by Mary Lindsey
He smiled and kissed her forehead. Yeah. Unnatural, which suited somehow. He’d always felt outside of society and different. Maybe it wasn’t because he was off or wrong. Maybe it was because everyone else was. Until now. He lowered his mouth to hers, knowing that the kiss would be anything but normal.
Twenty-Six
“I still think we should go straight to the top and confront Wanda Richter,” Freddie said as they passed Bean’s Coffee Shop and turned right onto Magnolia Street.
Rain squinted in the afternoon sun, loving the feel of Freddie on the bike behind him. “This is a better place to start.” Gerald had said to follow the body. “Do you know anything about Reinhardt Funeral Home?”
Freddie put her chin on his shoulder. “Yeah. The Reinhardts are one of the original Weaver families in New Wurzburg. Petra, the youngest one, is a freak. She had to be homeschooled starting in sixth grade because she drew too much attention. She still does, but they keep her pretty well contained.”
Being a freak in this freaky world was an accomplishment. Rain pulled into the packed funeral home parking lot where a black hearse waited under a green awning. “Must be a funeral going on.”
Freddie got off and did a three-sixty, checking out the cars. “I don’t recognize any of these, so it’s a human funeral.”
“Maybe we should come back later.”
She struck out toward the front door. “Nah. This is a great time to catch Petra. They keep her hidden when there are regular people around. She creeps everyone out.”
He fell into step beside her on the pebble walk leading to the oak front doors. “You think Petra’s the one we need to see here?”
“Yep. She’s the only one who would have touched my dad once he was brought here.”
He arched an eyebrow in question, stopping on the bottom step.
“She’s a Sealer,” she said from a step above, which put her a bit taller than him. “She’s the only one who can secure the magic into the body so it doesn’t escape all at once, and she makes sure the body’s prepped right to not return as a revenant.”
He followed her through the doors into a lobby with dark, formal-looking furniture and stark white marble floors. A box of tissues was perched on top of most every flat surface. Organ music droned from a room off to their right, and through the glass doors, he could see people in pews facing a coffin draped in white roses.
He’d never been inside a funeral home before. Because they’d been penniless, his mother’s body was taken care of by the county. He’d brought her ashes to the wooded area near the church, and he and Moth had returned her to nature. It seemed the right thing to do. She would’ve hated something public like this.
His breath caught as he stared through the glass at the mourners, imagining Freddie sitting in that front row at her father’s funeral, holding in her grief and rage. Clearly, she’d had the same thought because she stopped for a moment, staring in with wide, glazed eyes, then squared her shoulders.
“Let’s go before one of the Reinhardts spots us. Weavers are thick as thieves. Chief Richter will know we’ve been here within minutes,” she said.
The hairs on the back of Rain’s neck prickled as they walked down a dark paneled hallway toward a door labeled Employees Only. The organ continued to moan from behind. “So, is this Petra a friend of yours or an enemy?” he whispered.
“Neither. We went to school together until she quit. I always kind of felt sorry for her. She’s a Weaver, though, so we were never really close.”
“Watchers and Weavers can’t be friends?”
She stopped outside the door, hand on the knob. “No.”
“You’re friends with Grant.”
“We have a business relationship. He’s my sponsor. We’re not friends.”
He’d seen Grant with her. The way he watched her. He’d love to be friends with Freddie. Which begged the question, what the hell was a sponsor? Before he could ask, she shoved open the door and took off down an even darker hallway toward a metal door at the end.
“Have you been here before?” he asked, shooting a look over his shoulder.
“Only for Dad’s funeral, but never back here.” She nodded at the metal door at the end of the hall. “That has to be where we’ll find her, though. Magic is sealed inside steel walls. Doctor Perkins died three days ago. It’s a five-day process, so chances are, she’s here.”
The Watchers could shift during The Five, and it took five days to prep a body. “Five seems to be a theme,” he said.
