Chapter 4
“Rise and shine,” an overly enthusiastic voice announced as the inner door of my loft opened.
I pulled the pillow over my head.“If you aren’t a sexy man bearing coffee, go away.”
“Well, I don’t think I’m bad,” said Caleb, my landlord and good friend.“And this may be a fresh-brewed cup o’ joe. Black. No sugar.”
I pulled one side of my pillow away so I could peer up at him though sleep-blurry eyes. “Are you my fairy godfather?”
His lips twisted as he leaned down to scoop my robe off the floor. He tossed the robe at me. “Get up,” he said in mock agitation, but I could hear the laugh rumbling under his deep voice.
Fairy godfather was a long-running joke between Caleb and me because he was, in fact, fae.
“So, what time is it?” I asked as I reluctantly rolled to my knees and shrugged on the robe.
“Eight forty-five.”
I groaned. I’d been asleep less than four hours. When I’d gotten home, I’d had to recharge my ring, and then I’d spent far too many hours searching the Internet for an explanation of the way Bethany’s shade had acted and for any mention at all of glyphs like the ones I’d seen on Coleman’s body—or whatever was posing as Coleman’s body. Folklore was full of stories of the fae stealing a mortal and leaving a stock—wood or stone glamoured to look like a person—in their place. But if the fae kidnapped Coleman … ? It didn’t seem to add up.
More sleep would probably help.
I collapsed back against my mattress. “Give me another hour,” I whispered, my eyes drifting closed.
Caleb held the mug out, letting the delicious scent of dark-roasted coffee waft through my senses.
“You know,” he said, “Holly left over an hour ago.”
Holly, my final housemate and an assistant DA, believed in early mornings regardless of how late the night lasted. “Holly is a workaholic.”
“And there is a cop downstairs who says he’s your ride.”
My ride? “Damn it—the trial! I have to get to the courthouse.”
I rolled out of the bed, snagging the steaming mug of coffee from Caleb as my feet hit the ground. Not that I had time to enjoy the dark, bitter taste—I was too busy running around the one-room loft searching for the clothes I’d picked out to wear. Caleb at least had the decency not to laugh, much.
———
My introduction to Ms. Legal on the courthouse stairs consisted of an assessing glare under severely plucked eyebrows and the question, “Miss Craft, really—don’t you own an iron?”
Twenty minutes later, I stood in the women’s restroom, doused in dewrinkler, my hair pulled uncomfortably tight in a chignon, and with three inches of makeup caked on my face.
My OMIH-assigned babysitter, whose real name was Patricia Barid, dropped her blush brush and took my chin in her manicured fingers. “I think that’s the best I can do,” she said, but the corners of her eyes pinched together. “If you’d wear a complexion charm …”
I shook my head yet again. “I’m not raising a shade with foreign magic on me.” I wasn’t about to chance having my magic interact erratically in front of the entire courtroom, particularly after what had happened yesterday.
“Fine.” She stepped back, her unimpressed gaze searching for something to pick at.
I fumbled for my hip pocket, but, of course, there wasn’t one. Good slacks never had anything practical like pockets, and these slacks had been good once, before someone donated them to Goodwill and I picked them up. They were the best I owned, and I’d thought I looked pretty sharp. Right until I met Patricia Barid.
“It’s not like anyone will be focused on me.” After all, I was the wizard behind the curtain in this trial. The hard questions, like what was a shade, and why a shade couldn’t lie, had already been addressed by an expert witness. I just had to raise the shade and then step back and let the attorney types grill her.
Patricia tilted her head and tittered.“That’s what you think.This is history in the making, and you, my dear, are the face of the OMIH today.” From the look she gave me, she clearly believed someone else should have been drafted for the job.Well, tough luck. I’d been part of this case since Amanda’s body was found, and I was the one who was going to raise her for the witness stand.
