Forever and Beyond (6 page)

“Whatever happened to her, it must’ve happened last night while she was asleep,” I said. For the first time the witches and warlocks on the east and west side turned to regard me directly.

“Why?” Kieran whispered.

“Because she’s still wearing her nightgown,” Blake said grimly, echoing my thoughts.

“What do you think happened to her?” someone whispered.

The room began to spin. I blinked several times to get rid of the dizziness forming before my eyes, but it didn’t work.

“It’s hard to say,” Aidan said. “There’s no bruising. No blood.”

“So, she died of a natural cause?” Hope oozed from Iain’s voice. I peered from him to Aidan and knew instantly my boyfriend wasn’t convinced.

“Could be,” he said. “Except that the Prophecy of
Morganefaire
starts with someone’s death. For all we know it could be hers.”

“Yes, that’s what the Seer saw, but the prophecy does not begin with the death of an ordinary witch,” Blake said, his black eyes cutting into Aidan’s, imploring him to keep quiet. “The verdict is she died of a natural cause. Iain, take her to the mortuary.”

“The Council shall meet at a more appropriate time,” Riley said. “Close the gates. No one’s allowed in or out until the investigation concludes.”

My gaze swept over the girl’s chubby cheeks that didn’t quite fit her otherwise thin body. I frowned and dared a quick sniff. Even though there was no sign of blood on her body, the telltale scent of copper hit my nostrils again.

“Please, something’s wrong,” a thin female voice echoed in my ear. “Something bad happened.”

“Did you hear that?” I whispered to Kieran. I glanced around but only saw men standing nearby. He shook his head, wide-eyed. His gaze swept over the hall, unsure what to look for. I was obviously freaking him out again.

“Can no one sense it?” the thin voice asked again, making me shiver. The people around us kept staring at the girl’s body, whispering to each other, but no one seemed to react to the voice. A ghostly presence? Maybe the spirit was calling out to me from the grave because she needed help.

My fingers hovered inches away from the girl’s parted lips, and that’s when it dawned on me. The scent came from inside her mouth. She might not have struggled because something or someone pinned her down, but she had bitten her tongue until she drew blood. Maybe Aidan and Kieran couldn’t smell it because they didn’t need blood to survive. Blake and I had never really been close so, for all I knew, he might just not have particularly good senses.

Kieran pulled me away and whispered in my ear, “What are you doing? We’re trying to make a good impression here, remember? You can’t touch a body with that facial expression. You look like you’re starving.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I had to take a closer look.”

“Why?”

My gaze sliced into his. “Because I think Aidan’s right that she was murdered.”

A moment later, Iain lifted the girl’s body in his arms and carried her away.

“Please, I need to find out what happened,” the female voice said.
I turned slowly, careful not to draw attention to myself, and scanned the empty space around me. Nothing there. It irritated the hell out of me that I couldn’t put a face to the voice. It made me feel like I suffered from a mental disorder. Schizophrenia maybe, or multiple personality. If I didn’t get out now and found an answer as to what was going on, I might as well check myself into a psychiatric ward.

“I need fresh air,” I whispered to Aidan.

He shot me a concerned look. “I’ll come with you.”

I shook my head. “No, you stay here and finish up. I’ll meet you in the hall outside, near the entrance.” Faking a faint smile, I squeezed his hand and hurried out before he insisted on accompanying me. Ignoring the curious stares, I dashed through the crowds of people, following the scent of iron and copper down a flight of stairs to an underground vault and a closed, mahogany door. With a fleeting look over my shoulder, I pushed it open and entered the morgue.

A voice had spoken to me—I hadn’t been imagining things—and apparently I needed to find out what happened. I needed more clues and if sneaking into the morgue was what I had to do, then so be it. My body shook…and it wasn’t because lifeless limbs scared me. Part of me feared visiting a place where resident souls still lingered near their bodies, screaming for help to come back to life or to have their requests fulfilled. With a gift like talking to the dead, every spirit would be attracted to me like a moth to a flame, but I’d still take the chance because living with a voice inside my head was out of the question. So I vowed to enter the morgue, inspect the body, and then get the heck out of there. And if I stumbled across a gathering of souls, I swore to myself I’d act as though I couldn’t see them and make a beehive for the nearest exit. Sounded simple enough. Unfortunately, the simplest things aren’t always as easy as they seem.

