I locked our new office and we headed up the alley with Desmond following in our wake, or maybe he was taking rear guard—it was always hard to tell what the barghest was thinking. Rianna had parked my car around the corner since, legally, I couldn’t drive. It was well documented that grave magic damaged the witch’s eyesight, so we were required to take a vision test once a year.
Yeah, guess when mine had come due? My—suspended—driver’s license currently listed me as blind. If I could avoid any serious damage to my eyes, I hoped I could retake the test and pass next week.
We were just passing the matchmaker’s door, the gray magic inside pricking at my senses, when Annabella Lwin began singing the chorus of “I Want Candy” in my purse. My phone. I dug it out but didn’t bother glancing at the display. When I’d replaced my phone yet again—the latest cellular casualty had been lost in Faerie—Holly, my housemate and good friend, had set her own ring tone.
“Hey, Hol.”
She didn’t bother with a greeting. “I want chocolate so bad, I may kill the next person I see with a Snickers bar.”
“I sure hope you didn’t just say that in the middle of the courthouse.” After all, Holly was an assistant district attorney, and I was guessing that threatening to kill people over vending machine fare wouldn’t go over well.
“I just left,” she said, and a car horn blared through the phone.
“So is this where I’m supposed to be the sympathetic friend to your chocolate plight or where I offer to meet you for lunch?”
“Both? My last case for the day is over, so aside from a mountain of research, I’m free for the afternoon,” she said, and her horn sounded again. “God, what I wouldn’t do for just one piece of rich, dark chocolate.”
I winced on behalf of the cars around her. I doubted they were driving any worse than most Nekros citizens or deserved the long blasts of her horn. Tilting the phone away from my mouth, I glanced at Rianna.
“You up for a change of plans? We’ll furniture shop later. Let’s go celebrate the new business over lunch and drinks.”
Rianna stopped, forcing me to turn on my heels and double back. “Where were you thinking?” she asked.
“The Eternal Bloom—before Holly commits vehicular homicide.”
“I heard that,” Holly’s voice snapped in my ear.
Rianna frowned. “Doesn’t sound like much of a celebration if you can’t drink.”
It was true, but there wasn’t anywhere we could go that all of us could lift a glass together. As a changeling, Rianna was addicted to faerie food; anything else she tried to eat turned to ash on her tongue. Holly wasn’t a changeling, not currently at least, but a month ago she’d been exposed to faerie food, and one bite was enough to addict a mortal. Not that she didn’t miss mortal food—hence her chocolate-withdrawal inspired rage. I sympathized. Which was why, despite the fact I’d recently learned I had more fae blood than not and was apparently going through some sort of fae-mien metamorphosis, I was avoiding faerie food. If I turned out to be too mortal to resist it, I was sure I couldn’t live without coffee and Faerie didn’t serve it. My abstention meant that going to Nekros’s local fae bar, the Eternal Bloom, excluded me from the meal. Unfortunately, since Holly was neither fae nor changeling, she couldn’t get into the VIP area, so she needed an escort and today was my day.
“We’re not far from the Bloom,” I said, swiveling the phone back in front of my mouth. “You want to meet in about twenty—”
A booming crash and the sound of shattering glass exploded from somewhere around the corner. The blare of first one and then the honks of several car alarms sounded.
“Shit!”
“What the hell was that?” Holly asked, her voice pitched high. “Alex, is everyone okay?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like a car crash.” I broke into a run, Rianna at my side. Desmond raced ahead of us, a black blur as he bounded around the corner and out of the alley.
“Are you okay? Anyone hurt?” Holly asked again.
“We’re fine. Hang on a second,” I said, and then under my breath muttered, “That better not have been someone hitting my car.” It was new, and from the sound of the impact, something had taken major damage.
As it turned out, major damage was an understatement. I breached the mouth of the alley and ground to a halt, my mouth falling slack at the scene in front of me.
