I whispered, and then shook my head. It couldn’t be false. Caleb can’t lie.
“Step away from him, Al. He’s charmed you.”
“No.” I lowered PC to the floor.“It wasn’t Falin. I was at the Eternal Bloom.”
“Holly checked the Bloom. You weren’t there.”
“VIP section.”
Caleb’s elongated jaw dropped. “Are you crazy? The VIP section is a pocket of Faerie.”
“Yeah, I figured that out.” What had the door guard said? It wasn’t that we couldn’t leave, but specifically that we couldn’t leave at that time.
“I suppose he took you there.” Caleb nodded at Falin.
“Actually,” Falin said, entering the conversation, “I tried to convince her not to go. Then I told her not to go without me, but she is stubborn.”
Caleb stared at him. Then his frown softened and morphed into something human. “Yeah, she’s pretty stubborn.”
And as though my stubbornness was a point they could bond on, the tension dissipated. Caleb’s eyes didn’t lose their distrust, but he nodded and walked back into his workroom, dismissing us.
He paused before reactivating his circle. “I reported you missing to the OMIH yesterday. You’ll need to contact them. I don’t suggest sharing where you’ve been.”
Great. I was a missing person. With a secret about Faerie.
———
Wednesday. Even after I made it back to my loft, it didn’t seem possible. Wednesday. The day of the Blood Moon.
And it was already late afternoon. We had to find Coleman before he unleashed whatever nightmare he was collecting souls to cast.
I used Falin’s phone to call Tamara and Holly while he showered. Both calls went to voice mail. I’d just updated my suspect list when Falin walked out of the bathroom, dressed but still towel-drying his hair.
“Last night Tommy said the lieutenant governor’s aide took him to the bar,” I said, looking up from the computer. And Lieutenant Governor Bartholomew was already my prime suspect for Coleman’s new body—Tommy’s story was a damning point against Bartholomew.
I was sure of it. “Bartholomew’s aide doesn’t meet the description of the body Coleman stole because she is, well, a she. I think Coleman, in Bartholomew’s body, found out I raised the shade. He had his aide talk Tommy into stealing the recording. Then the aide lured Tommy to the endless dance.”
Falin frowned and shook his head. “How did Coleman find out you were at the morgue?”
“Because of the—” I was going to say shooting, but that couldn’t have been it. The bullet had been spelled, so Coleman had to have known I was at the morgue.
To spell the gun and set the trap, he would have had to have been waiting for me to leave the building. I shook my head.
“Tommy is the one who told me you were raising Coleman’s shade,” Falin said as he sat down on the bed and slipped on his shoes. “Last night Tommy acted like he’d never seen me before. I’ve been with the department since two days after Coleman was shot. When I started, Bartholomew hadn’t been named lieutenant governor yet.”
I frowned. Tommy couldn’t have been at the Eternal Bloom for over two weeks. I’d seen him the day Casey hired me. It could have been Coleman glamoured to look like Tommy. That would explain why he acted so out of character. “Okay, Coleman wraps himself in glamour and becomes Tommy to watch his old body and make sure no one gets close to the truth.” Except I did. “So when he recognized me, he tattled to you, and then went outside to plan an ambush for when you kicked me out.”
It was a stretch, but the events did add up. Only one thing didn’t work. “You’re fae. How did you miss that Coleman was posing as Tommy?”
Falin frowned at me. “Coleman is a master at glamour. Even for fae, glamour isn’t always easy to detect or see through, once reality has accepted the illusion as true.”
“Oh.” I turned back to my suspect list. Bartholomew hadn’t been in the office yet; that meant the chief of staff Tommy had mentioned was Graham, my father’s squirrelly faced aide. I’d already cleared my father.
But we hadn’t cleared Graham.
He was the right age to meet Roy’s description, and had the right hair color. I knew from his conversation with my father that he’d reversed his opinion about Falin’s being assigned to the Coleman case. He’d been standing right next to my father when I’d felt Coleman’s darkness, and he’d left the dinner party directly after Bartholomew, giving him the opportunity to meet and murder Helena. The pieces fit. My heart tap-danced around my chest, pounding out little triumphant beats.
I knew whose body and identity Coleman had stolen.
I repeated the idea to Falin, and he punched in numbers on his phone before I finished my list.
“Hi, yes, this is Detective Andrews with Nekros City PD. I’d like to speak to Chief of Staff Tolver Graham,” he said. Then his face darkened in response to whatever the person on the other side of the line had said. He scowled as he hung up. “Graham left for the day. Supposedly he had a family emergency.”