It had been seventy years since the Magical Awakening, the day the fae decided to announce to the world that the good people of folklore truly existed. In an age of science and technology no one had believed in ghosts and goblins anymore, and there weren’t even enough children clapping their hands and crying “I do believe in faeries” to sustain the fae. They had been fading from memory and from the world. So, they’d come out of the mushroom circle, as some say. Witches came out next and got organized. The folded spaces expanded. Magic blossomed. History had been made over and over since then—I just hoped my little piece of history was profitable.
A knock boomed on the wooden door, making me jump. We were out of time. I was expected in the courtroom.
Patricia pursed her lips, but nodded.
“You’ll do.” She raked the cosmetics spread across the counter back into her oversized purse. “Don’t use any flashy magic when you raise the shade. Just get the job done. And don’t speak unless the DA asks you a direct question. And remember—”
I jerked the door open. “I got it.” We’d been through this all already. Twice.
The bailiff waited outside the door, his hand poised to knock again. I gave him a tight-lipped smile and motioned him to lead the way. My boots made clunking sounds as I followed him down the hall, and then we were there, outside the courtroom.
I took a deep breath. This is it.
The bailiff opened a large oak door, and the courtroom fell silent as I stepped inside. People packed the rows of uncomfortable wooden benches, far too many for the AC—already overtaxed by the heat wave—to prevail against. A drop of sweat ran down my neck. Or maybe it wasn’t the AC; maybe it was the fact everyone was staring at me.
A breeze picked up, to my relief, until I realized it wasn’t an earthly wind. The ghost from the morgue crossed my path, his gaze sweeping over the courtroom before settling back on me.
What is he doing here?
I didn’t have time to wonder.
The DA met me halfway across the room. “Doing okay, Alex?”
I nodded, smiling, and lost sight of the ghost. My gaze darted around the room. No sign of him. But I did spot several cops I knew, including Detective Jenson, John’s partner. I nodded in greeting. I’d have to track him down after the trial to find out the latest news of John’s condition.
My gaze moved on but stumbled over a woman in the front row with puffy red eyes. Her clothes hung off her as though she’d recently lost a lot of weight. Despite her sallow cheeks, I recognized her face.
I almost swore; instead, I matched my pace to the DA’s and dropped my voice to a whisper. “You’re letting the family watch?”
The DA didn’t even glance over his shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Just do your thing.”
He returned to his table, sitting down beside the journeyman attorney assisting him in the case. Holly, the assistant DA on the case and my workaholic housemate, had pulled her flame red hair back tight in a nononsense bun and was wearing a power suit. She looked imperturbable and stern, until she flashed me a double thumbs-up hidden from the crowd by her body.
That made me smile—Holly always could do that—and the rest of the walk to the front of the courtroom was a bit easier. I approached the stand but didn’t take it.
The chair had been removed to make room for Amanda Holliday’s coffin. A witch, probably Patricia Barid or one of her PR minions, had sketched a circle around the stand and coffin before the courtroom filled this morning.
All I had to do was activate it.
I closed my eyes. A soft murmuring spread across the courtroom, dozens of whispers wrapping together.
I wondered how many of the spectators had known Amanda Holliday, and how many were here only to see her shade. Putting a shade on the stand had been discussed for years—after all, they were the perfect witness.
Shades were just memories, with no agenda or self-awareness left in them. They couldn’t lie, but would relate their life as they recalled it at the time of death.
Despite that, no shade had made it to the stand. Until now.
I tuned out the crowd and focused on feeding energy into the circle until it sprang to life around me. Then I sank deeper, dropping my shields.
Amanda’s next-door neighbor sat in the defendant’s chair. Only two pieces of physical evidence put him there: a single blond hair found in his bed that was a visual match to Amanda but lacked a skin tag so couldn’t be matched to her by DNA, and a receipt for gas in the county where her body had been found. The DA could prove he had the means and opportunity, but Amanda’s eyewitness testimony was the only way the jury would be able to sentence him without reasonable doubt. The nature of the crime and the lack of evidence was what had finally convinced the DA to put Amanda on the stand. That, and the fact that if a jury sympathized with any victim, it would be with Amanda.