“Holly, I think we’re going to be late,” I said into the phone, but if she replied before I ended the call, I didn’t hear.
A crowd was gathering in the street, people pouring out of shops and cars screeching to a halt as the drivers stared with pale, shocked faces. The impact we’d heard had been a car—not mine—a little red sedan parallel parked a few spaces behind mine. Glass littered the street and sidewalk around it from where it had exploded as the roof caved. But it wasn’t another vehicle that had hit the car.
It was a body.
Chapter 2
I worked around the dead on a regular basis. It was one of those unavoidable consequences of being a grave witch. But I usually entered the picture after the deceased had been dead for a while—preferably after they’d been buried. I was squeamish around blood, and there was a lot of it leaking from the mangled form that had smashed into the car’s ruined roof.
“Should we call the police?” Rianna asked, moving so close her shoulders brushed mine.
I glanced at the phone in my hand. I’d forgotten I was holding it. Then I shook my head. There had to be a half dozen people already on the phone. The cops didn’t need yet another nine-one-one call clogging their switchboard.
“Is anyone a doctor or a healer?” one of the bystanders yelled, running toward the body.
“I’m a nurse,” a man said, separating himself from the crowd, just as a woman stepped forward with “I know a little healing magic.”
I shook my head. “It’s too late.”
I didn’t think I’d said it aloud, but several gawkers turned to glare at me, and an elderly woman who vibrated with the spells she carried sniffed and said, “Well, we have to try. That building’s only five stories. He might still be alive.”
Rianna and I exchanged a glance, but neither of us bothered to explain that we knew, definitively, that the man was dead. As grave witches we had an affinity for the dead. I could feel the grave essence lifting from the body, its chilling touch brushing my shields.
Besides, the man’s ghost was standing beside the car, staring at the broken shell he’d once inhabited. From the confused look on his face, he hadn’t grasped the situation yet. Which wasn’t that surprising, dying had to take a major adjustment. Of course, this guy looked like a jumper, so he shouldn’t have been that shocked.
What was more surprising, at least to me, was that a jumper would fight hard enough against moving on to become a ghost. Souls didn’t just pop out of bodies—a collector had to pull them free. The average mortal couldn’t bargain for his life, but if souls struggled enough, sometimes soul collectors released them, and they became ghosts. But why would someone so desperate to die fight the collector?
Not that this was the first ghost of a suicide I’d seen. I wasn’t sure why the collectors allowed some stubborn souls to stay and continue as ghosts in the purgatory of the land of the dead, but while ghosts were anomalies, there were enough that I doubted it was an accident they were left behind. I was familiar with the devastated landscape of the land of the dead, and I didn’t think such an existence was much of a win—neither did most of the ghosts.
But speaking of collectors…We’d heard the impact so I must have just missed seeing the collector and soul struggle. It was possible the collector was still here. I crossed my fingers as I scanned the gathering crowd, hoping to spot a familiar face.
I wasn’t disappointed.
Death, my oldest and closest friend, my confidant, and a man who, at one point, had said he loved me, stood on the far side of the street. While the people around him were a blur in my bad eyesigh
t, it was my psyche that let me perceive him, and I had no trouble seeing that those hooded, hazel eyes were fixed on me, his dark hair hanging forward toward his chin. The sight of him drew a smile from me that spread across my face despite the terrible scene behind me. It had been nearly a month since I’d seen him, and I missed his company so much it hurt.
Then I noticed he wasn’t alone. My smile faltered. Another collector, whom I’d dubbed the gray man due to his predilection for gray clothing, right down to a dried gray rose on his lapel, stood at Death’s side.
Damn. If the gray man spotted me, I’d have no chance to speak to Death. It wasn’t that the gray man disliked me in particular. He simply didn’t approve of mortals consorting with soul collectors.
