Grave War

by Price, Kalayna

  Nori glanced at the file. “That is not a priority.”

  “I know Falin had people searching for traces of the bogeyman Jenny Greenteeth. This”—I held up the first file—“is a potential lead on that case as she tends to foul any body of water she inhabits for long.”

  Nori’s lips pursed, pulling slightly to the side as she considered that. “It’s a thin lead at best, but perhaps it was an oversight not to look into the report more closely,” she admitted.

  I very nearly fist-pumped, but resisted. “Then let’s go,” I said, hiking the strap of my purse up higher on my shoulder.

  “Like I said, it is only a thin lead. Probably nothing.” She crossed her arms over her chest and gave the file a disgusted look before meeting my eyes. “We should assign some agents to look into it. Something this flimsy in a case that is months cold is not the top priority for an agent in charge.”

  Well, crap.

  I considered pulling rank and insisting, but she was probably right. Devoting the travel time, not to mention the hours or days it would take to search based on the vague description in the report, was probably not the most responsible use of my time. Though digging through paperwork didn’t seem that great either.

  I sighed, but took her recommendations of which agents should be assigned to which cases. Once they were briefed and on their way, I had no other way to avoid the mountain of paperwork. Nori watched me settle in, then she went off to her own office to do whatever it was she was doing. Tem stood in the corner of my office, leaning against the wall and staring down at his phone. I wasn’t sure what exactly he expected to guard me from inside my own office, but apparently he was sticking by my side. I really had to talk to Falin about this whole bodyguard thing.

  I worked through all the local files and then moved on to the reports from the agents stationed outside Nekros. After an hour or two, I stood and stretched, working the kinks out of my back. Tem looked up from his phone, his hand still hovering from where he’d been punching at the screen. I wondered how well that worked for him. He was glamoured currently, and his phone was larger than most, but his hands were still huge and goodness knew I fat-fingered a lot of texts.

  As if summoned by the fact that I’d moved, Nori stepped into the room. She gave a look at the piles of files still on my desk, as if disturbed that I hadn’t made my way through all of them yet. Screw that noise.

  “We really need to work on digitizing some of this,” I said, thumbing open the file in front of me.

  She cocked her head to the side. “Most of the files are scanned and in the database.”

  My head shot up. “You mean I could have been doing this on my laptop?” And she’d just chosen to bury me in physical files instead.

  “I prefer paper.” She shrugged.

  I stared at her. I should have realized there were digital files somewhere—Falin used a laptop all the time. But fae tended to resist technology, so I hadn’t even questioned it.

  I was about to tell her to haul all this paper back out, when a knock sounded on the doorframe of my office, making us all turn.

  “Someone apparently didn’t think you liked your first flowers enough,” Nori said, as one of the agents led in a woman in a simple uniform. “Looks like you received two bouquets this time.”

  The deliverywoman smiled, stepping forward with the two very large bouquets of bloodred roses. I scrambled backward, putting the desk between us.

  “No. I refuse them. Take them back.”

  The deliverywoman frowned at me. “Uh, I’m not the postal service, you can’t just refuse shipment. These were paid for. I’m just dropping them off.” She set the two enormous bouquets on my desk, nearly knocking over one of the piles of paperwork in the process.

  I took another step back. I didn’t even care that my agents were staring at me. After the soul chain hidden in the flowers at Tamara’s, I wasn’t getting near these flowers.

  “That’s fine,” Nori said to the deliverywoman. “Tem, see her out.”

  She turned to me, frowning. “What is going on, Craft?”

  I didn’t answer but stared at the flowers for a moment, opening my shields as I searched for anything malicious. Nothing jumped out at me, no trace of spells or any magic that I could see, though sometimes I missed fae spells. I’d only recently become sensitive to the magic and it was often easy for me to overlook.

  Nori made an agitated sound and said, “Who is sending you flowers, Craft? And why are you so freaked out about them?”

