“This has to stop, do you understand me, Alex?”
Again he was making me responsible for someone else’s actions.
“Exactly what do you want me to do, Caleb?” I asked, my voice low. Falin might be conducting the raids, but we both knew it was the Winter Queen ordering them and they weren’t likely to stop unless I joined her court.
Caleb shoved the platter away. “I don’t know. Figure something out. I’d hate to be forced to evict you, but this is intolerable.”
Something in my chest clenched, stealing my air, preventing me from speaking.
Holly gaped at Caleb. “You can’t mean that?”
He didn’t answer her.
“Caleb?” I said, squeezing the word out. My voice was thin. If he kicked me out…I’d lived in Caleb’s house for over seven years. I’d say he and Holly were like family, except I didn’t like my family. I cared about my friends a lot. I didn’t have any idea where I’d go if he made me leave. And I’d just put all my money into renting the office for Tongues for the Dead. I didn’t even have the money for a deposit if I had to go on an emergency apartment hunt.
Caleb frowned at me for what felt like forever; then he dropped his head and rubbed a hand over his face. The green faded from his skin, his glamour solidifying. “Just go, Al.”
Go? My throat closed. He really was kicking me out?
He looked up and whatever he saw in my face made his expression soften. “Home, Al. Go home.”
Oh.
“And attend the revelry in a few days. You need to see more of Faerie so you can choose your damn alignment and stop this madness.”
I had no idea what to say. So I nodded and then did as he asked and left.
Chapter 9
I wasn’t sure what I’d find when I returned home. The raids had been progressively worsening. Caleb was right—it was ridiculous. And yet, as I got off at the bus stop and walked toward the house, I hoped Falin would be there. That I’d see him. Or at least, part of me wished that. The smarter part knew it would only hurt if he were still at the house. But I guess it was better than hoping I’d spot Death on the way home. At this point, that would require wishing someone dead.
My car was the only vehicle in the driveway when I reached the house, and only a Chinese crested greeted me at the door. I hated how disappointed I was by that fact. Falin had the irritating tendency to enter my life like a whirlwind, stirring up emotions, and then leaving just as quickly. Right now he was out. Again. I sighed. Pining over men I couldn’t have? That wasn’t me.
“You’re the only man I need in my life, right Prince Charming?” I said, picking up my little six-pound dog. PC licked my nose, the white plume of his tail wagging. See, I have puppy love. I don’t need prince mysterious or prince unpredictable.
Yeah, tell that to the ache in my chest.
I glanced around my apartment. The drawers with clothes hanging precariously out of them and open cabinets were proof the FIB had swept my room in their raid. Oh, it had looked worse than this before, but it hadn’t been a mess when I left this morning. That was due entirely to the fact that when I’d inherited Coleman’s castle, I’d also inherited the brownie and garden gnome who lived there, or more accurately, they’d inherited me. Faerie might say the castle was mine, but the brownie, Ms. B, ran the place and had long before Coleman owned it. Throughout history and folklore, brownies bonded to the land or to a family. Burn a brownie’s home to the ground and they’d tend the ashes. A family brownie would follow the bloodline, even when they didn’t wish it to.
Ms. B had always been a land-bound brownie, but for reasons I couldn’t begin to understand, she seemed to like me. I rarely saw her, but for the last month my apartment had been consistently cleaner than in the last seven years I’d lived here. I sighed as I scanned the mess. Great. The room looked more trashed than searched, and I walked around the room pushing things back in drawers and sliding them shut, PC following at my heels.
When I passed the bed, I froze, a splash of color catching my eye. I turned. Thoughts about the mess scattered as if they’d never been there as my attention narrowed to a bloodred rose lying on top of my white pillowcase.
I sank onto the bed, staring, waiting for the rose to vanish. To prove to be a figment of my imagination.
But it didn’t.
I reached out a tentative hand and touched the velvety smoothness of a petal so deep a red it verged on black. I’d never considered myself a flower girl, and with my dating habits, it wasn’t like I’d received many, but I couldn’t help smiling as I stared at this single, solitary rose. I picked it up gingerly, mindful of the large, curved thorns running the length of the stem right up to the rose’s delicate bloom.
Appropriate.
