“No,” Mace said, sternly. “She is not responsible for this.”
“Then who is? What the hell is going on?” My voice was too loud again but I didn’t care. There was a dead woman laying feet in front of me, struck down by a poisoned fae arrow, and this guy was acting like she didn’t matter at all.
“A changeling has run away from the Seelie Court,” he said. “Sentinels have been sent to track her and bring her home, but she is... troublesome.”
“Troublesome how?” I wished I had a photo of Jade to shove in Mace’s face and ask if she was the changeling he sought.
He shrugged, the movement languid. “You know how young people are.”
“And did your hunt for this changeling get this poor woman killed?”
Mace regarded the dead woman again, this time with clear disinterest now that he knew she wasn’t whom he sought. “This lady was slain with an arrow of the Unseelie Court. It is not one of mine, nor the army sent to track the girl.”
“And this changeling, she does ink magic?” I asked.
“She has many gifts.” That wasn’t an answer, but it also wasn’t a no. It still didn’t make any sense.
“Is one of them using ink to curse people?” I pressed.
Mace’s lips curled in disgust. “I should hope not. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must follow the trail where it leads.” He bowed and then vanished into thin air.
Leave it to a fae lord to show up, spout cryptic things, and then vanish, leaving me to deal with the body. I didn’t like the thought of a fae assassin doing their job in front of my office but at least I had a good idea of who had killed her: the red cap I’d run into earlier. The question was, why? And why did she or I smell faintly of some missing changeling?
I bent down and unzipped the dead woman’s coat. Her body was still warm and it felt wrong to manhandle her, and yet I had to check. I pulled off the right arm of the coat, unable to get the other side off without moving the arrow, and I didn’t want to do that. Sure enough, she had a swollen, puffy tattoo on her wrist.
I gasped and dropped her arm. I could still feel the magic pulsing there in the ink, even though the poor woman was dead.
I sighed and pulled out my phone, fingers hovering over the buttons. Adam wouldn’t be thrilled to get a call at four-thirty in the morning, but he wouldn’t be too salty if I paid him. And he could hold the body for me. But then what?
I thought of calling Conor. My chest ached. Conor had resources I didn’t, but it meant working with the Watchers again, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
I called Adam.
Chapter 8
Adam stared at the body. He’d driven the hearse, at least, but seemed perplexed by the arrow. He kept trying to put his hands into the faux pockets of his purple skinny jeans, and then dropped them to his sides, repeating the process as if it might help all this make sense. When that failed, he’d run his hand through his dyed pink hair.
“I mean, should we even move her?” he asked. “Isn’t this, you know, a crime scene?”
Adam was a mundane human, a mortal guy with a macabre interest in biology and a willingness to do ethically questionable things to help make his rent. We had that in common. But he didn’t know much about the supernatural world, which meant I was usually explaining it to him.
“It is, but not that kind,” I said. Unlike the mortal authorities, the Watchers didn’t worry much about keeping a scene pristine. They might keep it cordoned off to get a good look or do magic to help recreate the crime or chase the criminal, but moving a body wasn’t the high crime it might be to human police, as long as you kept the body intact.
Besides, I had no intention of involving the Watchers in this.
“But she’s been shot,” he said, still fixated on the arrow. If you stared at it long enough, it didn’t look real anymore. It looked like some kind of movie prop or bad Halloween costume.
“Yeah, but she’s also beyond help. Moving her now isn’t going to hurt her.”
I felt a pang of regret. I wondered who this woman was, what she’d been doing here. She had a tattoo that suggested a curse like my own, and that meant she probably had come to my office to seek my help, for all the good that had done her. I’d been too late to help her, not that I’d had much of a chance.
I was sure the red cap had killed her, but I didn’t know why. Because she’d been at my office and looked a little like me in the dark? Had the faerie assassin mistaken her for me?
And if so, why would a faerie assassin be after me?