  I opened my mouth, not sure what I would answer, but I had to say something. Then the floor seemed to roll under me. The ground leapt, knocking me from my feet.

  I yelped as I dropped to my knees, but it wasn’t just me. The building shook, jolted, and rumbled. My coffee mug lurched from my desk, shattering beside me. Files and papers careened over the desk’s edge, scattering. The roses skittered over the edge, hitting the floor. Nori screamed and vaulted into the air, her glamour evaporating as she freed her wings.

  I curled into a ball, my hands covering my head. Yells came from elsewhere in the building, the sounds of crashing and banging filling the air as furniture toppled. If the ceiling gave way . . .

  As fast as the tremor began, it ended. The world stilled. There was one last crash as something fell, and then there was silence broken only by the annoyed rhythmic beeping of some disturbed electronic device.

  I remained tucked tight, waiting for the world to jump again. It didn’t. I opened my eyes. I was surrounded by papers and roses. A silver-embossed card lay a few inches before my nose, splayed open so that the increasingly familiar script was visible.

  My dearest Lexi, are you having an exciting first week?

  I swallowed hard, pushing up to my elbows. What had happened? Had something in the roses caused that? It had felt like an earthquake. I hadn’t sensed any spells. What the hell could cause an earthquake? Nekros wasn’t exactly on a fault line. The only other earthquake I’d ever experienced had been in Faerie just a few weeks back, when the Winter Queen had fallen . . .

  I uncurled from my protective ball and shot to my feet. My breathing was fast, my heart pounding in my ears nearly loud enough to drown out the incessant electronic beeping from somewhere in the building. My gaze shot around the room, searching for my purse. Had it been on the desk before the quake? The room was in shambles. The chairs were toppled; drawers hung open; the contents of my desk were strewn across the floor. But the walls and ceiling were intact, so while the floor jolting had felt intense, it couldn’t have been that bad, right? Surely not as violent as when Faerie had reshaped itself after the queen’s fall.

  Of course, this building had survived that as well.

  I spotted my purse peeking out from behind the far side of the desk and all but dove for it. I dug my phone out of the bag, not caring that I knocked even more of the contents onto the already cluttered floor. Across the room, the door burst open, clattering against the wall and making me jump. Tem burst into the room, his eyes sweeping over me as if assessing me for damage.

  “Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine,” I said, barely glancing at him as I pulled up Falin’s number and hit dial. The phone rang. And rang.

  The troll moved faster than I would have thought possible considering his size. Before the next ring, he was kneeling at my side, his pink eyes searching me as if I might be hiding some injury. His concern didn’t seem personal, but it was insistent.

  I forced a tight-lipped smile as the phone in my hand continued to ring. “Like I said, I’m fine. Besides, I don’t think a bodyguard could shield me from an earthquake.” My gaze shot to Nori’s still-hovering form. “That was an earthquake, wasn’t it?”

  “It appeared to be.” Her feet touched the ground and her form shimmered as her glamour cloaked her again, dulling her blue skin to a pale flesh tone and making her fe
atures more human and less other. “Has anyone contacted the Bloom yet?” Nori called out the open doorway to whoever might be listening beyond. Without waiting for a response, she pulled her phone from her pocket and began dialing.

  My phone clicked, Falin’s voice mail answering. Not that surprising—Faerie had no phone reception and he’d barely left since becoming king. The electronic voice instructing me to leave a message did nothing to reassure me. I didn’t leave a message.

  “No one is answering at the Bloom,” Nori said, glaring at her phone as if the electronic device was at fault.

  “Do you suppose—” Tem began before startling, as if pricked by an invisible knife.

  The look Nori shot him certainly contained daggers, and I wondered if she’d done something to him that I hadn’t seen. Her head jerked ever so slightly in my direction, not to look at me, but as if she was trying to slyly indicate me.