I hoped to find a note, or message, or anything, but there was just the rose. I frowned. If I were a note, where would I hide? I glanced at the stack of mail on my counter—or what had been a stack of mail. Now it was scattered over the countertop and littered across the floor
Oh crap. That stack was where I’d tucked Falin’s business card. I’d considered programming his cell number in my phone, but I was afraid I’d be tempted to call him and I didn’t want to hear the cold tone of his voice. So I’d hidden the card from myself among piles of other papers, junk mail, and flyers. Now I dug through the scattered pages, searching.
No. No. No. It wasn’t there. Did one of the agents find it? Had they seen the scrawled number on the back and reported Falin to the queen? Crap, oh—wait.
There, tucked between a get well card and a coupon for pizza, was the card. Relief washed over me as I picked it up. Then I just stood there, rose held carefully in one hand and Falin’s card in the other.
Behind me, PC whined.
Oops. I’d gotten so distracted, I hadn’t walked him yet and he likely had one very full puppy bladder.
“Sorry, little guy,” I said, pocketing the card. “We’ll go out as soon as I get this in water.”
Not that I owned a vase. I filled a chipped drinking glass with water and set the rose inside. Then I grabbed PC’s leash and took him for a much needed potty break, all the while fingering Falin’s card in my pocket.
I spent the rest of the night on the Dead Club forums searching for anyone with experience with shades missing memories. Most old posts I ran across were the expected: dementia, long-term brain damage, even a couple of posts about memory spells—though none that occurred as close to death as in the case of James Kingly.
I started a new thread, detailing the more unusual points of the case without revealing enough that anyone would guess my client’s identity. Not that anyone of the Dead Club was local. To the best of my knowledge, Rianna and I were the only grave witches in Nekros currently and the next closest lived more than a hundred miles to the east in Atlanta. But I still kept the finer points and the exact nature of Kingly’s suicide vague to protect my client’s privacy. I went ahead and added a line or two about the medical abnormalities discovered in autopsy, as well as the peculiar weight loss. With our affinity for the dead, some grave witches went into fields dealing directly with bodies. If I was lucky, I’d find another medical examiner who’d seen these same oddities paired with memory loss.
But I wasn’t lucky.
The boards were crowded, so my thread received ample attention, but most of the responses were more question than answer. Unfortunately, they were all questions I’d already asked myself, so not much help. Some users offered theories, and while I appreciated their out of the box thinking, the ideas were clearly not fully thought out. Such as the user who suggested that my client had died that first night, at the time of the memory loss, but his body had been guarded from collectors for three days until his suicide was staged and the soul allowed to be collected.
At first blush, not a terrible theory. If killed inside a circle or inside a cemetery or some other place a collector couldn’t traverse, a soul could get stuck inside a dead body until the body decayed so far the—usually already faded—ghost popped free without the assistance of a collector. But for the theory to work one would have to overlook the fact that Kingly had definitely jumped off the top of the building, not been a dead body tossed over the side. And the memory loss? A soul trapped inside a body still recorded what was happening. Being dead it couldn’t see or hear, but it would be aware of the body decaying around it. Kingly’s shade hadn’t recounted anything like that. From what he’d said, he’d died from the fall. Besides, Tamara would have noticed if the body had been several days dead before hitting the roof of that car.
Sadly, that theory was the most plausible suggested. And it was impossible. I left the thread active, just in case, but logged off for the night. Then I collapsed onto my bed, still fully dressed.
It was after two, and I was tired, but the conflicting and seemingly impossible details of the case buzzed around my mind. The fact Kingly had jumped off that building was undeniable. But was it suicide or murder? Had something happened in the three missing days that would have driven the man to kill himself? It was possible. Seemingly more possible than murder as not even the darkest blood or death magic could overpower one’s sense of self-preservation. And what about the memory loss? I’d heard rumors about agents whose knowledge was so classified that each carried a spell in his or her body that would obliterate the shade in the event of death. No shade meant no way to extract secrets postmortem.
But Kingly was a norm—would he have considered the fact that whatever happened during that missing time wouldn’t die with him? The timing of the missing memories was highly suspect as well. Not so much when the memory loss began, but when it ended and the shade started recording again. If Kingly had acquired some charm or potion to erase his own memory, the logical time for him to activate it would be on the roof, or after he jumped as he might not have remembered he wanted to jump if he activated the spell too early. The shade didn’t remember the roof. Or the fall. No, the memories started again after hitting the car. According to Tamara, medical death had occurred on impact. So medically, Kingly was dead before his soul started recording again.