Grave Ransom Read online

  After fruitlessly tracing the magic with my mind, I stood. My legs ached from kneeling, and I’d been still so long that vultures had gathered around the beast. I startled them as I hobbled away and they squawked at my back. Briar was no longer on the phone—in fact, for a moment, I was afraid she was no longer in the clearing, but then I felt her distinct signature of spells near where we had first entered the clearing. She was here but hidden behind her look-away charms again. Which meant if the necromancer who could animate dead creatures returned, I’d be the only one visible. Great.

  I considered heading over to where she was, to hide behind her spell as well, but once the hazmat team showed up, I’d likely not get another look at the bodies, and I wanted to compare the spells on the soulless beast with the one who’d had the wrong soul navigating it.

  And speaking of souls, there were four new souls that had joined the army of animal ghosts in the clearing. Even with me straddling the chasm between the planes, the new animals looked weak, drained; like mere memories on the wind. I passed by the ghost of the winged jungle cat, and it looked up at me, its rounded ears pressing flat against its head.

  “Nice kitty,” I whispered, lifting my hands flat in front of me.

  The ghost stalked forward. It looked insubstantial, even to me, but as I basically always existed on all the planes, more so when I had my shields open this far, it might still be possible for it to hurt me. I really didn’t want to get mauled by a ghost after I’d just survived being attacked by corpses. I backed away slowly, never turning my back, but also not running. Smaller ghosts scattered around my feet as I moved, but all my attention was on the winged cat.

  “Craft?” Briar called, the hint of concern clear in her voice.

  I didn’t answer or look over. Even with all the spells in her personal armory, it was unlikely she had anything that would be effective against a ghost. They just weren’t something most people had to worry about.

  I could have pulled the ghost’s remaining energy out, draining everything that made the ghost still the animal it had been, and I would if I had to, but I’d already done horrible things today. I hadn’t been sure before today that animals had enough ego to leave ghosts behind. Now that I knew they did, I didn’t want to cannibalize a creature who had already been through so much.

  So I kept backing up, moving slow, making soothing sounds as I crept away. The ghost stopped stalking forward as I felt the first buzz of the ward at my back. The ghost opened its mouth as if to let out a yowl, but if it made a sound, it was lost in the winds of the land of the dead. Its gaze moved beyond me, to the ward.

  “You just want out, don’t you, buddy,” I said, still keeping my voice low, calm.

  The ghost stared at me. I bent slowly, pulling the dagger I’d sheathed after the final creature had fallen. Then I half turned, not actually giving my back to the ghost, but turning enough that I could reach the ward.

  “What are you doing?” Briar asked from a lot closer than I expected, and I jumped.

  “I’m . . . uh . . . cutting a door in the ward.”

  “A door?”

  I shrugged, dragging my dagger through the thick magic forming the ward. The dagger could cut about anything, including most spells. It didn’t disappoint on the ward but sliced a clean line through the woven strands of orange and red energy.

  “The ghosts are stuck,” I said as way of explanation.

  “Uh-huh,” Briar said, lifting a skeptical eyebrow. “And how is that supposed to help? You can’t cut magic.”

  This enchanted dagger could. Or maybe it was this dagger in a planeweaver’s hand. I wasn’t sure. I could have used a mentor in this whole planeweaving thing, but they were all dead or stuck in an inaccessible court in Faerie. So most of what I’d learned in the last few months since my planeweaving emerged was gained through trial and error—mostly error.

  Door cut, I stepped to the side and looked at the ghost cat. It stared at me, eyes narrowed and ears flat. It didn’t move. It didn’t understand. Being dead didn’t change that it was an animal with an animal’s instincts and intelligence. There was also a good chance it couldn’t see the force that held it in the clearing, it just knew there was a wall.

  I frowned, looking at all the ghosts in the clearing. Hadn’t they been through enough? I doubted they’d understood what was happening to them when they’d been stuffed into bodies that weren’t theirs and then been forced to stay there as the foreign bodies rotted around them. Of course, that was assuming all were simple beasts. Most were. The small ones certainly. But the magical creatures? As they’d charged at us as soon as they realized we were in the field, I’d assumed that all were as much animals as they appeared. But maybe they weren’t.