The triumphant beats of my heart died. The next dull thud hurt, echoing in my chest. “He’s preparing for the ritual?”
“Probably.”
“Should we check the warehouse?” But even as I asked the question, I knew Coleman wasn’t going to return to the warehouse. Not now that the police had discovered it.
“I’ll call the station to learn what we missed while in Faerie and see who I can rally to help flush out Graham.”
I nodded. So, what do I do?
Where would Coleman go?
I pulled up a Web browser. Finding out what had happened during the past three days wasn’t a bad idea.
The news reported two more bodies. I assumed the first woman, Emily Greene, was the body Falin had been paged about Saturday before I went to the Eternal Bloom. The second body, Caitlin Sikes, was found Monday. I scanned the page. The article didn’t include much useful information. Both women were norms, though apparently Emily had recently begun taking a class on magic for the non– magically inclined.
That made six victims, seven including Sally. She who Sees knows the eyes’ empty look, and seven times she’ll know what it is he took. Seven was the number of souls in the Shadow Girl’s warning and the number the slaver had confirmed. But he hasn’t stolen seven. I’d helped free Helena’s soul—the gray man had collected her once the spell had been removed. A collector had probably also come for Sally, since her soul hadn’t been shielded and caged with glyphs. That meant Coleman had five out of his seven souls. If he hasn’t already killed again.
Falin’s phone snapped closed, and he snatched his holster and badge from the counter. I turned, ready to update him on what I’d learned. Then I saw his face.
“What happened?”
He looked at me, his eyes narrowed and his lips tight.
“I’ve been summoned to the chief of police’s office. Immediately.”
———
“Hey, Craft, we’ve been trying to reach you,” the desk sergeant called out as I entered Central Precinct’s main lobby.
I’d hitched a ride in with Falin, hoping to catch Tamara at the morgue before she left for the day. I needed to apologize for disappearing and let her know I was okay. I also planned to pump her for information. With Graham missing, our only chance of finding Coleman was to figure out where the ritual would be taking place.
Finding out as much as we could about his recent victims was our best chance for doing that.
I stopped at the desk and waved good-bye to Falin.
Or really, to Falin’s back, as he didn’t pause but stormed through the station. Then I turned to the desk sergeant, whose name I was pretty sure was Holt.
“Where you been?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“My phone got stolen, remember,” I said to him.
“Yeah, well, we found your car—”
Finally something good. Maybe my luck was turning around.
“It turned up in a scrap shop. There wasn’t much left, but your insurance should be able to confirm it was the old clunker.”
I’d clearly thought positive too soon.
“That’s just great,” I said behind a drooping smile.
If I’d had any insurance on the thing, that might have even been helpful information. Sighing, I forced a better, more hopeful smile onto my lips. “Have you heard anything new about John?”
Holt frowned. “Still unconscious, but last I heard, they did a brain scan and it lit up with activity. He could wake up any day now.” Despite the optimistic words, his gaze dropped, his lips tugging downward.
I nodded to acknowledge the news. He’s still alive.
That is what is important. But I had to find Coleman.
Waving good-bye to Holt, I said, “I’m headed down to the morgue.”
I passed through a security check—no gray magic this time—before making it down to the basement. Tamara was leaning over a body when I walked into the morgue.
She looked up, her eyes widening and her lips parting as she saw me. To her credit, she didn’t drop the heart she was lifting out of the open chest cavity.
“Alex!”
“Hey, Tamara,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets and rolling my shoulders in. Knowing people thought you were missing or dead and then just walking in was awkward. I hadn’t realized exactly how awkward it would be. I pressed the toe of my boot into the ground.
“I, uh, I’m okay.”
Tamara looked around as if she was trying to figure out what to do with the organ in her hands. Her eyes had a frantic edge to them, which was strange to see mixed with relief. She placed the heart in a tray and stripped off her gloves. Then she stepped around the table and gripped my shoulders.
“I was so afraid you were going to come here in a bag.”
She didn’t hug me, not exactly. She was still dressed for autopsy. But she squeezed my shoulders as if touching was the only way she could reassure herself I was really standing there. She pulled back, dropping her feverishly hot hands from my skin. “You’re cold enough to be on my table. What happened? Where have you been?”
“Well, it’s kind of complicated.”
The relief in Tamara’s face hardened. “And you couldn’t pick up the phone? Alex, there’s a madman killing women in their beds. Didn’t it occur to you to let someone know you were all right?”
I winced. For quite a large portion of my time in the Eternal Bloom, I definitely hadn’t been all right, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I looked down and stared at the drain in the linoleum floor. “I wanted to come by, say I was sorry for disappearing. I didn’t mean to. I honestly had no idea how long I was gone.”