“The number five holds power,” she said as they reached the door. “The culture of the Watchers and Weavers is wound up in the number. The five senses. Five elements—”
“I thought there were four elements.”
“Aristotle said five: Earth, water, fire, air and aether.”
“Aether?”
“That which is beyond the material world.” She shrugged. “At least that’s what I’ve been told. Weavers are weird.”
To his surprise, she didn’t open the door and walk in like she had the others. Instead, she gently knocked. When there was no response, she knocked again.
The organ music had faded to nothing, and the dim, flickering light of the hallway, along with the thoughts of aether and things beyond the material world, had him completely spooked.
“Ready?” she said.
No. Hell no. God only knew what was behind a metal door at the end of a creepy dark hallway at the very back of a funeral home. “Sure.”
Slowly, she reached for the door, and he held his breath, heart pounding. It felt like forever as she rotated the handle to the right, then soundlessly cracked open the door. A faint red light spilled from inside the room across the tile floor like blood.
A noise behind them nearly sent him launching out of his skin.
“Jeezus, Petra. You scared the shit out of us,” Freddie said, hand to her chest. “Don’t sneak up on people.”
The girl with shoulder-length inky hair, dressed all in black, stood no taller than Rain’s chest, but her presence was enormous. “It seems to me that you’re the one doing the sneaking, Friederike Burkhart.” Lowering her chin, she studied Rain with her huge black eyes that were way too large for her face. Sort of like a nocturnal creature that had adapted to see better in the dark.
A shiver passed through him as she scanned him up and down. Her gaze paused briefly on the envelope of photos in his hand before returning to his face. It was as if she looked through him rather than at him, and he fought the urge to squirm. A jet-black eyebrow arched and a side of her mouth quirked in a bizarre half smile, then her expression moved to one of horror, with wide eyes and dropped jaw. Rain looked behind him to be sure the bogeyman wasn’t there. When he looked back, Petra’s pale face reflected his least favorite emotion: pity.
“What?” Not the best greeting when meeting someone new, but this was beyond weird.
She shook her head as if clearing it, then pushed by them. Swinging the metal door wide, she gestured for them to follow, her long black skirt flowing around her like a cloud of heavy smoke.
“Told you she was a freak,” Freddie whispered before following her into the room.
Rain swallowed a lump in his throat as he entered the space that looked like something out of a spook house. Every surface was covered in brushed stainless steel. Walls, floor, even the ceiling were clad in metal that reflected the light from the raw red bulb in the center of the ceiling, heightening the eerie feel of the place.
In the middle was a metal table with a draped body on it. A wave of relief flooded over him when he realized the entire corpse was covered, even the face.
“Doctor Perkins?” Freddie asked.
“Yeah. Two more days left,” Petra responded, placing her hand on his chest. Her pale skin was almost the same shade of the white drape—at least Rain assumed it was white. Hard to tell with everything soaked in red light.
“You’re here about your dad.” Petra picked up a large, curved needle from a met
al tray near the body. “Your friend here talked you out of a mass slaughter. Now you’re seeking to justify what you perceive as a moment of weakness when you followed his advice.” Freddie and Petra stared at each other over the draped body.
“Freak here can read minds,” Freddie explained.
Needle still in hand, Petra picked up the end of a long string of some kind. It looked black in the eerie red light. “Freak here sees events. She can’t read minds. I see things that have occurred or will occur.” She threaded an end of the string through the needle. “You believe a Weaver murdered your father because his mouth was sewn shut.” With steady hands, she pulled the string to where it was doubled evenly through the needle. “You’re not aware that I’ve been accused of his murder and an inquiry has begun based on your uncle’s accusation.”
Freddie’s hands balled into fists at her sides as the girl slid the string over a block of something that looked like a blob of wax in a dish on the tray. Petra smoothed the thread from needle to end between her thumb and forefinger. “I didn’t do it.”
“Who did?” Freddie asked. “You can see stuff. Tell me who did it.”
