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  The queen’s dark eyebrow lifted in a perfect arch. “Has he now? How very . . . industrious of him.” She turned to Falin. “Were you not the one who told me one should approach a crime scene with an open mind? And yet it sounds like you walked into the scene of our butchered noble already expecting it to be something other than it appeared.”

  “The message I received indicated you desired Alex’s presence,” Falin said, and I could almost feel the effort it took him to not look at me or Dugan. “Hiring her expedited the process and best utilized your available assets.”

  “Hmmm. Perhaps.” The queen turned back to the papers spread over the table, her dark curls falling forward as she leaned to roll the scrolls closed. When she finished, she turned back around. Her appraising gaze cut at me, and from her expression, I came up lacking. “Lexi, my dear, we really must work on your wardrobe. Your outfit choices are always so unbecoming of a lady of your station.”

  She lifted her hand and my cringe made me sink deeper into my curtsy—she’d changed my street clothes to ball gowns in the past, and they didn’t tend to change back.

  “My clothes are very functional for my job,” I stammered, hoping she’d leave them untransformed. I was rather fond of the silver sweater and leather pants. They were comfortable but dressy enough for meeting clients, in my opinion at least.

  The queen tsked under her breath. “Females in the mortal realm act like pants are the only practical option.” She motioned to her own gown. It was admittedly the simplest dress I’d ever seen on her. Usually the gowns she wore featured full skirts, lots of layers, corsets, silk and lace. Her current dress was of an exquisite and no-doubt-magic-made material garnished with sparkling snowflakes—real ones, not embroidered—but the material looked more substantial than her typical fare, and the dress itself was a simple sheath with splits in the skirt so her legs were unconstrained; a small silver cinch accented her waist. A scabbard hung at her side, an enormous sword sheathed there. “I could ride a horse in this. Or I could”—she lunged forward and the sword was suddenly in her hands, the tip at Dugan’s neck—“slit a throat.”

  She hadn’t drawn the sword; it had simply materialized in her hand, the move shockingly fast. Dugan stared at her, seemingly unruffled. He didn’t step back or lift his own sword to deflect the blow. The moment stretched, and I realized I was holding my breath. Falin looked unconcerned, but I could see the slight tightening of the skin around his eyes and the way his shoulders stiffened despite the fact that he didn’t rise from his kneeling position. He was definitely not relaxed.

  Falin had told me not to get involved. Not to defend Dugan no matter what. But I really didn’t want to watch the queen murder him in front of me. It wasn’t my fault he was here—he’d hired me and insisted he wanted to observe the investigation, but he was still my client. As if reading the intent in my posture, Falin’s gaze slammed into me, and he shook his head ever so slightly, a single finger lifting in a motion to wait. I hesitated, the muscles in my legs twitching either in the need to move or simply from holding the curtsy too long.

  The queen and the prince stared at each other, and then a ghastly smile spread across the queen’s face. She opened her hand, releasing the sword. It fell less than an inch before dissolving into a fine sprinkling of snow. The sword reappeared in her scabbard a moment later and the breath I’d been holding rushed out in a hiss of relief.

  “Are you very brave or very foolish, I wonder, Cousin,” the queen said, leaning back against the table. “Why are you here?”

  “To prevent war,” Dugan said without hesitation.

  The queen considered him. She tapped her long nails on the tabletop, the quick, staccato beat the only sound in the room.

  “War with shadow gains me little,” she finally said, but her eyes narrowed, her cold gaze slicing into Dugan. “That does not mean I will not take this war to your doorstep if need be.” She turned to me. “Lexi, question the shades. Find out who is at fault for my noble’s death.”

  I nodded because I was still in the same damn curtsy I’d been in since we walked in, and my legs were on fire so I wasn’t going to attempt to dip any deeper. I’d been hired to raise the shades; it was what I planned to do anyway, but it was good to have permission.