Was it related to the tattoo or was that just a horrible coincidence? If the tattoo’s curse led to the worst luck, it might be the reason she’d caught an arrow in the heart: she’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But why was an assassin of the Unseelie Court lurking around my office with a quiver full of poisoned arrows in the first place?
I’d been awake too long and my brain was total mush. I had too many questions and not nearly enough answers.
“I’ll help you get her in the car,” I said, and lifted the woman’s feet.
Adam sighed. He pulled a gurney out of the hearse and rolled it up to the woman before bending down and helping me lift her on top of the cold metal cart. He covered her with a blanket, which tented at the arrow, and then pushed her into the back of the car, shooting me a look before closing the door. “I can hold her for a few days without raising suspicion at work, but not indefinitely. Tell me you have a plan.”
“I have a plan,” I said. And I did. Sort of. Vaguely. Finding answers was a plan, after all.
“Convincing,” Adam said, totally not convinced. “Just let me know what you want me to do.”
“Will do. And hey, don’t touch the arrow, okay? Especially the tip. I think it’s poisoned.” The only thing I knew about fae poisons was that they were potent.
Adam raised an eyebrow. “Man, I don’t charge you enough.” He got in the driver’s seat and sped off.
At least now there wasn’t a body in my doorway. That was something.
I went upstairs and looked up better, stronger anti-hex potions than the one I’d attempted earlier that evening.
I brewed the strongest one I could with the ingredients I had on hand--mainly vinegar, fennel seed, and rue--and chugged it. My stomach burned and I burped. A moment later, the tattoo tingled. I hoped that meant the potion was working.
I fell into bed, too tired to wait and see if it worked.
* * *
I awoke with my veins on fire. The burning was so intense that I leaped out of bed as if it were aflame, but putting weight on my legs only made the pain worse.
It felt like a raging inferno was blazing through my limbs. My stomach roiled, acid boiling and rising in my throat. Nausea rushed over me and I stumbled to the bathroom where I tried and failed to vomit.
I leaned against the counter, using it to prop myself up as pain radiated through my legs. My face looked pale and gaunt as if I were sick with some kind of awful plague.
The sheer agony in my bones made it hard to focus and my vision swam. I stumbled back to my bedroom somehow and sat on the bed, trying to breathe and make the pain stop. After a long moment, the heat and horror ebbed. Or maybe I got more used to it.
Either way, I managed to get to the couch and open my computer. I double checked the recipe of the anti-hex drink I’d made. It was all basic stuff that I’d used before. It shouldn’t be causing this misery. Was it the curse? Or was something else happening now, perhaps because of the curse? It felt like I’d been poisoned.
In a panic, I tried to remember if I’d touched the poisoned arrow but I hadn’t. I was sure I hadn’t.
I didn’t know what was happening to me. I only knew I needed it to stop. I picked up my phone and called the first person I could think of.
It was only when Conor arrived that I realized I was still wearing my pajama shorts and a ratty t-shirt that was falling apart. The upside of blinding pain is that it made it hard to give a shit about how I look
ed. At least until Conor, face full of worry, said, “You look like hell.”
“I feel like hell,” I said, gritting my teeth as another wave of searing hot pain rushed through me.
Conor looked me over, eyes stopping at the ugly, swollen black tattoo. “You got ink?”
“Not on purpose. It’s cursed,” I said.
Conor’s whole face shattered, his eyes widening. “A cursed tattoo? Are you—?”
“No,” I said sharply. “I’m not okay. It feels like my bone marrow is burning.” I opened my computer and showed him the anti-hex potion I’d made. “I drank that about two hours ago and woke up like this. Help.”
Conor pulled the computer toward him, studying the ingredients with a frown on his face. “This is a good anti-hex spell,” he finally announced. “It should help. Unless the curse has some kind of protection around it.”
“Protection?” I felt out of my depth.
