Grave War

by Price, Kalayna

  “Drop it in here,” Martinez yelled, rushing forward with a box the size of a loaf of bread.

  Tem didn’t ask questions, but dropped the item into the open box. Then he turned and plunged his arm back into the water as Martinez snapped the lid shut on the box. I could feel the magic-canceling charms worked into the small box. They were good. Some of the strongest I’d felt. But they were witch charms. Would they be enough against the fae charm?

  I held my breath, waiting to see if the charms could hold the fire spell. I think everyone else was wondering the same thing, because we all stared at the box, the only sound the water bursting from the fire hose and the moans of the wounded from deeper in the Bloom.

  No fire erupted from the box, and I let out a breath that had too much smoke in it, and ended up coughing as my lungs emptied.

  “I think that’s that, then,” Martinez said, snapping another seal on the box before accepting a third from the female witch who’d accompanied her. The woman rooted through the bag at her feet, possibly looking for a fourth seal, but Martinez shook her head. “This should hold. Well, I guess we can safely say this is a crime scene—unless that fire spell was in a hearth or something and the explosion just knocked it into the tree?”

  A never-ending hearth fire? That actually wasn’t impossible in Faerie, but I’d never seen one in the Bloom. I glanced around for Nori, but she wasn’t in sight, so I looked to Tem instead. He shook his head.

  “That was intentional.”

  “Well then,” Martinez said, nodding. “That is that, then. Looks like the fire is under control now. We should let the fire chief know and get some help in here to get the survivors out.”

  Chapter 10

  I did what I could to help locate and move the survivors. I’d originally thought looking with my gravesight would be clever—I’d used it in the past to search out living souls—but with no land of the dead here, the physical objects didn’t disintegrate in my sight, and my grave magic wasn’t exactly infrared heat vision. If no part of the body was visible, I couldn’t see the glow of a soul. Then there was the fact that the glow wasn’t bright like in mortal reality.

  I did great at finding the dead. Not so helpful with finding the living.

  When the firefighters finally joined us, I agreed to Tem’s urging to leave the rescuing to those trained to do it. He didn’t want to have to hover over me worrying about my safety, and I felt useless, like I was holding him back from actually helping people, so I left.

  The VIP door was just as finicky even without a physical doorway, but as I expected, time passed for me at the exact rate as what I’d spent inside the Bloom. Not for everyone else, though. Nori beat me out, even though she hadn’t technically left the Bloom yet when I’d exited.

  My phone beeped as soon as I walked out of the VIP room, letting me know I’d missed a call while inside. The caller hadn’t left a message, but I recognized the number as coming from the FIB office. I pressed the screen to return the call, and Agent Bleek answered on the second ring.

  “Have you made contact with the king yet?” I asked as soon as he answered.

  “Uh . . .” he started, and then stumbled on, the words speeding up, like he couldn’t stem the flood of them. “We haven’t contacted the king. No one has. The other doors are all intact but not working. The winter court is locked.”

  The last sentence slammed into me, dread gripping my lungs and squeezing out my air.

  “Ma’am? Are you still there?” Agent Bleek asked when my silence had stretched too long.

  I nodded, which he couldn’t see through the phone. “Yes. Yes, I’m still here,” I said, my voice coming out thin and hoarse. I cleared my throat and then forced air into my dread-frozen lungs before speaking again. “Have the other FIB offices continue trying the doors. I want to know as soon as the winter court opens.”

  I didn’t wait for the agent to reply, but hit the disconnect button with a finger that felt too thick and clumsy. Then I stared at my phone.

  The winter court was locked.

  The last time the winter court went into lockdown, it was because the former queen had fallen and Faerie was giving Falin a chance to adjust to his new court. Now the doors were locked once again.

  Damn it. You better be all right. Why was I stuck on the wrong side of the door? Again.

  And when had the mortal realm become the wrong side to me?

  Raised voices caught my attention. I didn’t really care what was being yelled about, but I did need the distraction or I was going to spiral into a frenzy of panic that would be useless. There was no action I could take right now to help Falin. My most useful contribution at the moment would be figuring out who attacked the amaranthine tree.

  I turned, searching out the source of the angry voices. It wasn’t hard to find. Nori and Martinez appeared to be squaring off outside the command tent, surrounded by a small contingent of ABMU officers. My feet felt strange and bouncy from the shock of adrenaline rushing through me, but I managed not to trip over myself as I made my way toward the angry group. Go me.

  “Going back in won’t help,” Nori said to a very pissed-off-looking Martinez as I approached.

  “The hell it won’t. He should have been right behind me. He was exhausted after using all that magic. Something must have happened.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, though I had a guess. It sounded like someone hadn’t made it out of the VIP room yet.

  “Halloway is missing,” Martinez snapped. “My team all exited together, but when Callen and I emerged, Halloway wasn’t behind us anymore.”

  She hadn’t technically introduced me to her team, but I guessed Halloway was the water witch as she’d said he was exhausted and had used magic and the other witch she’d taken with her had been a woman. I gave her what I hoped would come off as a sympathetic smile and said, “Give him some time. The doors can be tricky.”

