Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel

by Kalayna Price

  “I know.” But his tone carried a sulking note.

  I dropped my hands from my face and glanced back at him. As soon as my eyes fell on the ghost, the barrage of magic attacking my shields found a crack. I mentally grabbed at the slipping power, trying to draw it back.

  Too late.

  That part of me with an affinity for the dead, that power that let me reach across the chasm, spiraled out of me. What it wanted was grave essence, which every corpse contained, but the office was warded, and no grave essence could make it through. So it reached for the next best thing—a ghost.

  Roy straightened with a jolt as my power hit him, his eyes flying wide. Then color bled into his clothes and hair as my magic pulled him closer to the land of the living.

  I clamped down on the power, tightening my shields. I imagined the living vines that kept the dead out—and my magic in—slithering closed. A cold sweat dripped down my neck, but I stopped hemorrhaging magic.

  Roy gasped—typically an unnecessary action for a ghost—and then doubled forward. “Geez, Alex, warn me next time,” he said between ragged breaths. “I mean, you know I’m more than willing to let you siphon however much power into me that you want, but what the hell was that?”

  “An accident.” I frowned at him. With my shields this locked down, I should have been as disconnected from the other planes as possible. Instead my peripheral was filled with the chaotic mix of several planes. And Roy, well, I wasn’t sure if enough power had spilled out of me to make him manifest in reality, but his color was wrong, and in more than him being too vivid for a ghost. Or maybe it wasn’t his color. Maybe it was the way my psyche perceived him. Something was definitely off. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just…” He straightened and rolled his shoulders. “It’s never hurt before.”

  He winced, and my frown deepened. Ghosts are dead. As such, they can’t be killed. They can fade out of existence, but they can’t die, and before this moment, I’d have sworn nothing could hurt Roy. Or at least, nothing had before, even when I’d siphoned enough power into him that he fully manifested in reality.

  Roy looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time, and maybe he was. The land of the dead overlaid the living world perfectly, except that everything on the other side of the chasm was ruined and decayed. The farther from the chasm the ghost went, the worse the destruction. Even with my planeweaving and grave magic, I’d seen only the first couple of layers, but Roy had told me that in the heart of it there was nothing but dust and wasteland. Depending on how far into reality my magic had pulled Roy, he might be seeing the room almost as intact as it truly existed.

  “So am I here?” he asked, curiosity peeking through the wince claiming his features.

  “Not sure. Why don’t you try walking through that wall.” Now I was the one with labored breathing. I couldn’t keep my shields locked this tight much longer.

  The ghost frowned at me. “You know I can’t walk through walls. Not unless they aren’t there in my plane.”

  “I know.” Pain built behind my eyes, between my ears, and clawed down my spine. “Roy, I have to loosen my shields. If you don’t want a repeat performance from a minute ago, you might want to get out of here.”

  His gaze moved toward the door, but he shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t move. “I’m ready this time.”

  I almost made him leave anyway. After all, he’d been a factor in the magic overwhelming me. But if a ghost in the room set me off, how the hell was I going to step foot beyond the wards? As soon as the first tendril of grave essence reached for me, my magic would pummel through my shields. My grave magic preferred humans, but if I lost control, it would settle for any mammal or avian corpse in the vicinity. Wouldn’t that be something to loose in the Quarter? It would definitely get Tongues for the Dead noticed, but not in a good way. I shouldn’t have waited so long between rituals. Case or no case, as soon as Rianna returned, I needed to head to the nearest cemetery.

  But first I had to see if my magic would flare out of control again if I let my shields return to a maintainable level.

  “Okay, fair warning,” I told Roy. Then I loosened my mental hold, letting the vines in my mind relax—not open, they still maintained a solid wall, but no longer in a vicelike knot. The pain in my head lessened as I stopped working so hard, and I waited for the assault from my own magic.

  It didn’t come. The magic didn’t even rise to test the weakened shields. I blinked in surprise. I could still feel it inside me, like I was a cup filled to the brim and close to boiling over, but for now the magic wasn’t overflowing. I let out a sigh, relaxing back into my chair.