The girl gently folded down the sheet, exposing the head of the body on the table. It was an elderly man with a beard. His eyes and mouth gaped open as if he’d seen something remarkable. Freddie immediately turned her back, but Rain couldn’t bring himself to look away. He’d seen quite a few dead bodies when living on the streets, and it always struck him how compelling they were. How intense the fascination was with the worthless shell the spirit leaves behind. For some reason, though, he was still unable to look at the pictures of Freddie’s dad.
“I don’t know who murdered your father, Friederike,” Petra said. “I can’t see the events experienced by other Weavers. I also can’t read humans and Watchers unless I see their eyes. As you know, I don’t see many people other than my own family. The murderer could be anyone outside of you and your uncle.” Her eyes slid to Rain. “Or him… But I seriously doubt it was a Weaver.”
“Why?” Freddie asked, back still turned.
“Because it was done all wrong. Totally out of order. A Weaver would probably have been closer to accurate, especially if attempting to frame me.”
Freddie’s voice shook. “What was out of order?”
“The sealing of the body.” The girl took a sprig of something that looked like a dried plant from a bowl on her tray and placed it in the dead man’s mouth. Then, she forced the jaw closed with the palm of her hand. She picked up the needle and string and held it under his bottom lip. “If it’s done out of order, the magic doesn’t release properly and it can take over the body. You know what happens then.”
“No!” Freddie spun to face her. “Tell me you fixed it. Tell me he won’t rise.”
“He won’t, because I sealed him properly when they brought him here.” She pricked the needle through the man’s bottom lip, and Freddie covered her mouth.
Rain put his arm around Freddie’s trembling shoulders. “Can we talk somewhere else, Petra?” Preferably someplace without a dead man in the center of the room.
“There’s a rigid timeline. I can’t leave for a while. Not until the mouth is sewn shut, and it needs to be done right now.” She pierced the upper lip and drew the thread through. Freddie buried her head in his shoulder. No doubt, she imagined her father on that table.
“Hey,” he said, turning Freddie away. “Why don’t you wait at the coffee shop at the corner for me. I’ll meet you there in a bit.”
“I’m not some fragile, weak chick you need to protect,” she said through gritted teeth.
“No, you’re a tough, kick-ass girl whose father was murdered and shouldn’t have to watch something like this. It’s too much. I’m amazed you could even set foot in this place. It’s not weakness. It’s self-preservation.”
“You’re going to leave this room, Watcher, and go to the coffee shop and have a beverage, and you’re going to feel so much better. Also, he’s going to get some key information, and you’re going to have crazy sex later,” Petra said, needle still in hand.
“You’re a freak, Weaver,” Freddie shot over her shoulder as she headed for the door.
“Yeah, but I’m right.” She met Rain’s eyes. “Most of the time, anyway.”
The door slammed behind Freddie, and Petra’s shoulders dropped a little like she was relieved to see her go.
“So, did you really see all that?” Rain asked.
“I totally made all of that up. It doesn’t take special powers to predict the obvious.”
Twenty-Seven
“How did you become a mortician?” Rain asked Petra.
“I’m not a mortician. I’m a Sealer. I was born into it and then forced into work way too early. I’m not supposed to begin sealing until I’m twenty-one.”
That clearly wasn’t the case. “What are you, fourteen?”
“Eighteen. I’ve been sealing since I was nine.”
Holy shit. At nine years old, a little girl should be playing with dolls, not corpses. “Why?”
“Lust and bad luck.” She snipped her thread and made a tight knot. “Mrs. Goff was the Sealer before me. She fell in love with the wrong guy and ruined my life.” She made a new stitch in the lips of the man on the table. “Weavers and Watchers can’t have relationships. They get physical with each other every now and then, of course, because Watchers are beasts and that’s the nature of a beast.” She gave Rain a pointed look before pulling her string tight and snipping it. “Everyone likes a walk on the wild side, including Helga Goff, but then she got all stupid and fell in love with the guy.”
