Dark Harvest Magic (Ella Grey Series Book 2)

by Jayne Faith

  The maddening hunger I felt wasn’t the desire to cut the soul free.

  I looked down at my left hand, raised palm-up at my side. It cradled a smoke-black orb with bright pinpoint lights throughout it, like a galaxy shrunk down to the size of a tennis ball.

  Souls. Those tiny lights were souls that my reaper had claimed instead of liberated.

  Revulsion welled up through me at the realization that those souls—dozens of them—would never pass to the beyond. They were forever trapped in darkness. But still, I wanted to devour Amanda’s soul, I physically yearned for it as if I’d been lost in the desert for a thousand years and her soul was a cool oasis.

  My left hand drifted outward, reaching. I just needed to touch the cord with the orb and this soul would be mine. But those little lights, all those trapped souls . . . My heart lurched at the wrongness of it, and that was enough to momentarily lift the haze of soul-hunger. Before the crazed desire could pull me back under, I lunged forward and arced my right hand out. In a blur, the blade sliced the cord and the soul vanished.

  “Ella? Supernatural Crimes just pulled up. We need to get out of here.” Damien appeared in the doorway just as I turned at the sound of his voice. He beckoned at me with a hurried flap of his hand. “Come on, let’s go out the back.”

  I looked down at my empty hands and then over at Amanda’s still form. The mist had vanished. I was back in the world of the living.

  “Move, Ella,” Damien hollered, his voice pitched high with urgency. “Go!”

  I finally jolted from my stupor and sprang into motion, noting as I raced to the back of the cottage that maroon magic had marked the bedroom. I knew it wasn’t from me because it glowed too strongly. I’d bet my paycheck that Deb was right—this was the work of the same man who’d messed up Jennifer’s place. The one whose face I’d seen through the demon’s memory.

  My insides tightened as something occurred to me. Why had the man, the one with blood-red magic like mine, not taken the soul? Maybe I’d been wrong when I’d guessed he also carried the soul of a reaper. But I didn’t want that to be true. I actually hoped he was like me, even if he was a murderer, because it meant I might have hope of surviving my reaper.

  I followed Damien numbly through the neat little back yard, past the raised beds where the season’s tomato plants still held some heavy red fruits. Grave chill from the in-between still seemed to saturate me clear to my bones, and my brain felt fuzzy like the morning after a long night of drinking. I pulled my hands down my face and gave my head a shake, trying to clear the fog. The soul-hunger still stirred around in my stomach, now only an echo of the overwhelming urge I’d felt just moments ago. I shivered, remembering just how close I’d been to stealing the soul instead of freeing it.

  He stopped at the gate and rose up on his tiptoes to peer over.

  “Shit,” he muttered. “There are a bunch of SC cars parked out there. We either go through the gate or back through the house. Either way they’ll see us.”

  I looked around at the little yard, completely fenced in with six-foot-high wooden slats. There was a black plastic composting bin the size of a washing machine in one corner, nearly hidden by more rose bushes.

  I pointed at it. “Let’s go over.”

  We ran to the bin, and I carefully stepped up onto it, hoping it wouldn’t collapse. Bracing my hands on the top of the fence, I bent my knees, ready to pop over into the neighbor’s yard.

  “Hey!” a female voice called. “Stop right there!”

  Swearing under my breath, I turned, already knowing who I’d see behind me.

  “Down on the ground, now!” Detective Barnes barked at us, drawing her gun and swinging it up to aim at us in one swift, smooth motion.

  I went to step down just as one side of the plastic bin buckled under my weight. My boot slipped, and I scrabbled at the fence with my fingers but lost my hold. I went shoulder-first into a hedge of peach-colored roses.

  Thorns scraped my face, neck, and bare arms. They poked through my shirt and into my skin in painful little points. My cargo pants were just heavy enough to keep the woody needles from piercing through to my legs.

  Groaning, I struggled to free myself from the thorny entanglement, and the bush gave me dozens more scratches as a parting gift.

