She was right. I knew she was, but I couldn’t help walking toward that open doorway. I’m not sure my legs would have listened had I tried to stop them from climbing the steps.

Falin didn’t move, not even a muscle twitch, as I approached. I wanted to see him smile. Hell, after the kiss he’d said good-bye with a month ago, a kiss so full of promise, of need, I wanted those lips to do a lot more than just smile. Not like that could happen. His face was hard, impassive. But his eyes betrayed him. Ice blue, but oh so warm as they swept over me.

“Hi.” My voice was breathless and not from the three squat steps I’d climbed to reach the door.

“Ms. Craft. I trust you saw the warrant.” The words were crisp, professional, and cold enough to make me flinch. Only the lingering warmth in his eyes gave me hope.

“I saw enough to know it’s bullshit.” I leaned back against the doorjamb crossing my arms over my chest. “She’s not going to stop until I accept one of her invitations, is she?”

He looked away. Neither of us had to clarify who “she” was. Falin was the Winter Queen’s bloody hands, her assassin, her knight, and was completely bound to her will. Her current compulsion prevented him from having any contact with me outside of a professional capacity. Even our discussions were limited to FIB business. But then she sent him here, to my home, on these damn raids. Why? To remind me that if I wanted Falin I had to come to her first, had to join her court? Or was she simply torturing both of us, making him the instrument of her harassment because she was a possessive bitch and he belonged to her, not me?

I didn’t know, but I should have gone with Caleb and Holly. Seeing him, being so near, but with the queen’s icy barrier between us, hurt. My staying had been cruel to both of us. I pushed away from the doorjamb and started into the living room and the inner stair that led to my apartment, but paused as I took in the havoc the FIB agents had rendered on Caleb’s normally orderly house. They weren’t breaking anything, just ransacking the place so it looked like a mini whirlwind had hit the room.

Damn, no wonder Caleb had been so pissed. The previous raids hadn’t been this bad.

“Alex.”

I stopped at Falin’s voice. It was still distant, but not quite as cold as it had been a moment before. I turned, hoping when I made the full one eighty I’d find his chilliness would have as well.

No such luck. His expression was just as hard as when I’d turned away.

“If you have a case you think involves fae, or have any trouble that might call for FIB involvement…” He pressed a card into my palm, his gloved fingers tracing the back of my hand as he drew back again.

My stomach did an inappropriately excited somersault for such a small gesture. I swallowed, but the wall was still there between us, as if the movement hadn’t been intentional. But it was. He couldn’t break his queen’s commands, but he’d bend them as far as they’d go. And man, was I ever tempted to go find a case involving fae. Except that would mean looking for trouble, and enough found me without me actively seeking it.

Someone farther inside the house called Falin’s name as I glanced at the card he’d given me. It was his business card, but he’d scrawled his cell number on the back.

“Actually,” I said, slowly. “I am having fae troubles. I’m being harassed. Think the FIB could put a stop to that?”

For a moment, his hard facade broke, a small lopsided grin breaking through as he shook his head not in a “no” but in sad amusement. The change lasted only a moment. By the time I blinked, his expression was set and cold once more. That invisible distance was even worse for the contrast to the small slivers of emotion that escaped.

I hated this.

I hated that Falin could be so close and yet so far away. I hated that Death disappeared whenever I saw him.

I was so through with emotions. If only I could find an OFF switch.

An agent called for Falin again and he closed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I have to go. Don’t interfere with the raid, Ms. Craft.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said, heading for my apartment and the Chinese crested awaiting a walk and food. I might know the raid was bullshit, but I also knew better than to interfere. If you crossed the FIB, not only did you not pass go or collect two hundred dollars; you also didn’t go to jail. You went straight to Faerie.

Chapter 3

It took us the better part of a week to get the new Tongues for the Dead offices something akin to presentable and ready to open, but it took me only three days to discover the major flaw in having an office: someone had to be present during posted business hours. Since Rianna was at a gravesite, right now that someone was me.

Not that any clients had visited the office yet. At least, not any new clients. A woman who’d contacted me before we opened had, under protest, stopped by to sign paperwork and drop off a retainer fee, grumbling about the drive the entire time she was here. The office? Yeah, not so much a success thus far.

