“I’m gonna go home and probably talk to my boyfriend about doing the dishes. He never does ’em.”
“Good luck with that.”
Once they were outside in the chilly darkness, Veruca found herself chuckling.
“You may have pulled a little too much out of her.”
“She’ll be fine before she gets home. I didn’t take, just repressed. In fact, I’m sure if she’s hitting up those jelly beans, the guilt and worry over being caught will keep her from eating too many.”
“It’s Jessica’s fault, really. Who leaves a whole bag of jelly beans next to the Post-its? That’s just asking for trouble.”
Chapter Eleven
“Fuck me,” Finn whimpered, hoping the sparks burning holes in his vision were part of the pixie’s glamour and not the result of any serious injury. His neck felt on the verge of breaking and the top of his head had possibly caved in some as it had hit the ground.
The lamia was still thrashing, wrestling with her own hands, which seemed to have become glued to her face. Her tail walloped right into Finn, sending him sliding across the rough concrete until he felt his spine crunch against the iron bars of the cage. The pixie merely wobbled through the air until it came to rest next to him, still projecting the glamour of a different location as if the lamia weren’t too distracted to believe its existence.
Finn let himself lay still for a minute, maybe for ten. He couldn’t figure out what was going through his mind, having lost all sense of anything that wasn’t pain. Distantly his brain marveled at the detail set out by the pixie, the thin veil of what appeared to be a sunny afternoon full of butterflies, thick, soft grass, and the amazing smell of fresh-baked pies that had been smeared about the yard by an angry lamia. The pixie kept up the glamour effortlessly, as if every detail could render itself individually, leaving her to hover in the air like a drunk and slightly bored bee.
Smooth move, the pixie said in Finn’s head.
“Shut up,” Finn whimpered.
The lamia was having a hell of a time, panic driving her into a frenzy of muffled screams and bruising fits. But bruising wasn’t enough, Finn remembered. Alex had said, “To the blood” when talking to the desiccated raccoon. Finn was already bleeding, but it had been by his own hand. For all her self-injury, the lamia’s blood was still safely inside her body. If all Finn had to do to end things and get himself the hell out of the ring was make her bleed, he was willing to try.
“The fuck is my knife?” he mumbled, forcing himself to his feet.”Ahh, fuck me. Fuck you. Fuck this.”
Rude, the pixie thought, making Finn swat outward, whacking her right in the spine. Her body couldn’t feel pain, but the impact still counted, giving her—and thus Finn—a view of rapid forward motion. He had to act fast to keep himself from losing his footing once again.
Stumbling across the ring, careful to stay back lest the lamia’s thrashing pull her right up against him and send him crashing teeth first into face-uglying iron bars, Finn hobbled toward where he believed he’d started this stupid fight. Sure enough, there was his blood, the various spatters he’d left pooling together into one wide stain. The blade Alex had given him was sitting right in the middle, glinting in the light as if trying to get his attention.
“I see you,” Finn grumbled to himself before giving in to a delirious giggle. His head was killing him, but better it than the lamia, he thought. His entire body hurt, in fact. He was sure every capillary in his body had split open and he was bleeding into his own guts. But since none of it had split open his skin like a volcanic eruption, he was actually feeling pretty lucky.
The pixie hovered close behind, still keeping the glamour alive around him, causing Finn to swerve when he thought for a split second he’d been about to step in a grassy pile of key lime. She laughed in his head, and Finn realized after a moment that she’d put it there just to mess with him.
He decided he didn’t like pixies.
The lamia had managed to separate her hands from her face, but from the look of the raw skin devoid of scales along her cheeks, it hadn’t been easy. Finn felt a little bad for her, knowing what it was like to have great patches of skin scraped right off.
“No, no,” he scolded himself. “No compassion. Gotta slice this snake open. Somehow.”
