Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel Read online

  The phone rang. And rang.

  This would be the day Holly made it to dinner on time.

  I’d accepted I was going to get her voice mail when Holly finally answered. “I’m not late. It’s not even dusk yet. And sunset isn’t until six forty—I looked it up.”

  Or not.

  “No worries, you’re not late.” Yet. But I kept that last bit to myself as I forced false cheerfulness into my voice. That was something I’d been doing a lot recently. Holly had always been intense, but since her misfortunate trip to Faerie and subsequent addiction to their food, she’d become down right volatile, her moods unpredictable. As she’d been kidnapped to be used as a bargaining chip against me, I felt responsible.

  She hadn’t admitted it, but I think sometimes part of her blamed me too.

  So I weathered her bad days, both in guilt and in hopes of saving a seven-year friendship. I didn’t make friends easily, though I’d clearly been doing a bang-up job of trying to lose them.

  I smiled because I’d always heard people could hear a smile through the phone. “I’m actually glad you’re still at work. I’m at Central Precinct and I was sort of hoping I could catch a ride with you.”

  “Oh,” she said, the sharpness fading from her tone. “Alex, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know,” I said, cutting her off in case she apologized. She’d been renting from Caleb even longer than I had, and as he was fae and one of the house rules was no apologies, she usually remembered. But me being fae—or enough so that I suffered their weakness of iron and could call in debts—was new to all of us. “So, can I bum that ride?”

  “Yeah, of course.” Papers rustled in the background. “Just let me finish what I’m working on and pack up. I’ll be down in”—she paused—“fifteen minutes?”

  That worked for me. We said our good-byes and hung up.

  Since I had some time to kill, I dug Mrs. Kingly’s contact information out of my purse. This call did go to voice mail, which was a relief. I wanted more time to consider the case before she grilled me for details. I left a message with an abbreviated breakdown of what I’d learned, without extrapolating any theories—she already hated magic. This case presented an interesting puzzle, and it was exactly the kind of investigation that the new Tongues for the Dead should be able to handle. Now I’d just have to convince Mrs. Kingly to keep me on retainer and investigate the suspicious circumstances and anomalies in her husband’s alleged suicide.

  I reported that the police still refused to open a homicide case, but that the medical examiner planned to look over the body again before Kingly was picked up in the morning—or at least, Tamara had said she would. She was as curious as I was. I wrapped up the message by suggesting Mrs. Kingly make an appointment to discuss the details of my findings in person. What I didn’t tell her was that who I really wanted to speak with was her husband—whom I assumed still tailed her. I also didn’t mention the recording of the ritual. Tamara e-mailed me a copy before I’d left, and as promised, I planned to strip the audio for Mrs. Kingly, but only if she insisted on hearing it. There was nothing she could learn from that recording except that one of the last things her husband did was lie to her. I might not particularly like the woman, but I’d spare her that pain if I could.

  With my call complete, and still no sign of Holly, I claimed one of the benches in the bit of green space surrounding Central Precinct. Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on perfecting the mental shield I’d spent the last month building. But constructing new mental shields took concentration, and mine was fractured, my thoughts circling back to my case.

  The shade having absolutely no memory of the time he was missing bothered me. I’d raised a shade or two of people who had been victim to memory altering spells before, and there were always fragments of the original memory left behind. But not in this case. It was like the soul had hit pause for three days.

  But how is that possible?

  I knew one person who might know. Death. But even if he weren’t avoiding me, there was a good chance he couldn’t tell me. The collectors had a fairly rigid code of secrecy. But I still would have liked to discuss it with him, see if he could at least point me in the right direction.

  “Are you out there?” I whispered. The light breeze picked up the words, carrying them away, but no jean-clad collector appeared. Not that I expected him to.

  I sighed. Unless I wanted to go troll some high-risk area—like an intensive care unit—hoping someone died and that Death happened to be the collector to respond, I had no idea how to find him. He’d always found me, popping in from places unknown and leaving the same way.

  I’d have to puzzle this out on my own.