  By the time I rolled free of the roses, my skin burned from punctures and scratches, and Detective Barnes loomed over me with her gun pointed at my chest.

  I held up my hands in surrender. “No need for that, I’m not going anywhere,” I said bitterly.

  She was staring at my arms, and I glanced down expecting to see some especially gory rose bush wounds. But she wasn’t interested in my scratches. The sigils on my arms, the tattoo-like markings that had first appeared the night the reaper had forced me to the ghost house, were glowing cool pearly white.

  Shit.

  I flicked a glance at Damien, chest-down with his arms out on the brownish fall lawn. He’d raised his head to watch, and he saw the markings, too.

  Without a word, Detective Barnes reached under her blazer and produced a set of handcuffs. I knew they were charmed to prevent the wearer from using magic.

  “Eat dirt,” she said through clenched teeth. “Wrists together.”

  Groaning, I rolled to my stomach and joined my hands at the small of my back.

  She shouted at one of her colleagues—the tall detective I remembered from Jennifer’s—to come and cuff Damien. They pulled us to our feet and marched us through the side gate to the front of the house.

  Deb’s mouth dropped open when she spotted us, and a look of misery came over her face when she took in the cuffs on my wrists.

  The detectives took us to a yellow-and-black Supernatural Crimes patrol car and unceremoniously shoved us into the backseat. Damien looked like he either wanted to puke or cry. He’d probably never been in the back of a police car.

  “They didn’t read us our rights,” I said with a hopeful raise of my brows. My eyes flicked to Barnes, who was talking to the tall detective. “We’re not officially arrested.”

  “Yet,” he said with a sour turn of his mouth. “Are you okay?”

  I glanced down at my arms, twisting a little to try to get a full view, which was awkward with my hands secured behind my back. The scrapes had already healed, and the thorn punctures were only faint red dots.

  “Yeah, it looks like I’ll be good as new in a sec. Did I happen to mention how fast I heal lately?”

  He shifted to turn his full attention to me. “Another reaper effect?”

  “Reaper Effect, hitting theaters this Christmas,” I said in my best movie announcer voice. “It’ll scare the soul right out of your body.”

  One dark blond brow quirked, and I grinned hopefully. Damien and I had only known each other a few months, but it seemed like I was making a habit of getting him in trouble. Not intentionally, of course. But still, I couldn’t help feeling bad about it.

  “Yeah, must be,” I said in my normal voice. “You saw the sigils on my arms, too?”

  He nodded, tilting his head and squinting at my bare upper arm.

  I sighed. “More reaper effects. And Barnes noticed them.”

  “It’s not symbology I’m familiar with. I wish I could have taken a couple of pictures so I could study them later. They’re starting to fade.”

  “They’ve glowed like that only a few times. I don’t know what the marks mean, but she looked interested in them, which can’t be good,” I said.

  “When I found you in the bedroom, you seemed like you were in shock. Did you know the woman who was killed?”

  I shook my head. “We’d never met.”

  “First dead body?”

  “Yeah, but that part didn’t actually bother me too much.” I paused, biting my lower lip for a moment, debating about whether to tell him. “I . . . reaped her soul.”

  His blue eyes widened. “Damn,” he said in a low whisper.

  “I know. The reaper took over.” I squeezed my eyelid
s closed for a second, remembering the feel of the souls in my left hand, the crazed desire to add another to the collection. “I’m not sure if I can even explain it. Something strange happened—stranger than reaping a soul, I mean. I know this sounds bizarre, but if there are good guys and bad guys among reapers, I think mine might be a bad guy.”

  He peered at me and looked like he was about to ask something, but the car door next to him opened. Tall Detective stood there in his navy suit, but from my angle I couldn’t see his face. He flipped a hand in a beckoning motion.

  “Step out and I’ll remove your cuffs, sir,” the detective said.

  I hunched down and leaned over toward the open door so I could see his face. “What about me?” I gave him what I hoped was an innocent smile.

  He lifted his chin, indicating something on the other side of the patrol car. “She’s going to read you your rights.”

  I whipped around just as Barnes appeared at my door.

