“Some essential furniture too,” I said, digging through my purse. “But first…” I pulled out a thin rectangular box. I’d wrapped it in newspaper—wrapping paper was expensive and this counted as recycling, right? Rianna gave me a quizzical look as I handed it to her.
“I didn’t get you anything,” she said, staring at the box in its makeshift wrapping.
“Don’t be silly, just open it.”
She bit her lip, as if unsure. Then a grin cut across her face and she lifted the box to her ear and gave it a good shake.
“Hey, it could be breakable,” I said, and her grin grew.
“Nah, you’d have stopped me earlier.” She tore into the packaging. Her perplexed look didn’t change when she pulled out a small metal container engraved with her initials, but when she flipped it open, she gave out a squeal of a laugh. “Business cards,” she said, pulling out the thin stack of cards. “And that’s the logo I tried—and failed—to draw. You nailed it. When did you have this done?”
I shrugged, but I was grinning too. “I created the template years ago. But after you disappeared I didn’t feel right using it. These I had printed yesterday. I’m just glad you said yes.”
She closed the lid and clutched the gift as if it were much more valuable than a cheap case and a handful of business cards. Then she bounced on the balls of her feet before scampering over to hug me. But she didn’t thank me. I don’t know if that was for my sake, as I hated feeling the imbalance of debt, or simply because she’d lived among the fae so long. Either way, the hug expressed her gratitude more than sufficiently.
“So, furniture,” I said as we headed back outside into the bright afternoon sun. “Unfortunately our budget is thrift, but maybe we’ll luck out.”
I locked our new office and we headed up the alley with Desmond following in our wake, or maybe he was taking rear guard—it was always hard to tell what the barghest was thinking. Rianna had parked my car around the corner since, legally, I couldn’t drive. It was well documented that grave magic damaged the witch’s eyesight, so we were required to take a vision test once a year.
Yeah, guess when mine had come due? My—suspended—driver’s license currently listed me as blind. If I could avoid any serious damage to my eyes, I hoped I could retake the test and pass next week.
We were just passing the matchmaker’s door, the gray magic inside pricking at my senses, when Annabella Lwin began singing the chorus of “I Want Candy” in my purse. My phone. I dug it out but didn’t bother glancing at the display. When I’d replaced my phone yet again—the latest cellular casualty had been lost in Faerie—Holly, my housemate and good friend, had set her own ring tone.
“Hey, Hol.”
She didn’t bother with a greeting. “I want chocolate so bad, I may kill the next person I see with a Snickers bar.”
“I sure hope you didn’t just say that in the middle of the courthouse.” After all, Holly was an assistant district attorney, and I was guessing that threatening to kill people over vending machine fare wouldn’t go over well.
“I just left,” she said, and a car horn blared through the phone.
“So is this where I’m supposed to be the sympathetic friend to your chocolate plight or where I offer to meet you for lunch?”
“Both? My last case for the day is over, so aside from a mountain of research, I’m free for the afternoon,” she said, and her horn sounded again. “God, what I wouldn’t do for just one piece of rich, dark chocolate.”
I winced on behalf of the cars around her. I doubted they were driving any worse than most Nekros citizens or deserved the long blasts of her horn. Tilting the phone away from my mouth, I glanced at Rianna.
“You up for a change of plans? We’ll furniture shop later. Let’s go celebrate the new business over lunch and drinks.”
Rianna stopped, forcing me to turn on my heels and double back. “Where were you thinking?” she asked.
“The Eternal Bloom—before Holly commits vehicular homicide.”
“I heard that,” Holly’s voice snapped in my ear.
Rianna frowned. “Doesn’t sound like much of a celebration if you can’t drink.”
It was true, but there wasn’t anywhere we could go that all of us could lift a glass together. As a changeling, Rianna was addicted to faerie food; anything else she tried to eat turned to ash on her tongue. Holly wasn’t a changeling, not currently at least, but a month ago she’d been exposed to faerie food, and one bite was enough to addict a mortal. Not that she didn’t miss mortal food—hence her chocolate-withdrawal inspired rage. I sympathized. Which was why, despite the fact I’d recently learned I had more fae blood than not and was apparently going through some sort of fae-mien metamorphosis, I was avoiding faerie food. If I turned out to be too mortal to resist it, I was sure I couldn’t live without coffee and Faerie didn’t serve it. My abstention meant that going to Nekros’s local fae bar, the Eternal Bloom, excluded me from the meal. Unfortunately, since Holly was neither fae nor changeling, she couldn’t get into the VIP area, so she needed an escort and today was my day.