  “Do you suppose what?” I asked as I straightened from where I’d been crouched over my phone. I could guess how the sentence might have ended. Did she suppose Falin had fallen in a duel? Did she suppose Faerie was reshaping again? Dread clawed at my throat, slicing painful gashes as it slid to land heavy and hard in my stomach. That couldn’t be it. Maybe I was on the wrong track. Maybe Tem had been going to ask if she supposed the doors were moving? Of if she supposed it was a natural occurrence?

  Two pairs of eyes turned to look at me. Nori’s were assessing and guarded. Tem’s were wide and sympathetic. His were the more painful to see, because the kind pity in his eyes meant he suspected the worst.

  What had all the notes attached to the flowers said? The first had congratulated me on my promotion. The second said we needed to talk—right before soul chains tried to remove my free will. And this one asked if I was having an exciting first week. Well, I certainly was now, but not in any good ways. None of the notes were overtly threatening toward me. Or toward Falin. And yet Nekros had just shook.

  I hit redial on my phone, even though I knew it wouldn’t make a difference, and grabbed my purse, shoving the spilled contents back in haphazardly before slinging it over my shoulder. Was I the lead investigator here or wasn’t I? Well, I was going to go investigate, damn it. “I’m headed to Faerie.”

  I’d made it halfway across the room when I remembered I hadn’t driven today, and while the FIB headquarters and the door to Faerie hidden inside the VIP room of the Eternal Bloom were both in the Magic Quarter, they were dozens of blocks apart and I’d waste a lot of time walking. I turned to Nori, intending to ask for—demand—a ride, but before I opened my mouth, a fae rushed through the open door.

  Her head swung between Nori and me before her focus settled on the more familiar authority figure, ignoring me. “The human authorities just contacted us,” she said, her voice taut with panic. “There has been an explosion at the Eternal Bloom.”

  Chapter 7

  Despite our quick response, the blockades around the Eternal Bloom were already in place. I hadn’t expected to roll right up to the crime scene, but I was surprised to discover they had set up a three-block perimeter around the Bloom and were actively evacuating a thousand-yard circumference around the building. Our FIB badges would get us beyond the barricades, but not our car, as the streets closest to the explosion had to remain clear for essential fire and medical vehicles.

  Nori parked our car more or less on the sidewalk just beyond the barricades, nearly scraping a news van that had beaten us to the scene and was already illegally parked on the curb. I slid out of the car before it had even jolted to a full stop, all but running toward the barricades.

  Nori caught up to me a moment later, her hand catching my shoulder and pulling me to a stop.

  “Don’t run,” she said, her eyes hard. “You cannot show panic or uncertainty. You are in charge, and since this explosion happened in a fae establishment, you have the most authority on the scene, but that doesn’t mean the other law enforcement agencies will just hand it to you, so you must demand their respect from the moment we arrive.”

  “Right,” I said, squaring my shoulders. It was good advice, and something to remember, as I still felt like a PI sneaking onto a crime scene and not like a special agent in charge of the entire winter branch of the FIB. I brushed my palms down the front of my pants, taking a deep breath and checking the pocket holding my badge folder.

  I set a brisk—but not frantic—pace to the barricades. Already a crowd was forming outside the barricades. Some no doubt those who’d been evacuated from the surrounding buildings or who had been in the area, but a shocking amount of press were already present, more arriving right behind us.

  The officer manning the barricade gave us more than one skeptical look as he recorded our entry into the scene. Actually, maybe it was just me he studied a little too closely. Of course, in his dark suit, Tem looked like a secret agent from a movie and Nori certainly looked slick and professional. In my leather pants and boots, and with my blond curls no doubt an unruly mess, I looked like a tagalong—not like the person in charge. Maybe Nori’s dig on my wardrobe had been warranted. It was also possible the officer recognized my name—likely as someone with a history of questionably accessing crime scenes—but I had a badge, so after jotting down our pertinent information he let us through. Still, the whole thing took far too long, and I was doing my best not to break into a run again when he finally handed back my badge and stepped aside.