  “So it’s done?” Roy asked, his expression torn between disappointment and relief. At my nod, his shoulders rolled forward a bit and he said, “Oh, okay.”

  He looked around my sparsely decorated office and then reached for one of the only things on my desk besides my laptop—a framed photo of my dog. I leapt from my chair and grabbed it before he could.

  “Hands off,” I warned.

  “Ah, come on, Alex, I just want to see what that little jolt did,” he said, shoving his thick-rimmed glasses farther up his nose.

  The first time I’d pumped magic into Roy, he’d gone from an average haunt not able to interact with reality at all, to a passable poltergeist capable of moving small objects when he concentrated. I’d siphoned power into him a few times since then, but it had always been small, controlled amounts. Even with that, he was getting better at picking up, and sometimes throwing, real objects—and I had the broken dishes to prove it. Of course, if he was fully manifested currently, he’d be able to interact with anything he wanted until the energy dissipated.

  “Go play with that chair,” I said, nodding at one of the two client chairs at the other side of my desk—not that any clients had actually sat in them yet.

  Roy glanced at the chairs and his shoulders sank as if he were deflating into himself. “You know, I’ve been thinking…” he said.

  Uh-oh. Did I even want to know?

  Not that I had a choice. After shuffling his feet for a moment, Roy looked up, but his gaze was somewhere over my shoulder as he spoke. “I was…Well, since I’m here all the time anyway…I just thought…” He trailed off again and I was beginning to think he’d never get around to whatever he wanted to say when his gaze snapped to meet mine, he straightened, and said, “I think I should have my own office.”

  “You’re a ghost.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not using the room next door.”

  “Roy, that’s a broom closet.”

  The ghost frowned at me, but he didn’t back down. “You don’t have a broom.”

  True. But we’d eventually have to get a vacuum cleaner as the office was carpeted. I almost said as much, but Roy was still standing up straight, watching my expression, and I knew that he must have been building up to asking me about an office for days.

  “Why would you want an office that exists in the living world? I mean really, what’s the point?”

  “Because it would be mine,” he said, his gaze going distant for a moment. Then his eyes snapped to me again and he clearly didn’t like what he saw in my expression. “Oh come on, Alex. It’s not like I haven’t been helpful before. Remember when I helped you sneak into the State House? Or when I trailed those Spells for the Rest of Us guys? I can help on your cases. I just want my own office.”

  The last was more whine than statement, and his bottom lip protruded slightly as he shoved his balled fists into his pockets. Geez, I hated when he pouted.

  “Okay, fine. The broom closet is all yours,” I said, and Roy immediately perked up, a smile breaking across his face. “But you’ll have to share it with a vacuum when we finally get one. And you have to get along with Rianna.”

  That smile darkened and fell as quickly as it had appeared. I couldn’t exactly fault the response, after all, Rianna had played a major role in his death. Not an easy thing to forgive and forget, even
if she had been under someone else’s control at the time.

  “Just stay out of each other’s way,” I said as the ghost slouched into a sulk. Avoiding each other shouldn’t be hard, she couldn’t see him unless she tapped the grave, so as long as he ignored her, everything should be fine. A small smile crept along the edge of Roy’s mouth and I added, “And no hurling objects at her.”

  The smile slipped and he gave me a “Who me?” look, which I didn’t buy in the least.

  “If I hear about her getting assaulted by office supplies, you lose all rights to the office,” I warned and his shoulders curled farther forward as he huffed out a breath.

  “Fine. Can you bring my blocks to my office?”

  I nodded. I’d bought him the blocks to save what was left of my dishware.

  “And the Scrabble game?”

  Again I nodded.

  “And can I have my name added to the door?”

  “Don’t push it.”

  “Ah, but—” Whatever argument he might have concocted to try to convince me that putting a dead norm’s name on the sign was a brilliant plan stopped abruptly as the chime on the door rang through the front room.

