The baggy jeans and flannel shirt he wore were colorless, shimmering with each of his steps. If I had dropped my shields, I could have made out the color of his hair and heard what he was saying, but I wasn’t that curious.
Ghosts, at least true wandering souls, were rare, but as a whole they were an obnoxious bunch. After all, it took a severely stubborn personality to withstand Death’s attempt to collect a soul. Unfortunately, most ghosts I’d encountered hadn’t been pleased with their success.
They were just pissed that their struggles hadn’t kept them alive.
I must have made a noise, because the ghost looked up and saw me watching. He pushed a pair of shimmering glasses higher up his nose, then flipped me off. Jerk. I returned the rude gesture, and his mouth fell open. I was no lip reader, but the slow question “You can see me?” was obvious enough that I nodded.
His next words weren’t nearly as easy to decipher as his lips dashed into motion. His hands flitted through the air, accenting his silent speech with extravagant motions.
Great—an excitable ghost. How long has he been dead?
Most ghosts took a while to realize that no one could see them. Well, no one but grave witches such as me.
I might have dropped my shields just a smidgen to hear what the ghost was saying, but John chose that moment to reemerge. Actually, the gurney he was pushing emerged first, sliding through the ghost’s shimmering form. The ghost’s mouth snapped closed as he glanced down at the gurney passing through his hips.
I looked away before John stepped through the ghost as well. It was disturbing to watch things like that.
“Which is this?” I asked, tossing a nod at the lumpy form under the sheet on the gurney.
“How about you tell me.” John stopped in the center of the room, and his mustache twitched as he smiled.
“So, you’re going to make it to dinner tonight?”
Oh yeah, it’s Tuesday. I nodded. “Can you give me a ride?”
“Course.” He pushed out a second gurney, this one with a body still in a black transport bag. The ghost was nowhere in sight. John parked the gurney beside the first. “Maria is making pork chops. A couple of the boys from the station will be joining us.”
My stomach gurgled, and I squeezed my abs, trying to silence it. Way to go, stomach; let everyone know I skipped breakfast. And lunch.
I set my purse by my feet and dug out the black lipstick tube I carried my oil chalk in. Crouching, I pressed the waxy chalk to the linoleum floor. I dragged it, duckwalking, around the two gurneys.
As I drew my circle John adjusted the digital equipment.
The camera was meant for recording autopsies, but John borrowed it whenever I raised shades for a case.
“Heard you might be a murder suspect.”
I dropped the chalk. “You what? No, I—” The tube rolled toward the drain in the floor, and I scrambled after it. “I mean, the widow thought I … but Tamara cleared me.”
John’s mustache twitched so fiercely with his attempt not to smile, it nearly walked off his face. I frowned, and a deep-bellied laugh erupted from him.
It wasn’t funny.
Still, he had an infectious laugh. I found myself grinning as I finished my circle.
“Seriously though,” I said, capping my chalk. “If Tamara hadn’t been the medical examiner at the scene, I could be in holding right now. Waiting for the autopsy.”
Being held under suspicion of death magic was not something I wanted. Nulls already had enough trouble understanding the difference between death magic and grave magic—my unfortunate specialty. Luckily, as well as being the lead ME, Tamara was a certified sensitive.
She could locate a spell quicker and more accurately than any spellchecker charm, and unlike a charm, she could usually discern the purpose of the spell. The only magic she’d been able to sense at the scene had been the ritual I’d used to raise the shade and charms to keep the flowers fresh. No spell had been involved in Baker’s death.
With my circle complete, I stood. Recapping my chalk, I tucked it away.
John flipped a switch, and the camera turned on.
“Ready?”
I nodded, closed my eyes, and cleared my mind. The obsidian ring on my right hand throbbed with the raw energy I’d stored. I mentally tapped into it, drawing out a spindly string of magic. There wasn’t much. I hadn’t had time to recharge the ring after the ritual for Henry Baker, but there was enough. I channeled the energy into the wax circle, and it sprang to life, buzzing with pale blue power behind my eyelids.
Now for the fun part.
Releasing my connection to the magic stored in the obsidian ring, I unclasped the thin silver charm bracelet on my wrist and shoved it in my pocket. The extra defenses the charms gave me vanished. The chill of the grave pressed against my mental shields like icy water lapping at the edge of my consciousness. I drew in a deep breath and sank deeper into a trance. The grave essence lifting from the corpses within my circle persisted, thundering against my mind. Beckoning. Taunting.
