“Don’t warn me off—prepare me. What is that thing? How do I stop it from jumping bodies?”
The three collectors exchanged a look I wasn’t invited to participate in. Then the raver turned toward me. “You see far too much, girl.”
“Walk away.” The gray man pointed his cane so the silver skull grinned at me a foot from my face. “Walk away and let someone else deal with it.”
“Who? Who can deal with it? You guys can see it and have made no effort to stop it.”
The three collectors went as still as statues. Then they turned toward one another, as if in silent conversation. I could read enough of their expressions to know that Death wanted to tell me whatever they silently debated. I guessed the gray man would vote no, which left the raver, who was the swing vote and tended to waver more than the other two. I hoped she was feeling charitable toward me today.
She raked a hand through the air in a dismissive gesture. “She’ll figure it out anyway,” she said.
The gray man, with his youthful features disguised under the blandness of his appearance, snapped his cane against his thigh, but gave a sharp “Fine” before turning toward me again.
“It does not exist on a plane we can touch, so we cannot do anything about its actions. But that doesn’t mean you need to get involved. Walk away.”
His message delivered, he vanished. The raver lifted a brightly dyed eyebrow, as if daring me to disagree; then she also vanished.
Which left Death, his handsome face torn, a mix of want and pain in his eyes as he stepped closer.
“I know you have to go,” I said.
“I don’t want to.”
I knew that too—it was written in every movement of his body—but I didn’t say it. There were laws against a mortal and a collector having a relationship. A month ago I’d even seen a horrific example of why. But I missed Death. I wanted him in my life.
I had a circle of people I considered my best friends, but Death was more than just a good friend or potential lover. He’d been there for the worst moments of my life, knew the secrets I told no one else, knew me. And despite everything he couldn’t tell me, I knew him. Oh, I didn’t know his name or understand his magic, but I knew his easy laugh, his kindness, his compassion, and yes, his flirtatious streak. I might want him as a man, but I needed my friend.
“If we went back to the way things were before…?”
Death stepped around my desk and brushed a curl behind my ear. The simple, familiar gesture sent a shiver of excitement through me. Okay, maybe going back would be hard.
“That wouldn’t be enough anymore,” he whispered, as his fingers tilted my face toward his.
I dropped my gaze, avoiding the emotions in his eyes. His nearness woke a giddy excitement in my stomach, something much more than friendly, which carried on its heels the itch of guilt because he wasn’t the only man who affected me this way.
I changed the subject. “I have the artifact the witch and her reaper used in their ritual. Shouldn’t you take it?” After all, it allowed mortals to interact across planes—including the collectors’ plane.
I hated that damned artifact. It contributed to Death’s absence this last month. Though, to be fair, the actions of the twisted couple couldn’t be blamed on a magical relic. Still, in the aftermath of that horrible night, something inside me warned me not to turn the artifact over to the police.
“Is it secure?” Death asked, his expression turning serious.
I nodded. “It’s in a magical dampening box in my apartment.”
“You’re probably the only mortal with no use for the artifact, so that will be enough for now. I’ll find out what should be done with it.” His thumb ran along my jaw, sending shivers down my body. “That will give me an excuse to return.”
He leaned forward and his breath tumbled over my lips, smelling of dew and clean, fresh turned earth. I froze, uncertain if I wanted to pull away or accept the kiss.
It turned out I didn’t have to make the decision.
A hand with bright orange nails appeared, grabbed my shoulders, and jerked me back, making my chair tilt as it rolled over the uneven carpet.
I yelped, more in surprise than anything, and the raver stepped between Death and me.
“You two seriously need a babysitter,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring first at me and then him. “Time to go.”
Death said nothing, he just glanced over her head, meeting my gaze, and then vanished. She followed suit.
I sat there, alone in my office, still seeing the look in Death’s eyes before he left. Those eyes that could smile even when he wasn’t; those eyes that could tease. But tonight, in that last look, what I saw in those eyes reminded me of words I only half remembered from when I’d been dying under the Blood Moon. And that terrified me, because that night Death had said he loved me.
Chapter 19
I stopped in the doorway of the Tongues for the Dead office, the morning sunlight streaming in behind me and reflecting off the burnished wood of a large executive desk. A desk that hadn’t been there when Caleb and Holly had picked me up at midnight.
Okay, either I’m dreaming or the desk fairy came overnight.
I blinked, waiting to wake up. I didn’t and the desk was still there. Desk fairy it is.
And the desk wasn’t the only new item. A large leather chair sat primly behind it, a blotter, a phone—which was even more a mystery as we didn’t have a landline—and a computer were placed neatly on the desk’s surface. Against the other wall, the threadbare seat had been replaced with a leather and wood love seat and two matching chairs. And on the wall opposite the main door? A grandfather clock taller than me.
I stepped back out the threshold, closed the door, and stared at the words Tongues for the Dead stenciled on the window, Rianna’s and my name under it. Yes, this was our office.
I opened the door again, expecting the ragtag collection of furnishings we’d had since opening a week ago to have reappeared. No, the expensive lobby decor still filled the lobby.