  I expected to feel the familiar tingle of Rianna’s magic, but I could sense only the smallest bit of magic, and it wasn’t familiar.

  I jumped to my feet. A client? Finally. I rushed around my desk, but Roy stepped into my path, his eyes wide behind his thick-framed glasses.

  “Am I…?” The whispered question trailed off as Roy gave an exaggerated wave of his hand and I knew he was asking if he would be visible to whomever had entered.

  I honestly had no idea. The ghost looked pretty solid to me, but he always did so I wasn’t a great judge. Then there was the fact I still had other planes filling my peripheral vision, giving me glimpses of the world decayed, of colorful wisps of magic, of the emotional shadow of those who’d passed through the room before, and occasionally flashes of planes I couldn’t identify. Recently, determining if what I saw was what everyone else in the world saw was a lot more complicated than it should have been.

  “Just go with it,” I whispered back. “If the client sees you, we’ll deal with it.”

  Then I stepped around him and rushed into the lobby to greet what I hoped was our first walk-in client.

  Chapter 4

  The woman standing in the center of the lobby was a complete stranger, but I immediately guessed who she was. Or, at least, I knew who she was related to—the ghost standing behind her was the jumper Rianna and I had encountered last week.

  “Welcome to Tongues for the Dead Investigations,” I said, stepping forward and extending my hand. “I’m Alex Craft.”

  The woman, who looked to be in her late forties and very, very pregnant, tore her less than impressed gaze from studying the lobby and turned those critical eyes on me. I got the distinct impression she disapproved of my appearance even more than that of the ramshackle office. Of course, despite her swollen belly, she wore what had to be a tailor-made dress suit, complete with pearls and fat-heeled pumps that her water-bloated ankles pudged over. I, on the other hand, owned only two pairs of dress slacks and I’d already worn those this week. Today I had on a pair of hip-huggers. They were black and I’d paired them with a flattering blouse, so I thought I’d pulled off something close to business casual.

  My prospective client clearly didn’t agree.

  She frowned at me before releasing the death grip on her designer purse and reaching out to give my hand a limp squeeze. Pain shot through my fingers and up my arm. If I hadn’t spent the last two months perfecting not flinching whenever I came into skin contact with someone, I would have winced. But I had practiced, and I kept my smile locked tight on my face. Still, I was thankful when she dropped my hand, even though she pulled back as if I had some disease that might be contagious.

  Several months ago my body temperature had dropped significantly, so much so that the touch of someone running your typical 98.6 was uncomfortably hot against my skin. But I was accustomed to that. The pain from her touch had been deeper, sharper. I glanced at her well-manicured hand and noticed a thick ring of dull metal.

  Iron.

  So Tongues for the Dead’s first walk-in client was firmly anti-fae. Great. And wasn’t that just my luck? Of course, judging by her disapproving expression aimed at, well, everything, she might turn around and waddle right back out of our office. And I wasn’t sure I’d be disappointed by her doing just that. Of course, we needed the money if we were going to really fix this place up, and I definitely needed to raise a shade.

  “Would you like to have a seat in my office?” I asked, taking a step to the side and gesturing toward my open door.

  The woman continued to study me and Roy stepped forward, extending his own hand. “I’m Roy Pearson.”

  She didn’t even glance at him, though the other ghost looked up, and on seeing Roy, shrank back a step behind his wife.

  Well, that answers that question. Whatever I’d done to Roy, I hadn’t forced him to manifest.

  When the woman ignored Roy, he frowned, gave me a nod, and then stepped back, his eyes on the other ghost. Neither spoke. They watched each other warily, and I realized this was the first time I’d seen two ghosts in the same place outside of a cemetery. Ghosts were so rare, I’d never considered that they might avoid each other intentionally or what would happen if they crossed paths—judging by the hostile glances between these two, nothing good.

  “You’re very cold,” my potential client said.

