If I could have stumbled back in shock, I would have, but I couldn’t even blink in surprise. Not because the soul transitioned—that I expected—but because the ghost now standing in front of me was that of a young woman.
My focus shifted from the balding, middle-aged man to the woman who might not have been old enough to drink. Ghosts weren’t like shades. While shades were always an exact representation of the person at the moment of death, ghosts tended to reflect how a person perceived himself. Appearing a little younger or more attractive was common. I supposed it was even possible that if someone identified across gender lines, their ghost might reflect that discrepancy. But this ghost was a drastically different age as well as being a different gender and ethnicity. And that was unheard of.
The ghost-girl looked around, no longer inhibited by the spell holding the body she’d been inside. Her dark eyes rounded as her eyebrows flew upward and her motions took on the frantic quickness of panic.
A panic that didn’t last long as a figure appeared beside her. He was dressed from head to toe in gray and carrying a silver skull-topped cane. The Gray Man. A soul collector.
I wanted to scream No. To run between him and the girl who clearly hadn’t belonged in the dead body. Things didn’t add up here, and I wanted to talk to the ghost.
But I still couldn’t move.
I stood silently frozen in place as the Gray Man reached out, grabbed the soul, and sent her on to wherever souls went next. Then he turned and looked at the body she’d vacated. His expression gave away nothing as his gaze moved on to me. He gave me one stern shake of his head, which could have meant he didn’t know what was going on or that he knew but it wasn’t any business of mine.
Then he vanished.
Of course, that was the moment the guard released the spell. I stumbled back as the now truly dead body collapsed.
I barely registered the gasps and screams. I only half noted the gun that clattered across the marble as the lifeless body hit the floor. I was far too busy staring at the spot where the Gray Man and the ghost had been. She hadn’t belonged in the wrongly animated body. So how the hell had she gotten into someone else’s body? And why?
Chapter 2
“You’re saying the man was dead before he ran into the security system?” The cop interviewing me looked up from his notepad, one skeptical eyebrow raised. “And what makes you think that?”
“I’m a grave witch. I sensed him when he walked by on the street,” I said, not paying as much attention to the questions as I probably should have been. Most of my attention was focused on the body that someone had draped a black tablecloth over just a few yards away, still where it had collapsed near the door. When I’d first sensed the body—when it was still up and walking around—it had felt like the very recently dead. Now my magic told me it was older, days, maybe even a week, deceased.
I squinted, as if the action could reveal more about the body. It didn’t, of course. I could have reached out with my ability to sense the dead, thinned my shields so I gazed across the planes and spanned the chasm between the living and dead, but there was a lot of magic—both latent and active—in the museum, and my shields were already rather worse for the wear after getting caught in the antitheft spell with the corpse.
The cop’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re saying you noticed the deceased before he entered, and you followed him in?”
“I, uh . . .” Crap. Yeah, I definitely should have been paying more attention to the questions at hand. One look at the cop’s expression told me that I’d just gone from “unlucky witness” to “potential suspect.”
The door to the museum swung open and my gaze flicked over the cop’s head. Tamara stepped inside. She held out her laminated medical examiner ID as she assessed the scene, clearly trying to identify who was in charge.
“That was fast,” the other officer—the one interviewing the museum curator—said with a look of relief on his face. He wasn’t a homicide detective and he’d responded to a robbery call only to discover a dead body. He likely wanted to hand over his notes and be done with this mess.
Tamara shook her head. “I was across the street. At lunch.” The last words held the barest edge, no doubt aimed at me. “I let my office know I was at the scene. The rest of my team should be here soon.” She made her way toward the prone figure. Her baby bump was just barely showing, but her gait had changed slightly. Nothing major, but I’d known her long enough to notice. “Did anyone try to resuscitate the victim?”
The cop who’d been questioning me held up one hand, two fingers raised, clearly indicating I shouldn’t go anywhere. He half turned toward Tamara, never letting me out of his sight. Yup, I was officially in his suspect category, and I hadn’t even told him I’d been responsible for driving out the soul who’d hitched a ride in the man’s body.
“He was clearly dead when we arrived, ma’am. I checked for vitals, but he was gone.”
Tamara nodded absently and reached down to pull the makeshift shroud from the corpse. “What the—?” She jumped backward, dropping the cloth. “Get a magical hazmat team here now. This body needs to be sealed and contained behind a circle. Now.”
The cop in front of me radioed in Tamara’s order as his partner began drawing a circle around the corpse. Tamara kept backing away, never turning from the body.
I took advantage of the sudden chaos and slipped around the officer so I could get a better look at the body. The shriveled lips had pulled away from the corpse’s teeth, giving him an eerie death grin as his skin had slipped down his face. This wasn’t decay that happened in less than half an hour—this was days of rot. Which corresponded with how long my magical senses claimed the man to have been dead.
Tamara’s backward stride—steady and slow as if she were afraid that if she turned and ran, the corpse would jump up and give chase—had finally brought her to my side. I knew it wasn’t the decay that had her on edge—I’d seen her happily autopsy bodies in much worse states. No, it was a recent experience she’d had that had nearly killed her and her unborn child. An attack by a body that had transformed after death.
She turned to me, her dark eyes wide. “What have you gotten me into now? And why do I hang out with you?” She hissed the question, her voice too fast, too breathy with fear. “You don’t think he is . . . ?”
“A ghoul?” I shook my head. “Trust me, I’ll never forget what they feel like. No, this is something different. I don’t know what’s going on, but I definitely don’t like it.”
• • •
I sat in an uncomfortable folding chair at Central Precinct in a room that, if I were being generous, I’d call a waiting area. A more accurate description of the space was that it was a tucked-away closet where the cops could shuffle off someone they didn’t want to deal with but whom they couldn’t arrest. Yet.
The Anti–Black Magic Unit had arrived at the scene before the homicide detectives. To secure the scene and better assess the situation, they’d decided to clear the civilians out. Which included me. I’d been asked to come down to Central Precinct to give a formal statement. Which was fine—I needed to explain what I’d seen and felt. Quick-rotting corpses walking around piloted by the wrong soul were not normal. In fact, I’d never heard of any other reported case. I was hoping the NCPD would put our prior differences behind us and resurrect our retainer agreement so I could raise the shade and get some answers about the whole thing. But sitting in a dingy room between two empty folding chairs for over an hour was not leaving me optimistic on that front.
Standing, I paced around the small room, but there wasn’t enough room to make that a satisfying endeavor, and it left me more irritated instead. I could at least check and see if the detectives in charge were back from the scene. And if they weren’t, well, I had my own business to run. They could set up an appointment for me to come back. I was done waiting. With a decisive nod, I pulled open the door and walked down the short hall to the lobby of Central Precinct.
The front lobby buzzed with activity. Tensions had been high in the city of late, and that translated into an increase of both petty and serious crime. Some of the detectives and supervisors had private offices deeper in the building, but the bulk of the officers had desks scattered mazelike in the front. Blue-clad cops sat at these desks typing up reports, talking to witnesses, informants, or concerned citizens, or working on cases. An officer I vaguely recognized pushed a handcuffed man past me, toward fingerprinting, the man blathering about how this was all a big misunderstanding. As he passed, the assortment of spells the well-dressed suspect carried tingled along my senses. Most were commonplace enough, but then my ability to sense magic zeroed in on something he should definitely not have been carrying.