  So how did the memory wipe tie into the suicide? They had to be connected—the timing was too convenient otherwise. But why? And how? And most important of all, if James was an innocent victim, what kind of magic was I dealing with?

  Chapter 8

  “What is all that?” Rianna asked, as Holly dropped a stack of books and journals on the table.

  Holly’s lips twisted as her nose scrunched in distaste. “Research for a case.”

  Rianna eyed the stack as she lifted a bowl to her lips and sipped what looked like barley soup. Holly’s “fifteen minutes” had turned into an hour. I’d told Rianna to head on without us, and I was glad I had. The sun had been dipping below the horizon line as Holly and I walked into Nekros’s one and only fae bar, the Eternal Bloom.

  I always insisted on sitting in the back of the bar, and Rianna had secured our normal table. As I moved to take the chair against the wall, Desmond looked up from where he’d been lapping up his own bowl of soup on the floor. He gave a huff that sounded a lot like a laugh and regarded me with red eyes that betrayed his amusement that even after a month of nearly daily visits, I still chose the chair that let me watch the room.

  “Hey, if you want to make fun of me, stand up straight and say it,” I told the barghest.

  The amusement in his doglike features bled into hostility, and he curled a lip, exposing yellow canines. Once I might have shied back, but he didn’t make a sound, which meant he didn’t want Rianna to know. As such, it wasn’t likely he’d attack me. I shook my head at the barghest. He had a humanoid form. I knew that for a fact as I’d seen it when I’d gotten caught in the Realm of Nightmares. But whenever I saw him with Rianna—and I never saw Rianna without Desmond—he was in the form of an oversized black dog. A few weeks ago I’d started to ask why he always remained in one form, but the shaggy black dog had knocked me on my ass. I hadn’t tried to ask again—though that didn’t stop me from picking at him when he picked at me.

  I scanned the room from my seat in the corner, fully aware that the barghest’s amusement wasn’t exactly inappropriate. At this point, I surveyed the room more out of habit than paranoia. The Bloom would never be my favorite place, or somewhere I felt particularly safe, but familiarity breeds acceptance. While my first couple of visits ranked right up there on my panic scale with running blindfolded through a minefield, I’d now rate our time in the Bloom more in the range of walking through a bad neighborhood at night. Caution was smart, but there was no reason to be terrified. I knew what to avoid: the fiddler playing the endless dance, the enormous tree growing through the floorboards that hid the door to the winter court—which wasn’t actually a hazard unless you were avoiding the Winter Queen, which I was—and the tree’s amaranthine blooms that gave the bar its name and had an enthralling effect if studied too closely.

  As for the rest? Well, I barely noticed the seemingly random movement of the sun or moon above the branches of the enormous tree, and even the trolls, dryads, goblins, fauns, and all the other unglamoured fae of every size and color were becoming familiar. I hadn’t spoken to many, but most were local independents who frequented the bar regularly so as I glanced around the room I recognized many of the fae. Occasionally I’d spot a changeling or a fae still wrapped in glamour, but in truth, Rianna, Holly, and I were the odd ones in
this crowd.

  And the other patrons treated us as such.

  It had taken me a couple of weeks to realize, but the resonance of the bar changed slightly whenever strangers or court fae entered the room. And if a Fae Investigation Bureau agent arrived? The change wasn’t just slight. Of course, while humans thought the FIB were a nationalized organization in charge of policing and maintaining order in the fae population, in truth each branch worked for whatever court ruled that area. That made the local division of the FIB the Winter Queen’s enforcers. And I knew firsthand that the independents in Nekros had every reason to distrust her.

  My quick scan of the room showed that aside from the slight disturbance from Holly’s and my entrance, the atmosphere of the bar was relaxed and jovial. Good. I turned back to the table as Holly pulled papers out of the satchel she carried. She didn’t look any more pleased by them than she had the stack of books.

  “I thought you enjoyed prepping for cases,” I said. She certainly used to attack the task with gusto.