He didn’t want to get any closer. She was possibly a worse danger to him now than she’d been before being slathered in pixie dust. Her movements were unbelievably fast, and worse than that, completely unpredictable. Finn didn’t want to get slammed by any part of her, nor sliced by her now free hands. If she didn’t sit still, the fight may never be called. It would be a stalemate, and Finn couldn’t be sure anyone would think to let him out.
“How sticky is this stuff anyway?” Finn asked, glancing over at the bobbing pixie. She turned her jowly face to his, but it was clear she had no interest in answering. Shaking his head, he combed his scrambled memories for the way it had felt when the pixie had dusted the lamia before and sent her over, bracing himself as he poured all the power he could into the order. The pixie tensed, pulling her plump limbs in tight, her paunchy face screwing up into a wrinkled approximation of strain, and then, catching his eye over a tight, smug smile, she exploded.
For a second, Finn was sure he’d pushed too hard, poured too much power into the pixie and caused her to self-destruct like a star going supernova. Whiteness blinded him, snowing down like a blizzard around the lamia and Finn himself. He felt the soft touch of the dust and it was pleasant along most of his right side for a split second before it became awful.
His eyelids were glued shut, his shirt felt heavy and stiff, and every minuscule movement of his dredged limbs felt like each individual hair was being plucked out by the root. He couldn’t open his mouth to whimper and only knew the lamia had been just as screwed because he was still in the pixie’s head, and she hadn’t been affected at all.
Obscenities ran through his mind like a never-ending locomotive as he brought the pixie in, had her grab the knife out of his hand, and sent her as quickly as her skinny wings would carry her to swipe the knife across the only bare patch of scales the pixie could find. Pale brown blood welled, and Finn held his breath, hoping everything would go instantly back to the way it had been before he’d been thrown into the ring with a terrifying snake woman.
Not how it works, dummy.
“Very good sir,” said someone outside the pixie’s field of view. “Your colleague has collected your reward. Would you like assistance into the showers?”
Finn mumbled his assent, hoping the stuffy, resonant voice that was speaking smoothly into his left ear understood what he couldn’t say with his mouth glued shut. Minutes passed before Finn felt the scalding spray of water cascading over his scalp and down his shoulders.
The pixie was still in his head, hovering above the lamia, which had been cemented to the floor of the cage by a layer of pixie dust so thick it resembled freshly squeezed Elmer’s.
So long, fae spawn, the pixie said, before his necromancy snapped back into his chest and Finn was left alone, wet, and stiff as a board.
****
“Was that a wasted trip?” Donald asked once they were back on the road and headed toward the hotel.”
“Not … not really. I learned something I’d suspected was correct, but didn’t learn anything to lead us to understand why or who.”
“What did you suspect?”
“That the necromancer sent a corpse to pick up Amanda’s. I’m assuming the family of someone at the other mortuary is due for a very unpleasant visit from Homicide—which I’m hoping you can look into for me, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, just tell me where to look and who to call.”
“I’ll write it down when we get back to the hotel. This is all such a mess,” Veruca said, dropping her head back against the headrest. “This asshole is going to take out half the city, and I don’t know why.”
“You’re sure there is a why? Maybe you’re wasting y
our time trying to find out.”
“You’ve done this sort of thing before,” she said, looking to Donald as he glanced away to check his blind spot. “You know the why can lead you to the who.”
“I didn’t mean from an investigative standpoint. I didn’t deal with corpses nearly this much, so maybe I know nothing, but this person seems to be a few headstones short of a graveyard. Maybe there is no proper why, and this guy is just nuts.”
“I’m sure he’s completely nuts, but there still has to be something driving him. He took Amanda’s body for a reason, sent it to talk to me for a reason, wanted Finn back for a reason. If I can find out what that reason is, even if it’s something loopy like, ‘because the cyborg melding of Teddy Roosevelt and a Roomba told me to,’ maybe I can find a way to put a stop to it.”
“Teddy Roombavelt,” Donald said. Veruca’s brain took a second, but once the picture of such a strange combination popped into her head, she snorted, despite her gloom.