  “Can any of you speak?” I asked, lifting my voice to be heard across the clearing.

  Some of the ghost creatures looked at me. The wolf ghost growled. None answered.

  Briar watched me as if I’d lost my mind. “Who are you talking to?”

  “The ghosts.” I waved a hand to indicate the ghosts she couldn’t see. I could have expended energy to make them visible and more substantial, but that didn’t seem wise. For one thing, these creatures had attacked us when they’d been inside bodies. And for another, I was already trembling, and not just from the adrenaline letdown anymore. I needed to close my shields soon. I’d be blind, but the longer I stayed in contact with other planes, the longer that blindness would last. I wanted to check out the other body first.

  “Are the ghosts human?” Briar asked, her gaze searching for the invisible-to-her ghosts.

  I shook my head. “The same creatures we fought as well as others. A lot of others. Small creatures. Probably early experiments, as you said.”

  I couldn’t feel the age of ghosts, so I had no idea how long any had been dead. I could get a sense of some of the small bones in the field; though there were too many to examine each, the oldest I could feel was no more than two months old. In contrast, the two bodies of the beasts who had been walking were newer, no more than three weeks old. Strangely, the largest beast was the most recent of the two, even though it had been the most decayed out of any of the walking creatures. Possibly because it hadn’t had a soul? I couldn’t get anything from the ash left from the incinerated beasts.

  As I considered that possibility, one of the circling birds overhead swooped down, into the woods, and through the door I’d cut in the ward. I’d thought all the birds were vultures, but this one was a raven. A very large raven.

  It didn’t fly to the two remaining corpses but to the ghost of the winged jungle cat. It landed on the ghost’s back, its claws sliding into the insubstantial form. The ghost glowed, flashing bright, and then vanished. It had transitioned and moved on. The raven flew to the next ghost.

  No, it wasn’t a raven. It was a soul collector. An animal soul collector.

  “Hello,” I said, trying to get the large bird’s attention.

  “Now what are you talking to?” Briar asked. When I just waved her off without answering, she shook her head. “Sometimes I’m not sure if you aren’t legitimately crazy.”

  I ignored her, making my way toward the raven collector. It looked at me a few times, cocking its head, but it kept flying from ghost to ghost. It had its work cut out for it, but it kept moving, swooping down to collect each soul, even the tiny mice. Once the clearing was free of ghosts, the raven turned and, without a wasted flap of its wings, it flew back through the door I’d cut and was gone.

  Chapter 15

  It took nearly two hours for the magical hazmat team to arrive.

  By then I’d compared the spells on both of the creatures who’d left behind corpses. The big one was covered in indecipherable spells I couldn’t make sense of, but the smaller one, the one I’d ripped the soul out of, had minimal traces of magic, and what was left was too faint for me to get more than vague impressions. Briar was
more than a little disappointed. After all, my specialty was the dead. But I dealt with shades, and occasionally ghosts. Despite the cheerily colored magical energy the necromancer used, whatever had happened to these creatures was very, very dark magic.

  After I’d given up on detangling the spells, I released the grave and sat at the edge of the clearing, blind. Every time Briar made a noise I jumped, expecting the mysterious necromancer to appear. He still hadn’t shown himself by the time hazmat showed up. Briar talked to the team for a while, but she was done hanging out in the clearing. Someone was going to have to stake out the area in case the necromancer did turn up, but Briar was delegating that to local law enforcement.

  Once the scene had been turned over, Briar was ready to leave. Unfortunately, I was still more or less blind. A few shadows of shapes had reemerged in my sight, but it wasn’t enough to get through a hike in the woods. I was too proud to ask Briar to guide me through—and I had serious doubts she would anyway—which meant opening my shields again. I wasn’t actually using any magic this time, just looking, so it didn’t do as much further damage as it could have, but I was still in no shape to drive the car when we reached it.

