Grave Witch

by Kalayna Price

Page 9

  Author: Kalayna Price

  My OMIH-assigned babysitter, whose real name was Patricia Barid, dropped her blush brush and took my chin in her manicured fingers. “I think that’s the best I can do,” she said, but the corners of her eyes pinched together. “If you’d wear a complexion charm …”

  I shook my head yet again. “I’m not raising a shade with foreign magic on me. ” I wasn’t about to chance having my magic interact erratically in front of the entire courtroom, particularly after what had happened yesterday.

  “Fine. ” She stepped back, her unimpressed gaze searching for something to pick at.

  I fumbled for my hip pocket, but, of course, there wasn’t one. Good slacks never had anything practical like pockets, and these slacks had been good once, before someone donated them to Goodwill and I picked them up. They were the best I owned, and I’d thought I looked pretty sharp. Right until I met Patricia Barid.

  “It’s not like anyone will be focused on me. ” After all, I was the wizard behind the curtain in this trial. The hard questions, like what was a shade, and why a shade couldn’t lie, had already been addressed by an expert witness. I just had to raise the shade and then step back and let the attorney types grill her.

  Patricia tilted her head and tittered. “That’s what you think. This is history in the making, and you, my dear, are the face of the OMIH today. ” From the look she gave me, she clearly believed someone else should have been drafted for the job. Well, tough luck. I’d been part of this case since Amanda’s body was found, and I was the one who was going to raise her for the witness stand.

  It had been seventy years since the Magical Awakening, the day the fae decided to announce to the world that the good people of folklore truly existed. In an age of science and technology no one had believed in ghosts and goblins anymore, and there weren’t even enough children clapping their hands and crying “I do believe in faeries” to sustain the fae. They had been fading from memory and from the world. So, they’d come out of the mushroom circle, as some say. Witches came out next and got organized. The folded spaces expanded. Magic blossomed. History had been made over and over since then—I just hoped my little piece of history was profitable.

  A knock boomed on the wooden door, making me jump. We were out of time. I was expected in the courtroom.

  Patricia pursed her lips, but nodded.

  “You’ll do. ” She raked the cosmetics spread across the counter back into her oversized purse. “Don’t use any flashy magic when you raise the shade. Just get the job done. And don’t speak unless the DA asks you a direct question. And remember—”

  I jerked the door open. “I got it. ” We’d been through this all already. Twice.

  The bailiff waited outside the door, his hand poised to knock again. I gave him a tight-lipped smile and motioned him to lead the way. My boots made clunking sounds as I followed him down the hall, and then we were there, outside the courtroom.

  I took a deep breath. This is it.

  The bailiff opened a large oak door, and the courtroom fell silent as I stepped inside. People packed the rows of uncomfortable wooden benches, far too many for the AC—already overtaxed by the heat wave—to prevail against. A drop of sweat ran down my neck. Or maybe it wasn’t the AC; maybe it was the fact everyone was staring at me.

  A breeze picked up, to my relief, until I realized it wasn’t an earthly wind. The ghost from the morgue crossed my path, his gaze sweeping over the courtroom before settling back on me.

  What is he doing here?

  I didn’t have time to wonder.

  The DA met me halfway across the room. “Doing okay, Alex?”

  I nodded, smiling, and lost sight of the ghost. My gaze darted around the room. No sign of him. But I did spot several cops I knew, including Detective Jenson, John’s partner. I nodded in greeting. I’d have to track him down after the trial to find out the latest news of John’s condition.

  My gaze moved on but stumbled over a woman in the front row with puffy red eyes. Her clothes hung off her as though she’d recently lost a lot of weight. Despite her sallow cheeks, I recognized her face.

  I almost swore; instead, I matched my pace to the DA’s and dropped my voice to a whisper. “You’re letting the family watch?”

  The DA didn’t even glance over his shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Just do your thing. ”

  He returned to his table, sitting down beside the journeyman attorney assisting him in the case. Holly, the assistant DA on the case and my workaholic housemate, had pulled her flame red hair back tight in a nononsense bun and was wearing a power suit. She looked imperturbable and stern, until she flashed me a double thumbs-up hidden from the crowd by her body.

  That made me smile—Holly always could do that—and the rest of the walk to the front of the courtroom was a bit easier. I approached the stand but didn’t take it.

  The chair had been removed to make room for Amanda Holliday’s coffin. A witch, probably Patricia Barid or one of her PR minions, had sketched a circle around the stand and coffin before the courtroom filled this morning.

  All I had to do was activate it.

