Grave Ransom

by Kalayna Price

  “So someone is in our house.” Holly said it matter-of-factly, but there was a thinness in her voice that spoke of shocked fear. “We should call the police.”

  Obviously. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to grab my phone. I glanced around. Caleb was in baggy sweatpants that clearly had no pockets. Holly only wore an oversize shirt that probably belonged to Caleb. Rianna had on a cute pajama set and was gripping her flashing orb in one hand and had the fingers of her other hand buried deep in Desmond’s fur. Clearly no phone. By contrast, Falin was all but fully dressed in his jeans, white undershirt, and shoulder rig complete with gun. He had no shoes, but I would have bet money he had a phone on him. Probably a few hidden weapons as well.

  “Falin?” I asked, looking at him.

  Sure enough, he pulled a phone out of his back pocket. “I’ll call my agents, and then I’ll go check it out.”

  Holly crossed her arms over her chest. “I said police, not the FIB.”

  Falin paused, his thumb still poised over the call button. “Caleb is the homeowner. He is fae. Whoever broke in is probably after Alex, who is fae. This is clearly an FIB matter.”

  “Just call everyone,” I said, exasperated.

  Falin frowned at me, but nodded. Then he turned away to make his calls—hopefully to both police and FIB, though I didn’t relish the idea of either going through the old house.

  I should have been exhausted—I couldn’t have gotten more than two hours of sleep—but I had too much nervous energy to stand still, so I ended up pacing the length of the foyer. Holly watched me walk one full circuit, then joined me, fidgeting with the side seam of her oversize shirt as she fell in step.

  “What’s the likelihood whoever broke in will find this folded space?” Rianna asked. In contrast to my and Holly’s need to move, Rianna stood completely still, both her and the doglike fae at her side doing a good impression of statues.

  “I imagine that depends on where they entered from,” Falin said, hanging up his phone. “I’m going to go check it out.”

  “Shouldn’t you wait for the cops?” Holly asked, and Falin gave her a look I couldn’t quite interpret.

  “He is the cops,” Caleb said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And he might as well be of some use since he lives here.”

  I stopped pacing to shoot him a dirty look. Caleb made no secret of his distrust of Falin, but usually he wasn’t outright nasty to him. Of course, someone had just broken into his house, so he got a little leeway for stress.

  I turned to Falin. “I’ll go with you,” I said, crossing the room.

  “No,” Falin and Caleb said simultaneously, and Holly said, “Not happening.” If Rianna added her thoughts as well, I missed it under everyone else.

  I frowned at the group collectively, though in truth, I didn’t really want to go surprise someone who’d probably broken in to do me harm. But I also didn’t want to wait for whoever it was to find the door to the folded space. If someone found their way in, they could hide in the area surrounding the castle for who knew how long. The castle had no wards on it like the house, or locks for that matter. I’d have to look into remedying both of those situations.

  It was clear no one here was going to let me out of this castle, but I doubted I could keep Falin from going, so I simply said, “Be careful.”

  “I’ll call when it’s clear,” he said, and then he was gone, hurrying out the door.

  “I wonder what the burglar thought when they found the house empty?” Holly said, the titter in her voice that verged on amusement a clear sign of nerves.

  I had serious doubts about burglary being the goal of the person who broke in, but I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “I’m going to go get dressed. Caleb, will the orbs change when the person who broke in leaves?”

  “It depends on how badly they damaged the wards on the way in.”

  So in other words, maybe. I nodded and headed back to my room. I dressed for the day, because despite the fact that it was only a little after four in the morning, I likely wasn’t going to get any more sleep tonight. I left the orb behind. No reason to carry around a flashing crystal if it likely couldn’t give me any more useful information.

  When I returned to the foyer, it was empty. I slipped out of the front door unseen, but I didn’t head to the house yet. The path was lit only with moonflowers, and I didn’t want to go wandering in the mostly dark when I didn’t know who else might be out there. Instead, I stepped back, turning to search the front face of the castle.

  On a ledge not too much higher than the door perched a menacing-looking stone statue. The gargoyle was nearly three feet with a wingspan twice that, and looked like she’d been carved about to swoop down on anyone who dared trespass into the doorway. I’d never seen Fred move, but her current stance was way more aggressive than her typical pose. Either she was reacting to the tension inside, something more had happened, or something was going to—the gargoyle was a precog who sometimes seemed to have trouble telling the difference between present and future.

  Other gargoyles dotted outcroppings all over the castle. Some appeared to be sleeping, but most were in aggressive poses, like Fred. When we’d all lived in Caleb’s house, Fred was the only gargoyle I ever saw. She liked the taste of Caleb’s magic, and the fact that I left cream out on the porch for her. I hadn’t known at the time she was a she or that she was some sort of high priestess among her flock, so when she’d refused to tell me her name, I’d started calling her Fred. It amused her, so eventually the name stuck. When the castle had unfolded in the backyard, she’d moved her entire flock of gargoyles here. Maybe that was what she’d been waiting on the whole time.

  “Hello, Fred,” I said, waving up at her.