Ruby had told him Helga Goff lived alone. “Where’s the Watcher now?”
Again, she made a tight, tidy knot. “He died while hiking in Utah. Buried in an avalanche.” She snipped the edges of the knot and picked up the needle. “By the time the snow melted enough to find the body, it had already reanimated.”
“As a revenant.”
Her gaze moved from where her needle sunk into the doctor’s skin to Rain’s face. “Yes. They always return to the source of their magic. They consume magical flesh as fuel in order to stay animated.”
Zombies. “They eat Watchers and Weavers.”
“They eat Weavers. We contain the most magic.” She returned her attention to Doctor Perkins and completed another stitch while Rain’s mind churned with questions.
“That doesn’t explain why you had to start doing this at nine years old.”
“Magic is tied to confidence and truth of purpose. Helga Goff lost her power to seal.” Her pale, strong fingers completed another stitch. Rain found himself less and less creeped out as she worked, and he began seeing the craftsmanship in her stitches. “Her dead lover sought her out when he rose, of course.” She shook her head and sighed. “After she killed him, she sealed him herself in her barn, then tended the body for the required amount of time. She was never the same again.”
The more he knew about Watchers and Weavers, the more screwed-up the whole thing was.
“She still sees things.” She threaded another piece of string through the curved needle. “Three years ago, she told me you would come to New Wurzburg.”
Yeah. Totally screwed up. “I need you to tell me everything about the day they brought Hans Burkhart here, Petra. Who came with the body, what everyone said, and what you believe really happened.”
“Chief Richter, Ulrich Burkhart, and Ellen Ericksen brought in Hans Burkhart’s body. They didn’t talk at all during my examination of the outside of the body. Ulrich Burkhart paced and growled a lot. When I was done, the chief asked me what I thought happened. I told her I thought it was someone trying to incite a pack riot by making it look like a Weaver did it. That set Mrs. Ericksen off on a tangent about how I was unstable and saw conspiracies everywhere.”
“Why would she say that?”
“Because there are conspiracies everywhere. I see things, remember?”
“Why did you believe
it was someone framing a Weaver?”
“They were framing me, actually.” She made the final push through the upper lip. “From the outside, it looked like a proper job of sealing the magic. It wasn’t until later that I discovered what really killed him.”
“Did you tell them?”
“No.” Again her eyes sought out the envelope in his hand. “Like you, I have photographs. I saved the evidence for the trial.”
“What trial?”
“A tribunal of Elders from other covens will assemble next month. If the real murderer isn’t found by then, I’ll be tried. If I’m found guilty, I’ll be burned at the stake and my magic destroyed forever.”
What the actual fuck is going on here?
She smiled at him as she tied the last stitch. “But now that I’ve met you, I am pretty sure that won’t happen.”
“Pretty sure.”
“Yeah. I saw…” She shook her head. “Hard to explain. I saw something in your forward memory.”
“What did you see?”
“I can’t tell you or it’ll come out at trial that I led you. There are others who see future and past actions, and they’ll examine this conversation thoroughly.”
“Okay, so tell me about your private examination of Hans Burkhart.”
She wiped an ointment of some kind on the stitches as she spoke. “When the magic is sealed into a body, it is sort of like a time-release capsule that allows the magic to seep out at a safe rate. The steps are precise. First, the body is allowed to rest for twenty-four hours. That’s probably just a remaining precaution from olden days to be sure the person is really dead and not passed out drunk or in a stupor or something. Day two: Family is allowed in to say good-bye one last time. Services can be held this day, open casket and all, if the family wishes. In Hans Burkhart’s case, the service was closed casket, obviously.” She gestured to the body on the table. “Doctor Perkins had a huge service yesterday. It’s not only good for the family, it keeps human suspicions down that it fits tradition.”
She smoothed the doctor’s hair. “This is day three. On the third day, the tongue is cut out—”