I poured my energy into her shade, trying to make her as physical, as real, as possible. A scream shattered the murmuring in the room, and my heart skipped a beat.
Did I raise another one?
No, it wasn’t Amanda screaming. It was the crowd.
People were screaming.
I opened my eyes. In my grave-sight, Amanda Holliday sat atop her casket surrounded by the rotted and pitted wood of the witness stand. She’d been buried in her Sunday best, but she’d died in a stained T-shirt, and that was what every cell in her body remembered and how her shade appeared.
The judge pounded his gavel, trying to restore order.
Amanda’s wailing mother had to be escorted out of the room. She wasn’t the only one. Amanda’s unseeing eyes appeared to watch them, her cherub face impassive.
Being dead, she was no longer touched by the horror of her death. But it touched the jury, the crowd, and apparently the defendant. He’d turned paler than the shade, his eyes bulging as he stared at the five-year-old’s body and the red gaping smile ringing her throat.
———
“To one of the shortest jury deliberations ever.” Holly lifted her beer.
Tamara hoisted her own bottle. “To putting away the bad guys.”
I clinked the rim of my bottle to theirs and took a deep swig of the room-temperature hops. As I set the bottle on the table, a shiver ran down my arms and I shrugged deeper in my blazer. I was probably the only person in the city wearing long sleeves, but I’d held the shade for over an hour. The chill had a way of clinging after that long.
Holly and Tamara had both abandoned the suit jackets they’d worn in the courthouse. And in a true show of celebration, Holly had let her red hair down from the stern bun she typically wore. She thought the bun helped her look more professional, but at five-two in heels and with her heart-shaped face, she always came off more cute than fear-inspiring—unless she caught you behind the witness stand.
In the corner of my darkened vision, I caught sight of a shimmering form hovering behind me. That damn ghost. I didn’t bother turning around. No one else at the table could see him, and he’d just vanish if I did. It was what he’d been doing all morning. Freaky haunt. I ignored him.
“We make a pretty good team,” I said to my companions, taking another swig of beer.
“I’ll drink to that.” Tamara brushed her long brown hair over her shoulder before lifting her beer bottle.
Holly nodded. “To teamwork.”
We tapped rims again. Holly had worked in the DA’s office to help prepare Amanda’s case for trial, Tamara had performed the autopsy, and I’d raised the witness.
Teamwork at its finest. All we were missing was our homicide detective. My stomach twisted at the thought of John. I’d talked to Jenson after the trial, and last anyone had heard, John was still unconscious. How much blood had he lost?
As if sensing my darkening mood, Holly leaned in and nudged me. “I think we’re being scoped.” She nodded over my shoulder.
It was early afternoon and the bar was mostly deserted, so there weren’t a lot of options for who could be checking us out. The man at the table she’d nodded to had his back to me. In the dimness, and without my glasses—lost in my tumble down the stairs—all I could see of him was light reflecting off long blond hair.
My jaw clenched. Why would … ? I shook my head.
It couldn’t have been Detective Andrews. He wouldn’t be in a little hole-in-the-wall bar like Mac’s.
Mac’s was the type of bar catering only to regulars.
Situated in a little strip on State Street, several blocks from the courthouse, it had a used bookstore on one side, an artsy coffee shop on the other, and just a red door with no sign to mark the entrance. If Andrews had transferred in two weeks ago, there was no way he’d so much as heard of Mac’s.
Still, how many men in this city had long platinum blond hair? I squinted, but my bad eyes couldn’t make out any useful details. Not that it mattered. I twisted back around.
“You go for it,” I told Holly as I drained my beer.
“Oh no.” Tamara plunked down her empty bottle. “If I’d known this was a hunting trip, I wouldn’t have come.”