I wove my way through the crowd of people as they pushed forward to gain a closer look at the grisly disaster. I sidestepped and dodged, all the time letting my eyes drink in Death’s familiar features, the way his black T-shirt showed off the contour of a muscular chest, the faded jeans he wore. He was certainly no skeleton with dark robes and a scythe as popular media still, even seventy years after the Magical Awakening, liked to portray soul collectors. Of course, there weren’t that many of us who could see collectors, and to my knowledge, I was the only living person—outside of Faerie at least—who could touch them.
Not that I’d get that chance today. The gray man spotted me as I strained against the flow of the crowd. He tapped Death’s arm with the silver skull atop his cane.
While my magic let me look across planes of existence and see the collectors, it didn’t give me super hearing. But I recognized a heated exchange when I saw one. The gray man jabbed his cane in my direction. Crap.
I gave up on being polite and pushed my way through the crowd. I’m five ten barefoot, and with my boots I easily hit six feet. But while my height let me see over peoples’ heads, it wasn’t like I had much bulk to put behind it. As I’d recently learned, I was built like my Sleagh Maith relations—tall but skinny. Some called it lithe. I called it curveless. Either way, it certainly wasn’t helping me clear a path.
I’d made it halfway across the street and nearly out of the crowd when Death looked at me again. He pressed two fingers to his lips, his gaze burning into me, making my skin flush as I recalled the press of those lips on mine. Then both collectors vanished.
Son of a— I stopped the thought before I finished it. A month ago, a changeling grave witch and a rogue soul collector created a massacre in an attempt to be together. So many lives were lost, all in a twisted vision of love. In the aftermath, the gray man had warned me that the relationship blooming between Death and me could never happen. Since then, I’d had no direct contact with Death.
None. Zip. Zilch.
Occasionally, I’d catch sight of him from a distance. Once or twice he’d even waved. But he always vanished before I reached him.
I was sick of it.
The worst part of the whole mess? I’d lost my closest friend. Death had been my one constant since I was five years old. At times, my only friend. But now he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—speak to me.
It sucked. Majorly.
Of course, that pretty much summed up the state of what passed as my love life. Falin Andrews, the other man, or really, fae, I was occasionally involved with also wasn’t speaking to me. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t disobey the compulsion of his queen’s command.
The really sad part? Even with neither man speaking to me, either one could be considered the closest I’d come to a relationship in my adult life. I’d always preferred no strings—and certainly no emotions—attached partners. Someone to warm my bed when the grave chilled me to the bone, but nothing more. This whole relationship thing? Yeah, I wished I could get over it already.
A masculine scream pierced the air behind me, dragging me out of my one person pity party—and making me realize I was still standing in the center of the street. Good thing the cars were all stopped, the drivers, at least those who were even still in their cars, were too busy trying to figure out what had drawn a crowd to do anything sensible like drive.
Another scream rang out, half panic, half…rage? I turned and wove toward where Rianna and Desmond stood among the wary onlookers surrounding the car. Moving closer to the scene was even harder than trying to get out of the crowd had been. More than once I squeezed between people and the heat of the press of bodies sizzled against my skin. I’d never had trouble with crowds before, but my breath was suddenly coming too fast, my heart racing. I had to get out of the center of this crowd. I used my arms to part people, trying to make a clear path. People jerked back at my icy touch, which gave me a little more room, but it was still slow going. And the whole time, somewhere up ahead, the man yelled, calling for someone to help, for an ambulance, for someone to do something, anything.
I guess the ghost finally realized he’s dead. No one reacted to his cries. It had taken him long enough to get with the program, but he definitely wasn’t taking the situation well.
I caught snippets of conversations as I struggled through the crowd. Most were making guesses on what happened. Had he jumped? Was he pushed? Maybe he’d been leaning against the railing and fallen. I squeezed around two gentlemen, just as one asked the other who he thought would have to pay for the damage to the car. They were debating if it would be the owner’s insurance or the deceased’s estate as I moved too far to hear more.
