Grave Ransom Read online

  “You didn’t think it was odd this doctor was using quickchat?” That somewhat sarcasm-laced question was Jenson’s. We had a . . . strained relationship. I almost didn’t repeat it, as it would require the shade to make a judgment call, which he’d only be able to do if he’d considered it while alive, but I didn’t want to get accused of prejudice or ignoring a line of questioning.

  “Quickchat is common on campus. It was unusual for it to be used for something official, but the questionnaire and waiver weren’t dissimilar from other studies I’d participated in, and the offered money was good.”

  “Did you agree to meet as soon as you answered the questions?” I asked.

  “No, he contacted me a few days later, via the quickchat app, and let me know I’d been approved as a candidate for the study. We agreed to meet the following evening.”

  Which brought us back to the nineteenth. “Where did you meet?”

  “An old funeral home. He claimed the place was haunted and it would be an ideal location to find ghosts.”

  “Name, location?” John asked, looking up from the notebook he was furiously scribbling in.

  It wasn’t a funeral home I’d heard of before, but then I didn’t have much cause to visit them. Cemeteries I would have known, but not funeral homes.

  Questions kept coming. I shivered, dutifully repeating them. With five people interjecting lines of inquiry, the interview seemed to drag out. Remy described the ritual proceeding his death in detail—or as many details as he could. He wasn’t a witch and had no spellcasting training, so he hadn’t been paying much attention to Hadisty’s circle. He thought there might have been some sort of markings on the floor but was uncertain what they were. He either couldn’t understand or hadn’t listened enough to remember what words Hadisty had been saying before handing him something to drink. I was pretty sure Remy was the least observant person I’d ever encountered. That, or he’d shown up to the study to get paid and hadn’t cared about anything but the money promised.

  Tamara quizzed Remy in great detail about the liquid he drank. She wanted to know any impressions about viscosity, smell, and taste. If he’d felt any immediate change, tingling, or numbness while drinking it. His answers didn’t seem particularly helpful. She’d run a toxicity screen on all the bodies since their cause of death was unknown, but the preliminary results had all been negative. She was still waiting on the more in-depth panel.

  Finally no one had any more questions.

  I released his shade, drawing back my heat and magic. I did not like how little of either were left after only the first shade. My trembling was so strong that my whole arm shook when I lifted it to guide the magic into the next body.

  “We have to speed this up,” I said.

  The next shade I raised was Annabelle McNabb. Her story was not that dissimilar from Remy’s. She’d seen a flyer for the study at a coffee shop, and while she didn’t need the money, she thought it would be nice to stuff it away as “mad money.” Her interaction with the researcher was much the same as Remy’s, except he’d claimed his name was Dr. Marcus Vogel. After making plans on quickchat, she’d met him at the funeral parlor with much the same results. If anything, her details were even vaguer than Remy’s had been. Thankfully, everyone kept their questions short and efficient and the interview was done in a quarter of the time it had taken with Remy.

  The museum thief, Rodger Bartlett, had a story much the same except he’d met with Dr. Marcus Basselet after seeing the study in the classifieds. The location arranged on quickchat for the ritual had been different from the others as well. He’d been met at a dilapidated house that Basselet claimed was haunted.

  “What day was that?”

  “November fourteenth,” the shade said, which made him our earliest victim. Annabelle hadn’t died until the eighteenth and Remy on the nineteenth.

  Rodger’s description of Basselet was more detailed than the others. He described him as a man in his midfifties of average build and height with hair more gray than black and dark eyes. There were enough similarities to the descriptions of Hadisty and Vogel—even if both had had hopelessly vague descriptions—that it was a safe assumption that all three were the same man using different names. A few more questions were asked, and then Rodger was returned to his body and I turned to the last corpse.

  “What is your name?” I asked after the shade of the homeless woman sat up, and this time it wasn’t an obligatory question. We really didn’t know.

  “Rosie Cranford.”

  “Rosie, do you remember how you died? Can you describe the circumstances surrounding the event?”

  “A nice gentleman was walking through the park early in the morning. I was just waking up, trying to get my old joints moving after a cold night. Dr. Moyer approached as I was rolling up my blanket. He said he was involved with the magical science of ghosts and was currently looking for volunteers for a case study. I wasn’t doing anything important, and I could use the fifty dollars he said the job paid, so I agreed to volunteer.” The shade related her story without inflection or emotion. The observations she’d made were not a part of her now, just a part of the story. “He drove me to an old funeral home and took me down to the basement where a circle was drawn. There were runes drawn around the circle, so many that some were several layers deep beyond his chalk line. I like runes, so I asked about them, but the more questions I asked, the more agitated he became. I started to get a bad feeling and was thinking about leaving when he handed me a goblet. It was a masterful piece, covered in even more runes. I drained the goblet as instructed and then . . .”

  And then, like all the others, her soul had left her body.

  “You said you asked him about the runes. Did you recognize any of them?”

  “Most of them,” the shade said. “But he didn’t seem to be using them for their meaning. The way it was laid out, it seemed he was using the runes as an alphabet, writing out words.”

