Grave War

by Price, Kalayna

  “You’re an ass for staying away so long,” I whispered.

  He inclined his head, his dark hair falling forward. “I missed you too,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  We sat like that, in comfortable silence. I thought I was cried out, but another tear slowly worked a hot trail down my cheek. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, my voice sounding slightly strangled, as if even my throat resisted admitting the fact.

  “That isn’t atypical for you,” Death said without hesitation.

  “Hey!” I sat up, but despite myself, a small smile broke through.

  At my fake outrage, a lazy smile crossed Death’s lips and he lifted a dark eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”

  “Yes! Well . . . okay, maybe not, but you don’t have to rub it in.” I crossed my arms over my chest, and Death only grinned wider.

  He reached across and hugged me to him. It was awkward only because of the car’s console, but it was a good hug. A comforting one, and I relaxed into his warmth. Unfortunately the lighthearted moment couldn’t last, the desperation of the minutes before clawing back to the surface of my mind.

  “In seriousness, though, I don’t know what to do. This . . . this is all so much. It’s too big.”

  “Who said you had to be the one to fix everything?” Death asked, still holding me in that comforting one-armed hug.

  I frowned. I didn’t actually think I had to be the one to fix everything. Hell, I knew I couldn’t fix it all on my own. “I . . .”

  I had been approaching it like it was all my responsibility, though.

  “I can’t do it all. But I do have to do something. I can’t just say, oh well, guess I’ll move to Europe!”

  His chest moved in what must have been a sharp but silent laugh. “No. That’s not your style.” His thumb rubbed over my shoulder, the movement rhythmic and comforting. “What can you do right now?”

  Hide in a smelly alley with a soul collector, apparently. I dragged in a breath, considering the question.

  I had a long list of things I shouldn’t have done in the last hour or two, like abandon my team, punch a hole in reality, or destroy the spell in the flowers before I knew what it did. I was still on the fence on if it was the right choice to try to cover up my father’s disappearance. But those were all things already done. They affected what I could do next, but there wasn’t a lot of point in dwelling on what was done.

  So what could I do now?

  Finding out who was stalking me had moved to the top of my list. The condolence note was too on the nose to not have been connected to whoever had attacked my father. Of course, tracing whoever was leaving the flowers was the issue. I’d disintegrated the evidence. I might have been able to use the flowers in a tracking spell since whoever left them on my car was clearly still on this side of the door. But no flowers meant nothing to trace. The spell that had been in the bouquet held the same signature as the fire spell from the Bloom. Maybe Martinez and her team had made some headway on tracing it. Of course, considering she was with the police and I was likely wanted by the police . . . Yeah, that might complicate things.

  I made a frustrated sound, because I’d circled back to regrets about things I’d already done, instead of things I could do next. Death’s hand slid into mine, and I realized I’d been fidgeting as I thought, clenching and unclenching my hands so hard that my palms were sore where my nails had been digging into the skin.

  “I don’t know,” I said with a sigh that had a slight, frustrated catch to it. I’d cried myself out already, but I still felt like screaming at the world. Not that I thought it would be a good idea to start rage-yelling in an alley. I needed to keep a low profile, not have the police called on me. “I should probably get off the street.”

  But where would I go? Death offered no opinion, just sat with me as I mulled it over. I couldn’t go home. If the police were looking for me, that would be the first place they checked. The FIB office was out for the same reason.

  My father had said to go to shadow. That seemed my most viable next step. There were too many secrets, too many unknowns, and shadow was the court of secrets. Hopefully I could glean some of them without trading away anything too valuable. It was also the only court with a planebender, and I needed to talk to the king about evacuating the independents anyway.

  The decision gave me some direction. While I could attempt to contact the king anywhere—hell, even this alley was an option, it had shadows—it made sense to head to my father’s mansion. It was the only spot of Faerie left, so it was where the planebender would have to open his portal for the independents. Assuming, of course, I could negotiate passage to Faerie with the king. The shadow court did owe me a favor.

  The bonus of heading to the estate was that the police would be unlikely to look for me there. Plus I had a higher chance of getting on the property now, before my sister or my father’s staff heard he was missing. Once that news went public, I doubted I’d set foot on the Caine estate. I had no idea how I’d get the rest of the fae there later, but at least I could try to get access to the property now.

  Nodding to myself, I sat up. Now that I had at least some idea of what I would do next, I did feel a little more sure of myself, or at least less likely to start screaming. Death gave my shoulder one more small squeeze before releasing me.

  “Okay, I have . . . well, I have a first step, not really a plan.”

  “It’s more than you had,” he said. He was still holding my hand, and his thumb ran over the top of my knuckles. “I’m glad to see you are looking well.”

  “Well?” I cocked an eyebrow. Death wasn’t prone to throwaway comments. “I just had a breakdown in my car. I’m sure my nose is red, my eyes swollen, and my face blotchy, so I’m guessing what you’re looking at isn’t my stunning beauty.”