  Chapter 6

  A STRING OF four-letter words streamed through my mind, but I managed to contain it behind my clenched teeth as the detective formally arrested me.

  At the downtown Supernatural Crimes station—a building that ironically was within my Demon Patrol beat—I sat in a tiny cube of an interrogation room. It was just like on TV shows, me facing Barnes and Tall Detective across a banged-up table. His name was Lagatuda, I remembered. Like on a police procedural, except the chair I sat in was charmed to prevent me from using magic. Not that my magic was much of a threat. But they’d taken my actual weapons—my whole service belt, in fact—as soon as we’d arrived.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You arrested me because I’d been in the houses at two crime scenes, but you have zero evidence that I was involved in any crime.”

  “We don’t have direct evidence that you were involved, though we aren’t ruling it out. But we do have evidence that indicates you have some connection to the perpetrator,” Barnes said. Her short blond hair was held back with a black leather headband. She was actually rather cute in a perky, petite, head cheerleader sort of way. If you ignored the snarl on her face, that is.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m confused. How can you know that I know the perpetrator if you don’t know who it is?” I asked. I ignored Barnes, or at least refused to look at her, trying to appeal to Lagatuda instead. She’d clearly already settled on her suspicion, but I sensed I might still have a chance to gain a little sympathy from him.

  “Our scans picked up likeness between the signature left by you and the signature left by the person we believe committed the crimes,” Lagatuda said.

  Barnes shot him an irritated look as if she didn’t want me to know that detail, but he gave her a steady, cool gaze. My regard for him jumped up a notch or two.

  My heart thumped. They hadn’t mentioned maroon magic yet, so there was probably something less specific in their crime scene data.

  “What was it?” I demanded.

  They exchanged a look. “We don’t have specifics.”

  I relaxed slightly. I could tell they hadn’t fully deciphered whatever their scans had detected.

  “That’s a completely random thing, though,” I said, trying my best to sound reasonable. “Even if there is a similarity, it doesn’t mean I know him.”

  “Him?” Barnes leaned forward with a predatory gleam in her eye. “How do you know the perpetrator is male?”

  “I don’t. It’s just a generic pronoun,” I said through clamped teeth. I was losing patience. “But your argument is like saying, ‘Well, you’re tall, and we know the perpetrator is tall, so you must know the perpetrator’.”

  “It’s obviously not that simple. And regardless, we are within the law,” Barnes said. She stood and her chair scraped the floor with an unpleasant screech. “Since you’re not going to help us, we’re going to have to monitor you.”

  “What?” I spat. I felt my blood pressure spike, and my face began to heat with the flush of anger.

  She nodded at the mirrored window, and a second later the door opened. A female SC officer appeared with what looked like a thick white plastic bracelet. Two male officers were right behind her.

  “We’ll be monitoring your movements as well as your use of magic in real time,” she said.

  “No!” I tried to spring to my feet, but the two officers smashed down on my shoulders, preventing me from standing. “That is a complete violation of my privacy, and you don’t have cause. You can’t do this. I want a lawyer!”

  I couldn’t believe they were treating me like a criminal. It was humiliating.

  “You’re welcome to get a lawyer,” Barnes said. “But that won’t be of much help to you. As of now you’re no longer under arrest. You’re under surveillance. And trust me, we’ve got supernatural law on our side here.”

  I tried to shake off the hands clamped over my shoulders, but looking around the room, I realized it was five against one. I wasn’t going to get past all of them even if I could escape the iron grips holding me in place.

  “What if I refuse the monitor?” I asked.

  Barnes crossed her arms. “We’ll arrest you as a suspect, and you’ll go to jail until we can determine the extent of your involvement in the crimes,” she said, her tone maddeningly calm. “Then you might want that lawyer, though your refusal of the monitor would pretty much hamstring any further legal maneuvering.”

  “Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. My head was starting to pound from all the jaw clenching, and I needed to get the hell out of there before I lost my temper and made things worse for myself. “Just get it over with.”