  “There is an ill wind this morrow.” The gargoyle’s words weren’t something I heard so much as felt in my mind. They were as hard and gravelly as her exterior, but not unkind.

  “Someone broke into the old house. Can any of your gargoyles see the door to the house? Has anyone come through it?”

  The gargoyle didn’t move, but after a moment, I heard her again in my mind. “Only the knight has passed that way, but we will remain vigilant.”

  I nodded. The knight would be Falin, so we shouldn’t have any unexpected visitors. Yet.

  “Any warnings or advice you’d like to share?” I asked the gargoyle. Occasionally she shared hints that her precog abilities showed her. She gave them to me as puzzles, typically, but right now I’d take almost anything.

  The gargoyle remained silent. I waited a moment. Finally her words rumbled through my mind. “Look to yourself. What you seek is never far.”

  Okay, I was wrong. I wouldn’t take almost anything, because that sounded like it belonged in a fortune cookie or on a motivational poster. I’d try to keep it in mind, but I had to wonder if it was actually a warning for my future or just general advice. I nodded to acknowledge I’d heard her, and then I glanced down at my phone. Falin had been gone at least ten minutes now. Had the police arrived yet? Had he encountered the person who broke in? Why hadn’t he called?

  I glanced out the open portcullis in the wall of the castle to where the door out of the folded space waited. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness but the dim glow of flowers along the path. Though even if it had been day, I wouldn’t have been able to spot the door.

  While the door that led to the folded space was part of Caleb’s house, which was in turn part of a larger neighborhood in the suburbs surrounding the Magic Quarter, on this side of the door, in the folded space, the door was just a frame and a door sprouting up from the ground in the center of an enormous field. Spotting it from a distance wasn’t easy.

  I glanced at the phone display again, counting the seconds. It had been too long. Shoving the phone in my pocket, I started down the path. I wouldn’t walk through that door until Falin called me—well, as long as he called me soon—
but I could be ready and waiting when he did.

  I didn’t consider the fact that as the door was in the center of a field that was more or less flat and empty as far as the eye could see, there was absolutely nowhere to hide. Good for spotting intruders, bad if you were trying not to be seen by them. By the time the phone finally rang, I was sitting behind the door as it was the only cover in the field.

  “The house is clear,” Falin said, and a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding tumbled out of me. I sheathed my dagger as he continued, “Both the police and my agents are already here. You and the others can come back inside.”

  “Understood,” I said, walking around to the other side of the door. I sent a text to the others, letting them know what he’d said, and then I walked into a crime scene that used to be my home.

  Chapter 18

  It could have been worse.

  I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t help ease the violated feeling as I walked through my tiny one-room loft. The rest of the house had been left untouched, but the intruder had broken the wards and then kicked down my door. The sheets and pillowcases had been stripped off my bed and were missing. The police were speculating that the thief used them to store and carry everything else they stole, but despite the fact that all of my dresser drawers were lying empty on the floor, and all the cabinets and drawers in the bathroom were open and empty, nothing else was missing. Mostly because there had been nothing in those places to take.

  The TV hadn’t been touched, though it would have been a desperate thief who ventured to steal the old thing. The kitchen cabinets also appeared untouched, though Falin said the refrigerator had been open when he first walked in. Considering it had also been empty, nothing could have been stolen from the fridge. So as far as I could tell, the only thing missing was bedding.

  And that worried me. As did the places the intruder had searched, because dresser drawers and the bathroom were where you’d normally find personal items. The kind of items one would use as a focus for a spell.

  The sheets had been laundered and hadn’t been slept on in a month, so they wouldn’t make a particularly effective focus. All my clothes and toiletries had been moved to the castle, so there was nothing else personal in the loft. Ms. B and her brownie magic did the cleaning, so I knew that even if the intruder had time to check the drains in the shower, he wouldn’t have found a single hair. All and all, aside from the broken doorframe, there was very little damage. It could have been worse.

  The police didn’t stay long. They dusted the door around the lock and a couple of the knobs on drawers the intruder might have touched, and then they left me with instructions to inventory everything stolen and turn the list in to the precinct later. That obviously wasn’t happening.

  The FIB left even before the police did. Falin had startled one of the intruders on her way out, but she’d jumped into the back of a waiting car and sped away. He’d gotten the tag number, as well as the make and model, so his agents were off searching for the vehicle. Holly and Rianna had remained in the castle, but Caleb was outside assessing the damage to the wards. So only an hour after I’d awoken to sirens, I was moving numbly through my old apartment, putting the spare set of sheets on the bed and trying to figure out the best way to clean fingerprint dust off wood.

  Falin didn’t press me to talk about it, or crowd me, but picked up the scattered drawers, fitting them back into the dresser silently. I avoided looking at the door, which wouldn’t stay shut so it hung open several inches, letting in a cold draft. But all too quickly the rest of the apartment was restored to the condition it had been in before the break-in, and all that was left was the broken door.

  I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the splintered wood around the lock. One strip of the doorframe had broken off completely and lay dejected and mangled on the floor. I didn’t live here anymore, not really, but I had for several years, and it hurt to think of someone I didn’t know entering my space.

