Grave Ransom

by Kalayna Price

  “I can’t, Alex. Now that I’ve seen her. I can’t leave her here.” He didn’t say he was sorry about that fact, though I could hear the regret in his voice. “I’ll keep an eye on you. If he sends another spell . . . I will be there. But I have to take this soul now.”

  He started forward.

  Briar was kneeling on the ground inside the barrier, drawing a true circle. I didn’t know how strong the one she’d spontaneously erected was, but circles needed something physical to cling to. One created without something to cement it would be weak, prone to shattering if hit with too much. I doubted it would keep Death out long.

  I had to stall him.

  I jumped to my feet and grabbed his arm. I almost screamed as my blistered fingers touched him, but I didn’t let go.

  He turned and frowned at me. I couldn’t hold him back physically, I knew that. I wasn’t strong enough, especially when my fingers barely agreed to move in their damaged state. Death looked at my hand on his bicep. We were precariously close to a line. We both knew it. The only question was, what would be one step too many?

  Death shrugged away from me. Pain shot through my hand as his arm jerked from my fingers. One of the newly formed blisters tore open, oozing hot liquid.

  I didn’t reach for him again. It wouldn’t have done any good. I could at least let Briar see he was approaching, let her know where the threat was. She had to be almost done with her circle. It wasn’t that big a circle.

  I reached out with my magic and pulled Death into mortal reality. Once I would have had to be touching him to do it. I no longer needed that. I pulled, and everyone in the room could see him.

  Falin stepped into Death’s path, his daggers appearing in his hands. “Leave the witness be.”

  Death stared at him. “Get out of my way.”

  Falin didn’t move. Behind him, a second, stronger circle snapped to life around Briar and Tiffany. Death’s gaze moved past Falin to the much stronger circle, and his scowl deepened.

  He turned and looked at me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The line had been crossed. A trust betrayed.

  He vanished.

  No one moved. I held my breath, waiting for Death to pop back into the room. He didn’t. After a moment, Falin sheathed his daggers. I dragged myself over to Briar’s chair—mine was still on the floor—and sank into it. I wanted to draw my knees to my chest. To cry. I didn’t do either. I just put my hands on the table, palms up, and stared at my blistered fingers without seeing them.

  Falin moved around the room. He picked up the fallen chair and sat down facing me. He took my burned hands in his and pressed cooling magic into my skin. John walked into the room, dropped a first-aid kit on the table, and then walked back out without a word. Falin didn’t question it. He opened the kit and examined the contents before choosing a tube and rubbing the ointment on my blistered flesh. Once I was a sticky mess, he bound my hands with gauze saturated in a healing spell.

  As Falin worked, Briar continued to question Tiffany from inside the circle. I caught enough to know that the shaken corpse was cooperating. Death might not have worn black robes or carried a scythe, but Tiffany had clearly recognized him for what he was. An end. One we’d prevented, at least temporarily. I didn’t listen to most of what was said. Briar would fill me in later. I’d bought her time, and she’d use it.

  I was stuck inside my own head, shaking from the adrenaline drop after escaping the spell, but dwelling on what had happened after. Had I done the right thing? The look in Death’s eyes . . . I wanted to explain, but what could I say that I hadn’t already? Tiffany sure as hell better give us the best lead in the world.

  “Hey, Craft, think it’s okay if we come out of the circle now?”

  I looked up. I had no idea how much time had passed. Falin had long ago finished binding my hands.

  I nodded. “Yeah. But you should move Tiffany somewhere secure. She needs to be inside a circle if you don’t want another collector coming for her.” Or in a graveyard or behind the type of ward Gauhter could make, though I had no idea how he’d accomplished it.

  “We could drop her body down at the morgue like we did Remy.”

  I was too tired, emotionally and physically, to glare at her. I just shook my head warily. “If she doesn’t agree to leave the body, I’m not forcing her out.” I’d done too many things I wasn’t proud of recently. I wasn’t tacking on another.

  Briar shrugged and unchained Tiffany’s cuffs from the floor. “I guess you get a cell with a circle. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 26

  Twenty minutes later we were sitting in the conference room that had been transformed into Briar’s temporary command center. Briar had updated the map with all the different locations Tiffany had provided. Officers had been dispatched to each, with orders to call if they found anything out of the ordinary. Falin’s agents had created a cursory list of driver’s license images to match the registrations from the cars in the rest stop lot. It was still incomplete, but we’d visually matched Tiffany’s body to one, and the ghost I’d seen in Rodger’s body to another. Past victims didn’t narrow down where Gauhter might be now, so the list was currently being put on the back burner to be examined when we didn’t have so many physical locations to search. Some FIB agents were also following up on the stolen bottle. The theft had been reported over two months ago—which fit with the age of some of the animals I’d seen in Gauhter’s clearing of experiments. Investigating the theft had apparently never been prioritized or followed up on before, so Falin had his agents reexamining the case with instructions to call if they found anything.

  Now we were poring over the map evaluating which cemetery Gauhter might be using. Well, Briar, Falin, John, and Jenson were. I was sitting in a chair hugging my bandaged hands to my chest. It was only four, but I was so done with this day. The day wasn’t done with me, though. I had to find Gauhter before he realized his spell hadn’t killed me. Which meant narrowing down his most likely hideout.