“Hello?” I said, not expecting an answer. If Rianna had been here—and she never beat me because of the erratic nature of the Bloom’s door—she would have left the door unlocked. Which meant I was alone with an office suite worth more than half a year’s rent.
Or at least I thought I was alone, until the door to my personal office swung open.
I dropped to a crouch, my hand moving to the hilt of my dagger. It was silly really. What did I expect? Burglars? Their MO was to take stuff, not replace junk with better stuff. Or maybe the office was the prop of a serial killer with an executive fetish.
From where I was squatting, the large desk blocked the bottom half of my door, but I expected to see the torso of whoever had opened it. I didn’t. The chair squealed, twisting slightly, and then a thud sounded as small bare feet landed on the top of the desk.
I straightened at the sight of the brownie, who stood maybe two and a half feet tall and nearly as wide. Her long, quill-like green hair trailed behind her, hanging over the back side of the large desk. Her small fists rounded and she pressed them against her hips.
“Ms. B?”
“You’re late,” she said, coal-colored eyes hard as she pointed to the large grandfather clock. The larger hand currently pointed at the three. “I expect you here on time tomorrow.”
“On time?” I repeated like a parrot. It was my business. How could I be late? Of course, I did have the hours posted on the door, and according to them I was, in fact, fifteen minutes late.
I almost asked her how she’d gotten into the locked and warded office, but I knew better. She bypassed the locks and wards on the house just as easily. I took another look around the room. There were even paintings on the walls.
“Is all of this glamour?”
“Of course not. That would never do,” she said, and the way she cocked her head implied she was questioning my general intelligence. She looked about to say more when the phone—the
one that shouldn’t have had a live connection—rang. “Tongues for the Dead,” Ms. B said in her gruff voice. She’d never be a phone sex operator, but she did sound surprisingly professional. “Yes, bring them in, we’re ready.” She set the phone back on the receiver and turned to me. “You planning on catching pixies in that trap?”
I blinked, then realized my jaw was hanging loose. I snapped my mouth shut.
The chime on the door sounded and Rianna said, “Oh hello.” But she didn’t step inside and she wasn’t talking to me. Two large trolls ducked under the doorway, not that they could stop ducking after they were inside—the ceiling had only an eight-foot clearance. The first carried four chairs, two with blue velvet seats and silver accents and the other two with green and brass.
“Blue this way,” Ms. B said, and turning jumped from the desk. Her hair rustled as she padded across the floor, which I noticed with more than a little shock was now a deep cherry hardwood instead of the ratty carpet. The small brownie headed into my office, and the troll with the chairs, Rianna and I followed.
My office’s transformation wasn’t quite as drastic as the lobby’s, but then there wasn’t much room to be drastic. My mismatched client chairs were gone, but were quickly replaced by the blue ones the troll was carrying. My chair, which had already been fairly nice, was still there, but I had to do a double take to realize the desk was the same as it had been stripped and refinished.
“I managed to salvage it,” Ms. B said, a note of pride in her voice.
The troll set the chairs down haphazardly. As Ms. B positioned them to her satisfaction, I looked at the other changes. I now owned a filing cabinet stained the same color as the desk and chairs, the broken blinds on my window had been replaced and blue curtains hung around them, and best yet, a mini fridge with a microwave and coffeepot on top sat in the farthest corner.
“Okay, I’m impressed.”
Ms. B clucked appreciatively and then turned toward Rianna. “Your turn, girl.”
She scampered out of my office and across the lobby to Rianna’s. Both trolls followed this time, one setting a new desk in the center of the room and the other placing the final two chairs. Rianna’s room was decorated with the same dark wood as mine, but where my accents were blue and silver, all of hers were green and brass. Desmond even had an oversized green velvet dog bed, which he immediately investigated.
Rianna and I looked at each other, sharing an approving nod.
“The small one goes in the little room,” Ms. B told the troll who still carried one desk, the size a pupil might use in school.
She got a desk for Roy? If he weren’t already dead, I guessed the ghost would keel over from joy. I couldn’t wait until he saw it. But one nagging worry scratched at the edge of my mind.
“Ms. B, how did you pay for all this?”
“From your treasury of course.”
My treasury? I made a mental whimper that I managed not to allow to escape any farther than my thoughts. “So, Faerie money?” I gave a despairing glance at all the beautiful things—which we were going to have to return. Faerie money didn’t remain money long; it turned back into leaves or rocks or whatever it was made from after a few hours, which meant everything was technically stolen.
“Not Faerie money,” the brownie said. Her expression was hard to read because of her very inhuman, coal-colored eyes and lack of a real nose, but she sounded offended.
Rianna elbowed me in the side and whispered. “Coleman made good money as governor. Of course, he also knew how to spend it, but he left quite a bit when he died.”
“I have a vault of money?” My voice sounded far away as I imagined what I could do with an entire vault of money.
“Not anymore.” Ms. B walked back into the lobby.
My shoulders sagged, just a little. “Oh.” Well, at least the office looks presentable, I guess. Though a bit of savings to invest back into the business wouldn’t have been amiss. I bet even Nina Kingly can’t find fault in this setup.
As if my thoughts summoned a client, the door chimed. I turned.