The windowless room was about as big as a small chapel, and cold as ice. A couple of torches and candles burned bright, casting golden shadows across the cracked, white walls. The girl was spread out on a marble altar,
a decorated slab with images of the sun and moon set up in the middle of the room. An inscription in fancy cursive was carved out in gold. The golden brown girl’s hair was arranged around her like a halo; her long flowing dress brushed the stone floor. She looked so serene, as though she was barely asleep and would wake up very soon. It was hard to believe someone this young and pretty was gone forever.

Hesitating, I inched closer until my hand almost touched her cold skin. My fingers brushed over her mouth, then pressed lightly to part her lips and inspect the inside of her cheeks. Her jaw remained clenched tight. Rigor mortis, the rigidity that commences shortly after death, had already kicked in, meaning her limbs could no longer be bent without using force for at least a few more hours after which they would soften again. But I couldn’t wait that long. To prove my theory that she had been awake during her attack and bit her tongue in fear, I had to peek inside her mouth and break a few bones in the process. The prospect of hurting someone—even someone already dead—horrified me. It just seemed wrong. Besides, for all I knew, the girl’s ghost might still be hovering around this place. I had been to the Otherworld and knew ghost experienced their last moments and the brief period afterwards over and over again. The violation of her mortal carcass wasn’t a memory I wanted to give her for all eternity.

I circled the altar once, then again, pondering my options, when the air above the girl’s chest sparkled for a brief second. It could’ve been a trick of the candlelight or the figment of my imagination, and yet it made me stop on the spot. My gaze narrowed as I peered from her chest to the ceiling, then back down to her unmoving body.

The thin, golden thread was there, faint and barely noticeable, but there nonetheless. Frowning, I edged closer and bent forward until my face hovered inches away from the sparkling air. I had seen it before, when one of my friends, the devil’s daughter Cass, almost lost her bonded mate and became a reaper. She had told me about the golden thread—the life cord, as she called it—that binds a human’s soul to a mortal body and that it needed to be cut within hours upon one’s death. The girl had been dead for at least a few hours, and yet no reaper had arrived to cut the life cord. I wondered why.

I watched the golden thread in silence. Maybe the reaper was late. Maybe her death had gone unnoticed in the Otherworld. Maybe something had happened to the designated reaper, which was unlikely but not entirely impossible. I don’t know how long I just stood there, lost in thought, unaware of the entity watching me. A freezing sensation washed over me, but I attributed it to an uneasiness stemming from being in a room with a corpse. Eventually, I peered at one of the flickering candles, and that’s when I saw the girl’s ghost standing near the wall, her frightened gaze fixed on the altar. My mouth turned dry, my pulse spiked. The usual sense of fear and dread grabbed hold of me, but after my recent encounters with ghosts, both of the good and the bad kind, I knew running wouldn’t get me far.

As though she felt my thoughts, the girl’s hazel eyes shifted to me
and our gazes connected. Her face remained blank for a second, and then she seemed to understand that I could see her. A tiny gasp escaped her chest, in shock, in surprise, I couldn’t tell but the usual countless questions began to burn in her eyes. She wanted to understand what happened to her so badly, and yet how can you explain Fate?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing too well my words wouldn’t be able to offer consolation.

“You can hear me?” she asked. Her voice was thin and frail.

I nodded. “Someone will be here soon. They’ll help you,” I said, talking about the reaper. I didn’t tell her the one coming would be a winged demon that would take her to either Heaven or Hell, depending on the kind of physical life she had led.