  The female officer knelt next to me, lifted my pant leg, and wrapped the white monitor around my ankle just above my boot. It was more rubbery than it looked, and I felt a whisper of elemental energies over my skin as it briefly glowed with strands of green earth magic and yellow air magic. Tightening slightly of its own accord, it molded to a snug fit.

  “Don’t go anywhere you can’t easily justify,” Barnes said. “And don’t use any magic beyond—well, I guess I don’t really have to warn you about that, considering your aptitude level.”

  The shadows edging my vision writhed as if they too were outraged by the constraint—and the insult. A new thought occurred to me, and my stomach dropped as I eyed Barnes sharply.

  Did they know I was a necromancer? Deb had said that such skills were highly prized in the supernatural community, that my reaper soul, ability to wield magic even a little, and necromancy made me a “unique configuration” that certain people would love to control. By force, if needed. I was beginning to suspect she might be right. Most necromancers weren’t crafters, and I assumed the reaper soul was even more rare.

  Surely it wasn’t within the purview of Supernatural law to force me to use my abilities for their benefit . . . was it? Even if it was, the joke would be on them. At this point, I could barely do any necromany, my magical aptitude was unimpressive, and the reaper soul was equally bent on killing me as assisting me.

  My chest felt like it was wrapped in rubber bands. I needed to get out of this damn box of a room. With six people stuffed into it, it felt like there was barely enough oxygen to go around.

  Barnes handed me off to the female officer for processing, and twenty minutes later I was standing outside in the gold-toned October afternoon sunlight, waiting for Damien and feeling like a criminal on an invisible leash. I’d tried Johnny first, but he’d been called away to a job.

  When my partner’s Lexus eased into the Supernatural Crimes precinct parking lot, my insides loosened a little. I suddenly felt empty, since my adrenaline had worn off and my anger at the whole stupid situation was calming to a dull ache in my temples. My ire flared again, however, when I got in the car and lifted my pant leg to wordlessly show Damien my new jewelry.

  He let loose with the dirtiest language I’d ever heard from him, which actually amused me enough to lift my spirits for a moment.

  “This has got to be a violation
of your rights,” he said.

  “Apparently, it’s not. How’s Deb doing?” I asked.

  “She’s upset,” he said. “She and some of her friends are at your place now. They’re waiting for you.”

  I tried not to wince. I wanted to comfort Deb, but the thought of a bunch of weeping witches gathered in my living room made me a little twitchy. Outpourings of emotion—not exactly my comfort zone.

  When we arrived home, I was relieved to find that although there were a lot of red-rimmed eyes, the mood was more quiet determination than hysterical grief. I was surprised to see Lynnette Leblanc, the powerful exorcist witch with the charter to the coven that Deb and her friends were trying to get into. Roxanne was there too, huddled on the sofa with Loki, her hands pulled inside the sleeves of her hoodie. Under Deb’s mentorship, Roxanne had also been training with Amanda, the woman who’d been murdered, and other witches. Deb was skilled enough to guide Roxanne in all of the basics that new crafters needed to learn, but Deb thought it would be good for the girl to learn from multiple women, especially considering she didn’t have a female role model at home. The young witch looked dazed and pale.

  I cleared my throat as everyone turned to me.

  “I’m so sorry about the loss of your friend,” I said. I nodded at Lynnette. “I’m sure you’ve already talked about the connection between the killing and what happened at Jennifer’s.”

  She blew out a heavy breath and nodded, her usual attitude seemingly deflated in the wake of tragedy.

  I moved to join them, sitting on the floor next to Deb, and Damien perched on the sofa arm. No one seemed to mind that he was there.

  “My first suspicion was that someone was targeting your coven hopefuls out of competition or jealousy,” I said to Lynnette. I paused, considering how much to reveal. “But I have reason to believe we’re dealing with a man. Any idea why a man would take an interest in your coven?”

  Only female crafters formed covens. It was a unique quality of feminine magic that allowed women to combine their abilities. When done in a well-bonded coven, the collective magic was much more powerful than the sum of the individuals’ abilities.