Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel (13 page)

Yeah, tell that to the ache in my chest.

I glanced around my apartment. The drawers with
clothes hanging precariously out of them and open cabinets were proof the FIB had swept my room in their raid. Oh, it had looked worse than this before, but it hadn’t been a mess when I left this morning. That was due entirely to the fact that when I’d inherited Coleman’s castle, I’d also inherited the brownie and garden gnome who lived there, or more accurately, they’d inherited me. Faerie might say the castle was mine, but the brownie, Ms. B, ran the place and had long before Coleman owned it. Throughout history and folklore, brownies bonded to the land or to a family. Burn a brownie’s home to the ground and they’d tend the ashes. A family brownie would follow the bloodline, even when they didn’t wish it to.

Ms. B had always been a land-bound brownie, but for reasons I couldn’t begin to understand, she seemed to like me. I rarely saw her, but for the last month my apartment had been consistently cleaner than in the last seven years I’d lived here. I sighed as I scanned the mess.
Great.
The room looked more trashed than searched, and I walked around the room pushing things back in drawers and sliding them shut, PC following at my heels.

When I passed the bed, I froze, a splash of color catching my eye. I turned. Thoughts about the mess scattered as if they’d never been there as my attention narrowed to a bloodred rose lying on top of my white pillowcase.

I sank onto the bed, staring, waiting for the rose to vanish. To prove to be a figment of my imagination.

But it didn’t.

I reached out a tentative hand and touched the velvety smoothness of a petal so deep a red it verged on black. I’d never considered myself a flower girl, and with my dating habits, it wasn’t like I’d received many, but I couldn’t help smiling as I stared at this single, solitary rose. I picked it up gingerly, mindful of the large, curved thorns running the length of the stem right up to the rose’s delicate bloom.

Appropriate
.

I hoped to find a note, or message, or anything, but there was just the rose. I frowned.
If I were a note, where would I hide?
I glanced at the stack of mail on my counter—or what had been a stack of mail. Now it was scattered over the countertop and littered across the floor

Oh crap.
That stack was where I’d tucked Falin’s business card. I’d considered programming his cell number in my phone, but I was afraid I’d be tempted to call him and I didn’t want to hear the cold tone of his voice. So I’d hidden the card from myself among piles of other papers, junk mail, and flyers. Now I dug through the scattered pages, searching.

No. No. No.
It wasn’t there. Did one of the agents find it? Had they seen the scrawled number on the back and reported Falin to the queen?
Crap, oh—wait.

There, tucked between a get well card and a coupon for pizza, was the card. Relief washed over me as I picked it up. Then I just stood there, rose held carefully in one hand and Falin’s card in the other.

Behind me, PC whined.

Oops. I’d gotten so distracted, I hadn’t walked him yet and he likely had one very full puppy bladder.

“Sorry, little guy,” I said, pocketing the card. “We’ll go out as soon as I get this in water.”

Not that I owned a vase. I filled a chipped drinking glass with water and set the rose inside. Then I grabbed PC’s leash and took him for a much needed potty break, all the while fingering Falin’s card in my pocket.

I spent the rest of the night on the Dead Club forums searching for anyone with experience with shades missing memories. Most old posts I ran across were the expected: dementia, long-term brain damage, even a couple of posts about memory spells—though none that occurred as close to death as in the case of James Kingly.

I started a new thread, detailing the more unusual points of the case without revealing enough that anyone would guess my client’s identity. Not that anyone of the Dead Club was local. To the best of my knowledge, Rianna and
I were the only grave witches in Nekros currently and the next closest lived more than a hundred miles to the east in Atlanta. But I still kept the finer points and the exact nature of Kingly’s suicide vague to protect my client’s privacy. I went ahead and added a line or two about the medical abnormalities discovered in autopsy, as well as the peculiar weight loss. With our affinity for the dead, some grave witches went into fields dealing directly with bodies. If I was lucky, I’d find another medical examiner who’d seen these same oddities paired with memory loss.

But I wasn’t lucky.

The boards were crowded, so my thread received ample attention, but most of the responses were more question than answer. Unfortunately, they were all questions I’d already asked myself, so not much help. Some users offered theories, and while I appreciated their out of the box thinking, the ideas were clearly not fully thought out. Such as the user who suggested that my client had died that first night, at the time of the memory loss, but his body had been guarded from collectors for three days until his suicide was staged and the soul allowed to be collected.

At first blush, not a terrible theory. If killed inside a circle or inside a cemetery or some other place a collector couldn’t traverse, a soul could get stuck inside a dead body until the body decayed so far the—usually already faded—ghost popped free without the assistance of a collector. But for the theory to work one would have to overlook the fact that Kingly had definitely jumped off the top of the building, not been a dead body tossed over the side. And the memory loss? A soul trapped inside a body still recorded what was happening. Being dead it couldn’t see or hear, but it would be aware of the body decaying around it. Kingly’s shade hadn’t recounted anything like that. From what he’d said, he’d died from the fall. Besides, Tamara would have noticed if the body had been several days dead before hitting the roof of that car.

Sadly, that theory was the most plausible suggested. And
it was impossible. I left the thread active, just in case, but logged off for the night. Then I collapsed onto my bed, still fully dressed.