  I’d been so busy watching the ghosts’ interactions that I’d missed the fact she’d finished her assessment. Her expression wasn’t pleased, but apparently I’d passed, at least enough for her to finally deign to speak to me.

  I shrugged off the comment but kept my face in what I hoped was a politely professional smile. “Hazard of the job.”

  “Then you’re the grave witch? The one who talks to ghosts?”

  My gaze flickered to the shimmering form behind her. Oh, I could talk to ghosts. But that wasn’t why people hired me. Ghosts were rare anomalies—which wasn’t properly represented at the moment as I had two in my office. But as a general rule, ghosts occurred only when something went wrong. Grave witches raised shades, which were the collective memories stored in every cell of the body given shape by magic. I didn’t bother correcting her. Instead I nodded and said, “I’m one of two investigators with the firm.”

  Roy cleared his throat, clearly miffed at being left out. I ignored him as he disappeared through the door of the broom closet.

  “Would you like to step into my office and discuss your case, Ms…?”

  “Mrs. Kingly,” she said, but this time she walked to my office, her movements slow as she waddled with one hand supporting her belly and the other clutching her purse. The ghost followed, shiny ephemeral tear tracks evident on his cheeks. The woman tottered when her heel caught in a hole in the carpet that Rianna had used magic to disguise. The ghost threw out his arms, trying to support his wife. His hands passed through her with her none the wiser of his presence. I jumped forward, but the woman straightened before I reached her, which was probably for the best. I had the distinct impression she wouldn’t have appreciated me touching her. She waddled the last five feet to my office, her husband haunting her wake.

  If Mrs. Kingly had been less than impressed with the front room, my office didn’t do much to improve her opinion. A salvaged, battered desk took up most of the small area. It left just enough space for my chair and the two almost matching client chairs. The room wasn’t exactly cramped, but if I closed the door it would get claustrophobic fast. At least she didn’t stand there assessing the room with disapproval this time, but lowered herself awkwardly into one of the chairs. I spent half a moment wondering if I should offer some sort of help, but I didn’t know what she might need so instead I scooted around my desk and sat in my own chair.

  “I assume you’re here about your husband?” I asked once we were
both settled.

  My client startled, her eyes flying wide before the expression turned into something that looked a lot like suspicion. Of course, she’d just walked in off the street and had no idea her dead husband was following her around. I probably should have approached the topic less directly, but I wasn’t used to dealing with clients face-to-face until after all the details of a case were worked out.

  She studied me with narrowed eyes for a long moment before finally saying, “I suppose it doesn’t matter how you guessed that, but yes, I’m here about my husband, James Anderson Kingly.” She touched her belly and added, “Senior.” She paused, looking away from me. “Do you have a tissue?”

  Crap, tissue. That was definitely something I should have in the office. I added it to my mental shopping list because if we had grieving family members walking in to hire us, this was unlikely to be the only time someone asked for a tissue. I shook my head to let her know I didn’t have any and noticed for the first time that under Mrs. Kingly’s perfectly applied makeup, her eyes were red from crying.

  “There’s a bathroom on the other side of the lobby. I can show you to it.”

  She sat there, silent, unmoving, her gaze focused on the window on the far side of the room. Then she shook her head, but she still said nothing. I didn’t push her. Her husband had just died, which didn’t excuse the chilly demeanor she’d treated me with, but it factored into the equation. Appearances were clearly important to her, and she was too proud to break down in front of a stranger, so I gave her time to collect herself, even if that meant she’d wrap herself back in that disdainful armor she’d walked in wearing. Finally she turned to me, and while her eyes were shiny as if tears could fall at any moment, the glare she speared me with was cold. Hard. No big surprise there.

  “An officer gave me your card and said that you’d told him that James didn’t kill himself,” she said, opening her purse and producing the card, which wasn’t mine, but Rianna’s. Of course, as the card had been torn into several pieces before being taped back together, the only thing legible was the name of the firm. “Can you prove that claim?” she asked. “Can you prove it wasn’t suicide?”