  Tiffany had provided us with the locations of safe houses she and the other corpses used, as well as a couple more ritual sites, but none were places Gauhter or the Saunderses did more than pass through. If the officers found more walking corpses, we’d question them. Or maybe they’d find a giant clue pointing us to Gauhter’s actual base of operations, but I wasn’t holding my breath. Right now, narrowing down which cemetery Rachael Saunders had planned to take the alchemy book to was our best lead.

  “It can’t be one in the center of the city. They are too public. Someone would have noticed,” Falin said.

  “True,” Briar agreed, moving to mark the inner-city cemeteries off her list.

  “Remember the tree? And the shack? He’s excellent at illusion magic,” I said, my voice sounding oddly hollow even to my own ears. “Or, they, I guess.”

  “Craft, we’re supposed to be eliminating possibilities. And what do you mean by ‘they’?”

  I frowned, forcing my focus out of my head and onto Briar. “The magic. I’ve noticed since the first time I saw it that it is super dense and intricate. Almost amazingly so. I thought at first he was just that good, but when Rachael ran from the shack today, the magic she wrapped herself in was exactly the same shade. All the spells Remy carried were the same as well. As were both the fire spell that attacked me and the trap laid in my office. No matter how powerful the witch, that’s a lot of magic to move around and cast in a short amount of time. Some of it could have been pre-cast, waiting in charms, but not all of it. I think Gauhter and the Saunderses are joining their magics to do these castings.”

  Briar’s brow bunched as she considered it. “That would be exceedingly rare. Most magic won’t meld.”

  “That’s because most witches commune with only one or two colors of Aetheric energy. If a witch who uses one color releases it to someone who uses different strands”—I lifted my bandaged hands in a shrug—“t
hey don’t meld. I mean, it still works, but the finished spellwork comes out patchy, weak. The merged magic is still bigger and can be cast faster, but the spells aren’t particularly good. But if you have a group of witches with harmonious magics, and they are capable of putting their egos aside and releasing it to one skilled witch . . .” I shook my head. “The spellwork I’ve seen is impressive.” And I’d seen more than most. Several electives on Aetheric theory in school guaranteed that. Unfortunately, they hadn’t improved my own poor spellcasting ability much.

  “Are we sure Rue Saunders isn’t Gauhter? We know Gauhter is fond of aliases,” Falin said, frowning at the possibility I’d laid out.

  Briar was the one who shook her head. “I saw him. He doesn’t match the description of Gauhter.”

  “So these were clients of yours, Alex?” John asked. “Do you know what they would want that would encourage them to work with a necromancer?”

  “Their daughter,” Briar and I said in unison.

  The men in the room gave various looks of confusion, and I sighed.

  “They wanted me to find their daughter’s ghost, which was an odd request. Gauhter must have promised to put her ghost in a new body.” And the couple I’d seen in my office were probably desperate enough to jump at that chance. A witch giving their magic to someone else took trust or desperation; it was hard on the body and on the mind. But for the promise of having a child returned? I could see a parent jumping on the possibility.

  I pulled out my phone and brought up a browser, but pecking out letters on the touch screen was impossible with my hands covered in gauze.

  “What are you doing?” Briar asked.

  I thrust the phone toward Falin. “Pull up the Nekros City newspaper.”

  He tried to take the phone from my gauze-bound hand, but I didn’t give it up, so he settled for pecking out words with his pointer fingers while I held the phone. When it loaded I said, “Pull up the obits and type in ‘Katie’—no, that has to be a nickname. Try different spellings for ‘Catharine Saunders.’”

  It took him several searches, but finally he nodded and I pulled the phone back.

  “Kathryn Saunders, age six, passed into the arms of angels on November first.” I scrolled down the page, scanning over the obligatory list of people she was survived by and the gushing report of her character typical of any obituary listing. “Here we go, it says a viewing was held on November fourth at noon followed by a graveside service at South Cemetery.” I looked up. “That’s where we should look.”

  Briar nodded, but John’s mustache pulled downward with his frown. “It’s as good a lead as any, but I don’t think we should focus solely on that cemetery.” John turned to the map. “This cemetery is the closest to the northeast wilds where the bulk of Gauhter’s activity has been. It is also a very viable option. But it could be any of them. We should send teams to systematically search all the cemeteries in and around the city.”

  “Sure,” Briar said, already on her feet. “But you still have men at the rest stop and shack. And you sent more to the locations Tiffany gave us. Manpower is running pretty thin. Craft is right, Gauhter tends to use illusions, which means each team is going to need a sensitive or to do a sweep by hand with a spell detector. It’s going to take time to search all the cemeteries. We have our own sensitive.” Briar nodded to me. “So we should join the search, and I think Craft’s lead is the most likely.”

  “Then I’ll take a team to the cemetery in the northeast,” John said.

  Briar headed for the door. “Get your men organized and briefed. We will head out now since South is one of the farthest cemeteries. If anyone finds anything that seems to point to the necromancer’s presence, I’m their first call. Craft, Andrews, you two coming?”