It was after two, and I was tired, but the conflicting and seemingly impossible details of the case buzzed around my mind. The fact Kingly had jumped off that building was undeniable. But was it suicide or murder? Had something happened in the three missing days that would have driven the man to kill himself? It was possible. Seemingly more possible than murder as not even the darkest blood or death magic could overpower one’s sense of self-preservation. And what about the memory loss? I’d heard rumors about agents whose knowledge was so classified that each carried a spell in his or her body that would obliterate the shade in the event of death. No shade meant no way to extract secrets postmortem.

But Kingly was a norm—would he have considered the fact that whatever happened during that missing time wouldn’t die with him? The timing of the missing memories was highly suspect as well. Not so much when the memory loss began, but when it ended and the shade started recording again. If Kingly had acquired some charm or potion to erase his own memory, the logical time for him to activate it would be on the roof, or after he jumped as he might not have remembered he wanted to jump if he activated the spell too early. The shade didn’t remember the roof. Or the fall. No, the memories started again
after
hitting the car. According to Tamara, medical death had occurred
on
impact. So medically, Kingly was dead before his soul started recording again.

Then there was the fact I hadn’t felt any magic at the scene. Granted I hadn’t gotten very close and the Quarter has its own ambiance of never-ending magic that numbed my sensitivity. But Tamara hadn’t felt any trace of a spell either, and a spell that could do what was done to Kingly? It had to be huge, which should have made it hard to miss.

Unless it wasn’t a spell.

What was it Conan Doyle’s fictional Baker Street sleuth had said: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

What if I wasn’t looking for a solution in witch magic at all, but one in fae magic? Though he was dead, I knew of at least one fae who could steal bodies and walk around in their skin. Of course, when he stole a body he ejected the body’s soul, taking its place. Kingly’s soul had been inside his body until the end.
Unless it was removed and then reinserted?
But was that possible? And if it was, wouldn’t Kingly’s ghost remember the missing three days?
And wouldn’t the body have started decaying as soon as the soul was removed?

Again I wished I had a way to contact Death. He may or may not answer my questions about whether a soul could be removed and returned, but at least I’d have someone to talk to and bounce ideas off. I’d heard Caleb and Holly return hours ago, but I hadn’t dared go downstairs. So now, completely alone aside from the dog snoring lightly on the pillow beside me, I reviewed everything I knew again, tried to examine it from different angles. Any way I looked at it, nothing fit.

I frowned at my ceiling. Maybe I was making this too complicated. Witch magic could explain the memory wipe but not the compulsion to jump, but maybe fae magic could overcome self-preservation? I’d never heard of anything like that, but folklore was filled with stories of fae tricking mortals to their death. Of course, they usually made things that weren’t there appear through glamour, like a guiding light hanging several feet past the edge of a cliff.

I stopped. Could that be it? Could Kingly remember being at the bar and then being dead because he was experiencing a glamoured illusion of the bar? Maybe the days weren’t missing. I just hadn’t asked him to recount the correct events. If he’d been trapped in an illusion, he could have thought he was climbing off his barstool or walking
across the room when he “jumped” off the building. Except, if that was the case, where was he during the missing days?

I had no idea. But I knew someone who might.

I dug the business card out of my pocket and flipped it over, staring at the number.
He did say to call about trouble involving fae
. I couldn’t be positive my case did, but I finally had a legitimate excuse to contact Falin.

I
checked that I’d entered the correct number three times before I tapped the
CALL
button, my heart thudding hard enough I felt it in my throat. It rang once, twice.

I hit
END
. My breath fast for no good reason.

What are you doing, Alex?
I was just calling him about business, right? It had nothing to do with the fact I wanted to hear his voice.
Yeah, even I can’t convince myself of that.

It would be smarter not to call. To avoid all contact until I forgot about him. Not like that would be easy with the weekly raids or him leaving roses on my pillow. I glanced at where the rose sat in its chipped glass on my bed stand and a shiver of excitement tingled through me. I closed my eyes, my body reacted to the memory of our last kiss, my skin tightening and my breath catching, even though I didn’t want to remember.

And of course, thinking about the fact I didn’t want to think about it only made everything worse. My heart raced, encouraging the giddy feeling in my chest and my palms dampened with nerves. What, was I fourteen again? This was pathetic.

There were two men I was currently interested in. And the fact of the matter was that I couldn’t have either of them.
So get over it, Alex, and make the damn business call.
At least Falin had a phone. Short of a suicide attempt, I couldn’t call Death.

I hit redial before I had a chance to change my mind again. The call was answered on the first ring.

“Andrews,” a deep voice, rough with sleep, said as way of greeting.

“Falin?”

There was a pause, then, without a hint of the earlier grogginess, “Alexis.”

My name, my true name, was a whisper from his lips, as if he barely dared to believe I’d called, and as if the one word were so much more. I used to hate my given name, used to hear my father’s disinterested or disapproving tone in each syllable. But Falin made my name sound intimate, like a caress.

I shivered, though it was warmth, not a chill, that flushed my skin. On the other side of the phone I heard him move, most likely to sit up, and I imagined the sheets falling away to pool at his hips. Okay, yeah, he was naked in my imagination.
So pathetic.
And not conducive to finding out the information I needed.

Right. Kingly. The case. Focus on that.

But when I opened my mouth, regardless of my intentions, what I blurted out was, “I got the rose.”

Smooth.

And worse? The phone was silent. He’d hung up.

Damn the queen and her edict.

I hit
REDIAL
, too angry to bother thinking it through.

“This better have something to do with the fae,” he said without a word of greeting. The warmth present in his voice when he’d first said my name was gone. Now his tone was hard, professional.