  She collapsed into her chair and slumped forward. “Yeah, I do. When it’s my case. I’m sitting second chair, again, and to a junior prosecutor.” She pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes, her fingers sliding into her straight red hair and making it fall forward around her face. “I have to get on the DA’s good side again.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Holly might not look intimidating with her heart-shaped face and pixie features, but she could dominate a courtroom and move a jury. She was in her element in trial and her talent hadn’t gone unnoticed. Her career had been on the fast track. For the past year the DA had been batting her good, career-making cases. He’d even made her second chair to him in the Holliday trial, and whatever the higher court’s ruling, that case was going down in history, and Holly’s name was attached to it.

  Then she’d gotten tied up with Faerie, and the last month had been disastrous for her career. It wasn’t just the food either.

  It was the damn doors.

  The first time I’d visited the VIP section of the Bloom, I hadn’t realized the significance of signing the ledger—on both sides of the door—and signing out again. That was a mistake. One I paid for by losing three days in the mortal realm while only an hour or two passed in the Bloom.

  Now we meticulously signed the ledgers every visit, but the doors were still unpredictable. Usually we’d emerge only moments after entering, regardless of how much time we spent inside. Sometimes the amount of time that passed in the Bloom corresponded relatively equally to the time in the mortal realm—knowing precisely how close they lined up was impossible as watches weren’t feasible when time rarely lined up properly. Gaining extra hours was great, and equal time was fair, but on a couple of occasions, time in the mortal realm had accelerated and passed much faster than that in the Bloom.

  That was the real reason we’d missed dinner with Tamara last week. We walked in the Bloom at six, spent roughly forty-five minutes inside, and walked out to find it midnight. At least it was the same day. That wasn’t the first time either. A week earlier Holly had missed a morning court date—which was why she was on the DA’s shit list. It was also why she skipped breakfast now when she had morning trial.

  I thought at first that we’d done something wrong, but no, the damn door was just finicky and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The fact we weren’t allowed to talk about the Bloom hiding the door to Faerie didn’t help, as that meant Holly was left scrambling for excuses. I wished I could offer her some solution, or even a suggestion, but I had nothing. Hell, I was barely dealing with my own issues with Faerie.

  A light click-clack of approaching hooves sounded as a faun carried a tray laden with food to our table. He first placed a platter in the center of the table. The aroma of roasted lamb, spices, and rosemary wafted up from it, making my mouth water. The faun then set down steamed asparagus stalks, followed by a stack of sticky buns. When he started passing out plates, it took all my willpower to lift one gloved hand and wave mine away. Rianna claimed it with a quick “for Desmond” and a gesture to the barghest. The server only shrugged, like he didn’t care one way or the other. He set down several tall, waxed leather flagons and placed a pitcher on the table. Then, without a single word, he turned and clip-clopped away.

  “So what’s tonight’s lie?” Holly asked, dropping her hands to look at the small feast laid out across the table. Whereas I had to resist sneaking a bite, Holly picked up a thick slice of lamb and dangled it between two fingers at arm’s length as if the oh-so-tender-looking meat were a sweaty sock or dead rat.

  I sighed. After we’d lost half the morning two weeks ago—and Holly had lost the respect of her boss—she’d decided, illegal or not, she’d sneak Faerie food out of the Bloom. Not a lot, of course, just enough so that she’d have some options, be able to snack in the middle of the night, and maybe eat lunch at work once in while. Sneaking out food was an idea we’d discussed on multiple occasions, but Caleb had vehemently vetoed even the suggestion.

  But Caleb wasn’t there the night Holly had gotten the equivalent of a demotion. She was devastated and desperate, so I’d helped her smuggle out the food.

  The thing no one ever told either of us about Faerie food? The reason that, more than being illegal, it was taboo to take it into the mortal realm? That’s because Faerie food is real only inside Faerie.

  The second we stepped foot into the mortal realm the roasted chicken and the half dozen sweet rolls turned into toadstools. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they almost instantly browned and shriveled into squishy, foul smelling fungus.