I was far from an expert on curses but I liked to think I had a rudimentary understanding of how they worked. Most of them were fairly basic—if evil—magic. They did one thing: made a person suffer in whatever way the curse-maker intended. Curses were meant to harm people but they almost always had escape clauses: all you had to do was figure out how to break it, and the spell would lose its hold. I’d never heard of curses having protection spells on top of them.
“Intricate curses sometimes have a protection spell woven into them to prevent things like anti-hex potions and spells from breaking them. It’s not easy to do but if someone is determined to make the curse work…” He trailed off.
He reached out and touched my arm, his skin warm and comforting even against the fire in my veins. He moved his hand over the tattoo, his fingers hovering a centimeter or so above the ink. He closed his eyes as if he could feel the magic pulsing out of it. He shrank back, yanking his hand away.
“That bad, huh?” Another wave of agony washed over me and I rode it out, clenching my muscles until the pain ebbed.
“It’s complex. And done with spelled ink.” He scratched the dark stubble on his unshaven face (which made him look ruggedly handsome, not that I could appreciate it at the moment). “I’ve never seen such a curse on a living person.”
I swallowed, uneasy, my mind conjuring images of Leah Smart, the dead woman at my door. “Thanks, that’s reassuring.”
Conor winced. “Sorry. I simply meant that I’ve seen curses like this but only in books, in stories. It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever encountered or heard of in recent times, particularly not tattooed into someone’s skin. Usually, the most vicious curses are woven into one’s hair or marked with ash on their foreheads.”
“Can you do anything about it?” I asked, gritting my teeth again. I was trying my damnedest not to collapse into a puddle of misery and the pain kept coming in hot waves of horror.
Conor considered. He was looking at me like I was a mess he was trying to determine how to clean up and while that was absolutely true, it didn’t feel great. “Milkweed to help null the effects of the potion. I’m afraid it won’t help the curse, but...” He flipped his hands palm-up in a what can you do? gesture.
“But I’m already screwed on that front,” I supplied.
“I’ll go get milkweed. You try to clean up. And then I’ll take you to breakfast and you can tell me the whole story.”
I nodded. Much as I’d been trying to avoid Conor, he was easy to work with. And more, he made me feel like nothing was insurmountable, not even this nasty, twenty-pronged curse from hell.
I took a quick scrub and rinse in the shower and managed to ignore the pain long enough to pull on jeans and a sweater.
When Conor returned with milkweed mixed into actual milk, I chugged it eagerly. The stuff tasted grassy and sour, but it did help. As I drank, it cooled my stomach and then moved through me, putting out the fires. Less than five minutes later, I was left with only a mild throb in the tattoo. All the other pain was gone. My vision cleared. My brain didn’t burn when I tried to form thoughts.
“Better?” Conor asked.
“A lot better, thanks,” I took several deep breaths, re-acclimating to a world that wasn’t full of constant pain. And then I pulled on my coat. “I believe there was a promise of pancakes.”
* * *
Conor and I went to Denny’s, which won out because it was in walking distance and open. I ate a stack of buttermilk pancakes with a side of eggs and bacon, washing it down with a pot of coffee, and told Conor the whole story of how I’d met Krissy, encountered Jade, and gotten myself cursed.
Conor picked at a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, eating slowly as he absorbed my story. “So she’s using atramancy and magic ink she brews herself,” he said. “That would help her make the curse complex. And putting it into the skin is genius, in terms of effectiveness.”
“Can we not praise the woman who is literally making my life miserable?” I asked, stabbing at my pancakes with my fork.
“I’m not. I’m merely pointing out that she knows what she’s doing. It’s one thing to curse people. It’s another to do so with such nuanced and layered magic.” Conor sipped at his coffee. “After we eat, we can go arrest her. Hold her to account. The threat of the dungeon should be enough to make her lift your curse.”
“There’s something else,” I said, setting my fork down and meeting Conor’s eyes. “I think she might be part fae. Or working with the fae. I don’t know. There are a lot of fae around lately.”
Conor frowned. “But atramancy is witch magic and your curse doesn’t have the hallmarks of a fae curse.”
