Grave Dance (24 page)

I knew exactly how she felt.

Standing, I recapped my chalk and walked to the center of the circle I’d drawn. Then I turned to her. “Ready?”

At her nod, I tapped into the magic stored in my ring. I spindled out the smal est amount of energy and funneled it into my circle, which shot up around me, glowing slightly blue to my senses.

With the barrier separating me from the outside world, I unclasped my charm bracelet and dropped my mental shields. A frigid wind whipped around me, through me, and my grave-sight blazed into existence, making the world wither and decay. The grave essence in the corpses on the gurneys reached for me, raking at my body and mind with icy claws. I opened myself and let the chil in, let it fil me.

Part of me railed against the invasion of the grave. My warmth boiled in my veins, trying to remind me I was a creature of life, of—at least limited—heat. I pushed that living heat out of me, sending it into the two corpses. Only then did the chil of the grave settle comfortably under my skin, as if I’d reached some sort of balance, a kind of equilibrium with the grave and the land of the dead.

I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, I reached out with my magic. Using the part of my psyche that touched the dead, I guided the magic into the corpse of the girl, sending it deep into the shel that had once been a person. Her soul was long gone, everything that had once made her someone lost, but a shade, a col ection of her memories stored in every cel of her body, had remained. She was recently deceased, and the shade was strong, emerging easily when I pul ed with power.

A vaporish form sat up through the sheet that topped the body. She might have been nineteen when she died, her body. She might have been nineteen when she died, her pixielike features round as if she hadn’t yet lost al her baby fat. There was no shock in her face, no sorrow. Any trace of personality or sentience had left with her soul; now al that remained was a recording of who she’d once been.

“What’s your name?” I asked, and the shade turned her head toward me.

“Jennifer McCormic.”

“And how did you die, Jennifer?”

The shade cocked its head to the side. “I don’t know. I stopped living.”

That’s what I thought.

“What was the last thing you remember?”

“I met my boyfriend, Andrew. We were going to go for lunch. We were walking across campus and . . .” She fel silent.

“And what?” Tamara asked, stepping up to the very edge of my circle.

“And she died,” I said because I knew the shade wouldn’t. Once her soul was gone, her body had hit the STOP button on the record of Jennifer’s life. That was it.

The end.

“Did anyone approach you before you died?” I asked the shade.

She shook her head and I chewed at my bottom lip.

Sometimes people caught a glimpse of their col ector before they died, but not always, and Jennifer clearly hadn’t.

Since she hadn’t seen the col ector, it was possible that something else caused her death and she hadn’t been reaped, but the unsettled feeling in my stomach had me leaning toward cause of death being soul snatching.

“Rest now,” I said, pushing the shade back into Jennifer’s body. Then I turned to her boyfriend, Andrew.

“We were walking and Jennifer got this funny look on her face and col apsed,” Andrew said without a trace of emotion in his voice, though watching his girlfriend die in front of him had probably made his last moments some of front of him had probably made his last moments some of the worst in his life. Of course, it didn’t sound like that moment had lasted long. “I turned, trying to catch her, and I saw this man. He stuck his hand in my chest.”

Bingo.

“The man you saw directly before you died, what did he look like?”

“Older than me, but not too old. He could have been a grad student or a postdoc. He had dark hair and he wore a long, dark coat.”

A trickle of icy sweat ran down my spine. That description sounded
exactly
like the col ector I’d seen near the rift.

“How many of these unexplained deaths did you say you had?” I asked Tamara after I returned Andrew to his body.

Her cheeks caved inward as she chewed the inside of her mouth, and she glanced toward the cold room and the bodies stored inside. “More than a dozen. Maybe fourteen?

But those are only the deaths deemed to be under suspicious circumstances.”

Which meant that if the reaper had hit a hospital or anywhere else that deaths would be written off as due to natural causes or at least expected, it was probable there were a lot more victims than we knew about. But we were fairly certain of fourteen victims, plus the two skimmers I saw him take.
Sixteen souls.
I wasn’t sure what process turned a soul into fuel for a spel , but the ravens had each dissipated into only smal amounts of soul mist, so I guessed that the soul fueling them had been broken up somehow.
So what, maybe three or four souls among the
thirty-two birds?
Adding in the soul for the cu sith attack, that accounted for no more than five of the victims. There were a lot of unaccountedfor souls out there.

And the potential for a lot of constructs.

Chapter 22

J
ohn arrived at the morgue at six thirty on the dot wearing the same clothes I’d seen last night, now wrinklier, and with bags large enough to house a pixie under his eyes.

“Jeez, John, did you get any sleep?” I asked, as Tamara pushed Jennifer’s body back into the morgue’s cold storage room.

He pressed his palm against one eye and dragged it down his face. “Recently?”

The air around John buzzed slightly with magic, which was weird because John was a nul —no magical affinity at al . He could walk through a magical barrier without even noticing it existed. He had nothing against magic—

obviously; he was, after al , my first contact with the police—

but he never used charms. I let my senses stretch, tasting the magic.

“A stay-awake charm? John, those things are dangerous.”

