Grave Ransom Read online

  “You did it,” she whispered. “You actually did it.”

  Despite my exhaustion, a smile I couldn’t have contained if I’d wanted to claimed my face, and I hugged her back fiercely.

  When she finally pulled away, I swayed and pressed a hand against my head. “I don’t think I want to do that particular trick again anytime soon, so let’s make sure you make it back to Faerie from now on?”

  She beamed, studying my face. “But you did more than just save me. Al, you wove reality. Normally you just shove it around. You actually wove it together.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way.

  On the other side of the circle Desmond gave out another whine, and Rianna’s eyes widened before she whirled around to run to her four-legged companion. I turned to Falin. He’d picked himself off the ground, but he looked shaken. His glamour had snapped, letting the natural glow of his skin show, but it wasn’t as strong as it should have been. His soul inside his exhausted body still glowed strong and healthy, though, so I hoped I hadn’t done any of us permanent harm.

  “You don’t look so hot,” I told him when he offered me a hand up.

  He gave me a pointed look. “You should talk.”

  Yeah, I bet I was frightful in my half-decayed clothes, grave wind still blowing my hair every which way, not to mention the power drain of what I’d done.

  “I should say th—” I started, but Falin pressed his fingers to my lips, stopping me.

  “Do not offer me any boon she could use against you.” He didn’t have to say who she was. At the end of the day, he was always the queen’s tool.

  “You didn’t have to do what you did.”

  “I know.” He lifted my hand to his mouth and pressed a quick kiss to my knuckles. “One day I’ll ask you for a boon with no debt. Grant it to me.”

  He said the words like a requested oath, but they held no binding power. I nodded anyway. He turned my hand over and winced.

  “We’ll need to rebind this.”

  I frowned at my hand. I thought at first that the blood was from where I’d cut my palm, or perhaps Desmond, but no, it was actively flowing from the shredded skin of my fingers. Touching reality had cost me some flesh.

  “Well, I guess that wraps this up,” Briar said, climbing to her feet from where she’d been tending to Gauhter’s wounds.

  He was alive, and apparently would stay that way.

  “And I guess I know why Derrick gave me my charm,” she said, making a face at the viscera splattered over her jacket and pants. Yeah, without a charm preventing the smell of decay from sinking in, that would never come out.

  She leaned down and picked up a bag near Gauhter’s workbench. Opening it, she whistled slowly. “I thought your client lost one bottle. There are three in here.” One by one, she lifted three ornate bottles out of the bag. One was empty, two were not. “Now for a harder question. What do we do with these?”

  “We should release the souls outside the cemetery gate. They’ll get stuck if we release them inside,” I said, frowning at the bottles. “Then we should smash them.” I turned and gave an apologetic nod to Rianna. “I don’t think you’re getting paid for this case. Those bottles should not continue to exist. Your client is not getting them back.”

  “Whether or not to smash them will be up to my bosses,” Briar said, placing the bottles carefully back into the bag.

  “I think it will be up to the FIB.” Falin crossed his arms over his chest. “They are stolen fae artifacts.”

  They stared at each other, stubborn sets to their jaws. Above us, heavy boots crashed on the floor and I heard an officer yell, “Police, we’re coming in.”

  The cavalry had arrived.

  Chapter 29

  It took three days for my sight to return this time. I’d really pushed it not just gazing across planes but shoving zombies through them. It did return, though, to something at least akin to my normal. My hands were a completely different matter.

  A week later, they were still a mangled mess and no amount of magic-laced gauze or applied healing charms seemed to speed their recovery. Rianna, in contrast, was on the mend, her no-longer-broken arm already out of a cast. Even Desmond was back to his grumpy self.

  Gauhter and both adult Saunderses had been taken into custody. I’d lost track of how many magical artifacts were pulled out of the groundskeeper’s house. Some had been reported stolen, but some appeared to have been purchased legally. I guess now we knew what he was doing with the cash from the bank robberies. Gauhter’s wife had been transported to the local ICU. I hadn’t heard if she’d survived being relocated, but now that she was no longer behind wards blocking soul collectors from reaching her, I didn’t expect she’d be among the living long.

  Katie had been tracked down and laid back to rest, as I was calling it. She hadn’t really been alive and the thing inside her wasn’t human. Without a constant supply of souls to consume, she would have quickly degenerated into the same hungry, rotting dead we’d fought in the basement, so it was a kindness to put her down quickly.

  Over four dozen graves had been disturbed in South Cemetery. Less than a quarter of the bodies had been recovered and were waiting to be identified and reinterred. There was no accurate count of how many had been incinerated or deteriorated. At least the bad guys hadn’t ended up ashes this time—maybe that would improve John’s opinion of me again. But I wasn’t holding my breath.