  The queen turned back to the scrolls on her table, dismissing us. Lyell and Maeve turned toward the table as well, instantly focusing again on whatever they had been discussing before we entered. Well, that went better than I’d feared. Falin stood in one graceful motion. He made the movement look effortless. I, on the other hand, didn’t land on my butt as I tried to straighten, but that was about the best that could be said for my effort as I tried to get my trembling legs under me. My muscles were stiff, seeming stuck from my overdrawn curtsy, and I wobbled, taking too wide a step sideways. Dugan caught my elbow, supporting me. I gave him a polite nod and stepped away from him as soon as I got my feet under me. The muscles in my legs felt like rubber bands that had been pulled too tight too long and now were the wrong size.

  “Oh, Cousin,” the queen called from behind us.

  Crap. We’d almost been out.

  We turned. The queen hadn’t moved, her attention seemingly fixed on the scroll she’d unfurled across the table. She didn’t look up, but her voice reached us across the room as if she were right beside us.

  “If you compromise or attempt to steal my planeweaver, Cousin, next time I will not stop my blade from tasting your spine.”

  Chapter 5

  The bodies were waiting for us by the pillar of ice that marked the exit to the Bloom. They had been placed in black body bags and dumped unceremoniously on the floor. Nori hovered nearby, the bagged weapons in her arms, but no one else was in the hall. No one living, at least. The guards must have carried the bodies this far, but they’d vanished back to wherever they waited to ambush anyone who entered the court.

  “The healer said that while the damage was not great, she could do nothing,” Nori said, and while she might have still considered Kordon—or at least the shadow court he came from—a possible suspect in Stiofan’s murder, there was sadness in her voice as she delivered this news. Fae didn’t die often, and they didn’t like death.

  Dugan nodded, but he looked like he’d already been resigned to that outcome.

  I frowned. There was no sign of any kind of stretcher or gurney to carry the bodies out on.

  “How do we—” I started, but the answer became apparent when Falin leaned down and scooped the closest bag off the ground.

  “Time to make yourself useful, Shadow Prince,” he said, nodding to the second bag.

  For his part, Dugan didn’t protest, he just leaned down and scooped up the second bag—which totally would have not been my response if I’d been asked to carry a dead body. He had the smaller of the two bags, which I guessed must contain the goblin—it was rather jarring to not sense the whispers from the grave and know for certain. He slung the small body up, over his shoulder, and I cringed. This was totally not the proper way to handle evidence, let alone a person, but it was admittedly better than the last time we’d removed a corpse from Faerie. That time we’d walked out with a duffle bag crammed to bursting with disassembled bones.

  Falin turned, heading for the pillar, Nori and Dugan following.

  “Uh, are we seriously going to walk down the streets of the Magic Quarter with bodies slung over your shoulders?” I asked, not following. “We’ll have SWAT after us before we reach the parking garage.”

  “I would assume the plan is to not be seen by mortals?” Dugan looked to Falin for confirmation. The other fae nodded and stepped forward, vanishing around the edge of the pillar. The other followed and I trudged behind.

  I emerged into the Bloom last. A complete hush had fallen over the crowd, the only sound in the room the distant strands of fiddle music from the eternal dance, which I tried to ignore. There were fewer fae than when we’d pa
ssed through the first time, but there was still a big enough crowd that the silence was eerie. I could only imagine how it looked, the queen’s bloody hands and the Prince of Shadows and Secrets emerging from Faerie with bodies slung over their shoulders. Every eye was on us as we wove around the tables. I stared straight ahead, but I could feel the stares, the skin between my shoulder blades tightening until I was sure it would crawl off if we didn’t reach the door soon.

  The sense of relief I felt once we reached the street was palpable. And bonus, less than fifteen minutes had passed in the mortal realm while we’d been inside Faerie. I couldn’t sense the glamour that covered us as we walked toward the car, but no one stared at the two fae carrying body bags, so clearly it was in place.