  Falin stepped up beside me. “It’s too early to call someone to fix it. In a few hours we should be able to find someone. With luck they’ll be able to get to it today.”

  But what did we do with it in the meantime? We couldn’t just leave the door hanging open. I might not sleep here, but I still spent time here occasionally.

  “I guess we could seal it with tape in the meantime?” I finally said.

  “Most people use wood, but yeah, duct tape would hold it.” He gave me an odd look. It was torn between amusement and sympathy. Then his expression sobered. “I hate to mention it right now, but what kind of security do you have at your office?”

  Crap. “Basic. The wards aren’t even as good as here.”

  Would the people who broke in here really go to my office? They’d surely expected me to be asleep here, but when they hadn’t found me, they’d searched for items they could use as a spell focus. There hadn’t been many. If they thought I was in hiding, my office would be the next logical place to find personal items.

  “Let’s find some tape. I need to get to the office.”

  • • •

  Dawn hadn’t even arrived, and I was once again watching police officers dust for prints. This time in the Tongues for the Dead office. The window in the door had been smashed and the door unlocked from the inside. Glass littered the entryway, and shiny shards spread like a trail deeper into the front lobby.

  Ms. B’s fastidiously tidy desk looked only slightly disturbed. She would know better than I would if anything on it had been moved. Rianna’s office didn’t even look like it had been opened, nor did the broom closet Roy considered his office. Mine, though . . .

  I’d only seen it from the doorway. The cops didn’t want me inside until they finished diffusing the nasty ambush spell set to detonate just beyond my personal office door. Falin had nearly set it off when we first arrived and he wanted to ensure the building was clear. I’d sensed it just in time, and had never been so glad I was sensitive.

  Now I sat on the small love seat in the lobby, staring, but not really seeing the magic techs working on the ambush trap, or the cops dusting the lock on the door. With the escalation of an armed spell, the cops were taking this much more seriously than the simple robbery at the house. I’d texted Rianna. She and Ms. B would head this way once sunrise passed. Now there was nothing to do except wait.

  Falin had been talking to one of the officers working on the spell, but now he walked over to stand beside the love seat where I was sitting. “You okay?”

  I turned toward him, but my gaze was sluggish to follow. It felt like so many thoughts were buzzing in my brain that the commotion was too loud to follow any single one. I looked around the room, but my gaze kept getting caught on the little shards of glass ground into the carpet.

  This wasn’t just some missing bedding, and it couldn’t be fixed by picking up a few empty drawers. A sharp tinge of magic snapped through the air, and someone yelped as the ambush spell reacted poorly to the tech’s attempts to dispel it.

  Someone had meant very deadly business.

  Falin placed a hand on my shoulder, the touch tentative and light, as if he was prepared to draw back quickly. The contact grounded me, made the cacophony of warring thoughts tearing through my mind quiet a little, as I focused on the warmth of his fingers through my sweater. I reached up, placing my fingers over his, and his touch grew surer. We stayed like that, me sitting, him standing, both silent as the police worked.

  I’d known as soon as I saw the news report that I’d be a target, I just hadn’t expected it this soon. I’d expected more time to work on the case, to get ahead of the bad guy. Instead the day hadn’t even properly begun yet, and it had already been a long and potentially dangerous one.

  Briar walked through the front door as the techs unraveled the last of the spell in my office.

  “Well, that escalated quickly,” she said as she glanced around, her h
ands on her hips. Then she smiled.

  She smiled.

  My teeth clenched so tight my jaw popped. I wanted to jump up and throttle her. Or yell at the top of my lungs that this was not some game and nowhere in our contract had I signed up to be her disposable pawn.

  “I should bring you up on charges,” Falin said. His voice was that distant, scary tone, full of ice and danger, controlled, but with menace lurking below the surface, like an iceberg that could sink any unwary soul who ventured into it.

  Briar cocked an eyebrow and rolled her shoulders back. “For what, exactly? There was nothing false in the information I provided the reporter. Alex is technically still a person of interest in this case. It was the videos that really condemned her, and that was all her, not me.”

  “But you leaked the videos,” I said, my voice thin and a little shrill, but not screaming. I was proud it didn’t come out a scream. No conversation goes productively after one party starts screaming. I’d get further sounding reasonable, even if right now I hoped to never hear Briar’s name again. “And you gave them my name. Less than twelve hours later, both my home and work have been burgled, and a spell was set in my office that would have killed someone if I weren’t a sensitive.”

  Briar glanced back at where the techs were cleaning up. “Yeah, but that means we got the necromancer’s attention. That should prove useful. We just need a little better hook attached to our bait.”

  “Use yourself as bait. Oh, wait, you don’t even walk down the street without a spell that makes you less noticeable. Fuck you, Briar.”

  And there went reasonable. Oh well, I didn’t care. I was done. Briar could take her contract and shove it.

  “I quit,” I said, pushing out of the chair and storming past Briar.

  “You’re emotional right now, so I’m going to let you think about that one a little while longer,” she called after me as I headed to my office.