A mousy-looking woman with short cropped brown hair stood just inside the door, her eyes wide as she took in the now lavish lobby.
Ms. B hopped onto her desk. “Welcome to Tongues for the Dead, where not even death can keep secrets.”
That so wasn’t our tagline. Besides, Death was more than capable of keeping secrets. I should know.
The woman looked toward the desk, and her shoulders jumped as her gaze landed on the brownie. “Oh, uh. Hello?”
I stepped forward. “Hi, I’m Alex Craft,” I said, holding out my hand.
The woman gave me a relieved smile. “Kelly.” She took my hand and pumped it a little too vigorously. “Kelly Kirkwood.”
Crap. With everything that had happened with the collectors and then the surprise of Ms. B’s redecorating, I’d forgotten Kirkwood’s widow was supposed to stop by this morning. The collectors’ vague warning unnerved me, but I’d told Kelly that I’d work her case and I would stand by my word. After all, I had a business to get off the ground and dropping my first two cases wouldn’t be the best start.
My hand tingled both from Kelly’s warmth and her grip by the time I reclaimed it. Rianna hovered in her doorway and I motioned her over. “Mrs. Kirkwood, this is my associate, Rianna McBride. We’ll be working your husband’s case together.” That got an eyebrow lift from Rianna, but if Kelly noticed Rianna’s reaction, it didn’t stop her from giving Rianna as enthusiastic a handshake as she’d given me.
Introductions complete, I moved on to the more important matter. “Did you bring the items we discussed?”
“Right here.” She held up a thin manila folder.
“Perfect. Let’s have a seat in my office.”
With any luck, we’d find a pattern we could use to track the rider.
An hour and a half later, Kelly had signed the required paperwork, paid our retainer fee, and then, after I’d promised to keep her up-to-date, she’d left to plan her husband’s funeral. Since then Rianna and I had poured over Kirkwood’s purchases for the three days he’d been possessed. We’d expected the five-star restaurant charges, and as Rianna had noted with Kingly’s cuisine choices, they were in alphabetical order—this time Jeniveve, La Belle, and Le Rouge, which, on a list of Nekros’s five-star restaurants, were directly before the ones he’d eaten at while in Kingly’s body.
“It’s been what, thirteen days since Kingly died? What restaurant is thirteen spaces below Pandora’s Delight—that was the last place Kingly ate, right?” I asked. We were hours from lunchtime, but if we knew where the rider was going, finding him would be a hell of a lot easier.
But do I want to find him? I couldn’t help thinking about the collectors’ visit last night and their warning to let someone else handle the case. But I’d called John after Death had left, and he’d insisted I lacked enough physical evidence to open a homicide case.
Which leaves us to find the rider. That didn’t mean we had to engage him, just find him and then call in the big guns. I glanced at Rianna, waiting for her to check on the restaurant.
She pulled out her phone and in a few clicks, had the search results she’d used the day before. “Problem,” she said, frowning. “There are only nine more five-star restaurants listed.”
Damn. That meant he could be anywhere. Would he start back at the beginning? Or return to favorites? I had no way of knowing.
The rest of Kirkwood’s charges weren’t terribly enlightening. The hotel he’d stayed at was also a five-star establishment, but he’d stayed there both of the nights before he’d doused himself with gas and we didn’t know where Kingly had stayed. The rider had also hired escorts, which I hadn’t even realized Nekros had until I looked up what the—rather outrageous—charges on the card were.
“Why did he go to a ballet?” Rianna asked, pointing to one of the final charges on the card.
I shook my head. “He also attended four movies and went to an art galle
ry.” I stared at the charges. “What is it doing? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that it’s eating good food, staying in luxurious places, indulging its libido, and all around living the highlife on its victim’s dime before sucking the body dry and jumping to a new one, but why? What’s its point?”
Rianna shrugged. “Does it have to have one? Maybe that’s the extent of it.”
Supernatural identity theft? Yes, but this ended in death, not a battle with creditors.
“There has to be some sort of plan though, right? You don’t just kill people to—” I didn’t finish the sentence because at that moment an excited ghost popped through the door.
“I have a desk! A real desk,” Roy said, his opaque glasses sliding down his nose as he bounced on his toes like a child who’d been promised all the ice cream he could eat.
“I wish I could take credit, but it was all Ms. B.”
“Ms. B? You mean the…?” He pointed toward the lobby.
“Brownie. And yes. She apparently decided we needed new office furniture.” And hadn’t consulted anyone first, which I wasn’t exactly complaining about, we looked a hell of a lot more professional, but she’d appointed herself office manager and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Rianna gave me a quizzical look. “The ghost?”
I nodded. “He’s excited about his desk,” I said and a moment later lights lit behind Rianna’s eyes as she tapped the grave so she could see and hear Roy. He ignored her, though I knew from what Roy had told me in the past that she’d just lit up like a torch in the land of the dead.
Well, ignoring is better than fighting.
I glanced at the paper in front of me. We needed something to compare Kirkwood’s experiences to. I knew the rider had slept with Allison in Daniel’s body and that while riding both Kirkwood and Kingly it had dined well, but what about the rest? Did the host’s personality have any influence?
Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel Page 18