Author: Kalayna Price

Roy looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, and maybe he was. The land of the dead overlaid the living world perfectly, except that everything on the other side of the chasm was ruined and decayed. The farther from the chasm the ghost went, the worse the destruction. Even with my planeweaving and grave magic, I’d seen only the first couple of layers, but Roy had told me that in the heart of it there was nothing but dust and wasteland. Depending on how far into reality my magic had pulled Roy, he might be seeing the room almost as intact as it truly existed.

“So am I here?” he asked, curiosity peeking through the wince claiming his features.

“Not sure. Why don’t you try walking through that wall.” Now I was the one with labored breathing. I couldn’t keep my shields locked this tight much longer.

The ghost frowned at me. “You know I can’t walk through walls. Not unless they aren’t there in my plane.”

“I know.” Pain built behind my eyes, between my ears, and clawed down my spine. “Roy, I have to loosen my shields. If you don’t want a repeat performance from a minute ago, you might want to get out of here.”

His gaze moved toward the door, but he shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t move. “I’m ready this time.”

I almost made him leave anyway. After all, he’d been a factor in the magic overwhelming me. But if a ghost in the room set me off, how the hell was I going to step foot beyond the wards? As soon as the first tendril of grave essence reached for me, my magic would pummel through my shields. My grave magic preferred humans, but if I lost control, it would settle for any mammal or avian corpse in the vicinity. Wouldn’t that be something to loose in the Quarter? It would definitely get Tongues for the Dead noticed, but not in a good way. I shouldn’t have waited so long between rituals. Case or no case, as soon as Rianna returned, I needed to head to the nearest cemetery.

But first I had to see if my magic would flare out of control again if I let my shields return to a maintainable level.

“Okay, fair warning,” I told Roy. Then I loosened my mental hold, letting the vines in my mind relax—not open, they still maintained a solid wall, but no longer in a vicelike knot. The pain in my head lessened as I stopped working so hard, and I waited for the assault from my own magic.

It didn’t come. The magic didn’t even rise to test the weakened shields. I blinked in surprise. I could still feel it inside me, like I was a cup filled to the brim and close to boiling over, but for now the magic wasn’t overflowing. I let out a sigh, relaxing back into my chair.

“So it’s done?” Roy asked, his expression torn between disappointment and relief. At my nod, his shoulders rolled forward a bit and he said, “Oh, okay.”

He looked around my sparsely decorated office and then reached for one of the only things on my desk besides my laptop—a framed photo of my dog. I leapt from my chair and grabbed it before he could.

“Hands off,” I warned.

“Ah, come on, Alex, I just want to see what that little jolt did,” he said, shoving his thick-rimmed glasses farther up his nose.

The first time I’d pumped magic into Roy, he’d gone from an average haunt not able to interact with reality at all, to a passable poltergeist capable of moving small objects when he concentrated. I’d siphoned power into him a few times since then, but it had always been small, controlled amounts. Even with that, he was getting better at picking up, and sometimes throwing, real objects—and I had the broken dishes to prove it. Of course, if he was fully manifested currently, he’d be able to interact with anything he wanted until the energy dissipated.

“Go play with that chair,” I said, nodding at one of the two client chairs at the other side of my desk—not that any clients had actually sat in them yet.

Roy glanced at the chairs and his shoulders sank as if he were deflating into himself. “You know, I’ve been thinking…” he said.

Uh-oh. Did I even want to know?

Not that I had a choice. After shuffling his feet for a moment, Roy looked up, but his gaze was somewhere over my shoulder as he spoke. “I was…Well, since I’m here all the time anyway…I just thought…” He trailed off again and I was beginning to think he’d never get around to whatever he wanted to say when his gaze snapped to meet mine, he straightened, and said, “I think I should have my own office.”

“You’re a ghost.”

“Yeah, but you’re not using the room next door.”

“Roy, that’s a broom closet.”

The ghost frowned at me, but he didn’t back down. “You don’t have a broom.”

True. But we’d eventually have to get a vacuum cleaner as the office was carpeted. I almost said as much, but Roy was still standing up straight, watching my expression, and I knew that he must have been building up to asking me about an office for days.

“Why would you want an office that exists in the living world? I mean really, what’s the point?”