  Once my sight had returned, I’d helped Remy and Taylor find their closure. It was sappy and there were a lot of tears and a good bit of human-on-ghost kissing, which was awkward for me, but they were teenagers. In the end, I’d had to cut the session off or they would have tried to go on like that forever. Remy had stayed behind even after Taylor couldn’t see or hear him anymore, though she’d kept talking to him, trusting he was there. I wasn’t sure where he was now. He could have been found by a collector, or he could still be haunting her. She’d never know the difference. It was sweet and sad at the same time.

  Channel Six had retracted their story on me, with Xandra running a short sound clip on how there’d been a miscommunication and I’d actually been working for the police, not a suspect. It hadn’t helped Tongues for the Dead. We hadn’t had a client call since the story ran. With me pretty much out because of my eyes and hands, Rianna recovering from her own injuries, and the front door needing to be replaced, we’d decided that the firm would close for a holiday. It wasn’t going to be a great month, but I’d made more in three days working with Briar than I would have from half a dozen other clients, so we’d make it. We’d open back up in a few weeks, and hopefully by then the smoke would have cleared and we’d get some new clients.

  In the meantime, I’d had way too much free time while being unable to actually do anything because of my hands. I’d spent some of it carefully studying the threads of reality in the castle. I only spent a few hours spread over each day doing it, to try to reduce the damage to my eyes, but I needed to learn more about my planeweaving abilities and what I could do. So far, there hadn’t been any huge breakthroughs, but I hadn’t given up.

  “Alex,” a voice said from the center of my previously empty room.

  I jumped at the sound, nearly dropping the novel I’d been reading. I looked up at Death’s familiar outline, a relieved smile rising to my lips.

  It never made it all the way there.

  I took one look at his expression, so solemn, so serious, and the smile died before it ever had a chance to reach my mouth. I closed the book, setting it carefully on the coffee table. The bindings on my hands made it difficult, but I dragged it out longer than strictly necessary, avoiding looking back up. When I finally did, Death still stood there, with that same sad expression.

  I stood, taking a deep breath. “You came to say good-bye?”

  He nodded.

  Something in my chest shattered, the jagged edges pie
rcing deep inside me as they fell. My throat was burning, and I tried to swallow the heat back down, knowing that otherwise it would keep heading up, toward my eyes, and I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t.

  “I didn’t want to just vanish,” Death finally said.

  It was my turn to nod. And then we both stood there for several heart-wrenching moments, not saying anything. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I looked away. I walked over to the castle window, gazing out at the magnificent gardens below without seeing them.

  “So,” I finally said, not even sure if he was still there. “I’ll never see you again?”

  I felt him fill the space behind me. He placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned his chin on the top of my head. It was friendly, intimate without being sexual. But it was still too much.

  I stepped away. He nodded, as if that had been the right thing to do, like maybe he’d regretted touching me as soon as he’d done it but didn’t know how to pull away.

  “I’ll always come when you’re in danger. I won’t let you disappear into the darkness. That hasn’t changed.” He looked down at his hands and sighed. It was obvious it took effort for him to look back up, to meet my eyes again. “But this, what we have. Had. It can’t continue. Not right now.”

  “You were my friend before you were my lover,” I said, and the world was getting a little hazy, so I knew I was losing my fight against the tears.

  He looked at me, and there was true anguish in his face. He shook his head. “I can’t be here and watch your heart move on to someone new. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  I didn’t promise I would wait for him. I didn’t beg him to reconsider. I just nodded.

  “So that’s that then,” I said, hating the throatiness of my voice.

  He nodded. He stepped forward like he would kiss me, and part of me wanted him to more than anything in the world. The smart part of me was glad when he vanished instead.

  And like that, my oldest and closest friend wasn’t anymore.

  A knock sounded on my door. Rianna pushed it open without waiting for me to answer.

  “Hey, Al, I’m heading down to dinner, want to join?” She paused, frowning at me where I was standing in the center of the room, still staring at the spot where Death had been. “You okay? Did something happen?”

  I turned to her and forced the tears back down. “Yeah. Dinner sounds good. I’ll be down soon.”

  I forced a smile I didn’t feel. Yet. This castle was full of friends. A family I’d accidentally built around myself. I might not feel the smile yet. And I would grieve the end of this first real relationship. But the smile would be real again. Eventually.

  First though, I’d test the garden gnome’s theory that the castle bent to my will. Because I wanted ice cream. And cake. And chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

  Chocolate could fix anything.

  Kalayna Price is the USA Today bestselling author of the Alex Craft novels, including Grave Visions, Grave Memory, Grave Dance, and Grave Witch. Ms. Price draws her ideas from the world around her, her studies into ancient mythologies, and her obsession with classic folklore. Her stories contain not only the mystical elements of fantasy but also a dash of romance, a bit of gritty horror, some humor, and a large serving of mystery. Kalayna is a member of SFWA and RWA, and an avid Hula-Hoop dancer who has been known to light her hoop on fire. Visit her online at kalayna.com.

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