  He smiled. “Well, the red does bring out the green in your eyes, but no.” He hesitated, and I waited. There was something he wanted to say, I could feel it in the air between us, some secret he was weighing. Pressing Death for secrets never worked, so I waited, letting him decide if it was something he could share. “The other fae I’ve seen since dawn appear . . . less vital. You are not similarly afflicted.”

  I stared at him. “The other fae are fading . . .” I said slowly, because he was trying to tell me something without actually saying it. “But I’m not fading.” I frowned. “Why would I not be fading?” I’d definitely felt dawn harder than ever before, but thinking back to the way Caleb had been stumbling around, and the comments from some of the wild fae, maybe I hadn’t been affected as much as others. But why?

  Death’s gaze shot down, and in another situation, I would have thought he was staring at my chest. There was too much purpose in that look, though. I lifted my hand. The heart-shaped amulet that wasn’t truly an amulet sat against my sternum. I’d carried the ball of realities on me for over a month now, and I barely noticed it unless I focused my magic on it. When the Mender had forced it on me, it had contained only a few planes, namely the land of the dead and the plane the collectors existed on. I had noticed that it seemed to be denser the more I practiced with it, but I’d thought that was simply my own mastery. My first attempts at unraveling it had created a circle of blended realities around me only about eight feet wide. Now I could regularly extend the realities fifteen feet.

  I mentally reached for the ball of compacted realities, not attempting to unravel it, just poking at the condensed strands. It could be hard to differentiate the ball from the surrounding strands of reality in the mortal plane because the ball contained planes that were already here, all around me. In Faerie it was a little more obvious, as the collectors’ plane and the land of the dead didn’t naturally occur there. Now as I mentally poked at it, I realized there were several planes that weren’t around me in the mortal realm, including one that felt just like Faerie.

  “I . . . I’m carrying aroun
d a sliver of Faerie.” Like, more than just the magic of Faerie that fae normally carried around in their blood and bones—I had somehow gathered strands of the plane in with all the rest. How had that even happened? I still had so much to learn about my planeweaving. Unfortunately, teachers were in short supply. The Mender had given me enough instruction that at least I wasn’t ripping my hands to shreds, but there was so much more I didn’t know about how my magic worked. It was a dangerous position to be in. I fingered the locket. “So if I unfurl this ball of realities, will I have a fifteen-foot area of Faerie anytime I need it . . . ?” Which could change my plans as, in that case, the planebender might be able to open the portal to Faerie proper anywhere I needed it instead of only in the blended space in my father’s house. “Or will the strands dissipate? Quickly destroyed by the harsh reality of the mortal plane without a connection to Faerie to sustain them?”

  Death gave me a small shrug, shaking his head to show he didn’t know. Which made two of us. So right now the strands of Faerie were keeping me from fading like the rest of the fae on this continent, but if I unfurled the realities, I might lose those strands I’d unintentionally bound. Which meant opening the locket was a gamble. Half of me wanted to unfurl the bound layers of reality right here and now in the car, to see if the collected strands were even dense enough that the planebender would be able to reach them, but if they instead started breaking down, that would be a terrible waste. I knew there was a pocket of Faerie left in my father’s home. It made the most sense to go there first, and save my locket for an emergency.

  As I looked back up at Death, the hazel in his eyes swirled, a kaleidoscope of spinning colors. I knew what that meant. “You have to go.”

  He nodded, squeezing my hand lightly, but when he released my fingers, I didn’t let go as quickly.

  “Don’t stay away so long this time?” I said.

  The smile that touched his lips was small, almost sad. “As long as you do not run away to Faerie forever.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to get the door reopened here, remember?”

  “Not what I meant.”

  Yeah . . . He was talking about the fact that I was dating Falin. I gave an awkward shrug, because what do you say to something like that? I had feelings for Death, I probably always would, but we’d given it a shot and it hadn’t worked. That didn’t mean I wanted to lose my best friend. I needed him. But it also didn’t mean I wouldn’t explore what was between Falin and me, because I had feelings there too. A lot of them. And thinking about Falin made me feel instantly guilty for sitting here taking comfort from Death while Falin was badly injured and locked away in Faerie. Not that I could actually reach him right now.

  I looked away from Death, my awkward shrug turning deeper, until it was more of a withdrawing cringe. “You know me. Commitment issues and stuff.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Death lift an eyebrow, and I glanced at him long enough to see him studying me. The kind of look that seemed to see deeper than the skin, and that small, sad smile continued to cling to him as he shook his head ever so slightly.

  “If you say so,” he said. “But my time is up. I must go to the soul that needs me.” He lifted my hand, his lips grazing over my knuckles ever so lightly before his touch suddenly vanished, and my hand hung in empty air, his seat now empty.

  I stared at the spot where he’d been for a moment, my hand falling to my lap. Then I twisted back around to face my steering wheel, because he was gone, off to collect a soul and send it wherever souls went. I had other things to do, like talk my way into my father’s estate. I should probably also call Nori.