  And we were off to look for a necromancer, in a cemetery. Where else?

  • • •

  Rianna hadn’t called me back yet, so I called her again as Falin drove toward South Cemetery. Voice mail, again. I dialed the Tongues for the Dead office next. Considering the damage the office had taken, I wasn’t sure anyone would be there, so I was pleasantly surprised when Ms. B’s gruff voice answered.

  “Tongues for the Dead, where the grave holds no secrets.”

  Well, it was better than the line she’d been using the last time I’d called. I decided not to mention it. “Hey, Ms. B, it’s Alex. Is Rianna in the office? She’s not answering her cell.”

  “No. She ran off to chase a lead before lunch. It’s getting late. She’s probably back at the castle by now. Reception is iffy there. Is there something you need?”

  “True,” I said, but it wasn’t like Rianna to not return calls. “I wanted to ask her about the case she’s working. It appears to be tied into mine. Do you think you could scan the contract her client signed and e-mail it to me? It probably won’t lead to anything as he was the victim of theft, not our bad guy, but you never know.”

  Ms. B grunted. “Sure. It might take me a minute to locate. Rianna’s filing system leaves even more to be desired than yours.”

  “Great,” I said as way of thanks, ignoring the insult tacked on the end. Ms. B was a brownie; anything short of perfect organization was a mess to her. Then another thought occurred to me. “Also, the clients I saw but didn’t accept a few days ago, Rue and Rachael Saunders. Do we have any information on them from when they booked the appointment?”

  I heard the sound of her tapping something on her keyboard, one keystroke at a time. We’d been looking for a keyboard that she could learn to type on, but they didn’t make many options for someone slightly smaller than your average toddler.

  “Looks like all we got was a phone number,” she said after a few moments. “Will that help?”

  “Can’t hurt,” I said, and she read it off to me. As I couldn’t exactly take notes with my hands heavily bandaged, I called the number out to Briar as Ms. B read it to me. She punched it into her own phone before repeating it back to me.

  “Anything else?” Ms. B asked, her gruff tone making it sound like my call was inconveniencing her. I didn’t take it to heart.

  “That’s it. I’ll see you back at the castle tonight.” I exchanged my good-byes and then twisted in the seat so I could see Briar. “So can we trace the Saunderses’ phone or anything now that we have their number? Get a GPS fix or something?”

  Briar frowned at me. “I sent it to Derrick; we’ll see what he can gather for us. It might take some time, though.”

  I nodded, admittedly disappointed. Then I had nothing to do but wait impatiently for Derrick to get back to us, the e-mail from Ms. B to arrive, or to reach the cemetery. Or you know, Gauhter to send another spell after me.

  The overcast day made the approaching dusk seem to arrive early, so that by the time we reached the gates of South Cemetery, the world was caught in an oppressive gray gloom. My eyes had mostly recovered from the abuse I’d put them through this morning, but as night approached, my normal night blindness set in, making me feel vulnerable. I didn’t like being here this late. Half of me hoped we didn’t find anything, even though I knew time was at a premium. Maybe I could sleep in a magic circle tonight . . . and stay there for the foreseeable future. That wouldn’t work, and I knew it. Besides, my circles were too weak. Had I been inside one this afternoon, it would have crumbled under the assault of the spell Gauhter had sent. And as that spell had failed, I would bet the next one would be even stronger.

  So I followed Briar and Falin into the cemetery.

  South Cemetery was the oldest in Nekros, older than the city itself, and judging by some of the bodies I’d sensed here in the past, older than when the space had unfolded after the Magical Awakening. Though it was a large, beautifully maintained cemetery full of statues and ornate mausoleums, it wasn’t a cemetery I particularly liked. Not anymore, at least. The last time I’d been here hadn’t been for a job, but when I’d been kidnapped by s
kimmers who wanted me to tear a hole into the Aetheric for them. I’d escaped that night by pouring energy into the dozens of ghosts haunting the cemetery and using their sudden appearance as a diversion. Tonight, as we walked among the hulking mausoleums and granite angels, the cemetery was oddly quiet. Too quiet.

  “Where are the ghosts?” I asked, stopping and looking around.

  Briar and Falin turned, giving me twin quizzical looks.

  “Last time I was here, you couldn’t enter without at least a few of the dozens of ghosts following you around. I haven’t seen one since we arrived.” And I’d left the ghosts in this cemetery with a major power boost, so they should have been abundant and obvious.

  Briar shrugged, looking unconcerned. Falin scanned the cemetery, but even if the ghosts had been present, he wouldn’t have been able to see them.

  “You picking up any spells, Craft?” Briar asked as she started walking again.

  I shook my head. We were headed for the largest mausoleums on the grounds, which would be the easiest to conduct rituals inside. So far, I hadn’t felt a hint of anything. I knew that at least one of the mausoleums had a secret underground bunker beneath it, but we’d already passed the crypt Bell and his flunkies had held me in, and I hadn’t felt anything there either.

  Briar paused, pulling her phone from her pocket. She answered, but almost immediately pulled the phone away from her ear and hit a button on the screen. “All right, Derrick, you’re on speaker. What’s the warning?”