I just have to keep it that way.

I’d have to wait to check out the tear after the commotion died down. If it dies down. I sighed, fed and walked PC, then called Holly to check on her. They were holding her in the hospital overnight for a sleep study, but if nothing unusual happened, she was scheduled to be released in the morning. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad news. I was about to head downstairs and visit Caleb when Roy appeared in the center of my room.

“Alex, you aren’t going to believe this,” he said, his shimmering form all but vibrating with his excitement. “That guy you sent me to follow, Maximillian Bell? He just claimed responsibility for a tear in reality.”

Chapter 18

“Wait, Roy—slow down,” I said both to give myself a second to absorb his words and because the excited ghost looked like he might flit back into the deep realms of the land of the dead at any moment. “Which tear? The one at the Lenore Street Bridge?”

Roy scrunched his face around his thick-framed glasses. “I’m not sure where. A phone call came in, and then everything happened in a flurry. At first I thought I’d missed something. That his men had nabbed you despite his instructions to follow you discreetly—”

That would have been good to know before now. “—But then Bell and a bunch of his followers—that school is a cult, by the way—piled into cars and drove down to the river.”

“That has to be the same tear Lusa found.” I rolled from my heels to the balls of my feet. So Bell was on the scene. And claiming the tear? “Roy, did you actually see Bell rip the tear into the Aetheric?”

The ghost shook his head, pushing his glasses farther up his nose when they slipped forward. “He got the call, hurried to the site, and then told the reporter and the officials that the tear was his possession and on his land, so they were trespassing.”

“So Bell might not have had any idea the tear was there until Lusa ran her report.” Which made a lot more sense. After all, if he could rip a hole in reality on his own, why would he have approached me? Unless he found someone else to do it.

But who?

“Did you see another ghost at the scene?” I asked, remembering the figure I’d spotted in Lusa’s footage, the one Falin hadn’t been able to see. “Probably a man with dark hair. It looked like he was wearing some sort of trench coat?”

“You mean the reaper?” the ghost asked, and his form shimmered out of focus as he shivered. “Yeah. That’s why I got the hell out of there.”

A soul collector? The collectors were a secretive bunch. I’d “known” Death most of my life, but in truth, I didn’t know anything about him or the other collectors—I didn’t even know his name. What was a collector doing walking around a hole into the Aetheric?

Lusa was no longer on the screen of my TV, most likely because Bell had kicked her off his property. The studio reporter rerolled Lusa’s footage of the tear, keeping his own running commentary as he pointed out parts of the tape. He paused to enlarge the shot when the cameraman had zoomed in on the tear, and a symbol scratched into the dirt caught my attention.

“Is that a rune?” I stepped closer, squinting as I all but shoved my nose against the screen trying to make out the small shapes in an already overzoomed image. The symbols sure looked like runes, but the magnification had degraded the image quality to the point that someone could have drawn a tic-tac-toe board in the dirt and it probably would have looked like a rune.

I leaned back as the camera panned. Then a clump of pixels at the bottom of the screen jumped out at me. “That’s definitely a rune.” It was that same damn rune I’d spent half the morning staring at because it looked familiar but I couldn’t place.

“Got you,” I said, jabbing my finger against the TV screen.

Roy hunkered down beside me and looked from where my finger pressed against the screen to my face. He shoved his glasses farther up his nose again. “Alex, are you talking to the TV?”

“Not at all.” I jumped to my feet, unable to stay still any longer. The rune proved that the tear and the constructs were connected. Maybe they weren’t from the same ritual, but they were definitely cast by the same witch or coven of witches—the chance that two unconnected witches would suddenly start casting unheard-of spells using the same rare runes was too unlikely. “This is the break we need.”

“Would ‘we’ include me?” Roy asked, floating beside me as I paced. “Because if it does, I’m lost.”

“I’m thinking out loud, but sure, ‘we’ can include you.” I grabbed my purse and dug out the page of runes. “We’ve only had the end results of the witch’s spells thus far. First there were the feet filled with dark magic. Then the constructs that left only a spelled disk behind. We knew the two were created by the same person or group because the magic felt the same, but we haven’t been able to get anywhere with the remains of the spells. But this rune”—I pointed to the fourth rune down on the page—“was cut into the dirt around that tear. Whoever ripped that tear has to be responsible for the other two as well, but now we have a crime scene. There has to be something at that site that will lead back to the caster.” And I wasn’t there. I glanced at the TV but a commercial was currently playing. “Roy, can you go check out the scene? Let me know what’s going on?”