  Finally, one victim who’d actually paid attention. And she appeared to know a bit about magic, or at least runes.

  “Could you read the writing?”

  “Not really. Way back in high school I joined a club studying runes. Thought I’d be able to learn magic that way. Never did manage to so much as set a circle, but I did learn a lot of runes. It has been a long time, though. That was why I was so curious.”

  It was more than we’d had before, but it was less than I’d hoped for when her story began. The predictable round of questions began, and I repeated each one, trying to keep my teeth from chattering. I needed to end this ritual soon.

  Rosie had been more observant than any of the other victims, but her information still only gave us small pieces of the puzzle. She claimed the drink in the goblet tasted like wine with frankincense and myrrh in it, which was an interesting detail but didn’t help figure out exactly what had happened or how.

  Finally everyone ran out of questions and I withdrew my magic and heat from her corpse. It rushed back into me but was immediately consumed by the chill flowing through my veins. I’d been in touch with the dead for hours.

  I let the vines that made up my mental shield slither around my psyche once more. The grave essence didn’t even fight me as I pushed it out. I had so little magic left that there was nothing to draw the grave to me. Once my mental shield was complete, I dug the charm bracelet out of my pocket. The external shields snapped into place as soon as the clasp closed around my wrist.

  As I worked on the shields, the people outside my circle all began talking at once. John and Briar were clearly both on the phone, while Jenson was giving directions to one of the uniformed officers. Tamara, who’d grabbed a chair sometime during the ritual because it had lasted a couple of hours and a pregnant woman shouldn’t stand for that long, stood to converse with the lab assistant, telling her which tests and panels they needed to run and how to prepare to take the samples they’d n
eed.

  I hadn’t fully closed my shields yet, or dissolved my circle. I glanced between the people in the room, memorizing where everyone stood because I knew what was coming. I walked to the edge of the circle and scooped up my purse. Then I closed the last gaps in my mental shield, blocking my psyche from gazing across planes, and the world fell into darkness.

  I’d been prepared for it. Even short rituals burned out my vision quickly these days, and this had not been a short ritual. But even though I’d anticipated the blindness, a twinge of panic still jetted through me as the world fell dark. There were too many people present that I didn’t fully trust for me to be confident while this vulnerable. Not that there was much I could do about it. I could have left my shields open longer, but I was so drained, I wasn’t sure I had enough magic left to fight off any questing grave essence once my circle fell.

  So I closed my shields, letting darkness surround me, and dissolved the circle.

  Then I stood there, unsure what to do. I could feel the dead bodies, and Briar and Tamara wore enough magic that I could sense them, but the others in the room? I just had to listen for them to move.

  A door whooshed as someone left the morgue. One of the uniformed officers? A gurney squeaked beside me, and I jumped in surprise. It was probably the morgue assistant, but I hadn’t heard her approach.

  A hand landed on my elbow, hot and unexpected. I jumped again before I realized that the buzz of Tamara’s magic had approached while I was distracted by the gurney.

  “Let’s find you a spot to recover,” she whispered.

  I couldn’t have been more grateful.

  No one stopped us as we walked, her guiding gently, discreetly. I felt the whoosh of air as a door opened. And then we were through it, the door swishing closed behind us and Tamara leading me through the darkness, away from the dead.

  Chapter 12

  “How bad is it?” Tamara asked after the door closed behind us.

  I shrugged. “I’ve been worse.”

  “You’re shaking like a leaf.” She led me to a chair, and I sank into it gratefully. “And I’ve never seen you this bad. Can you see at all?”

  I shrugged again, but the movement might have gotten lost in my trembling. I hadn’t lied; I’d been a lot worse in the past. Today I’d only raised shades. Yes, it had been a long ritual, but it had only been plain old grave magic. It wasn’t like I’d been shoving around layers of reality. I was blind and cold, but I’d bounce back fairly quick.

  “Your office?” A guess, but a good one. We hadn’t gone far and the space didn’t sound big and hollow enough to be the hallway outside the morgue.

  Tamara didn’t say anything at first. Maybe she nodded before remembering I couldn’t see her. Finally she said, “Yeah. What can I do to help?”

  “Have any whiskey hidden around here?”

  Tamara snorted a laugh. “Not so much. How about some coffee instead?”

  “It would be sacrilege to turn down coffee.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Which is good, I wouldn’t want these nice dark roast beans to go stale while I incubate this little guy.”

  I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was rubbing her now-noticeable bump. Her footsteps moved away, across the room, and then the sounds of her preparing the coffee drifted through the air. I tucked my hands in my armpits, my arms hugged across my chest, as I tried to generate a little warmth, but the cold was deep inside me still. I seriously needed to look into making or buying one of the spells hospitals used to make blankets nice and toasty.

  “Here you go,” Tamara said.

  I lifted my hand and she pressed the coffee mug into my palm, waiting until I’d wrapped both hands around it before letting go. The ceramic was almost too hot to touch, but I held it anyway. If I put the mug down—if there was even anywhere to put it, I wasn’t sure where I was in the room—I’d probably knock the mug over when I tried to find it again. So I clutched the scalding cup, inhaling the steaming heavenly scent of coffee.