“Yeah, wel , it was this or an IV of caffeine. The charm was easier.” He focused on me for the first time. “You okay?”

I shrugged, a movement that turned into a tremble.

Raising a pair of shades probably wasn’t the best way to prepare for a difficult ritual, but I now knew the reaper was stealing souls. I wasn’t sure what to do about that fact—I mean, what does a mortal do about a rogue reaper?—and I couldn’t yet prove he was supplying the souls for the constructs, but I was starting to put things together.

Hopeful y we would learn even more when we raised a Hopeful y we would learn even more when we raised a shade from the foot.

“Rianna should be here soon,” I said, glancing toward the large steel doors. At least I hoped Rianna was on her way.

I’d never sent messages via brownie before.

John rubbed a hand over the ever-expanding bald spot on his head. “So, what is the story with you working for the FIB?”

Crap.
I’d seriously been hoping he wouldn’t ask.
A little
overoptimistic there, Alex.
“It’s complicated.”

“Yeah?” His mustache twitched, a quick swish of displeasure, but I was saved from having to answer any more questions by the morgue door opening.

Rianna stood in the doorway, looking unsure until her deep-sunk eyes landed on me. Then a feeble smile broke on her face and she scuttled across the room, her woodensoled shoes clunking on the linoleum floor.

“I’m glad you made it,” I said, since I couldn’t thank her for coming. Then I accepted her hug as she tossed her arms around my neck.

She pul ed back quickly. “You’re cold.”

“It happens.” I introduced her to John and Tamara, who both gave me questioning glances when I used Rianna’s name. It took me a second to realize why. They were both good enough friends to know that my roommate in academy was another grave witch, named Rianna McBride

—they also knew she’d disappeared a handful of years ago. I hadn’t told anyone I’d found her, and I certainly wasn’t going to get into her being a captive of Faerie. “So which foot do you want us to try to raise a shade from?” I asked, trying to keep the focus on the business at hand.

“How about the one from last night? It’s a good puzzle.”

John glanced at Tamara, who nodded and walked back to the cold room.

She returned pushing a gurney covered with a white sheet. A sheet with only the smal est lump in the center.

“That’s it?” Rianna asked.

“That’s it?” Rianna asked.

“I know it’s not much to work with, but we’l try.”

She nodded, but her lips turned down in a grimace. I didn’t blame her. Even together, if we managed to raise the shade from such a smal specimen, it would be a miracle.

With Rianna terrified of leaving Faerie for extended periods of time, my asking her to venture out for a nearly impossible task probably didn’t rate high in her book. Stil , the two of us had raised some seriously impressive shades in the past.

We
might
be able to raise this one.

“So, you know where the foot was found,” Tamara said as she rol ed the cart to the center of my already drawn, but inactive, circle. “Like the other feet, it was severed by unknown means just above the ankle bone. And like al the others we’ve found, it’s a left foot.”

Why only left feet? Why no other body parts?

“We won’t know gender until DNA results come back,”

she said, “but from an initial examination the foot appears to have belonged to a—”

“Male,” Rianna and I said in unison. There might not have been much of a body, but there was enough to sense gender.

John shook his head. “Okay, geniuses, you’l get your chance to show off in a minute.” When we’d first met, John hadn’t believed I could always tel the gender of a corpse.

Always. He’d rol ed gurney after gurney out for me to identify. “Here’s what I bet you don’t know,” he said. “The boot the foot was found in was laced and double-knotted.

Not like it was being pinched shut but like there was a leg in it when it was laced. And here’s the real mystery. The foot was severed almost four inches below the top of the boot, but there’s not a drop of blood inside the boot and there’s no more damage to the boot than what would be expected of an old, worn-out shoe.”

“So the foot was shoved inside after being severed?”

And drained of blood. But why? “Or are you thinking the person throwing feet in the river missed it because it was person throwing feet in the river missed it because it was hidden inside the boot?”

“Yeah, that’s one of several theories floating around—

none of which is leading us anywhere.” John rubbed at his bald spot again.

“Any luck untangling the spel s on it?” I asked, glancing at Tamara.

She shook her head. “I was hoping that since this one hadn’t spent any time in the water maybe I’d glean something. But it’s just like the other feet we’ve found.”

If we were lucky, we’d be able to ask the shade. I turned to Rianna. “You ready to try this?”

She nodded and held out her hands, palms up. “Are you leading or am I?”

Rianna was the better witch when it came to spel casting, but I’d always had a stronger connection to the grave. “I’l lead.”

I placed my palms flat against Rianna’s and then looked at John. “We’re going to start now,” I told him, and he reached over and flipped a switch on the video recorder. I turned my focus inward.

It took only a smal string of magic to reactivate my circle, and it sprang up around us, buzzing softly. Once it was in place, I nodded at Rianna.

“My magic to your wil ,” she whispered, and though the words themselves held little meaning, she laced them with magic, giving them shape and purpose.

“I wil guide it,” I said, tapping into the energy stored in my ring and giving power to my own words.