“You don’t even need your empathy to fix moods, you just need to make jokes like that.”
“I try.”
Veruca smiled, but like Serena’s had been, it was reflexive, something for the other person’s benefit rather than an actual representation of how she felt in the moment. Smiling wouldn’t have come close to showing the world her true feelings.
Finn was missing, along with the untrustworthy woman Veruca had hired to keep him safe and clear his name. A mad necromancer was out in the world using a dead family to rob banks, Fairy thought the man Veruca loved was a threat to its invisibility, and the only thing she’d learned since starting her investigation was that the necromancer really had a hard-on for the corpse of Amanda Gleason.
Well, she hoped not a literal one.
“Ugh,” Veruca grumbled, shaking her head as she thought of what Belial had mentioned to her and Finn the day before.
“What?” Donald asked. “What’s wrong? What’s got you all greasy and tense?”
“Greasy?” Veruca asked, this time feeling the smile for real. “I feel greasy?”
“Disgust, you’re grossed out by something. It feels, uh, disgusting. Like being coated in something slimy and slick and smelly. Greasy. It’s not my fault I can read your emotions. I can’t really turn it off.”
“There are ways. I could direct you to a local witch who might be able to help.”
“First tell me what’s wrong.”
“I just can’t figure out why the necromancer wanted Amanda’s body. He has the other family members, the one he’s been using so far. Two are underage, but not by much, not so young they can’t be useful. Amanda, however, was left alone at the house after the necromancer took off. I don’t understand why he wanted back what he’d abandoned.”
Donald didn’t answer for a moment, his brow knitting as he thought about what she’d said. After a bit, he shook his head, slowing down to stop in front of the hotel.
“I’m sorry, I have no idea.”
“Well, that’s another ‘why’ we should probably figure out.”
“Then let’s go brainstorm.”
****
“You got some nice moves, pretty boy,” Alex said as Finn stepped out of the shower. She handed him a towel, and he wondered what it was supposed to do against his sopping wet clothes. “Unorthodox, but they got the job done. I wouldn’t have figured the pixie dust for the way to go. I’d have just glamoured you and yours invisible and sent the yeti in to slice her open.”
Finn stared at her, the possibilities of what she’d said opening up in his brain like a box full of angry bees. He’d gotten slammed, smacked, dropped on his head, mocked by a creature the size of his foot, and covered in the stickiest goo he’d ever come across, while all along the answer had been that simple.
He kind of wanted to cry.
“You put on a great show, though, which is really what matters in a ‘to the blood’ fight. You probably had that in mind the whole time, right, hot stuff?”
At a loss for what to say, Finn sighed, draping the towel over his head so he could scrub the water out of his hair. He was going to need a real shower at some point too since there seemed to be pixie dust in his ears and gluing shut his left nostril. He didn’t even want to think about how he’d get that stuff out.
“Got your necromancer’s name, though. Didn’t figure it for a woman, but maybe that’s sexist of me. You interested?”
“I just got my arse handed to me in pursuit of that name, of course I’m interested,” Finn spat, draping the towel over his shoulders as he toed off his squelching shoes and went at the button on his jeans. Alex could have a show if she wanted, he just needed to ring his clothes out or he’d never get dry.
“Our locator says the only other necromancer in a four-hundred-mile radius of Seattle is one Diana Merighi. She’s about your age, actually. Got the whole—”
Finn felt his brain short circuit, shock, terror, and panic running through his limbs until they shot out his fingers and seemed to take control of his hands.
“Merighi?” he demanded, grabbing Alex’s shirt and hauling her in close. “M-E-R-I-G-H-I? Spelled like that? Those exact letters in that exact order? You’re sure?”
Without missing a beat, Alex took his proximity as an opportunity, unzipping Finn’s fly and shoving his heavy jeans to the ground before stepping in closer as if assuming he wanted to get a little more intimate.