  I closed my eyes. A soft murmuring spread across the courtroom, dozens of whispers wrapping together.

  I wondered how many of the spectators had known Amanda Holliday, and how many were here only to see her shade. Putting a shade on the stand had been discussed for years—after all, they were the perfect witness.

  Shades were just memories, with no agenda or self-awareness left in them. They couldn’t lie, but would relate their life as they recalled it at the time of death.

  Despite that, no shade had made it to the stand. Until now.

  I tuned out the crowd and focused on feeding energy into the circle until it sprang to life around me. Then I sank deeper, dropping my shields.

  Amanda’s next-door neighbor sat in the defendant’s chair. Only two pieces of physical evidence put him there: a single blond hair found in his bed that was a visual match to Amanda but lacked a skin tag so couldn’t be matched to her by DNA, and a receipt for gas in the county where her body had been found. The DA could prove he had the means and opportunity, but Amanda’s eyewitness testimony was the only way the jury would be able to sentence him without reasonable doubt. The nature of the crime and the lack of evidence was what had finally convinced the DA to put Amanda on the stand. That, and the fact that if a jury sympathized with any victim, it would be with Amanda.

  I poured my energy into her shade, trying to make her as physical, as real, as possible. A scream shattered the murmuring in the room, and my heart skipped a beat.

  Did I raise another one?

  No, it wasn’t Amanda screaming. It was the crowd.

  People were screaming.

  I opened my eyes. In my grave-sight, Amanda Holliday sat atop her casket surrounded by the rotted and pitted wood of the witness stand. She’d been buried in her Sunday best, but she’d died in a stained T-shirt, and that was what every cell in her body remembered and how her shade appeared.

  The judge pounded his gavel, trying to restore order.

  Amanda’s wailing mother had to be escorted out of the room. She wasn’t the only one. Amanda’s unseeing eyes appeared to watch them, her cherub face impassive.

  Being dead, she was no longer touched by the horror of her death. But it touched the jury, the crowd, and apparently the defendant. He’d turned paler than the shade, his eyes bulging as he stared at the five-year-old’s body and the red gaping smile ringing her throat.

  ———

  “To one of the shortest jury deliberations ever. ” Holly lifted her beer.

  Tamara hoisted her own bottle. “To putting away the bad guys. ”

  I clinked the rim of my bottle to theirs and took a deep swig of the room-temperature hops. As I set the bottle on the table, a shiver ran down my arms and I shrugged deeper in my blazer. I was probably the only person i
n the city wearing long sleeves, but I’d held the shade for over an hour. The chill had a way of clinging after that long.

  Holly and Tamara had both abandoned the suit jackets they’d worn in the courthouse. And in a true show of celebration, Holly had let her red hair down from the stern bun she typically wore. She thought the bun helped her look more professional, but at five-two in heels and with her heart-shaped face, she always came off more cute than fear-inspiring—unless she caught you behind the witness stand.

  In the corner of my darkened vision, I caught sight of a shimmering form hovering behind me. That damn ghost. I didn’t bother turning around. No one else at the table could see him, and he’d just vanish if I did. It was what he’d been doing all morning. Freaky haunt. I ignored him.

  “We make a pretty good team,” I said to my companions, taking another swig of beer.

  “I’ll drink to that. ” Tamara brushed her long brown hair over her shoulder before lifting her beer bottle.

  Holly nodded. “To teamwork. ”

  We tapped rims again. Holly had worked in the DA’s office to help prepare Amanda’s case for trial, Tamara had performed the autopsy, and I’d raised the witness.

  Teamwork at its finest. All we were missing was our homicide detective. My stomach twisted at the thought of John. I’d talked to Jenson after the trial, and last anyone had heard, John was still unconscious. How much blood had he lost?

  As if sensing my darkening mood, Holly leaned in and nudged me. “I think we’re being scoped. ” She nodded over my shoulder.

  It was early afternoon and the bar was mostly deserted, so there weren’t a lot of options for who could be checking us out. The man at the table she’d nodded to had his back to me. In the dimness, and without my glasses—lost in my tumble down the stairs—all I could see of him was light reflecting off long blond hair.

  My jaw clenched. Why would … ? I shook my head.

  It couldn’t have been Detective Andrews. He wouldn’t be in a little hole-in-the-wall bar like Mac’s.

  Mac’s was the type of bar catering only to regulars.

  Situated in a little strip on State Street, several blocks from the courthouse, it had a used bookstore on one side, an artsy coffee shop on the other, and just a red door with no sign to mark the entrance. If Andrews had transferred in two weeks ago, there was no way he’d so much as heard of Mac’s.