“With that reaper there? No way.” He fanned his hands out away from his body to accent his no. “Being a ghost might not be the best gig in the world, but I have no idea what happens after the reapers nab you. The devil you know and all that.”

“Right, the soul collector,” I said, pacing again without really hearing the rest of what Roy said. “Why is he there? Does he have a part in this? The collectors take that . . . soul mist . . . that appears when the constructs are disbelieved. Does he provide that?” But why would he? Why would a collector be involved at all? “He might just be passing through.”

I dug my phone out of my purse. I needed to update Falin on the runes. He’d need to make sure the area was treated as a crime scene—especially if Bell had claimed ownership and had his people tromping through the place. I woke the phone but then hesitated as I pulled up the address book. I didn’t actually have Falin’s phone number. My phone had been destroyed by the time we’d started working together on the Coleman case, and I hadn’t replaced it until after Falin had disappeared. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him use a phone since he reappeared, so I wasn’t even sure he had one on him. Damn.

I shook my head and dropped the phone back in my purse. “I have to go to the scene.”

But Falin was right—I did not want to draw Faerie’s attention. If there was some other planeweaver out there ripping holes in reality, the courts could drag him or her away. I needed to stay far from the tears. And even if I wanted to go, how would I get to the scene? It was dark, so I couldn’t drive. Besides, Falin had my car.

But what about the case? And Holly? And Caleb—who wouldn’t be protected by anything but his wards tonight. Wards that this morning’s adventure proved were easy enough for the spell to circumvent.

I chewed my lip and walked over to the TV again. They were replaying the same clip I’d already seen twice. I didn’t need to see the tear’s discovery again. I needed to see what was happening at the scene right now. One of Lusa’s “Breaking News” bulletins would be great. Of course, I guess she’d already done that.

The anchorman rolled the film where the collector crossed in front of the tear, his features out of focus. What was he doing there?

“Okay, that’s it. I’m going to the scene.” There had to be a crowd by now. I would just try to blend in.

Picking up my phone, I hit the second number on my speed dial and then turned the speaker on while it rang. As I waited, I twisted my shoulder-length curls up on top of my head, then secured—and covered—them with a cap that read WITCHITUDE across the front. As far as disguises went, it was weak, but much more and I’d look like I was trying to hide. I’d just tucked the last of my escaped curls under the cap when a groggy-sounding female voice answered the phone.

“Alex? You woke me at four this morning. I’m trying to catch up those hours, plus I had a day full of dead bodies with no cause of death and I . . .” Tamara said, and then her bed squeaked as if she’d sprung to her feet. “Wait. Did something happen? Is Holly—?”

“She was fine when I talked to her last. She’s staying at the hospital for observation tonight. But something did happen, and I need a favor, and, uh, a ride.”

“Do we know which side of the bridge the tear is located on?” Tamara asked as we headed south toward Lenore Street.

I shook my head. The Lenore Street Bridge wasn’t a high-traffic pass. The Sionan River separated the skyscrapers and booming metropolis of downtown Nekros City from the Magic Quarter and the Witches Glen, but the Lenore Street Bridge was in the southern part of the city. On the western side of the Sionan—the Quarter side—Lenore Street was practically a country road, since the suburban sprawl hadn’t yet spread that far south. On the eastern side—the city side—Lenore Street was a fairly minor road in the warehouse district. It certainly wasn’t a street I traveled often.

“We’ll look for the crowd.” And there was bound to be one. Witch Watch had been replaying Lusa’s footage for the last hour, so aside from the media frenzy guaranteed to flock to the site, gawkers had probably gathered by now. There were always gawkers. Several law enforcement agencies would descend on the new tear as well, even if they hadn’t realized the site was a crime scene—and though I couldn’t yet prove a crime had taken place there, I had no doubt that Tamara or I would pick up the magical signature from the witch responsible for the recent murders. Finding the right location wouldn’t be an issue.

I was right. Empty cars dotted the side of the road as we neared the river, and by the time the old steel bridge came into view, the crowd gathered on the other side was easy to spot.