  Which meant reluctantly handing my keys to Briar. And then sitting in the passenger seat of my car, more or less blind, feeling my newish-to-me car careening through the city. By the time she pulled into the parking lot of Central Precinct, I was clinging to the armrest and silently cursing my wyrd ability and my eyes.

  I didn’t bother following Briar inside. I was done for the day.

  My eyes weren’t as bad as they’d been the day before, but I was way below the visibility limit that I could legally drive with, so I called Rianna for the second day in a row. She was about ready to give up on her current case, but no new clients had stopped in, so she was still poking at the limp mess that was her search for her client’s missing bottle.

  It was early afternoon, and I should have gone back to the office, but I was so done with the day. I was hungry after losing my breakfast after the fight, and I was mentally, magically, and emotionally exhausted. I just wanted to go home. So that was where I had her take me.

  “You’ve been really quiet,” she said as we pulled into the driveway of Caleb’s house. “Mulling over the case?”

  “Something like that,” I said, because I didn’t want to talk about it. In truth, my brooding had only been tangentially connected to the case. I was thinking about the clearing, and watching that creature fall after I took out his legs because I felt that learning what magic had made him was more important than ending his suffering quickly. I didn’t like what that said about me. And I was thinking about the look on that ghost’s face when I’d pulled her out of Remy’s body. His body was dead. She was dead. And I’d prevented people who were alive from being harmed or killed. Death had confirmed that more people would have died if I hadn’t acted. But I was starting to question whether I’d done the right thing. Maybe there had been some other way to stop them.

  I climbed out of the car before realizing Rianna wasn’t following.

  “You coming inside?” I asked, leaning down to squint at her through the still-open door. Desmond had already scrambled over the seats to take my place, so I mostly only saw a lot of black fur.

  “No, I think I’ll head back to the office and keep working on a spell to narrow down what area of the city this stupid bottle is in,” she said from somewhere on the other side of Desmond. “The tracking charm actually picked up a lead for about an hour today, but I lost it before I got far. I’m going to keep watching it and try a few more things.”

  I nodded, wishing I could thank her. She was struggling with her own case and here she was playing chauffeur to me. It wasn’t even like I’d been that great a friend lately. Everything was work and then home to the castle. I silently vowed that once this case was done, I’d have a girls’ night out with Rianna, Holly, and Tamara. Also, tomorrow, if I ended up blind after wherever the case took me with Briar, I’d call a taxi. It didn’t matter how much metal the vehicle contained.

  I waved good-bye and headed inside. I glanced toward the stairs of my old apartment. It would be smart to set up my computer and do some more research. I’d had no luck looking for anything having to do with humans walking around after death, but the creatures in the clearing had been very different from the human corpses.

  I didn’t go upstairs. I was tired and hungry, and I didn’t really want to be alone. I’d do it later. Instead I headed to the castle.

  Unfortunately, it was the middle of the day, so the castle was empty as well.

  I collected PC from my rooms and a sandwich from the kitchen, and then I headed to one of the gardens I hadn’t explored yet. Usually I kept PC on a leash, but this particular garden was completely enclosed, so I let him run. Despite the fact that it was November, roses were in bloom all along the perfectly manicured path. They filled the air with a soft scent that seemed to swirl around me, making me think of sunshine and spring.

  I stopped by one of the bushes to admire the flowers. Each deep red bloom was full and perfect, the petals velvety soft. Not one black or yellow mark marred the bush, which had to be magic in and of itself. My father had always had rosebushes around his estate when I was growing up, and his gardeners were forever battling black spot because of our humid southern weather.

  PC ran up to me and dropped the ball he’d grabbed before we left my room. I tossed it and the dog scampered after it. I kept walking. He wasn’t likely to bring it back until he got tired of playing on his own.

