Grave Ransom

by Kalayna Price

  It took several minutes, but finally the screams and sobs coming from the other side quieted. A moment later, something scuffed along the microphone of the phone and Taylor returned.

  “Ms. Craft, are you still there?” she asked, and at my affirmative said, “How did he . . . ? How did it happen?”

  “The police are investigating. My personal belief is that whatever happened, started last night before he was supposed to pick you up. Magic of some sort was almost certainly involved. His body was at the First Bank of Nekros near the East Town Village shopping center.”

  “Why would he be way out there? Magic? So not an accident. You’re still investigating, right?”

  I wanted to say that looking into a murder wasn’t part of our contract, but that seemed too blunt, too heartless to say to someone who’d just received the news I’d given her. Instead I said, “It is an active police investigation now.”

  “The police didn’t do squat when he was missing,” she yelled, and then it sounded like she slapped a hand over her mouth to try to reclaim the frustrated sentence. I heard her take a long, shaky breath before she continued. “Sorry. I didn’t . . . No, I did mean that. But I paid you for five hours of investigating already. Surely some are left?”

  If I didn’t count the time I’d spent at Central Precinct—and I hadn’t planned to charge her for that time despite the fact that I’d only been there because of my work searching for Remy—I still had a couple of hours left. I’d planned to issue a refund for those remaining hours, but I could use them following up on the remaining trace from the tracking spell. I was fairly certain it was Remy’s soul, and I had the sinking feeling I’d find it in someone else’s body. That might answer some of the questions that had been cropping up since I’d spotted the first walking corpse yesterday, but it also sounded more dangerous than it was worth and would probably get me in further trouble with the police.

  “I will look over what I have on the case and see if there are any leads I can follow for you,” I said, not committing to continuing but not dismissing the possibility. It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it was the best I could offer right now. I’d weigh the options tonight but would probably turn the tracking charm over to the police and let them follow up on it.

  I had Taylor promise she’d stay with family or friends tonight before wrapping up the conversation. I hung up as I pulled into a parking lot in front of a large, squat industrial-looking building. It looked like just another warehouse, but it wasn’t. The low, rhythmic pulse of a bass beat proved that this was exactly the building I was looking for.

  A large man with bulging muscles and two full sleeves of magic-laced tattoos sat on a bar stool just inside the door of the building. His arms were crossed over his chest, his posture announcing that he was imposing, and going for a touch of menacing. Maybe it was just the fog in my eyesight in the dim entry, or the fact that the bar I usually frequented kept trolls as bouncers and this guy was small in comparison, but I just wasn’t impressed by his show.

  I paid my cover and he let me pass with a disparaging look at my less-than-club-ready attire. I pulled open the second door and passed from the relative calm of the entryway into the chaos of sound and light of the club.

  What was mostly bass outside the building became full-bodied synthetic electric music once I entered the club proper. Strobes flashed, black lights glowed, and fog machines filled the air with cloudy water vapor. It was early evening on a Saturday, and the club was already hopping, but not as packed as it would be later in the night. While it was loud, and the lights were disorienting, at least there wasn’t a crush of bodies to contend with.

  I moved forward slowly, weaving between tables and trying not to trip over chairs, which appeared to all be gathered around the outskirts of the room and the back where the bar was situated, leaving the bulk of the large space open as a dance floor. I could make out several dark shapes moving on the dance floor, as well as a few who glowed fluorescent in the black lights. None were who I was looking for. When I finally spotted my target, it was obvious—she was the only person in this club I could see clearly. Mainly because I saw her with my mind more than my eyes.

  She spotted me before I made it halfway across the dance floor, and she stopped undulating to the beat to glare daggers at me.

  “Didn’t we discuss this club being off-limits to the likes of you?” the Raver asked, pressing her fists against hips clad in orange pants that glowed even brighter than normal under the black lights.

  “I need to talk to him, but I don’t know how to reach him. You do.”

  She huffed, cocking a hip. “He should be staying away. You’re nothing but trouble.”

  Neither one of us had to clarify who “he” referred to. Death. Of course, that wasn’t his real name, or a name the Raver would recognize him by. I didn’t know his real name—or hers, for that matter—and as far as I’d observed, collectors didn’t use names at all. It could make things confusing, but we both knew there was only one person I’d track her down for.

  “He’s my boyfriend.”

  She rolled her eyes so hard her whole head moved with the action, making her long dreads twitch like snakes curling around her.

  “I need to talk to him,” I said again. “Can you let him know I’m looking for him?”

  The Raver just stared at me a moment, incredulous. I met her gaze, not backing down. After a moment, she made a sound that wasn’t dissimilar to a growl before slashing her glowing orange-capped nails through the air in a dismissive gesture. “Sure. I’ll tell him. But don’t you think he knows? He pops off to see you whenever he can. If that’s not enough for your mortal heart, then you should cut him loose. Don’t you know how dangerous your forbidden dalliances are?”

  I had some idea, but I had the suspicion he hadn’t told me the full extent of it. “I’m not trying to endanger him.”

  “Then let him go.”