Of the three of us,Tamara was the only one wearing jewelry serving no magical purpose, and that was a ring with a big fat diamond on it. As a charm witch she probably couldn’t resist the temptation to enchant the engagement band much longer, but she and her fiancé hadn’t even set a date yet, so she was still holding out. Holly and I had bets on how long she’d last before turning the diamond into a charm.
I smiled at Tamara. “Don’t worry. This is a purely celebratory drink.”
“Exactly. And it looks like we need another round.”
Holly waved a hand in the air, and Mac brought three more bottles as well as another basket of chips and salsa.
I lifted my beer. “To Amanda’s testimony, the first of many victim voices heard in court.”
“Good luck.” Tamara tapped the rim of her bottle against mine.
Holly’s bottle made a soft clink against mine, her movement restrained.“Alex, you know this will take time.The defense will drag this appeal through the courts.”
The first guilty verdict based heavily on a shade’s testimony?
Yeah, I knew. In years to come this verdict would probably be a case lawyers cited, but no one would recall the details. Unfortunately, the DA wouldn’t let me work another case until he learned what the higher courts decided.
Which meant I was stuck with private clients a while longer.
I sighed into my beer, and the conversation moved on to what other cases we each had on our respective plates.
I was probably a little too quiet and not as forthcoming as normal, because when the conversation paused, two pairs of eyes focused on me.
“Well, actually, I was hoping you could help me out with my newest case,” I said, looking at Tamara.“I’d like to get a better look at Coleman’s body. Think you can arrange a meeting?”
“It would be worth more than my job. Oh, and if that’s why you were at the morgue yesterday, I don’t want to know.”
I paused with my beer bottle halfway to my mouth.
“You didn’t see the recording?”
“There wasn’t one. I searched the hard drive. Not even a record of John turning the camera on.” She frowned at her beer. “Which—if you did what I think you did—is a good thing.”
I dropped my gaze to the salsa and concentrated on filling a chip. How could the recording have disappeared?
I grabbed another chip. Falin had seen the recording; he’d admitted to as much.
Holly snatched the next chip I was reaching for.“Alex, tell me you didn’t?” Her voice dropped to conspiratorial tones. “Coleman had a living will. No magic was to be used on him before or after his death.”
I hadn’t known that, though it didn’t surprise me.
I swirled the salsa. “I identified the Jane Doe vic. Her name was Bethany Lane.”
“Thank goodness,” Tamara said, obviously assuming—or at least, hoping—I’d been at the morgue only for John’s case.
I didn’t correct her misconception.
The silence built around the table. Tamara stared at her half-full bottle as if it held some secret deep in its depths. Shaking her head, she pushed it away.
“I should head out. I have several bodies on the table, and just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they should wait.” She stood, her stool dragging across the scarred wood floor.
Boy, did I know how to kill a celebration or what?
Holly and I waved good-bye. Then Holly drained her beer. Setting it on the table with a hollow plunk, she leaned in and nudged my elbow. “You are still totally being scoped.”
I glanced over my shoulder again. The man swiveled away as I turned, which was so not the most subtle move. He does look a hell of a lot like Detective Andrews.
It couldn’t be, though—could it? I frowned as I turned to face Holly.“I seriously doubt he’s looking at me.” Unless it is Andrews.
“He totally is. I’ve tried to catch his gaze—nothing. He is major eye candy. You should go for it.”
“Are you forgetting?” I gestured toward my scraped and bruised face.
Holly twisted a ring off her pointer finger, and freckles crawled across her nose, up her cheeks, and into her hairline. I blinked. I’d seen her without the complexion charm before, but the mask of freckles she hid never ceased to amaze me. She pushed the charmed ring across the table, then dug a compact out of her purse.
When I didn’t put on the ring, Holly frowned at me—one of those tight, disappointed frowns that rearranged her freckles. With a sigh, I slipped the ring on my pinky.