  In the center of the garden was a small reflecting pool. I sat down at the edge so I could watch PC bark menacingly—if the yip of a six-pound dog could be considered menacing—at his ball and then lunge at it and toss it in the air before starting the ritual all over again. PC had just decided it was time to actually bring the ball back to me when I heard voices behind me. After the day I’d had, I jumped, twisting around so fast I nearly hurtled myself into the reflecting pool.

  On the other side of the garden, Roy and Icelynne walked arm in arm. They noticed me about the same time I whirled around. Roy smiled, using an entire arm in his enthusiastic wave. Icelynne didn’t smile. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me, or I her; I think she just hadn’t figured out her place yet, and I confused her. Not intentionally, of course, but she was very stuck in her world views, and I didn’t fit.

  Icelynne began to curtsy but then caught herself halfway and seemed to get stuck, unsure how to proceed. She knew I didn’t like it when she curtsied, but she’d been a very old fae at her death and had spent her entire life in the Faerie courts. Not being a very powerful fae, she’d survived those centuries by deferring to those who’d had more power or better position, and in most of the courts, the Sleagh Maith were the nobility. I hadn’t grown up in Faerie, though, and I was just me.

  “Hey, Roy, Icelynne,” I said, trying to defuse the situation and free her from the awkward moment she’d gotten stuck in. “How are things?”

  “Good evening, Lady,” Icelynne replied, totally missing the lifeline I’d thrown her.

  Roy hurried over, all but dragging the smaller ghost along with him. She stood only about four feet tall and couldn’t keep up with Roy’s much longer stride, so she eventually unfurled her wings, flying to keep up.

  Roy didn’t stop until he was right in front of me. “Hey, Al. So Icelynne and I have been talking and we thought it would be great if the castle had a winter garden.”

  “It’s really nothing to bother Lady Alex with,” Icelynne said, stepping back and visibly trying to reclaim her hand.

  Roy, oblivious and ever eager, just frowned at her. “What are you talking about? Of course it is something we should talk to Alex about.” He turned back to me. “Lynne’s a frost sprite, but the castle seems to be caught in perpetual spring. She’d feel much more at home if there was a little more winter here. Just one garden would be
fine.”

  Icelynne jerked her hand from Roy and held both out in front of her, palms facing me as if in surrender. “It’s fine, really, Lady. The gardens are beautiful. We meant no disrespect.”

  It was my turn to frown at her. “Icelynne, it’s okay, calm down.” I almost told her to chill, but that would be too ironic. Besides, the little frost sprite likely wouldn’t have understood. “I think it’s a reasonable request. We can ask the garden gnome if it’s possible.” Or more likely Ms. B, who could talk to the elusive gnome.

  Icelynne blinked, her large inhuman eyes going first wide in surprise, and then narrowing. “That is very kind, Lady. What will I owe you for this boon?”

  “It’s not a boon, it’s a courtesy. You’re my guest here.” Not an intentionally invited one perhaps, but I seemed to be collecting strays these days. She couldn’t return to Faerie—there was no land of the dead for her to exist in there—and it wasn’t like ghosts took up a whole lot of space. “Guest” best described her role in the castle. “That said, I don’t know if it’s possible for the weather in just one garden to change, but I can ask.”

  “It’s your domain, Lady. These grounds, this castle, and everything are an extension of your will.”

  Riiiight. “Trust me, if this castle did what I wanted, the banquet table would be filled with pizza once in a while.”

  Icelynne cocked her head, her very alien features pinched, searching, as if I’d mystified her again. Roy smiled.

  “Thanks, Al. You’re the best,” he blurted out, the debt opening between us before I even processed his careless thank-you. Then he hooked his arm through Icelynne’s again. “Well, we’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing,” he said, meaning what he actually wanted was to get back to his alone time with the other ghost.

  I smiled and waved to them as they meandered back the way they’d come. It wasn’t until they’d rounded the corner that I realized I’d never thrown the ball again for PC. I looked around for the little dog and found him pushing the small ball up to the base of a roughly carved statue half obscured by a rosebush. He took a few steps back, tail wagging as he waited. When the ball just sat at the little wood figure’s feet, PC let out a demanding yip.