She shook her head. “
Someone
? You mean a demon from the pits of Hell?” She floated closer until she stood inches away from me. So the reaper had been here? Why hadn’t he taken her soul? As if sensing my questions she continued, “Yeah, I nearly fainted when I saw it. The thing said I needed to stay a while longer. That I hadn’t yet fulfilled my purpose. I don’t even know what that means.”

I blinked several times, confused. “Are you sure? Usually—” My voice trailed off as she nodded. Maybe her purpose was to tell us what happened to her. Even though I knew it was insensitive of me to ask about the last moments before her death, I figured I had no choice if I wanted to find out the truth and maybe even help her fulfill her purpose at the same time so she could move on. “Do you remember what happened to you?” I asked straight-out.

She seemed to consider my question for a moment, and then shook her head, wide-eyed. “It was night and I went to bed, as usual. Something woke me up, or maybe it was just a dream, I don’t now. The next thing I remember is this room—”
she clutched her chest as she took a deep breath “—and a demonic monster with black eyes and huge flapping wings. It commanded me in a deep voice to stay, and then it screeched making the walls vibrate, and it flew down through the stone floor right back into a lake of fire.”

The lake of fire thing was definitely a figment of her imagination, but I kept quiet because the sight of a reaper would traumatize even the strongest and most boastful out there. It definitely wasn’t for the faint of heart. Mind you, it made me want to run for my life the first time I saw one. “It’s gone now,” I said. “There’s nothing to fear.” She nodded. “Do you remember anything else? Maybe about the night you—”

“Died?” She shook her head. Her eyes glazed over, as though she was about to cry. “Something felt wrong but it took me a while to realize I was dead. My first impression was that something happened since no one could see me. And then the demon arrived. Trust me, I spent the last hours trying to remember what happened. But it’s all blank. I just don’t understand why it had to happen to me.” It was only natural to ask why she had to leave. They all felt their time had come too soon.

From what Cass told me, ghosts in the Otherworld recalled each and every gory detail about their death. That the girl didn’t remember anything told me something was going on. I figured she might’ve suffered a concussion or something, so I asked, “What’s your name?”

She didn’t even blink as she answered. “Juliette Baron. My friends call me Julie.” Her use of the present tense didn’t go unnoticed. Even though she knew she was dead, she had yet to acknowledge the finiteness of it. I swallowed hard to get rid of the sudden lump in my throat.

“I’m Amber,” I said with a weak smile. “Do you remember anything about your life, Julie?”

“What do you want to know?”

I considered my words. “For starters, who are your parents?”

“Like all the other children in
Morganefaire
, I’ve been brought up as an orphan and never met them.”

My heart went out to her. “Maybe you can tell me where you live.”

“I live in the house with the red brick wall in the south district of the city,” Julie said, “around the corner from
Elyssa’s
store.” Her tongue flicked over her lips, leaving a sparkling trail of moisture behind. Her eyes narrowed for a brief second, as though lost in thought.

I wasn’t familiar with the surroundings and made a mental note to ask Aidan who
Elyssa
was and where the south district was located, then moved on because I needed more clues. “Did you have a job?”

“Kind of.” Her eyelashes cast a dark shadow on her cheeks as she lowered her gaze so I couldn’t read her expression.

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“The Blue Moon is about to hang low over
Morganefaire
, which happens rarely enough. But this time, it will stand in perfect alignment with four other planets. Because of the prophecy, the Council has decided to recruit for the Night Watch. I was supposed to join them in four days. When they chose me, it was a dream come true.” Her eyes sparkled with passion and her chin tilted up with pride. Anger crossed her features a moment before she said, “I guess that won’t happen now.”

“I’m sorry.” I averted my gaze and let my thoughts roam free for a moment. Seeing her so helpless made me feel like I had to do something—set her free, or whatever necromancers do. Basically, I had to find out the truth about her death. A concussion was highly unlikely because Julie remembered too much about her life. Besides, I smelled no blood on her head. So something else was the reason why she couldn’t recall anything about the night she died. I needed to talk to Cass. She might know what could possibly be wrong with Julie’s memory.