Demanding.
I dropped my shields.
A racking wind rushed through me.The clammy touch of the grave slid against my skin, beneath my flesh.
I opened my eyes.
My vision had narrowed, leaving the world covered in a patina of gray. Flakes of rust covered the stainlesssteel gurneys on each side of me. The threadbare and tattered linen sheet covering the body on the gurney to my left rippled in the breeze blowing through me. The linoleum floor under my boots had worn away, and the cement beneath it crumbled. Outside the circle, John’s wrinkled jacket was pocked with holes, but he was filled with light, his soul a dazzling shimmer of pale yellow. I looked away.
The wind picked up, filling my ears with its roar and blocking out any other sound. The chill buffeted me, clawing under my skin, into my blood.
It hurt.
I was alive.A being of warmth and breath, not of cold and stillness. Not of death. My life force burned against the chill, warring against the grave essence wriggling into the center of my being. Sweat beaded on my skin even as I shivered.
I needed a reprieve.
The soulless husk in the body bag called to me. I didn’t need to guide the power. I stopped fighting it, and my living heat spilled into the waiting corpse. As my heat fled, the chill of the grave sank comfortably into my limbs. The roar of wind stilled. I blinked. I could feel only one body within the circle—the female in the black bag.
Strange.
I mentally reached for her, my innate magic following the trail my heat had burned. Even filled with my life force, the shade my mind touched was weak, tattered.
How could a shade who’s never been raised fade so quickly?
My magic trailed along large cuts in the feeble shade.
The deep, gaping incisions nearly shredded her to pieces.
I’d never felt anything like it.
I poured magic into the corpse, letting my power fill the holes in the broken shade. She still felt frail—barely remembered. But held together with both my heat and power, she was substantial enough to raise.
Taking a deep breath, I gave the shade a gentle push.
My power coaxed her from the body, guided her across the chasm separating the living from the dead.
She emerged screaming.
Chapter 2
High, piercing wails shook the air, and my hands flew up to cover my ears. What the—
I stumbled back as the shade clawed free of the body.
A gaseous head and shoulders emerged from the body bag. The screaming never dampened. Her face twisted, as if the agony of her death had reached beyond the grave.
I gasped, still plugging my ears. “Bethany?”
The shade didn’t respond to the name. I searched her face. The sharp chin and high cheekbones were on an older face than I remembered, but the hard, almost cruel beauty of her features, as if she were distantly descended from court fae, was hard to miss. It had to be her.
I turned to John. “I know her.”
John’s mustache tugged down toward his chin. “You can ID her? Who is she?”
“Her name is Bethany Lane. We went to academy together. She is—was—a wyrd witch.” I frowned. I’d never before raised a shade of someone I’d known in life. Not that I’d known Bethany well. But even in a city like Nekros, witches made up a small percentage of the population, and wyrd witches—those witches who, instead of needing to be taught to reach the Aetheric plane to gather magical energy, had to be taught not to use magic—were an even smaller percentage. “She was a touch clairvoyant, able to see the past, and sometimes the future, of an object when she touched it.”
John opened the file clenched in his hands and jotted something. He winced as Bethany’s screeching rose an octave. Glass would shatter soon. “What’s wrong with her? Make it stop screaming.”
“Be quiet,” I commanded the shade, but the wailing didn’t drop in volume. I gritted my teeth. My magic gave her form, made her visible, audible. She should have had no choice but to obey my command. Apparently no one had ever told her that. Okay, time for a different approach.
“Tell us your name.”
Bethany’s shade continued screaming. Her hands moved to her face and began digging at her eyes. I grabbed the vaporous wrists, tugging them down. She flailed in my grasp.
“Alex?” John stepped closer.
The edge of the circle trembled as he crossed it, and a shiver of power crawled down my skin. It was meant to keep out magic, not John, who was a null and as magically dampened as could be. He probably didn’t feel a thing. I felt the disturbance down to my bones. I held my breath, unsure if the already weak circle would hold.
I swayed, and the thrashing shade wrenched her wrist out of my grasp. She lashed out, her jagged nails slicing through the air like a scythe.
I jumped back. The crumbled cement under my boots shifted, throwing me off balance. John caught me before I hit the ground, and the shade’s next slash passed through him, grazing my shoulder.Three shallow trenches split open.
“The hell?” John flipped around to grab her.
A futile effort. His hand passed through her wrist.