“Because it would be mine,” he said, his gaze going distant for a moment. Then his eyes snapped to me again and he clearly didn’t like what he saw in my expression. “Oh come on, Alex. It’s not like I haven’t been helpful before. Remember when I helped you sneak into the State House? Or when I trailed those Spells for the Rest of Us guys? I can help on your cases. I just want my own office.”

The last was more whine than statement, and his bottom lip protruded slightly as he shoved his balled fists into his pockets. Geez, I hated when he pouted.

“Okay, fine. The broom closet is all yours,” I said, and Roy immediately perked up, a smile breaking across his face. “But you’ll have to share it with a vacuum when we finally get one. And you have to get along with Rianna.”

That smile darkened and fell as quickly as it had appeared. I couldn’t exactly fault the response, after all, Rianna had played a major role in his death. Not an easy thing to forgive and forget, even if she had been under someone else’s control at the time.

“Just stay out of each other’s way,” I said as the ghost slouched into a sulk. Avoiding each other shouldn’t be hard, she couldn’t see him unless she tapped the grave, so as long as he ignored her, everything should be fine. A small smile crept along the edge of Roy’s mouth and I added, “And no hurling objects at her.”

The smile slipped and he gave me a “Who me?” look, which I didn’t buy in the least.

“If I hear about her getting assaulted by office supplies, you lose all rights to the office,” I warned and his shoulders curled farther forward as he huffed out a breath.

“Fine. Can you bring my blocks to my office?”

I nodded. I’d bought him the blocks to save what was left of my dishware.

“And the Scrabble game?”

Again I nodded.

“And can I have my name added to the door?”

“Don’t push it.”

“Ah, but—” Whatever argument he might have concocted to try to convince me that putting a dead norm’s name on the sign was a brilliant plan stopped abruptly as the chime on the door rang through the front room.

I expected to feel the familiar tingle of Rianna’s magic, but I could sense only the smallest bit of magic, and it wasn’t familiar.

I jumped to my feet. A client? Finally. I rushed around my desk, but Roy stepped into my path, his eyes wide behind his thick-framed glasses.

“Am I…?” The whispered question trailed off as Roy gave an exaggerated wave of his hand and I knew he was asking if he would be visible to whomever had entered.

I honestly had no idea. The ghost looked pretty solid to me, but he always did so I wasn’t a great judge. Then there was the fact I still had other planes filling my peripheral vision, giving me glimpses of the world decayed, of colorful wisps of magic, of the emotional shadow of those who’d passed through the room before, and occasionally flashes of planes I couldn’t identify. Recently, determining if what I saw was what everyone else in the world saw was a lot more complicated than it should have been.

“Just go with it,” I whispered back. “If the client sees you, we’ll deal with it.”

Then I stepped around him and rushed into the lobby to greet what I hoped was our first walk-in client.

Chapter 4

The woman standing in the center of the lobby was a complete stranger, but I immediately guessed who she was. Or, at least, I knew who she was related to—the ghost standing behind her was the jumper Rianna and I had encountered last week.

“Welcome to Tongues for the Dead Investigations,” I said, stepping forward and extending my hand. “I’m Alex Craft.”

The woman, who looked to be in her late forties and very, very pregnant, tore her less than impressed gaze from studying the lobby and turned those critical eyes on me. I got the distinct impression she disapproved of my appearance even more than that of the ramshackle office. Of course, despite her swollen belly, she wore what had to be a tailor-made dress suit, complete with pearls and fat-heeled pumps that her water-bloated ankles pudged over. I, on the other hand, owned only two pairs of dress slacks and I’d already worn those this week. Today I had on a pair of hip-huggers. They were black and I’d paired them with a flattering blouse, so I thought I’d pulled off something close to business casual.

My prospective client clearly didn’t agree.

She frowned at me before releasing the death grip on her designer purse and reaching out to give my hand a limp squeeze. Pain shot through my fingers and up my arm. If I hadn’t spent the last two months perfecting not flinching whenever I came into skin contact with someone, I would have winced. But I had practiced, and I kept my smile locked tight on my face. Still, I was thankful when she dropped my hand, even though she pulled back as if I had some disease that might be contagious.

Several months ago my body temperature had dropped significantly, so much so that the touch of someone running your typical 98.6 was uncomfortably hot against my skin. But I was accustomed to that. The pain from her touch had been deeper, sharper. I glanced at her well-manicured hand and noticed a thick ring of dull metal.