  After that Holly had sworn off Faerie food. Completely. She’d claimed she would rather starve to death than eat glamoured toadstools. And she gave it a damn good try. She made it four days on nothing but water before Caleb finally convinced her that she had to eat. Now she did so with reluctance, as if she saw those toadstools regardless what delicious-looking dish the server set in front of her.

  Holly glanced at me. “Will you at least look at it?”

  And by “look” she meant See, as in through glamour. I pressed a gloved finger against my lips. The fact I could see through—and even break—almost any glamour wasn’t a well-known fact. Folklore was full of stories about the fae putting out the eyes of those who could pierce glamour. I assumed it was less of an issue now that I was fae, but I didn’t like taking chances.

  Not that I wasn’t going to look. I’d just appreciate a little more discretion. I cracked my shield of vines, simultaneously raising the new opaque bubble I’d been forging. As best as Caleb was able to explain it, the Bloom was a pocket of Faerie, but not truly a part of Faerie. It was more of a bleed-over zone for the doors between the two realms. That said, it was still more Faerie than not, but small amounts of planes that existed only on the mortal realm bled into the pocket, like a thin layer of the land of the dead and a few wisps from the Aetheric plane—neither of which existed in Faerie proper. So when I looked at the room on a psyche level only the smallest patina of gray filled my vision, and the fae constructed tables and chairs remained whole, undamaged.

  But as interesting as I always found that, it wasn’t the reason I was peering at the world through my psyche. I wasn’t sure if it was my planeweaving ability or the natural growth of my sensitivity to magic as the fae in me emerged, but when I opened my mind I could see magic and spells as well as see through glamour to the truth underneath. What I couldn’t see through was glamour that reality had accepted as real and so became not just believable, but true.

  I had no doubt that the food had started as glamour, but Faerie had fully embraced it, and the feast spread across the table was real—even if it hadn’t always been.

  “It’s exactly what it looks like,” I said, snapping my shields closed.

  Holly nodded but stared at her plate another moment before taking a deep breath and picking up one of the sticky buns. She nibbled on the edge, as if testing to make sure it really was what it appeared to
be.

  I’d been so busy trying to convince Holly to eat that I hadn’t noticed the drop of noise in the room as the patrons leaned close, keeping their heads down and murmuring instead of joking boisterously with goblets and flagons raised. That is, I didn’t notice until Desmond pawed my leg, a quiet but menacing growl escaping his throat.

  Then I noticed. Big time. The ambiance of the room hadn’t turned frightened, which meant it wasn’t a FIB agent causing the change, but it was definitely cautious.

  Not that I had trouble spotting the man who’d caused the disturbance. His hair shimmered like crystal in the ethereal glow that emanated from somewhere under his pale skin as he strolled through the bar. He moved with the air of someone who thought all those he passed were beneath him, or perhaps, were there for his amusement. While the patrons didn’t meet his eyes, many looked up after he passed and stared at the Sleagh Maith, who was enchantingly beautiful without his glamour. But he knew exactly how good he looked, which in my opinion, made him far less attractive. As did the fact I knew who he was.

  Ryese. The Winter Queen’s nephew.

  I ducked my head, hoping he wouldn’t spot me, but it was too late. He walked straight toward our table.

  “Good morrow to you, Lexi,” he said, using the obnoxious nickname the Winter Queen had given me after deciding, in her words, that Alex was too dreadfully masculine.

  “It’s evening, Reeses.” Yeah, okay, intentionally mispronouncing his name just because he used a nickname I hated was childish. Sue me.

  Ryese glanced up at the canopy of branches where the roof of the bar should have been. Enough light filtered through the glossy leaves to show that despite the fact dusk had fallen in the mortal realm as we entered the bar, in the Bloom the sun was in the eastern part of the sky. I didn’t bother explaining myself.

  “May I join you?” Ryese asked, moving Holly’s stack of research.

  “No,” I said at the same time both Holly and Rianna said, “Yes.”