  When we reached the garage, Nori split off from us, carrying the weapons to her own car to be taken back to FIB headquarters for processing. Since they’d obviously been planted at the scene, that likely wouldn’t turn up anything useful. But then again, old fae versus modern forensics might just work in our favor. Especially if they’d assumed that awful staging job would fool everyone.

  After a brief debate, we loaded the bodies into the trunk and headed back to Tongues for the Dead. Did I want two dead bodies in my office? No. I wanted them in the morgue—where dead bodies belonged. But there would be jurisdictional red tape and official records if we took them to the city morgue. I briefly considered performing the ritual in the parking garage. I’d raised a shade for the winter court there in the past, but my office offered a permanent circle and privacy. The latter we likely could have achieved with glamour, but the former was the real tipping point. My circles weren’t terribly strong, especially circles drawn in a public place with a little wax chalk. Considering one of the bodies still contained a soul, so I’d have to evict the ghost, I wanted the strongest circle I could cast. The permanent circle carved into my office floor offered me that.

  “How secure are the doors into the winter court?” I asked as we drove. “Or the shadow court, for that matter?”

  Falin glanced away from the road only long enough to frown at me. “The true doors of the court are very secure. Some of the borders, though . . . They are like their equivalents in the mortal realm. We try to monitor who passes through checkpoints, but sometimes people slip through.”

  “So assuming Kordon was the killer,” I said, and when Dugan began to protest in the backseat, I held up a hand. “Yes, it looks like his body was brought to the scene, but hypothetically, if it had been him, where would he have been able to slip into winter?”

  “One of the private holdings, most likely. Some land that connects to something in a neutral territory.” Falin gave me a look that indicated there was something more he wanted to say but wouldn’t in present company. Most likely something about the castle I currently called home. It wasn’t common knowledge inside Faerie that I owned it, and he clearly didn’t want to discuss it in front of Dugan. After a moment he said, “As a whole, the more important the fae, the harder it is for them to travel through different parts of Faerie. A goblin isn’t terribly important, but they are rather unliked, so I wouldn’t guess he’d have an easy time entering.”

  “But regardless, someone inside winter would have to help, right? Someone would have had to let the killer in through their own private lands?”

  Falin’s expression turned grim, but he nodded. It wasn’t good news, and he’d likely already reached the same conclusion. Winter had a traitor in its ranks. How else would outsiders have passed through without notice?

  We reached the alley in front of Tongues for the Dead before anything more could be discussed. Normally I insisted on cars being parked on the main street, but considering the guys were carrying bodies, I let it slide. I locked the door behind us and left the sign in the window that stated the investigators were currently in the field, the words followed by a phone number where potential clients could leave a voice message. While questioning a couple dead people wasn’t at all unusual for me, doing it in my office was. My luck was that if I left the door open, my first real—human—client in weeks would walk in while I was midritual and subsequently flee in terror.

  “Where should we put them?” Falin asked, glancing around. His gaze moved toward the love seat in the lobby, and I quickly pointed toward my office door.

  “There is a circle in the far corner of the room.” Not that I’d drawn it intending to raise shades in it, so it was small, meant to be a place just big enough for me to comfortably sit with maybe a few supplies to craft or recharge my charms. But it was a permanent, reinforced circle, so I’d make it work.

  Dugan and Falin placed the bagged bodies in the circle. Kordon fit without issue, but Stiofan’s form inside the bag was longer than the widest part of my circle, the head and foot of the bag hanging over the carefully etched line in the floor. I stared at the dark bag. I could feel the fact that the material of the bag included the pretty standard body bag spells that helped keep smells as well as all liquids inside and blocked the contents from outside magic. Well, most witch magic, at least. I’d yet to find one that warded against grave magic. But the spells on the bag meant that the material couldn’t be allowed to touch my circle—let alone cross it—or it would interfere with the barrier.

  I’m going to have to touch the body.

