But I wouldn’t know if the other victims had the same charges, not unless I saw their statements as well. Or if it is something I can track another way. I’d have to wait and see because I seriously doubted I could convince Nina Kingly to share information about her husband’s financial transactions. She already treated me like a charlatan half the time.
I woke my computer and glanced at the time. It was nearing eight. Either Holly and Caleb had abandoned me, or it was one of the days the doors to Faerie had decided not to give us extra time. I just hoped the time in the Bloom wasn’t moving at a fourth the time as mortal reality—I really didn’t want to be stuck at the office until midnight. I couldn’t call, not while they were inside the Bloom; since I’d already asked for a ride, I couldn’t take a cab home and not be there when they arrived. Which meant I was stuck for the duration.
I opened my browser. I hated the idea, but now that Kirkwood was officially my client, I needed to watch the video I’d seen linked to one of the articles about his death. It was saved in my bookmarks, so finding it was no problem. Convincing myself to click the button, now that took a minute. Was it just this morning I’d seen the end result? It seemed like days ago, but thinking about him brought back the grotesque image of the blackened and split skin. And the smell, suddenly my entire office stank with the remembered smell of burnt hair and charred flesh.
Okay, Alex, you’re not doing yourself any favors here. Just get it over with.
Easy to think. Hard to do.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slow and loaded the video.
It had obviously been shot with a cell phone, the person holding it moving so the frame shook. But as a whole, the footage didn’t start out too terrifying. Kirkwood was already engulfed in flames, but he just stood there, like a statue. People I couldn’t see gasped, cursed, and even cheered.
“Dude, are you getting this?” someone off camera asked. “This is so hard-core. What kind of charm do you think he’s using?”
“Hey, you smell that?” another voice asked.
“Ulgch, yeah.” The first voice again, and then yelling. “Hey, mister, I think something’s going wrong.”
Other people had realized it too. The cheering had stopped and people were yelling. Some at the burning man, who still stood perfectly still, others to people outside the video’s frame.
In the poor quality of the recording, I couldn’t see much more than the darkening of Kirkwood’s skin beneath the lapping flames. No, it wasn’t his skin. I stared as something dark poured out of Kirkwood, like a miasma of black that reflected the orange flames back in a prism of color. Whatever the darkness was, it wasn’t quite a figure, at least, not a humanoid one. The last bit flowed out of the burning man.
Then Kirkwood screamed.
His arms flapped at his sides as if the movement would help extinguish the flames that were consuming him. He made it three steps before collapsing in a burning heap. A man appeared in the space behind Kirkwood and my breath caught at the sight of the familiar form. Death. In the back of my mind I’d known the video might catch an image of the collector, even if the boys shooting it couldn’t see him. But Death’s sudden appearance caught me off guard, and for a moment all I could see was the grainy image of the man who’d always been the one constant in my ever-mutable and chaotic life—until he’d vanished. A fresh wave of loss washed over me.
Then the black T-shirt pulled tight across his chest as he reached into the burning heap in front of him, and the full horror of Kirkwood’s murder crashed into me again. In the background the boys making the video were speaking, and somewhere someone retched, the sound ugly and raw. I sympathized but I didn’t dare look away from the computer. Death pulled back a clenched hand. Without opening my shields, I couldn’t see souls, at least, not unless they transitioned from pure light to the land of the dead as a ghost. So Death’s hand looked empty, but I knew he clutched Kirkwood’s soul. He flicked his wrist, sending Kirkwood on to wherever souls went. Then Death stood, staring at the dark miasmic form on the edge of the screen. The video quality wasn’t good enough for me to read his expression, but his stance radiated anger. Despite that, he didn’t move, didn’t go after the figure.
“What is that thing?” I asked the grainy image of Death.
He didn’t answer. Not that I expected him to.
The boy holding the phone ran toward Kirkwood, and the screen bobbed in jolty, vertigo-inducing motions. I tried to focus on Death and the other figure, but as the amateur cameraman couldn’t see either, he aimed the phone only at Kirkwood. Death and the dark cloudlike figure were shuffled toward opposite edges of the screen as the boy moved closer. Then the miasmic creature shot off screen in a blur. To Kingly?
I wanted the boy holding the camera phone to turn, to follow it. He didn’t.
Death vanished a moment later.