  My hands clenched at my sides. I hadn’t come here to have my relationship critiqued. “He could walk away anytime.”

  “Until you have a case you can’t solve without trying to pry the secrets of the universe out of him. Then you’d crawl back, looking for him.”

  My jaw clenched, but I looked away because she wasn’t completely wrong. Wasn’t that basically what I was doing here? I wasn’t here because I was worried about him, or because I missed him so much I’d burst if he didn’t visit soon. I was here because he hadn’t visited in a while and I wanted to ask him about a case. If I was completely honest with myself, I was angry with him. Angry he hadn’t visited. Angry for him taking the soul at the bank, even though he was just doing his job. Angry about all the things he couldn’t tell me. Like his name.

  Yeah, she wasn’t completely out of line. And that made the words sting a lot worse.

  “Just let him know,” I said, forcing myself to meet her eyes again.

  “I already said I would.”

  Right. So that was that then. I nodded to her, trying to acknowledge thanks without actually verbalizing it. Then I turned.

  Several people were staring at me. In fairness, I’d been standing in the middle of a dance floor, not dancing, and having a conversation with someone no one else could see. Yeah, that likely didn’t seem strange at all.

  “You’re welcome,” the Raver called behind me, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  I didn’t turn but focused on navigating back to the entrance and the more reliable evening light outside.

  • • •

  It was far too dark for my comfort as I reached my neighborhood, and I found myself squinting into the dimness as I reached the driveway. I hated this time of year. The days were too short. Four cars were already in the drive, so I parked at the curb. We’d been cited for doing it by the homeowners’ association already, but they’d be even angrier if someone parked on the lawn, so until we widened the drive, it was what it w
as.

  I took a moment to brace myself before I left the cozy warmth of my car and dashed for the front door of Caleb’s house. Until recently, I would have gone around the side of the house to a set of steps that led to the second-floor room I used to rent, and, on paper, it was still listed as my legal residence. But the situation had changed.

  I let myself through the front door into the empty house beyond. Despite the nearly half dozen cars out front, the house was dark, silent. No one actually lived in it anymore. Caleb still used his studio on the main floor, and it was kept furnished in case anyone visited, but the house had been used more as a passageway than a residence for nearly a month now.

  I started to navigate my way through the darkness toward the back door, but then hesitated. The house did serve one other purpose. It was the place with power and Wi-Fi. There was one other source where I might be able to find information about walking corpses, or at least if other grave witches had encountered them: the Dead Club Forums.

  I detoured, heading through Caleb’s living room toward the inner stairs that would lead up to the old apartment I used to rent. A power charger for my laptop and phone waited on the small bar area in the one-room apartment, and I pulled out both and plugged them in, booting up my laptop.

  I clicked the desktop shortcut that sent me to the Dead Club Forums, the unofficial Internet home of grave witches all over the world. While the site was geared toward grave witches, other magic users dropped in occasionally as well. Many of the non–grave witches were morbidly curious about magic dealing with the dead, and others were obvious forum trolls, but sometimes more bizarre elements posted.

  I turned to the search feature first. It was . . . limited, to say the least. I looked for information on tracking a soul first. A handful of hits popped up. Most were hypothetical, but a few claimed they’d actually managed to track ghosts. In each case, there were no details listed and most of the profiles had been deactivated, making me think they probably weren’t legitimate accounts. I then tried every iteration of “walking dead” and “animate corpse” I could think of. Most of the results were unrelated, but two showed promise. Both were infuriatingly vague but seemed to hint at necromancy, which was what I was already leaning toward.

  Despite being a witch who worked with the dead regularly, I knew almost nothing about necromancy. Spells that physically affected dead bodies or used human or fae body parts were illegal in every country in the mortal realm. Practicing necromancy was banned, and even owning books about it was punishable with huge fines and/or jail time. So, even on the Dead Club Forums, necromancy was talked around, not about.

  I opened the compose mode on a new thread, but hesitated as I considered the very few details I knew about the case. The ghosts piloted the bodies. The bodies decayed abnormally fast once the ghosts were ejected. What else? I stared at the blinking cursor in the center of the blank box, not sure how I could ask if anyone had dealt with either of those scenarios without the thread getting tagged by an admin.

  “Hard day?” asked a masculine voice from across the room.

  I startled at the sound, even though the voice was wonderfully familiar. My head shot up, my gaze landing on Death leaning against the wall, watching me.

  “You came.”

  He lifted one shoulder, the movement making the black T-shirt he wore pull tight across a well-muscled chest. “You called,” he said, pushing off the wall.

  Somehow he managed to cross the room quickly without ever looking hurried, his stride confident but languid as he closed the distance between us before I had time to do anything more than let my eyes drink in his form. He leaned down, his fingers brushing featherlight along my cheek before coming to rest on my neck so he could guide my lips to his.

  I went willingly, the kiss starting oh-so-soft and then becoming more as we both answered the need that snapped like electricity between us. My hands moved up Death’s chest, feeling the contrast of his soft shirt over hard muscles as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He in turn dragged me closer, engulfing me in strong arms.