  Well, the bag at the very least. Stiofan was tall, and the large lump comprising his head rested on the edge of my circle, but there was excess bag on either side of his form. Now that we were back in the mortal realm, the grave essence reached for me, clawing at my senses, and there was no denying the lumps were anything but dead bodies. I could feel the weight of their deaths. Could tell without even thinking that both bags contained males and that they were old. Older than my magic knew how to calculate. With humans I could usually guess the deceased’s age to within a few years, but I couldn’t narrow it down to decades or even centuries for either dead fae. The grave essence coming off a murder victim or someone who died far too young always seemed to feel slightly colder, sharper, than when I encountered a body that died of natural causes, but that biting chill felt even more exaggerated with fae corpses, as if the abrupt loss of potential centuries of continued existence gave the grave essence teeth.

  Falin must have seen me staring and realized why I hadn’t moved or made any attempt to start the ritual. He squatted beside the foot of the bag and gently rolled the contents, moving Stiofan until the body formed a C contained inside my small circle. I shot him a relieved smile by way of thanks—I really hadn’t wanted to touch the body, even through a bag.

  One major problem still remained: Stiofan’s soul was inside his body. Ejecting it would be easy enough, but then it would be stuck inside my circle. Shades were harmless collections of memories, but souls transitioned to ghosts as soon as they left a body, and ghosts had wills and personalities, just like the living. While ghosts were usually fairly harmless—it took an enormous amount of energy for a ghost to interact with anything on the mortal plane—the fact that I was a convergence point between planes meant ghosts had no trouble interacting with me. I hadn’t known this fae in life and he hadn’t died peacefully. There was a good chance he’d come out angry and I would be an easy target. I did have some defenses against ghosts, but it involved draining them, causing them to cease to exist. I was hesitant to use it.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself. After all, maybe Stiofan would come out grateful for not being stuck in a dead body inside Faerie forever. Not likely, but possible.

  I’d raise Kordon’s shade first.

  Activating my circle, I dropped my mental walls and removed my charm bracelet holding my additional shields. The bitingly cold wind of the land of the dead ripped through me, rustling the body bags and sending my curls flying, but my circle contained it, leaving the rest of the room untouched. Around me, the world seemed to decay. I didn’t pay too much attention to the moth-eaten body bags or the rotting hardwood below
them. I had a thin, bubblelike shield still encircling my psyche, and it helped prevent me from merging planes unintentionally, but if I paid too much attention to what my psyche saw in the other planes, gave it too much credence, sometimes my magic pulled it through into reality. Ms. B would be furious if I ruined the floors.

  Reaching out with my magic, I channeled it into the smaller body. My magic flowed toward it quickly, greedily— it had been almost too long since I’d last raised a shade—but as soon as my magic sank below the flesh of the corpse, sharp pain zinged through me.

  I yelped, stumbling backward.

  “What happened?” Falin asked. He stood just outside the edge of the circle, but thankfully he hadn’t touched it.

  I rubbed my hand, as if the pain had been a physical thing, a prick of the finger or a slice of the palm, but it hadn’t been. It was like something had hurt my grave magic. That had never happened before. I reached out with my magic again, more tentative this time. I let it trickle into the little goblin’s body, waiting for the stab of pain again. The pressure of the grave pushed under my flesh and the chill warred against my living heat, but there was no unexpected pain so I released my own living heat, let it travel the path my magic had carved, sending it into the body.

  A small form sat up from the bag. I hadn’t known the goblin in life, but I’d seen his body. Being only memory and magic, his green leathery skin looked pale and washed-out on the shade but still had the lightest cast of green. His tunic was the same as the one we’d found him in, blood staining the front. My dislike of blood extended to ghostly projections, but my curiosity won out and I looked at his chest where the sword had emerged from his physical body. As I suspected, there was no sign of it now.

  Dugan made a sound—surprise? alarm?—I wasn’t sure. He’d never seen me raise a shade before. Maybe, despite his long life, he’d never seen a shade at all. I shot him a wan smile, checking to ensure that he hadn’t crept any closer to the edge of my circle. Assured he wasn’t about to charge my barrier, I turned back toward the little collection of memories that was Kordon’s shade.