  “How bad are your eyes?” Tamara asked, her chair creaking as she sat.

  “You sure I still have eyes?”

  “That bad, huh?”

  I shrugged.

  “So this case.” She paused. To shake her head? To shrug? I hated being blind. After a moment she said, “Are we dealing with what it sounded like out there? Is this necromancy?”

  “It sounds that way. How else can we explain dead bodies walking around? Hopefully this at least means I’m no longer a person of interest in this case.”

  “Not my department,” Tamara said, but I could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. I’d been a suspect before. My friends were getting to the point where they had to either laugh at it or walk away.

  Her chair creaked again, and I waited, listening for clues indicating whether she’d stood or leaned back.

  She made a soft, exasperated sound that issued from more or less the same place as before, so I guessed she’d leaned back in the chair. Then she said, “This case is a scientific nightmare. Dead bodies walking around that don’t look dead. Then boom. Plug pulled and all of a sudden they show all the signs of having been dead the whole time? How is that possible? Illusion? It can’t happen like it seems. The measurable and inevitable stages of decay are based on very predictable conditions like bacteria growth.”

  “I don’t think it’s an illusion.” But it also wasn’t like the decay of the body paused completely while a ghost was taking the place of the native soul. It was more like all that lost time was counted somewhere, and then hit the body all at once after the ghost left. Time hit changelings the same way during sunrise and sunset when they were cut off from Faerie’s magic. In a matter of seconds they could age rapidly if they’d spent years inside Faerie but came back out without the same time passing in the mortal realm. I’d seen one notable changeling age so much that she turned into dust.

  You could cheat time, but not forever.

  The door gave a squeak as it opened behind me. Briar’s magical signature proceeded her, so at least I knew who it was. I turned, not because it would help me see who entered, but because it would at least give the pretense that I could.

  “Hey, Craft, you ready to go?” Briar asked, and it was good I could sense her magic, because I sure couldn’t hear her footsteps. The woman moved like a ghost. “Cops are already converging on the two locations where the shades said the different rituals occurred, as well as searching for any flyers still hanging and contact information for whoever ran the classified ad. I think you and I should head to the funeral home. It was used for a ritual only three days ago, so it is our best lead. Why aren’t you moving yet?” she said when I just sat there listening, still clutching my coffee.

  “I think I’ll have to sit this one out.”

  “What? No, come on.”

  I shook my head. “I just held four different shades for several hours. I’m out for a while. Right now, I’d slow you down.”

  “You can’t be that tired. Suck it up. I might need a sensitive.”

  “She can’t see, Inspector,” Tamara said, her chair creaking as she shoved out of it. Her tone was fierce, and I wished I could have seen her, because she sounded like she was going all mama bear, which I’d never heard from her before.

  She’d also just revealed a secret I tried very hard to conceal as much as possible. I could all but feel Briar’s evaluating gaze boring into me. I sat straighter, trying to still my trembling and forcing myself not to cringe as the pounding of my heart in my ears marked the seconds it took for Briar to respond.

  “You can’t see at all? Like, you’re completely blind?”

  I nodded, the movement jerkier than I wanted. All grave witches had issues with their eyes. Most had permanently lousy night vision and restricted vision directly following a ritual, but it cleared quickly. Mine had always been on the more severe side of normal, b
ut within the acceptable parameters. Until my planeweaver abilities had emerged. Something about gazing across all the planes, not just into the land of the dead, really abused my vision. I’d created some extra shields that helped, but only so much. A short ritual would have been fine, but I’d straddled the chasm between the living and the dead for at least two hours.

  “How long will it be before your vision returns?” Briar asked, and I could tell from how much closer her voice sounded that she’d left the doorway and moved farther into the room.

  I shrugged. “Several hours, I would guess. Surely no more than six or so.” At least for a partial return of sight. I’d had full blindness last days before, with a very slow return to my normal damaged level, but I’d been doing some very serious, plane-shaping magic at the time. Even a ritual as long as I’d just performed couldn’t compare to that kind of magical expenditure.

  Briar was silent several moments. Then I heard the door swish open again.

  “I can’t wait that long. I’ll call you if I need you.” She must have said it over her shoulder as she walked out, because the door clicked closed a moment later.

  Tamara clucked her tongue in disapproval and then lifted the now-empty mug from my fingers. “More coffee?”

  • • •

  I called Rianna for a ride. I still couldn’t see by the time she arrived—no big surprise—so Tamara helped me to the parking lot. I’d have to come back for my car some other time.

  “There’s a dog in the front seat,” Tamara said after Rianna pulled the car to the curb.

  “Desmond, can Alex sit shotgun?” Rianna asked in a sweet voice.

  The barghest growled.

  “That’s not very nice,” Rianna said. “And wouldn’t you be more comfortable stretched out across the backseat?”

  The doglike fae made a grumbling noise that was not quite a growl, but I heard the scrambling of his nails and huge paws as he climbed into the backseat.

  “Am I good?” I asked Tamara.