  She glared at me. “It’s been over half an hour. Callen went back to check on him, and now she is missing too. I’m going back in there to secure my people, but your agent is getting in my way.”

  Oh, now that was a mess. I didn’t remember seeing Callen when I’d left, which meant she hadn’t made it through the door yet. With no magic to direct the door, this could get really complicated.

  “Agent Nori is correct. You shouldn’t go back in. It won’t help. In fact”—I turned toward Nori even though I could feel Martinez’s increasingly angry glare searing into the side of my head—“the doorway is a problem. Is there any way to get it working at least to the efficiency it did before the bombing?”

  Nori’s lips pressed into a thin line and she cocked her head to the side, considering it. “I’ll put in a call, but I doubt anyone here is familiar enough with the magic to fix it. Not in its current state. We should probably restrict human access to it.”

  Oh yeah, that would go over well . . .

  “The hell are you two talking about? How is a blasted-out doorway a danger and where are my people?” Martinez’s accent had grown thicker with her anger, and she hurled the question at me as if it were a weapon.

  “Your people are . . . between time, I guess would be the best way to put it,” I said, lifting my hands in a slight shrug as I searched for the right words. She gave me an incredulous look and I stumbled on. “I told you when we entered that you were in a place humans rarely see. We weren’t in Faerie, but we were in the next closest thing. That room—it isn’t fully here. Which is why it was bigger than what should have fit in the building, and why that tree hasn’t always been bursting out of the top of a single-story building. The doorway links the two places, but the connection isn’t always the best. Sometimes you walk out in one moment, but the person behind you misses that connection, and the door spits them out at a later time.”

  She stared at me, her eyes studying me as if trying to decide if I was making this all up. Afte
r a moment she asked, “Then why don’t we use the door to go back to before the bombs were set and make sure all those people don’t die?”

  Nori made an exasperated sound behind me. “It’s not time travel. You can’t go back along your same timeline. Once time has passed, it’s gone. The past can’t be changed. Sometimes the door just . . . jettisons people on a shortcut to a later time.”

  That was one way to put it.

  Martinez considered this for a moment. “So how long will my people be missing?”

  I glanced at Nori. She shrugged. “Usually people don’t lose more than a few hours.”

  “Hours?” Martinez took a step back, as if the idea of that much lost time had come as a physical blow. She turned and stared at the darkened building. I wondered if she’d read any old folktales. They were full of stories of people losing days or even lifetimes to Faerie. That wasn’t typical, but neither were the circumstances here. Still, I hoped her people emerged soon.

  The door was definitely going to be an issue. Keeping the humans out would be a feat in and of itself, and one I doubted I’d succeed at enforcing. But I couldn’t have my team losing hours or days either. Of course, if I was correct about the effect of the realities I was carrying with me, and they kept me tied to a continuous time, maybe there was something I could do about the Bloom door issue, at the very least. If only I could do something about the door to Faerie.

  Chapter 11

  The next few hours were long and exhausting. Dozens of trips through the door more or less proved my hypothesis correct. My reality was grounded in a continuous time, and because of my planeweaving, I naturally dragged anything I touched along with me. It wasn’t that dissimilar to how ghosts could interact with the mortal realm while in physical contact with me. I was a conduit between the planes, and now that I carried several on my person, it forced time to remain consistent for me in both Faerie and the mortal realm. Pretty convenient for not losing huge swaths of time to the doors, but unfortunately it meant I had to personally escort everyone who passed through the doorway. And I had to be in physical contact with them as we walked through.

  Because that wasn’t awkward at all with a bunch of law enforcement types I didn’t know.

  Once the survivors were carried out, the building was once again evacuated until the structural engineer arrived. He walked through with his team and suggested places that would need to be shored up and reinforced before the investigation could continue. I expected that to take a while, but the makeshift braces and structures were erected quickly, all things considered. The Faerie side of the bar needed no structural supports. The lack of a roof left little besides the tree that could fall, and many of the branches had already fallen. The fire had done much more damage than the explosion on the VIP side, with the reverse being true on the mortal side.

  By late afternoon, the building was opened for investigation, and the bomb squad and arson investigators took over the scene. My team was also free to enter at will to investigate. The problem was, I had no idea what we should be looking for. I was in way over my head in this investigation.

  I spent a lot of my time escorting people through the doorway. My team accepted the arrangement without question, thankful I could control the door. Pretty much every single human questioned my insistence on escorting them, though many were more than happy to leave the weird fae side of the bar to my team, which at least cut down on traffic. Others were too curious or dedicated to be dissuaded by my warnings that they would be entering a pocket of Faerie. For some I was thankful they still wanted to investigate, like Captain Oliver and his bomb squad techs. Others I considered arguing with—like the crime scene photographer. Cameras didn’t work in Faerie, and the VIP room was more Faerie than not, but arguing over the necessity of procedure was more than I felt up to, so I walked her in.