“We’re not far from the Bloom,” I said, swiveling the phone back in front of my mouth. “You want to meet in about twenty—”
A booming crash and the sound of shattering glass exploded from somewhere around the corner. The blare of first one and then the honks of several car alarms sounded.
“Shit!”
“What the hell was that?” Holly asked, her voice pitched high. “Alex, is everyone okay?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like a car crash.” I broke into a run, Rianna at my side. Desmond raced ahead of us, a black blur as he bounded around the corner and out of the alley.
“Are you okay? Anyone hurt?” Holly asked again.
“We’re fine. Hang on a second,” I said, and then under my breath muttered, “That better not have been someone hitting my car.” It was new, and from the sound of the impact, something had taken major damage.
As it turned out, major damage was an understatement. I breached the mouth of the alley and ground to a halt, my mouth falling slack at the scene in front of me.
“Holly, I think we’re going to be late,” I said into the phone, but if she replied before I ended the call, I didn’t hear.
A crowd was gathering in the street, people pouring out of shops and cars screeching to a halt as the drivers stared with pale, shocked faces. The impact we’d heard had been a car—not mine—a little red sedan parallel parked a few spaces behind mine. Glass littered the street and sidewalk around it from where it had exploded as the roof caved. But it wasn’t another vehicle that had hit the car.
It was a body.
Chapter 2
I worked around the dead on a regular basis. It was one of those unavoidable consequences of being a grave witch. But I usually entered the picture after the deceased had been dead for a while—preferably after they’d been buried. I was squeamish around blood, and there was a lot of it leaking from the mangled form that had smashed into the car’s ruined roof.
“Should we call the police?” Rianna asked, moving so close her shoulders brushed mine.
I glanced at the phone in my hand. I’d forgotten I was holding it. Then I shook my head. There had to be a half dozen people already on the phone. The cops didn’t need yet another nine-one-one call clogging their switchboard.
“Is anyone a doctor or a healer?” one of the bystanders yelled, running toward the body.
“I’m a nurse,” a man said, separating himself from the crowd, just as a woman stepped forward with “I know a little healing magic.”
I shook my head. “It’s too late.”
I didn’t think I’d said it aloud, but several gawkers turned to glare at me, and an elderly woman who vibrated with the spells she carried sniffed and said, “Well, we have to try. That building’s only five stories. He might still be alive.”
Rianna and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us bothered to explain that we knew, definitively, that the man was dead. As grave witches we had an affinity for the dead. I could feel the grave essence lifting from the body, its chilling touch brushing my shields.
Besides, the man’s ghost was standing beside the car, staring at the broken shell he’d once inhabited. From the confused look on his face, he hadn’t grasped the situation yet. Which wasn’t that surprising, dying had to take a major adjustment. Of course, this guy looked like a jumper, so he shouldn’t have been that shocked.
What was more surprising, at least to me, was that a jumper would fight hard enough against moving on to become a ghost. Souls didn’t just pop out of bodies—a collector had to pull them free. The average mortal couldn’t bargain for his life, but if souls struggled enough, sometimes soul collectors released them, and they became ghosts. But why would someone so desperate to die fight the collector?
Not that this was the first ghost of a suicide I’d seen. I wasn’t sure why the collectors allowed some stubborn souls to stay and continue as ghosts in the purgatory of the land of the dead, but while ghosts were anomalies, there were enough that I doubted it was an accident they were left behind. I was familiar with the devastated landscape of the land of the dead, and I didn’t think such an existence was much of a win—neither did most of the ghosts.
But speaking of collectors…We’d heard the impact so I must have just missed seeing the collector and soul struggle. It was possible the collector was still here. I crossed my fingers as I scanned the gathering crowd, hoping to spot a familiar face.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Death, my oldest and closest friend, my confidant, and a man who, at one point, had said he loved me, stood on the far side of the street. While the people around him were a blur in my bad eyesight, it was my psyche that let me perceive him, and I had no trouble seeing that those hooded, hazel eyes were fixed on me, his dark hair hanging forward toward his chin. The sight of him drew a smile from me that spread across my face despite the terrible scene behind me. It had been nearly a month since I’d seen him, and I missed his company so much it hurt.