  We hurried through an area that had been set up as a medical triage. People stood or sat wrapped in blankets, soot and dust covering their hair and faces. I saw more than one person with clean streaks cutting through the grime where tears had washed paths down their cheeks. Paramedics and uniformed officers hurried between these small huddled groups, but these were the survivors who hadn’t been hurt bad enough to need immediate emergency attention. Not everyone had been so lucky. We’d passed several ambulances with their sirens blaring on our way to the scene, and even though I couldn’t see the Bloom yet, I could already feel the distant tug of the grave. That chilled brush of death that feathered over my skin in a way that only human—or humanoid—bodies could. I was too far away to feel anything specific, at least without opening my shields, but I already knew that we would discover casualties.

  What had happened? I didn’t know. We were still too far away to see the Bloom yet, but the brush of the grave had me chewing at my bottom lip, faces flashing through my mind of the fae I regularly saw when I passed through the Bloom. It was the middle of the day, probably not one of the busiest times, but there were definitely bodies up ahead.

  My steps felt heavy and yet I kept pushing my feet to move faster without actually breaking into a run again. We passed a few more clusters of people. They didn’t have the dirty and shell-shocked expressions of the survivors in triage, so I was guessing these were individuals the cops had detained as witnesses. They were being questioned not too far beyond the barricades, still quite a distance from the Bloom. Then we passed that flurry of activity and entered a type of dead zone where there was no activity. The street and buildings were cleared, the noise and bustle of the paramedics and cops left behind us, but we hadn’t yet reached the chaos of sirens and fire trucks a couple blocks ahead of us.

  With each step, the chill of the grave grew stronger. I couldn’t see anything beyond the emergency vehicles, but I felt the death staining the air. Human. Fae too. And more than just a few. Whatever had happened, a lot of people had died. I shivered, fighting the urge to wrap my arms around myself.

  I wove between fire trucks and around a bomb squad van and then I stopped. My jaw dropped as I caught my first sight of the Eternal Bloom.

  Or at least, what had been the Bloom.

  The entire facade of the building had collapsed. The roof was more or less gone. Some interior walls still stood, at least partially, but much of the building was little more than rubble. Glass and debris covered the sidewalk as well as half the st
reet in front of the building. One car that must have been parked on the street was on its side. Two others had clearly been on fire but were already extinguished. The buildings on either side of the Bloom were blackened on their closest sides, the walls cracked, windows busted from the blast.

  A charred pillar rose from somewhere in the center of the Bloom. Fire licked up its dark surface, defying the jets of water firefighters on trucks were angling into the ruined building. The enormous pillar towered over the surrounding buildings, standing at least three stories tall. The Bloom had been a single-story building.

  No, it wasn’t a pillar, I realized. There were smoldering protrusions jutting from it at random locations. It had been a tree.

  The amaranthine tree.

  “Oh, that can’t be good,” I whispered, coming to a complete stop.

  The amaranthine tree typically was covered in hundreds of blooming flowers, regardless of season. It also typically wasn’t in human reality, but in the pocket of Faerie that existed between here and the winter court, the tree acting as the doorway. If that was the tree . . .

  Beside me, Nori stood in similar shock, her eyes wide as she absorbed the destruction. Tem didn’t waste time staring, but took off at a run as soon as he saw the building. Firefighters and a man in a uniform with bomb squad emblazoned on the back attempted to block him as he lunged toward the building, but he shoved them aside without breaking stride, his troll strength enough to throw all three grown men back several yards.

  “You can’t go in there!”

  “That structure isn’t stable!”

  “Who the hell is that? Where is his superior?”

  Shit. That superior would be me.

  I glanced at Nori, hoping for some help. She was still staring at the building. A high-pitched keening sound trilled through the air, emanating from her unseen wings. Her eyes bled to black, becoming larger and multifaceted as her glamour slipped.