The spell tingled, sliding over my skin, and I tried not to grimace—I hated the feeling of foreign magic on my body. Holly specialized in fire spells, but the complexion charm felt like her magic. Recognizing the spell and trusting the caster didn’t alleviate my uneasiness with the magic washing over my skin. Holly’s gaze moved in an assessing pattern over my face, and the way her eyes narrowed told me the charm hadn’t worked as well as she’d hoped. She held out the mirror.
Between Ms. Legal’s makeup miracle, and Holly’s complexion charm, I almost looked normal.Almost.The stitches still trailed down my forehead, and there was swelling, but at least I looked less like the poster girl for domestic abuse.
Swiveling on my stool, I squinted. The man was facing the wall again. A gray jacket had been thrown over the back of his chair, and the sleeves of his oxford were rolled to just below his elbows. From where I was sitting, I could just make out the strap to a shoulder holster.
Damn. It is Andrews. Is he following me?
Only one way to find out.
I slid to my feet, then hesitated, glancing back at Holly. “You won’t leave without me?”
Holly was my ride home, and if she left me here I was screwed. My car was at the house. That whole not-being-able-to-see-after-raising-shades thing was a real downer when it came to keeping a two-ton chunk of steel between the yellow lines.
“Not unless you want me to.” She flashed me a knowing smile.
I had a tendency to take guys home after raising shades. Nothing fought off the chill better than a stiff drink and a hot body against mine, but I was definitely not taking Andrews home. Holly flicked her fingers, urging me on. If she only knew. I wasn’t going to tell her who he was, not yet. I wanted to find out where the video had gone first. My feet were overly heavy as I made my way across the room, but I’d pasted on a smile by the time I sank into the chair across from Andrews.
He looked up, his eyebrow lifting—a gesture I envied, as my sutures still prevented any cocky eyebrow lifting on my part—but his expression wasn’t the least bit surprised that I’d invited myself to his table. “Miss Craft, is there something I can help you with?”
The smile that touched his lips was small, mocking.
How could Holly call him eye candy? Okay, so he was easy to look at. But he was just so … irritating.
“Falin.” I used his first name to annoy him. “I was actually wondering if there was something you needed? You appear to be following me.” I flashed some teeth at him.
“Just stopped in for a drink.” He lifted a glass, filled with more ice than clear liquid.
A twist of lime clung to the side of the small tumbler, but I doubted the contents were anything but water.
Mac was a good bartender; you had to really piss him off to end up with that much ice. Course, that’s also a possibility. I stopped forcing my smile.
“What happened to the recording?”
He didn’t blink. His expression didn’t change. His features just sort of stalled, as if he’d paused his face.
Then his eyes narrowed, and his chin jutted to one side.
“Of Coleman?”
I nodded.“The ME said there isn’t even a log of John turning the camera on.”
Falin slammed his tumbler on the table as he stood.
He said nothing, but turned, grabbing his jacket in one movement. Then he marched toward the door.
I pushed out of my seat. “Hey, I wasn’t done talking to you.”
No response.
Had he seriously not known about the missing recording?
Holly made her way over, her eyes wide. “I take it that didn’t go well.”
I gestured to the door, which had just slammed.“That would be the lead homicide detective on Coleman’s case.”
Her lips formed an O, her brows scrunching together.
She doesn’t know him either? Where did Falin transfer from?
Wrenching the complexion charm from my finger, I handed it back to her. She’d already paid the tab, so I swiped the rest of our chips into a paper napkin. Then I made my way to the door. “I’ll fill you in on the way home.”
———
“Oh crap,” Holly said, hitting the brakes.
I glanced out the front windshield. It didn’t take a genius to guess what “crap” referred to. News vans lined the street outside the house. Reporters swarmed the sidewalk like mourners gathered around a celebrity grave. I saw several station call letters for national news channels.
“Caleb is going to kill me,” I whispered, gaping at the cameras pointed at the house. Caleb enjoyed his privacy.
My attracting a horde of reporters to his home wasn’t going to make him happy.
