As I worked on the shields, the people outside my circle all began talking at once. John and Briar were clearly both on the phone, while Jenson was giving directions to one of the uniformed officers. Tamara, who’d grabbed a chair sometime during the ritual because it had lasted a couple of hours and a pregnant woman shouldn’t stand for that long, stood to converse with the lab assistant, telling her which tests and panels they needed to run and how to prepare to take the samples they’d need.
I hadn’t fully closed my shields yet, or dissolved my circle. I glanced between the people in the room, memorizing where everyone stood because I knew what was coming. I walked to the edge of the circle and scooped up my purse. Then I closed the last gaps in my mental shield, blocking my psyche from gazing across planes, and the world fell into darkness.
I’d been prepared for it. Even short rituals burned out my vision quickly these days, and this had not been a short ritual. But even though I’d anticipated the blindness, a twinge of panic still jetted through me as the world fell dark. There were too many people present that I didn’t fully trust for me to be confident while this vulnerable. Not that there was much I could do about it. I could have left my shields open longer, but I was so drained, I wasn’t sure I had enough magic left to fight off any questing grave essence once my circle fell.
So I closed my shields, letting darkness surround me, and dissolved the circle.
Then I stood there, unsure what to do. I could feel the dead bodies, and Briar and Tamara wore enough magic that I could sense them, but the others in the room? I just had to listen for them to move.
A door whooshed as someone left the morgue. One of the uniformed officers? A gurney squeaked beside me, and I jumped in surprise. It was probably the morgue assistant, but I hadn’t heard her approach.
A hand landed on my elbow, hot and unexpected. I jumped again before I realized that the buzz of Tamara’s magic had approached while I was distracted by the gurney.
“Let’s find you a spot to recover,” she whispered.
I couldn’t have been more grateful.
No one stopped us as we walked, her guiding gently, discreetly. I felt the whoosh of air as a door opened. And then we were through it, the door swishing closed behind us and Tamara leading me through the darkness, away from the dead.
Chapter 12
“How bad is it?” Tamara asked after the door closed behind us.
I shrugged. “I’ve been worse.”
“You’re shaking like a leaf.” She led me to a chair, and I sank into it gratefully. “And I’ve never seen you this bad. Can you see at all?”
I shrugged again, but the movement might have gotten lost in my trembling. I hadn’t lied; I’d been a lot worse in the past. Today I’d only raised shades. Yes, it had been a long ritual, but it had only been plain old grave magic. It wasn’t like I’d been shoving around layers of reality. I was blind and cold, but I’d bounce back fairly quick.
“Your office?” A guess, but a good one. We hadn’t gone far and the space didn’t sound big and hollow enough to be the hallway outside the morgue.
Tamara didn’t say anything at first. Maybe she nodded before remembering I couldn’t see her. Finally she said, “Yeah. What can I do to help?”
“Have any whiskey hidden around here?”
Tamara snorted a laugh. “Not so much. How about some coffee instead?”
“It would be sacrilege to turn down coffee.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Which is good, I wouldn’t want these nice dark roast beans to go stale while I incubate this little guy.”
I couldn’t see her, but I knew she was rubbing her now-noticeable bump. Her footsteps moved away, across the room, and then the sounds of her preparing the coffee drifted through the air. I tucked my hands in my armpits, my arms hugged across my chest, as I tried to generate a little warmth, but the cold was deep inside me still. I seriously needed to look into making or buying one of the spells hospitals used to make blankets nice and toasty.
“Here you go,” Tamara said.
I lifted my hand and she pressed the coffee mug into my palm, waiting until I’d wrapped both hands around it before letting go. The ceramic was almost too hot to touch, but I held it anyway. If I put the mug down—if there was even anywhere to put it, I wasn’t sure where I was in the room—I’d probably knock the mug over when I tried to find it again. So I clutched the scalding cup, inhaling the steaming heavenly scent of coffee.
“How bad are your eyes?” Tamara asked, her chair creaking as she sat.
“You sure I still have eyes?”
“That bad, huh?”
I shrugged.
“So this case.” She paused. To shake her head? To shrug? I hated being blind. After a moment she said, “Are we dealing with what it sounded like out there? Is this necromancy?”
“It sounds that way. How else can we explain dead bodies walking around? Hopefully this at least means I’m no longer a person of interest in this case.”
“Not my department,” Tamara said, but I could hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. I’d been a suspect before. My friends were getting to the point where they had to either laugh at it or walk away.
Her chair creaked again, and I waited, listening for clues indicating whether she’d stood or leaned back.
She made a soft, exasperated sound that issued from more or less the same place as before, so I guessed she’d leaned back in the chair. Then she said, “This case is a scientific nightmare. Dead bodies walking around that don’t look dead. Then boom. Plug pulled and all of a sudden they show all the signs of having been dead the whole time? How is that possible? Illusion? It can’t happen like it seems. The measurable and inevitable stages of decay are based on very predictable conditions like bacteria growth.”
“I don’t think it’s an illusion.” But it also wasn’t like the decay of the body paused completely while a ghost was taking the place of the native soul. It was more like all that lost time was counted somewhere, and then hit the body all at once after the ghost left. Time hit changelings the same way during sunrise and sunset when they were cut off from Faerie’s magic. In a matter of seconds they could age rapidly if they’d spent years inside Faerie but came back out without the same time passing in the mortal realm. I’d seen one notable changeling age so much that she turned into dust.
You could cheat time, but not forever.
The door gave a squeak as it opened behind me. Briar’s magical signature proceeded her, so at least I knew who it was. I turned, not because it would help me see who entered, but because it would at least give the pretense that I could.
“Hey, Craft, you ready to go?” Briar asked, and it was good I could sense her magic, because I sure couldn’t hear her footsteps. The woman moved like a ghost. “Cops are already converging on the two locations where the shades said the different rituals occurred, as well as searching for any flyers still hanging and contact information for whoever ran the classified ad. I think you and I should head to the funeral home. It was used for a ritual only three days ago, so it is our best lead. Why aren’t you moving yet?” she said when I just sat there listening, still clutching my coffee.
“I think I’ll have to sit this one out.”
“What? No, come on.”
I shook my head. “I just held four different shades for several hours. I’m out for a while. Right now, I’d slow you down.”
“You can’t be that tired. Suck it up. I might need a sensitive.”
“She can’t see, Inspector,” Tamara said, her chair creaking as she shoved out of it. Her tone was fierce, and I wished I could have seen her, because she sounded like she was going all mama bear, which I’d never heard from her before.
She’d also just revealed a secret I tried very hard to conceal as much as possible. I could all but feel Briar’s evaluating gaze boring into me. I sat straighter, trying to still my trembling and forcing myself not to cringe as the pounding of my heart in my ears marked the seconds it took for Briar to respond.
“You can’t see at all? Like, you’re completely blind?”