I knew little of fae magic but I wasn’t so sure. I’d never heard of a witch curse that would actively fight against attempts to nullify it with magic, but according to Conor, that was a thing witches did.
“If she is fae, you can’t arrest her,” I pointed out.
Conor’s frown deepened. “At the very least, she’s harming local supernaturals. I can certainly look into it.”
I finished my food and stacked my silverware on the plate, crumpling my napkin on top. The waitress cleared our table and brought a check. I reached for my wallet but Conor beat me to the punch. I was too tired to argue.
“I have to tell you something else,” I said.
Conor raised his eyebrows in question. “There’s more?”
“Just one little thing.”
Conor did not look excited. Given what I was about to show him, I couldn’t really blame him.
Chapter 9
Adam yawned pointedly as he opened the door to the funeral home. I shoved a venti latte in his hand to preempt any complaints about calling him into work so early when he’d done my bidding in the wee hours of the morning.
I’d made Conor hit the drive-thru at the nearest Starbucks on the way over, unwilling to face the day without extra caffeine on less than two hours of sleep. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to grease Adam’s wheels, either.
Besides, I owed Adam. He’d collected the body for me and now I had him at his workplace just after sunrise so I could show said body to someone else.
“Who’s your friend?” Adam nodded at Conor.
“Conor Ramsey,” Conor said, extending a hand. “Watcher and Demon Hunter.”
Adam hesitated and then shook. Despite the fact that he couldn’t have gotten much more sleep than I had, Adam looked put together. He wore bright green skinny jeans with matching green eyeliner, a black sweater, and he’d found time to gel and style his pink hair. He led us down to the morgue/prep area and set his coffee on a metal rolling rack.
“She’s in here,” he said, going to the wall of refrigerated drawers. He slid one open and revealed the body of Leah Smart, still in her puffy blue jacket with the arrow sticking out of her chest.
Conor stepped closer to get a better look, brow furrowed as he studied the body. I hung back. I’d seen enough of the dead woman last night. “She was killed in your office?” he asked.
“In front of my office,” I said.
&n
bsp; Conor gingerly reached out and touched the feathers on the arrow, careful not to disturb it. “This is fae. I recognize the feathers. They’re from a fae bird called a Snow Singer.”
“Fae?” Adam asked. He was leaning against the metal counter, drinking his latte.
“The arrow,” I clarified. “It’s a faerie arrow.”
“Okay. Adding faeries to the list of things I should be terrified of,” he said.
Conor shot me a look I couldn’t read, but I suspected it was meant as a rebuke for telling our business to a human. But Adam had seen plenty. He’d done a necropsy on a wolf I was convinced was a shifter—turned out to be wrong, but still—and he’d examined dead witches and goblins for me. He wasn’t exactly out of the supernatural loop.
“This isn’t good,” Conor finally announced, turning away from the drawer.
“No, it’s not. Glad we’re on the same page,” I said, a familiar flare of irritation igniting in my midsection. It burned out quickly, though. Conor was trying to help. And right now, I needed all the help I could get. Lack of sleep was making me cranky. Well, crankier than normal.
“Dani,” Conor said, his tone low and warning. Even Adam looked up, startled. “You don’t get it. This is the arrow of a fae assassin.”
“Yeah, I sort of figured that out,” I said. “It’s obviously not the arrow of a fae peacemaker.”
Conor shook his head. “I believe you were the target.”
I blinked. I shot a glance at Adam, who was carefully examining his newly painted purple fingernails and obviously trying to stay out of it. “What makes you think that?”
Conor ushered me over. I reluctantly moved toward the corpse. Cold wafted out of the fridge and her body lay unnervingly still on the metal slab. Her dark hair had been tucked beneath her head and her arms had been positioned flat at her sides. Her eyes were still wide, her fists still tightly clenched. She didn’t look at peace. She looked empty.
Demon Rogue: Brimstone Magic - Book 3 Page 6