“I didn’t know spelling surnames got you all hot and bothered, pretty boy. Shall we go with something a little longer next? Spell ‘Somerset’, while I watch.”
Finn jolted her roughly, shaking his head.
“I’m not flirting, I need to know, is that who you mean? That’s the Diana they said is here?”
“That’s the Diana in Seattle, yeah. Why? You owe her money?”
“Oh, it’s much worse than that. We’ve got to find Veruca.”
“You’re just leaving your jeans?”
“No time for pants!” Finn insisted, already storming around her toward what he hoped was the exit.
****
“When was the last time you ate?” Donald asked when two hours had passed and his stomach had started grumbling audibly. Veruca had decided not to mention it right about the time he spoke. “I don’t remember you ordering any breakfast.”
“You’re keeping tabs on my eating habits?” Veruca asked, sitting up and arching her back to stretch it out.
“You said something was angry at you and Finn. I’ve asked the staff to let me know if any of them are going up to your room, just to make sure no one—or nothing—else slips up there behind an attendant.”
“Fair enough. I don’t think I’ve eaten today at all. I honestly … can’t remember.”
“Well, I’ll order your favorite.”
“You don’t have to. I’d rather keep working on this.”
“On what? We’ve got no ideas. We’ve gone over everything we can think of and you still don’t know where Finn’s been all day. Alex’s answering service might hire a hit man if you call and leave any more messages.”
Veruca rolled her eyes over a smile, but waved her hand vaguely in assent. “Fine, order whatever, but make sure it’s enough for both of us. I’m going to keep thinking.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to stop.”
Veruca stared down at the sheet of paper in front of her on the coffee table and wished she’d been able to fill it with more ideas. It helped her to see things physically rather than just discuss them, but the only reasons she could see as to why a necromancer would want the corpse he hadn’t seemed previously interested in were few.
Either the necromancer wanted the body for sick fetish purposes, or he was just trying to throw Veruca off. It was possible the body had something on it that could help identify the necromancer, but Clark hadn’t seen anything with his probing. Alex said the police hadn’t found anything useful on any of the other bodies the necromancer had dropped across the region, and it wasn’t like it was a particularly u
seful corpse on its own. Amanda had been young, slim, not in excellent shape, and even rather slight for her age. Even if she’d had fae blood, it wouldn’t have mattered once she was dead.
“What would make a corpse useful, though?” Veruca asked aloud as Donald came back to sit on the couch.
“Apparently, they’re good for robbing banks.”
“Not this one,” Veruca said, shaking her head and looking over at him. “None of the bank footage we found showed her on it.”
“Maybe she was an excellent driver and the necromancer was using her as a getaway.”
“That wouldn’t really come into play. She was your average seventeen year old, not Danica Patrick.”
“Was she fae spawn? Maybe she had something extra the necromancer wanted to hold onto?”
“I thought of that, and it wouldn’t have worked that way. You need the corpse’s soul to use any magic they may have had in life. Any power she might have been able to wield went out before the necromancer climbed in. I would have seen it if her soul was still around.”
“Seen it?” Donald asked, his brows lifting. “How so?”
Veruca blinked his way for a moment, trying to decide if she wanted to come clean. She’d trusted Finn to learn her secret within days of meeting him, and Donald had been watching out for her and her property for years. Belial would understand if she revealed a little of the truth.
“I’m a Reaper. The hotels are kind of just a day job.”
“A Reaper? I’m…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what that means. Is it a job? A power?”
“Both. I can read souls, and … take them occasionally.”
Donald leaned back, worry moving in a quick spasm across his expression. “Take?”
“Not for fun, and not without being given permission. It’s probably truer to say I collect them for those to whom they’ve been promised.”
“What sort of idiot promises to give their soul away?”
“Only some of them are idiots. Others are perfectly aware of what they’re doing and what the consequences will be. It’s why I went after Angelina when she fled. The rattle she stole was going to be payment for a replacement soul. She hoped it would take the place of her own when it was time to collect.”
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