Sirens sounded in the distance by the time I made it back to Rianna and Desmond. If the ghost noticed the approaching officials, he gave no indication. He’d stopped yelling, but he kept trying to grab people in the crowd, his face a mask of dismay and terror as his hands slipped through arms and shoulders.
“We should go,” I whispered as the first responders arrived. Not that they could get close to the car and the broken body on top of it—there were just too many gawkers. Us included.
The crowd thinned as people retreated to move their cars, or perhaps they’d simply seen enough and were ready to move on and go about their days. Which was what I planned to do as well, right up until Rianna pointed out that the spot she’d parallel parked my car was blocked, at least until some of the other cars moved.
Great.
As the crowd thinned, the ghost made his way toward where we stood. He grabbed for people as they passed, his hands passing unnoticed through them. “Please,” he said, his voice broken. “Please, I have a wife. She’s pregnant. She needs me.”
I took a step back as he neared. If he tried to touch me, his hands wouldn’t just pass through me.
Rianna gave me a quizzical look. “Al?”
I mouthed the word “ghost” because I didn’t want him to know I could see or hear him.
Rianna’s lips formed an “O.” Then her green eyes blazed like candles had been lit behind her irises as she opened her shields and tapped into her grave magic.
“Hey, remember that you’re our driver,” I whispered when the glow of her eyes brightened, her psyche further straddling the chasm between the living and the dead so she could hear the ghost.
“It will be fine.” But she shivered. At least she wasn’t far enough across that the never-ending wind in the land of the dead whirled around her.
The police arrived at the same time as an ambulance—which wouldn’t be necessary. And still the ghost tried to get someone, anyone’s attention. My personal policy was not to get involved with ghosts. After all, most souls stubborn or desperate enough to fight off a collector either had unfinished business they wanted to drag me into, or they were so nasty in life, they feared what might happen to them in the afterlife. I was leaning toward the former for this guy as most of his pleading had to do with the fact his wife was expecting, soon, and he needed to be there.
“Crap,” I muttered, and Rianna turned her glowing gaze at me. I gave her a weak smile. “I still haven’t gotten rid of the last ghost I helped.” But I felt for this guy. If nothing else, I could try to calm him down and explain to him h
e was dead, right?
I didn’t get a chance. One of the officers—who looked familiar, but I worked for the police often enough that most of the local cops looked familiar—walked over carrying a small notepad.
“Did anyone see what happened?” he asked, glancing around the small cluster of people who remained.
The woman who’d sniped at me earlier was the first to speak. “He jumped. Right off the top of the roof.”
The ghost whirled around. “What? I would never—”
But the man beside the woman nodded vigorously. “I saw him too. I was right over there, coming out of Brew and Brews.” He pointed at a sketchy-looking bar specializing in magically laced beer. “Looked up, and there he was.” The man finished the last with a hiccup.
Oh yeah, now that’s a credible witness.
The ghost’s hands clenched. “You drunken liar.” He took a swing at the man, which, if the ghost had been corporeal, probably would have knocked the drunk on his ass. As it was, his fist passed harmlessly through the man’s jaw.
“And did either of you see anyone else on the roof with the man?” the officer asked.
The woman shook her head, but the drunk apparently enjoyed the sound of his own voice because he said, “Oh no. That guy, he climbed up on the ledge, took a look around, and then took a perfect swan dive into that there car.”
“I can’t listen to this,” the ghost said, and for a moment I thought he might try to slug the drunk again. He didn’t. Instead he walked up to the officer and said, “I would never, ever, kill myself. I’m about to have a son. A son! Why would I do this, huh? Why?”
By the last “why” he was yelling into the officer’s face, who never looked up from jotting notes in his notepad. With an exasperated growl, the ghost turned away. Then his gaze landed on two men bagging his body and he forgot about the drunk and the cop as he ran down the sidewalk yelling.
“Did anyone else see anything?” The officer asked. There weren’t many people left on the sidewalk now, just a cluster of maybe twelve, but they all shook their heads. The officer looked at me.
Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel Page 2