Other people rushed into the frame, carrying coats, drink bottles, blankets—anything to try to help extinguish the burning corpse. They were too late, but they couldn’t know his soul was already gone. Somewhere a witch created a glob of water, and it jetted like a fountain from off the screen.
I glanced at the progress bar. The video went on another fifty seconds but I’d seen everything I needed. I turned off the sound and backed the video up to where the thing poured out of Kirkwood. It’s like it was riding his body, directing it. Kirkwood didn’t regain control until that rider left. And Death could see it. I was sure he could. So why didn’t he do anything about it? It wasn’t natural, that was certain. I wanted the video to end differently this time. But, of course, the rider rushed off the frame in one direction and Death vanished to wherever soul collectors went.
I needed to talk to Death. He’d seen it. He had to know what it was, maybe even how to deal with it. Except even if he were speaking to me, in all likelihood—since the rider suppressed its host’s soul—it would fall into the enormous category of things the collectors couldn’t discuss.
I sighed and backed up the video again. I magnified it, trying to get a better look at the rider. Enlarging the image didn’t help; it just caused it to pixilate.
How likely is it that what I saw was a spell vacating and jumping bodies? I shook my head, dismissing the possibility. I hadn’t seen a face in that darkness, but I was positive that when Death stared at it, the thing stared back at him. That made it cognizant, a being.
A fae?
Not one I’d ever seen before, but that didn’t mean much. I grabbed my phone and scrolled through my recent contacts. I had no trouble finding the number I wanted—in truth, I didn’t even need to scroll, I’d memorized it long before I ever dialed it.
I clicked the video back on again as the phone rang.
“Andrews.”
Falin really needed to learn the word “hello.” Not that I bothered with it either.
“This is business,” I said before he could ask. “I’m looking for a fae who can jump from body to body without a ritual. It basically overrides the soul, taking control of the host until it sucks them dry. Outside of the body it’s just a formless mass. Dark, but also iridescent.”
Falin was quiet for so long, I feared he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “There are certain fae who can feed on human energy, eventually draining them with extended exposure—night hags and anything in the incubi family come to mind—but they all have solid forms. Does it look like the wraiths the shadow court uses as guards?”
I considered the shadows given form that I’d seen when I visited Faerie last month. “Those were more substantial than this thing. This was more like—” I froze, a sick realization hitting me. This thing riding mortal bodies. It wasn’t like a fae.
It was like a ghost.
“I have to go,” I said, hanging up.
On my screen, Death was staring at the malevolent thing that had poured out of Kirkwood.
“I wish you were here,” I whispered at his image.
“I do hope you’re talking about me,” a deep and wonderfully familiar voice said.
I tore my gaze from the screen. There, in my doorway, stood Death, his thumbs tucked casually into the loops of his faded jeans and an easy smile on his face.
I jumped to my feet and then froze because my heart felt like it might leap across the room before me. And I did want to run to him, to touch him and make sure he was real. But if he vanished on me, the crush of disappointment might break every bone in my body.
“Are you really here, or am I finally having a good dream?”
His face turned serious, those intense dark eyes searching me as if looking for a wound he could bind. “Still having nightmares?”
“This is not a social call,” another voice said, and the gray man popped into existence in the room, his cane twirling like a baton.
“Which is why he shouldn’t have come,” a female voice said as a third soul collector, one I’d dubbed the raver because of her white PVC pants, orange tube top, and neon dreadlocks, appeared in the room.
I sank back into my chair, my insides too heavy for my legs to support. “If I’d known there’d be a party tonight, I’d have brought drinks,” I said to none of the collectors in particular.
“Trust me, this is no party,” the raver said, her long nails tapping against the plastic of her pants. “This is an intervention.”
An intervention? She had to be kidding. But when I glanced at Death, his face was serious and he gave me a single, solemn nod. Damn. An intervention of what? They’d already inserted themselves into my relationship with Death to the point this was the first time I’d been in the same room with him in a month.
“You need to drop this case, Alex,” Death said, and I gawked at him.
I couldn’t drop the case. The police didn’t believe the victims were murdered. If I didn’t gather enough proof to convince them of the truth, who would? And then there was the firm’s budding reputation to consider. I couldn’t drop my first case. Though I had to admit, when someone whose primary occupation involved collecting the souls of the dead told me to drop something, I couldn’t ignore the warning. The case wasn’t worth dying for, but then, they hadn’t said it would come to that.