The spel activated like a key sliding home in a lock, and where Rianna and my palms touched, her magic poured up to the surface, slipping into my flesh, my blood. Sharing someone else’s magic is a strange, personal, and innately wrong feeling. Like drawing a breath directly out of someone else’s lungs. Being the one giving up magic feels even worse.

Rianna didn’t complain, though the skin around her eyes Rianna didn’t complain, though the skin around her eyes pinched in a wince.
Time to get on with it.
I dropped my shields.

Only the smal est tendril of grave essence reached for me from the foot. I drew it into me, accepting the chil into my body as I released what little heat I had left into the amputated part. Wind tore through the circle, whipping curls that escaped my ponytail into my face and making Rianna’s lank red hair fan out around her. A patina of gray crawled over the room as the linoleum under us wore away, revealing crumbling concrete underneath. The sheet on the gurney turned dingy and frayed, the worn holes exposing rusted metal. The Aetheric bloomed into twisting colors around us, strands of magic glowing in a low ebb and flow, like a giant magical pulse.

“Is this what it’s always like for you?” Rianna asked, her green eyes glowing brightly as she looked around us.

“The land of the dead? Yeah, recently.” I wasn’t going to mention anything about the Aetheric, especial y not while being recorded. I hadn’t realized that she would share my ability to see across the planes when we shared our magic.

I reached out with magic before she could ask any more questions. My ability to raise shades had nothing to do with the amount of Aetheric energy I could channel and everything to do with the wyrd ability that both Rianna and I had been born with. I reached out with that portion of me that touched the dead, and Rianna’s magic answered, reaching with mine. As I poured the two magics into the foot, they flowed together, twisting, twining, not like they were one single note of music, but like two harmonious notes vibrating together, building toward a crescendo.

I reached deep with the magic, searching for a shade. In theory, every cel in the body stored the life’s memory—the trick was having enough magic or the body having enough copies of those memories to give form to the shade. A new body with lots of cel s took only a little power to raise. An old body reduced to dust and bones needed a lot of magic old body reduced to dust and bones needed a lot of magic to fil in the gaps between the memories. With just a foot?

We needed to pump enough magic into the shade to fil out the missing body. Difficult. Impossible alone. But together?

Maybe. Just maybe.

Our magic fil ed the foot and flowed beyond it. I felt the shade forming before I even opened my eyes.

It worked.

Or not.

I stared, horrified, not at the shade of a man but at the single, ghastly glimmer of a foot. Just a foot.

The foot-shade hopped across the gurney, and though we’d poured enough energy in it to raise ten shades, the stump at its ankle led to nothing.

“What the hel ?” John stepped
through
my circle, making both Rianna and me shudder—I
had
talked to him about crossing active circles. He leaned closer to the foot, watching its strange dance. “Where’s the rest of it?”

Good question.
One I had no answer for. I glanced at Rianna. Her eyes were wide, the whites glimmering as she watched the il -formed shade bounce across the gurney.

“Does that mean it was severed prior to death?” Tamara asked. She at least respected the edge of my circle. Of course, as deeply entrenched in magic as she was, she’d have had to shatter the circle to cross.

“No,” I said, and Rianna shook her head. “I’ve raised shades that have been dismembered. This isn’t the result.

Remember that case three years ago when the parts were found in three different trash bags?” And the bag with the head and right arm had been found almost a week after the rest. The vic had died of exsanguination as his limbs were sawed off one at a time. It stil made me sick to think about that case, but even though I hadn’t had the ful body to raise a shade from, and several of the limbs had been severed prior to death, the shade had stil remembered that it once
had
a ful body—the parts had just appeared dismembered. This shade . . . it was like the foot was al the dismembered. This shade . . . it was like the foot was al the man had ever been.

“Okay, so then what is this?” John pointed to the flailing foot.

“I don’t know.” Unhelpful. That’s what it was. How could a foot forget it had been part of a body? “It’s like the rest of the body just ceased to be.”

John grunted. “You sound like the tracker I consulted.

Good reputation, best tracking spel s in the country. But he tried to track the rest of the body on each of the feet, and each spel failed. He said he’d never seen anything like it and it was like there was no rest of a body out there to find.

How is that possible?”

I had no idea. The shade jumped off the gurney and hopped across the floor. It bounced against the edge of the circle, sending a tremor through the barrier. I shook my head. “Why is it stuck in perpetual motion?” I asked aloud, though I knew no one could answer.
Would the other
dismembered feet do the same?

I thought back to the circle at the vacant lot and the rage-and pain-fil ed shadows I had almost been able to see around me. They’d been writhing and circling. Was this shade stil stuck in whatever had happened inside that circle? I watched the foot hop about. There seemed to be a pattern to its movement, but with only the one foot I couldn’t guess what it was.

“We should put it back,” Rianna said, her voice wavering.

Chil bumps had broken out down her arms, though I wasn’t sure if they were from fear or cold, and she looked exhausted, overused. Not that I wasn’t.

I nodded and began drawing the magic back, preparing to lay the shade to rest. Then the morgue door banged open. I jumped at the sound and a familiar silver-souled fae stormed into the room.

“Alex,” Falin said, coming to a stop inches from my circle,

“we have to go. Now.”