  The kiss spoke of lost time and longing, and while it lasted, it washed away everything else. There was just him and me. His hazel eyes so close. His sweet breath on my skin. This moment. This connection.

  Then the kiss broke, and the world crashed down between us again.

  He smiled. My answering smile was slow, feeble.

  Death brushed a strand of hair from my face. “What’s wrong?”

  I forced myself not to look away.

  “It’s been over a week since you visited.” I could have added to the list, but while I had once shared every secret I had with Death, I didn’t anymore. I couldn’t. After all, how do you tell the man you love that when you’d been dosed with a hallucinogenic drug that made nightmares come to life, it had been images of him that had tormented you?

  It would hurt him. It hurt me, mostly because it had been manifestations of my own doubts, fears, and the slew of unanswered questions about things I didn’t know about him that had given the visions power. Now the secret hung over me.

  And I had to wonder how he kept so many secrets himself.

  It wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. My time with him was always too short for such things. Instead I lifted onto my toes, bringing my lips up to his again as I said, “I missed you.”

  “Obviously.” He whispered the word against my lips before submitting to the kiss I’d offered.

  There was just as much heat in it as our first kiss, but something was different about this one. The desire was still there, but now the time apart wasn’t a desperate need to be made up for, it was distance between us.

  When the kiss broke, he leaned his forehead against mine. “I’ll try to visit more.”

  “Do that,” I said, giving him the smile I knew he needed. But he’d told me that before. Sometimes he was better at following through with it than other times. Like the Raver had said, our relationship was dangerous. I knew that, and it bought him a lot of slack in the boyfriend department.

  “So the bank today was crazy, right?” I said, as I straightened.

  Death frowned at me. “Alex, did you call me here to exploit me for your case?”

  “You’d rather I exploit you for sex?”

  The frown vanished, and he lifted his arms, opening them wide. “Yes, please.”

  I laughed, but cut off abruptly when I looked up and noticed the colors spinning in his hazel irises. He was being called away.

  Death lifted his hand to my cheek, his thumb trailing along my jaw, the touch both caress and apology. “Rain check?”

  “Please don’t go.” The words slipped out before I could catch them.

  I wished I could call them back as soon as they escaped. Not because of the potential debt that sprang up between us with the words—and it was a lot; my desire for him to stay was immense and would require him to ignore his duty as a soul collector. But that wasn’t why I wished I could call the words back. No, I wanted to retract them because of the heartbreak that spread across his face.

  He couldn’t stay. I knew he couldn’t. When the color spun in his irises like that, someone whose soul he was responsible for was at a crucial moment in their life. One likely to lead to death. He needed to be there to send the soul on to wherever it was souls went.

  “Go,” I whispered.

  Death leaned forward and kissed me. It was a soft kiss, tasting of sorrow and secrets and duty.

  He broke off and leaned his forehead against mine. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  I nodded, closing my eyes.

  He kissed me one more time. A mere brush of his lips against mine.

  Then he vanished.

  • • •

  After Death left, I packed up my laptop without ever finishing—or starting—my post on the Dead Club Forums. I’d think about the best way to word my
questions tonight and write up a thread when I got to the office in the morning.

  Heading back downstairs, I didn’t even bother turning on the lights as I passed through the living room and kitchen to the back door. I’d walked this path so many times now, I could do it blind. I used my key to unlock the double-cylinder deadbolt and stepped out into a yard very different from the one I’d walked through to the front door when I’d first arrived home.

  The air that greeted me here was warm and comfortable without a hint of the crisp November wind that had whispered of coming winter less than half an hour earlier. The sun had almost finished setting, but the oppressive blindness that hung over my damaged vision during most low-light situations was lessened, not gone, but less severe. The shadows were deep, but not all-consuming, and I could clearly make out the castle in the distance.

  It was a hike to reach it, and for the last portion, I was walking in starlight. Moon-loving flowers bloomed along the path as I walked, offering their light glow to the stars above. It was beautiful. Magical.

  Like literally, magical. If I’d walked around the side of Caleb’s house, I would have wound up in the predictable small backyard with two of its sides bordered by the fences of our neighbors. But Caleb’s back door now acted as a passageway into a folded space that had opened to hold my land and castle when I’d been granted my independent status by the Winter Queen. The Faerie castle had wedged itself into mortal reality.

  It had been shocking to discover the newly unfolded space, but once I’d gotten over the initial disbelief, I’d accepted that it was home. It wasn’t exactly Faerie or the mortal realm, but an intricate weave of both. My eyes liked it, my magic liked it, and it felt right.

  Everyone else apparently liked it as well.

  The current occupancy beyond me included Rianna, Desmond, Ms. B, and a garden gnome, all of whom had lived there before I’d accidentally inherited the castle. The new residents were my former landlord, Caleb, and our other roommate, Holly; two ghosts; an assortment of gargoyles who’d moved in on their own and decided to start guarding the place; and Falin Andrews, the Winter Queen’s knight and my sometimes—but not current—lover. It should have been getting pretty full, but it was a magical Faerie castle, and I was starting to think it conjured more rooms when needed.