I crouched lower in the passenger seat, trying to stay out of view. “There weren’t this many outside the courthouse, were there?”
Holly shook her head and inched the car forward.
As the car crept closer to the drive a couple of reporters caught sight of us. Then, as a whole, the milling mass turned and streamed forward, yelling questions at our closed windows. The car made slow progress, and Holly nearly committed vehicular homicide pulling into the driveway. The reporters obeyed the rules, though, and trespassed no farther than the front sidewalk. Of course, they didn’t have to enter the yard to yell questions or point cameras at us.
“You get inside. I’ll run interference,” Holly said as she killed the engine. Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, and her fingers brushed down the front of her immaculate courtroom power suit.
I only nodded. Holly was a lawyer: spin and PR were staples on her resume. We opened our respective car doors simultaneously. The assault of questions poured over us. Holly’s smile was already working at full wattage as I ducked around the front of the car, headed for my loft.
“Miss Craft, do you have a statement about—”
“—first learn Coleman—”
“—you describe the pattern you saw on—”
“—fae responsible for the spell?”
I ground to a halt. I was catching only bits and pieces of questions, but it sounded as though they knew about … Whirling around, I spotted Lusa’s face in the crowd. I pointed at her. “What did you ask?”
Lusa stepped forward, separating herself from the field of mics. “Can you guess the origin of the spell on Coleman’s body? Is it fae or witch magic?”
The world tilted, and I could only stare at Lusa’s perfect smile as my lips parted, my jaw going slack.
“Alex, go inside,” Holly yelled.
I snapped my jaw shut and blinked at Lusa. How the hell did Lusa know about the spell? My gaze traveled over the mass of reporters. How did any of them know?
The recording.
I turned on my heel, running around the side of the house and all but plowing over our friendly neighborhood gargoyle, Fred.
Fred wasn’t the gargoyle’s real name, but like most fae creatures, it wouldn’t share its name. I’d started calling it Fred several years ago in an effort to irritate it into telling me something else to call it. To my dismay, the gargoyle seemed pleased with the name, or at least didn’t care enough to object to it.
Though I’d never seen Fred move, it traveled the house perimeter, always staying near the garage. I typically left it a saucerful of milk, which the gargoyle seemed to like.
I got the distinct impression it was guarding the yard from other gargoyles and that ours was a sought-after bit of territory. Magic called to magic, and Caleb used a lot of it. Of course, most of the diminutive fae living outside of the Faerie Knowe congregated in the Glen.
“The green man will not like this attention,” Fred said inside my head.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I muttered. “The green man” was what the gargoyle called Caleb. Without pause, I swerved around the stone creature. Then I took the stairs two at a time.
PC jumped at my feet—which he probably shouldn’t have been doing no matter how well his leg was doing—but that didn’t prevent him from begging for attention as I dashed inside. I didn’t even pause. Crossing the room, I wiggled my finger in the hole where the TV’s power button should have been until the screen buzzed and filled with color.
Lusa Duncan appeared on the screen, with my house as a backdrop. “—where Alex Craft has just arrived home. As of yet, we have received no answers about Alex’s shocking revelation about the late governor in the video that appeared only hours ago on multiple Internet sites.” The screen cut, and my face appeared. My eyes glowed with grave magic as I stared down at the bared head and chest of Coleman.
The TV image of me looked up at someone offscreen, voicing my words from the morgue the day before, but I could barely make them out. The static of panic filled my ears, drowning out sound.The screen changed again, this time showing the steps of Central Precinct as Detective Andrews stormed up them, lifting his arm to buffer the barrage of microphones.
“—As of yet, the Nekros City Police have issued no comment as to the validity of the video,” Lusa’s voiceover said as Falin reached the top step.
He looked back, and the cameraman zoomed, focusing on Falin’s face. Icy blue eyes dominated the screen.
Really pissed-off eyes.
Eyes I could have sworn were looking right at me.