I glanced up, and Tamara twisted her lips, turned away. She grabbed a new pair of latex gloves out of the box, snapping them as she pulled them on. Then, without a word, she leaned over the body again.
I didn’t follow. I had an affinity for the dead, but I didn’t have the stomach to do Tamara’s job.
As the silence stretched I looked around. Even with my mental shields held tightly in place, I could feel the bodies nearby. Without drawing grave essence, I let my awareness sink into the female body on Tamara’s table.
I found exactly what I expected—a mostly empty cavity with a shredded shade inside.
“Another ritual victim?”
“Found by her sister this morning.” Tamara looked up, her eyes narrowed. “Do you have any idea how worried I was? You’re gone for four days, and then you walk in here and say, ‘Sorry. It’s complicated.’ That’s just not acceptable. Friends don’t do that. They don’t—”
“I was in Faerie.”
“—just disappear and—” She stopped. “You what?”
“I told you it was complicated. I was in Faerie. I was there for only a few hours, but I lost three days.”
I’d told Caleb I wouldn’t share with the OMIH and the public where I’d been, but Holly and Tamara were my best friends. I’d been keeping a lot of secrets from my friends recently. Too many. Tamara was staring at me, so I stumbled on. “Everything is a mess right now. When this is over, I promise I’ll tell you everything I can over a couple beers.”
“That’s as crazy as Tommy’s story.”
Oh crap, Tommy. He’d lost close to three weeks in the Bloom. He was likely more than confused—and no one had warned him not to talk about what happened.
“What he say?”
“Oh, I’ve only heard rumors. Security stopped him on the way in, and he claimed he had no idea what recording they were talking about. Then he had no idea Governor Coleman had been assassinated. He’s been up in interrogation all day.”
Poor Tommy.
I gave Tamara a weak smile. Then I nodded at the body in front of her. “Who is she?”
“Oh no, you’re not changing the subject that easily.” She bent her wrists and pressed them against her hips. I just stared at her, and she blew air between her teeth. “You were really in Faerie?”
I nodded.
“Girl, what have you gotten yourself tied up in now?”
She shook her head and bent back over the body. “This was Julie Staton, a precog, but I hope she didn’t see this one coming.”
I grimaced, agreeing with her. Precognition, the ability to foresee future events, was the rarest wyrd ability.
There were no shields to block out precogs’ visions.
They were just taught how to cope with them, and then they spent a lot of time in counseling because their visions were always the future. If they saw a horrible event and tried to prevent it, the vision had already taken their actions into account. If Julie had foreseen ending up a soulless husk on Tamara’s autopsy table … I shivered.
Tamara shook her head, staring down into Julia’s chest cavity. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out what killed this poor woman.”
“No glyphs were carved into her?”
“Oh, there are the same glyphs cut into her as all the rest, but all the wounds are shallow, superficial. There isn’t even enough blood loss to explain her death. It’s like he cut her up and she gave up the will to live. The last three have been like this.”
“Emily, Caitlin, and Julie?”
Tamara nodded, and I frowned. I knew how Julie had died—her soul was sucked right out of her body. Like cracking open an oyster. I rubbed the scratches on my shoulder. So Coleman had six souls already. That left one more, and I had a feeling he’d take that one during the Blood Moon.
“You know the strangest part about these victims?”
Tamara asked, and whatever she did inside the body made a slurping, squishing sound. I cringed and looked away as she continued. “It’s the glyphs. They are all nonsense. No trace of magic at all.”
“So, you don’t think a spell killed the women?” I asked because she’d paused and I had to say something, and I couldn’t just say, “Sorry. You’re apparently not sensitive to fae magic. And, oh yeah, by the way, that’s a soul-sucking curse.”
“A killing spell would stain black. There’s nothing here. Now, Caitlin was wearing more gray spells in her necklaces, rings, and bracelets than I’ve ever seen in one place, but that wouldn’t have killed her.”
No, it wouldn’t have, but … “Caitlin was a norm, wasn’t she?”
Tamara’s answer was drowned out by the morgue door banging against the wall. I whirled around as Falin stormed into the room. His eyes landed on me.
“Let’s go,” he snapped, and then turned on his heel, shoving his way back through the door.
Okay. Guessing it went less than well with the chief.
“I’ve got to, uh …” I glanced at Tamara. Her eyes were wide again, but her mouth was screwed tight, concerned.
I pointed in the direction Falin had gone.
“Alex,” she called after me, and I turned back as I reached the door. “Whatever mess you’re in, be careful.”