  I dug my phone out of my purse and discovered that its silence wasn’t due to the fact that she’d stopped calling, but that Death must have taken the time to put the phone on silent while I was crying. For a guy who could only interact with the mortal world while in physical contact with me, he’d proven to be rather good with technology today. Glancing at my screen, I saw that I’d missed dozens of calls from Tem, and another dozen from Nori. I also had quite a few calls from numbers I didn’t recognize.

  Nori was likely pissed I’d taken off, but that would hardly be noticeable beside her normal display of disdain for me. Tem . . . well, Tem was likely ready to drag me out for my own good. I’d have to be careful when I met back up with him. Nori and Tem were probably together, but I decided I’d rather deal with Nori’s ire than Tem’s professional worry.

  Nori answered on the first ring. “Craft? What’s going on? Where the hell are you?”

  “Hello to you too,” I said, putting my car in reverse and backing out of the alley. “I’m . . . well, I’ll be honest, I’m not exactly sure where I am right now, but I’ve decided where I’m going. Has there been any chatter about the governor’s disappearance?”

  “It’s not like I have a police scanner in my car, Craft,” she snapped. “I did receive a few calls from investigators wanting to talk to you. They were not happy when I couldn’t produce you.”

  No surprise there.

  My phone beeped, another call coming in. I glanced down at the number and frowned.

  “Why is Tem still calling me? Isn’t he in the car with you?”

  “No. He took off right after you did at the statehouse. Said it would be his head if he lost you.”

  Oh. “I’m going to patch him through then,” I said, hitting the button to join the two calls.

  “Boss, where are you?” Tem yelled over the phone. Wind roared through the line, the sounds of traffic filtering through. Wherever Tem was calling from, he was on the move.

  “I’m fine,” I said, turning on my blinker.

  “That wasn’t what I asked.” He ground out the words. I’d never heard Tem sound quite so furious. If I’d been standing in front of him when he sounded like that, I’d definitely be backing away.

  I glanced around. I still wasn’t sure where I was, but I at least had a general idea of the area, and I was pretty sure I was headed in a direction that would lead toward my father’s neighborhood.

  “I have an assignment for you,” I said, ignoring Tem’s fury. I was mostly addressing Nori, but they could both work on it.

  “I already have an assignment,” Tem barked. “And it is coming from a lot higher up than you. Right now, you’re actively obstructing my efforts to do my job.”

  I sighed. “Fine, then I have an assignment for Nori. I need you to get the word out to all the fae you can reach that I’m working on securing a temporary door to Faerie and they need to be ready to go.”

  There was silence on the phone for a moment and then Nori said something in that musical fae language I really needed to learn. When she was finished, she said, “Craft, where is this door? How?”

  If this worked, every fae in Nekros would know there was a pocket of Faerie in my father’s home, but before I secured the door, it didn’t seem right to reveal that. It touched too close to my father’s well-guarded secrets.

  “I’m still working out the details,” I said after only the briefest pause. “I need to negotiate with the shadow court before I know for sure it will work, but get the fae ready to evacuate.”

  Tem cursed, a string of grumbled profanity that aptly expressed how unhappy he was at my statement. “Boss, what are you thinking? You can’t go to the shadow court. You’re winter.”

  I was getting so sick of the hard lines fae seemed to set between courts. “I can if it gets us a door. Just get the word out. And the invitation is for anyone. Any fae from any court who is displaced and needs an evacuation route.”

  In the silence of the phone, I knew they were about to protest, so I added, “Nori said it herself, this isn’t winter territory anymore.”

  A strange sensation passed over me. It wasn’t pain, but an awareness of . . . something. Odd and vaguely uncomfortable. I hit the brakes of my car as the sensation intensified, and then a small shadow jumpe
d free of my own shadow. A tiny cat shape landed on the passenger seat. I stared at it, until a driver behind me laid on their horn. Then I jolted, hitting the gas again.

  “Just gather the fae,” I said and then hit the end button on my cell phone before Nori could answer. I shot another glance at the shadow cat. “Are you here because Dugan has found something, or because he heard I want to talk to the shadow court?”

  The cat didn’t answer, of course. It turned a circle in the seat and then settled into a shadowy blob, hardly resembling an animal so much as a patch of darkness. I frowned at it, but it was content to wait until I got somewhere I could talk to Dugan.

  My phone began buzzing again. I hadn’t even had time to set it down yet. I glanced at the display, expecting it to be Nori demanding more information about my proposed door. Instead it was Tem. I groaned, shooting a glance at the shadow cat. “Three guesses on what he wants. The first two guesses don’t count.”

  The cat didn’t lift its head. Maybe its ears twitched, it was hard to tell in the blob of shadow it had become. Right, no companionship there. I was definitely more of a dog person. With a sigh, I hit the button on my phone.

  “Tem, I’m fine. I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “The king told me to keep an eye on you, and that is damn well what I plan to do. Where are you, boss?”

  I did actually know the answer to that question now. I considered holding out, but what would it hurt to take Tem with me? I was going to have a serious discussion with Falin about this whole bodyguard thing as soon as I saw him again, though.