Author: Kalayna Price

“Okay, tha—” I caught the “thanks” before it slipped through my lips. One of the rules of the house when I’d moved in was that I was never allowed to thank him.

Thanking a fae acknowledged a debt, and Caleb didn’t want the temptation to collect. “I’ll see you later,” I said instead, sliding out of the car.

“Be safe, Al,” he said, shoving his car door closed.

I waved good-bye as he trudged to the main part of the house and I headed for my loft. I was thankful it was Caleb rather than Holly who’d been around to drive me to the hospital. Holly would have wanted juicy details.

And would be sorely disappointed. My mind flashed back to the expanse of chest that had been on display this morning. Well, maybe not completely disappointed.

I’d just let myself in after walking PC for the second time when movement in the corner of the room caught my eye. It was a man. I dropped to a crouch, pulling the dagger from my boot. Then I noticed the man was luminescent.

I sheathed the dagger. “Roy, what are you doing here?” Which was a dumb question, as I wasn’t going to be able to hear him. Adrenaline was still making blood pound inside my ears, so I could probably be forgiven a dumb question or two.

The ghost turned. “Alex, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

I was too stunned to move. I just blinked. Then I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes. My mental shields were in place, my extra shields were blown, but that shouldn’t have affected how far across the chasm my psyche was reaching. I looked around. My grave-sight wasn’t active, but I could see the fact that Roy’s hair was brown, his jeans blue.

“I think I need to sit down,” I muttered.

Roy frowned at me. Then he went into charades mode. He walked to my circle and stood in the middle.

He threw his hands out as if to indicate all the area around him. Then he moved his fingers like a flapping duckbill, which I guess was supposed to tell me he wanted to talk.

I leaned down and released PC from his leash. The small dog immediately begged for lunch.

“Just talk, Roy. I can hear you.” I didn’t fully understand why I could hear him, but I could.

His thick brows scrunched behind his glasses. “Are you sure? Because before you—”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Oh, cool. Well, I thought you should know that the police have brought in two more grave witches so far.”

“Yeah?” I said, filling PC’s food bowl. I’d already known the police were looking for second opinions.

“Well, both have disagreed with you.”

I dropped the bag, and kibble scattered over the wood floor. “What? Who were they? What did they say?”

Roy shrugged. “They both agreed that the shade couldn’t be raised, and that the body was resistant to grave magic. This morning’s witch used that word— ‘resistant.’ But neither found any trace of a spell or the symbols you saw on the body.”

“Of all the incompetent—” I cut off because I didn’t have words for the frustration I felt. Everything that had happened in the past four days had been balling in the center of my being, and the ball had just grown large enough to suffocate me. I couldn’t breathe. My chest burned, like my lungs were clawing through my ribs, searching for air.

Roy’s eyes went wide. “Maybe I should just …” He pointed over his shoulder and vanished.

Of course he fucking vanished. Roy could vanish.

Death could vanish. Coleman could mask his dark, tainted presence. And what could I do? I could have a seizure and get my soul sucked out by a fucking spell.

Someone knocked on my door, and I jerked it open without looking through the curtain.

“What?” I yelled.

Falin cocked his head in confusion, his lips drawing together. “Did I come at a bad time?”

“No, I—” I cut myself off and massaged my temples with my thumb and pointer finger. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“It’s barely noon.”

I glared at him “I suppose you’re here to tell me the experts disagree with my analysis of Coleman’s body and you want me to stay away from your case?”

“How did you—” He stopped. “Never mind. I think the so-called experts are wrong. May I come in?”

I gaped at him, and the pressure in my chest became more manageable. “Really?”

He frowned at me and let himself inside. After shutting the door, he turned and stared at the explosion of kibble that PC was doing his best vacuum cleaner impression on. There was way more kibble than one seven-pound dog could—or at least should—eat in one sitting.

“Oh, um, there was a …” I trailed off. Why was I trying to explain the condition of my house? Because his apartment had been spotless. I silenced the internal voice as I searched for where I’d stashed the broom last. “So, I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit.”

“No.You never saw any of the actual bodies in John’s cases, did you?”

I shook my head and dumped kibble, with as few dust bunnies as possible, back into the bag of dog food. I’d seen Bethany’s shade, but her body had remained inside the black body bag.