I sighed and tapped the touch pad on my laptop to wake the screen.

“You look bored.”

I jolted at the unexpected voice and my thrift-store chair screeched in protest as my heart jumped to my throat. Not that I didn’t recognize the voice, or the approaching shimmery form dressed in baggy jeans, loose T-shirt, and open flannel shirt so threadbare it would have been nearly transparent even if it hadn’t been worn by a ghost.

“Hey, a little jumpy there, Alex?” Roy, my self-appointed ghostly sidekick asked, shoving his hands in his pockets. Then he squinted, staring a little too hard. “Your magic is overflowing again, isn’t it?”

I gave an inward cringe. It had been almost a week since I raised a shade, and my magic was battering my mental shields in an attempt to escape. “That obvious?”

Roy shrugged. “You’re sort of…flickering.”

That wasn’t good. Roy, being a ghost, existed in the land of the dead, which was separated from the reality and the living by a chasm. All grave witches could bridge that chasm—that was how we raised shades—but as a planeweaver, part of my psyche always touched the land of the dead. Despite that, Roy had once told me that I was usually as shadowy and uninteresting looking as any of the living, at least, until I actively drew in grave essence. Then I apparently lit up like a roman candle. If I was flickering, my power was clearly slipping.

I should have taken the ritual in the cemetery today—I’d just wanted to give my eyes as much time as possible to recover.

“So whatcha working on? Do we have a case yet?” Roy asked, leaning forward to stare at my screen. He made a face. “Apparently not.”

I blushed and closed the laptop, hiding the two windows I’d had open. One of which was the Dead Club Forums, which was the unofficial digital gathering place for the small population of the world’s grave witches. The other window was the reason for my embarrassment. It held a game that’s sole premise involved slingshotting birds at strangely colored pigs. I wasn’t sure how the creators had done it, but I’d swear they worked a spell into the code. That was the only way to explain why the game was so unnaturally addictive.

“What do you need, Roy?” The question came out snippier than I meant—the pressure of holding my shields was wearing on my nerves—and the ghost jerked back. He took a step to the side and hunched his shoulders, all but broadcasting his hurt feelings.

Well, crap. I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in my hands. I really had to loose my magic soon. If I didn’t use it, my shields would crumple with my will. Considering those shields were the only things keeping the different planes of reality from trying to converge through me, I needed to make sure I—and not my magic—was in control when I lowered them.

I was too fae to apologize, so instead I said, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“I know.” But his tone carried a sulking note.

I dropped my hands from my face and glanced back at him. As soon as my eyes fell on the ghost, the barrage of magic attacking my shields found a crack. I mentally grabbed at the slipping power, trying to draw it back.

Too late.

That part of me with an affinity for the dead, that power that let me reach across the chasm, spiraled out of me. What it wanted was grave essence, which every corpse contained, but the office was warded, and no grave essence could make it through. So it reached for the next best thing—a ghost.

Roy straightened with a jolt as my power hit him, his eyes flying wide. Then color bled into his clothes and hair as my magic pulled him closer to the land of the living.

I clamped down on the power, tightening my shields. I imagined the living vines that kept the dead out—and my magic in—slithering closed. A cold sweat dripped down my neck, but I stopped hemorrhaging magic.

Roy gasped—typically an unnecessary action for a ghost—and then doubled forward. “Geez, Alex, warn me next time,” he said between ragged breaths. “I mean, you know I’m more than willing to let you siphon however much power into me that you want, but what the hell was that?”

“An accident.” I frowned at him. With my shields this locked down, I should have been as disconnected from the other planes as possible. Instead my peripheral was filled with the chaotic mix of several planes. And Roy, well, I wasn’t sure if enough power had spilled out of me to make him manifest in reality, but his color was wrong, and in more than him being too vivid for a ghost. Or maybe it wasn’t his color. Maybe it was the way my psyche perceived him. Something was definitely off. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just…” He straightened and rolled his shoulders. “It’s never hurt before.”

He winced, and my frown deepened. Ghosts are dead. As such, they can’t be killed. They can fade out of existence, but they can’t die, and before this moment, I’d have sworn nothing could hurt Roy. Or at least, nothing had before, even when I’d siphoned enough power into him that he fully manifested in reality.