  I held a lot of hands. Most grudgingly accepted when I explained the issue with the doorways. A few refused. One of those lost about an hour, another emerged in more or less the correct time, and a third emerged confused because only about thirty seconds had passed in the mortal realm even though he’d spent over an hour in the VIP area. We were still waiting on the fourth to return.

  Callen returned two hours after the investigation went into full swing. Halloway still hadn’t emerged. Martinez had me walk her in, but of course she hadn’t been able to find her errant officer. I still hadn’t managed to make her understand that he wasn’t actually lost or lingering in limbo somewhere. We simply hadn’t caught up to the time in which he would step out of the door yet.

  The sun hung low behind the neighboring buildings, only a sliver of reddish-orange glow left on the horizon, when a car that wasn’t an emergency vehicle rolled past the barricades and up to the cleared perimeter in front of the Bloom.

  “Our preliminary analysis shows that there were two devices,” Captain Oliver said. We were in the command tent for this briefing, and I was off to the side, wishing they’d brought in more light now that the sun was setting. Several heads turned as the vehicle approached, but Oliver didn’t seem to notice, continuing without pause, “We have found a lot of shrapnel in the normal part of the bar, but the explosion on the fae side appears to have been—”

  “Is that the governor’s limo?” Hilda Larine asked, cutting off Oliver. She lifted a hand to her hair, patting it into place before glancing down at her immaculate suit skirt. She was the only one of us still in pristine shape. Martinez, Oliver, the fire chief, and I had all spent time in the bomb-wasted remains of the Bloom, but not Larine. Her impractical high heels didn’t have a speck of soot or rubble on them.

  “He’ll be wanting an update,” the fire chief said, straightening from where he’d been slumped in a foldable chair as he’d listened to Oliver.

  The door to the limo opened, and a tall man in a simple brown suit stepped out. I wasn’t sure if he was an aide or a bodyguard, but he took a slow glance around the scene before heading straight for the command tent.

  Both Larine and the chief moved to intercept him. He smiled politely, but shook his head at whatever they said. Then he walked around them and ducked into the tent.

  “The governor would like a briefing from the FIB agent in charge,” he said, looking straight at me as he spoke. Well, word had certainly gotten around quickly about my new position.

  I gave him a tight smile, but didn’t say anything as I followed him out. I considered throwing Larine a smug smile as I passed her, since she clearly was dying to rub elbows with the governor, but the truth was, I didn’t want to talk to him and would have gladly given her my spot. It’s hard to be smug when you’re dreading the coming confrontation.

  Nori fell in step beside me as we walked. The tall aide/bodyguard didn’t stop her, or even say anything to her, until we reached the door of the limo. Then he stepped between Nori and the limo door.

  “The governor requested an audience only with the FIB special agent in charge,” he said.

  Nori frowned at him. She’d regained control of her glamour hours ago and once again looked like a cool, controlled FIB agent. She certainly looked more professional than me as her glamour covered not just her otherness, but also all the soot and mud she’d picked up inside the Bloom.

  “This is Agent Craft’s second day as agent in charge. I am her partner and mentor. I should help her brief the governor.” Nori’s voice was reasonable, no-nonsense, and her argument was a good one.

  It was also doomed to fail. I didn’t even need to see the man’s face to know that.

  I knew secrets about the governor that Nori was not privy to. Like that he was a fae in hiding. And also that he was my father. This was not a meeting he was likely to let outsiders overhear.

  The man didn’t bother smiling at Nori the way he had Larine and the chief. He simply shook his head and said, “I’m following direct orders. Only the agent in charge.” Then he turned his back on her and opened the door to
the limo for me.

  I stepped up to the door and leaned down, exhaustion and dread warring with the panic singing through me. I took one glance at the white leather seats and then hesitated before stepping inside.

  “I’ll ruin your upholstery,” I called out to the shadow of a figure inside. Some days I might have taken twisted satisfaction in smearing ash and cement dust on his immaculate seats, but today I didn’t want to waste the emotional energy on the barbed shaming that would be thrown my way if I did.

  “Alexis,” my father said in that vexing way that made me hate my own name. “Come inside and sit.”

  Beside me, I saw Nori’s posture change. My full real name wasn’t common knowledge, so in one sentence, the governor had just revealed that he knew me. That was a slip he rarely made, and the mistake, more than his words, urged me into the car.

  The moment the aide shut the door behind me, the limo fell into a silence that could only be achieved through magic—fae magic most likely, though I couldn’t sense it with my shields in place. Or maybe my father simply had the best noise-canceling tech built into his limo. Considering he’d been elected running under the Humans First Party banner, that would make more sense. Not that anything with my father seemed to make sense since I learned he was fae. The man was a mystery wrapped in contradictions and topped by a nice dollop of impossible. Not exactly who I wanted to talk to after my extremely stressful second day as an FIB agent.

  Not that I had a choice.

  He gestured to the seat across from him before steepling his hands and tapping his lips with his raised pointer fingers.

  It was a simple movement, nothing notable from most people. But from my father? It was an unconscionable amount of fidgeting. He was the master of being as still as a poised ambush hunter, especially when he had someone in his crosshairs.