“You said I would find glyphs on the new victim’s body. Can you describe them?”

I tossed the bag of dog food on the counter. “I can do better than that.” I grabbed an unopened bill and a pencil off the counter. Then I sketched the glyph that had appeared most frequently on the victim. I’d had nightmares about the glyph last night. I definitely knew what it looked like. I left the last mark off. Some glyphs were powerful enough in their own right that norms could use them. As I didn’t know what this glyph did—and it had been used in dark magic, so I was guessing nothing good—I didn’t want to accidently cast it.

I held up the not quite finished drawing. Falin leaned closer. His brow furrowed as he looked at it; then he pulled an envelope out of the inner pocket of his jacket.

He flipped through something inside and then withdrew a photo and tossed it on the counter beside us.

I picked it up and stared at it. The photo was a closeup shot of a torso. Carved into the exposed flesh was the glyph I’d drawn.

Falin took the photo back. “You couldn’t have seen that under all the blood.”

“Whoa—are you accusing me of something, Detective?”

His frown etched itself deeper into his face. “All the evidence from last night’s scene disappeared. Every candle, both champagne flutes, the ropes she was tied with, the sheets from the bed, everything. Gone.”

“I had nothing to do with that. Hell, you were with me all night.”

“I know that!” He shoved the envelope back into his pocket. “What I want to know is this: what are you, Alexis Caine?”

Chapter 15

“That stupid, arrogant—” I wanted to scream. Except screaming wouldn’t have been enough. The sound of the door slamming when I’d kicked Falin out still thundered in my ears—or maybe that was my blood pounding.

“What are you, Alexis Caine?”

Damn him.

I stopped in front of the mirror and stared at my face. “He thinks you’re weird,” I told the girl in the mirror.

She already looked pissed, so my statement didn’t change much. Of course I’m weird. I’m wyrd. I was the Caine daughter who was different, the one who couldn’t hide what she could do. I was the one who couldn’t not do magic, couldn’t not raise shades.The magic exploded out of me and latched onto random corpses if I went too long between rituals. Wyrd.

And now Falin thought I was even weirder than wyrd.

“What are you, Alexis Caine?”

I was pissed. I was exhausted. I was … wasting time.

I inhaled a deep breath and let it back out. This isn’t helping you find Coleman. No, but self-flogging was easy to do. But it wasn’t just my life on the line anymore—I had to find Coleman for John.

My gaze moved to the corner of the mirror and landed on a picture of Rianna. As the only two grave witches at the academy we’d never been weird to each other. In the photo, she looked at the camera with her big green eyes peeking over the top of a paperback book—probably a mystery novel. A PI firm called Tongues for the Dead had been her dream, not mine.

“What would you do if you were here?” I asked the photo.

It didn’t answer—not that I expected it to. Talking to the dead didn’t mean I could make a photo answer. But I did know what Rianna would do. She would write a report about everything we knew, including all our suspects.

I didn’t have the patience for a full report, but a suspect list wasn’t a bad idea.

I turned on my laptop and pulled up a blank document.

The party guest list was my suspect pool. I didn’t know the names of all the men in the group where I’d sensed Coleman. From what I remembered, six men had met the description Roy gave me: the businessman, two aides, Lieutenant Governor Bartholomew, Senator Wilks, and, of course, my father.

In my opinion, my father was cleared—if not by his actions, then by the fact I’d seen him a half hour before Falin was called to the scene. That wasn’t enough time for him to leave the party and commit the murder. Coleman probably wanted to get as close to the hot seat of power again, so I was betting on Bartholomew as the new host.After all, Bartholomew had left the party early on.That gave him the time and opportunity to get to the warehouse and conduct the ritual. I put a star beside his name and typed “prime suspect” in parentheses.

Now, the question was how to prove it.

I stared at the blinking curser.At my feet, PC whined.

I glanced down at him.

“What do you think, PC?”

He thought he’d jump in my lap.

I needed to know more about Bartholomew. I hit the icon to bring up my Internet browser. My e-mail was set as my home screen, and I groaned at the number of unread messages in my in-box. I scanned, deleting as I went. As expected, most were from the press.