A beam of light slashed through the darkness surrounding us. Jasmine, who was still making a show of rubbing the back of her head, had activated the flashlight on her phone.
“But I would never turn down a willing witch,” Kett said.
His breath brushed against the exposed, suddenly-feeling-far-too-vulnerable skin on the back of my neck. All at once, my choice of hairstyle — a smooth, discreetly pinned French twist — seemed utterly foolhardy and unintentionally provocative around a vampire. I didn’t move, wary that any reaction on my part might trigger a savage attack.
Jasmine turned her light toward me, angled downward. Kett was standing beside, not behind me.
“Magical blood must be tastier,” she said, as if we were having a regular conversation with a regular person, say about whether fries were better with or without gravy.
“Indeed,” Kett said.
I slowly turned to look at the vampire. The pale marble statue dressed in decadent cashmere and soft-washed jeans standing beside me. A monster barely trying to pass through the human world. He was smirking at Jasmine, as if he already owned her. As if she were his to take, to destroy.
No one owned Jasmine.
Irrational, rash, and ill-timed anger flooded through me. I raised my right hand toward Kett’s shoulder, though I wasn’t sure why. I had no chance of holding him back if he went for Jasmine. “Jade Godfrey has more than enough magic for any vampire,” I said.
His smile dissolved. He turned his silvered eyes from Jasmine to me, resting his inhuman gaze on the wrist of my right hand, which I was still holding aloft.
I lifted my chin, curling my fingers into a fist. Unwittingly called forth by my anger, magic boiled around my hand, glowing all along the edges of my platinum bracelet, just waiting to be unleashed.
What the hell I thought I might be able to do with that magic to a vampire of Kett’s power — even backed by whatever Jade had done to the bracelet — I had no idea.
“Wisteria …” Jasmine whispered, aghast.
“Are you afraid or simply jealous, little witch?” Kett’s attention was still glued to my wrist trinket.
Jasmine snorted indelicately. “Wisteria, jealous? Please.”
Kett raised his gaze to meet mine. Within the dark corridor and lit only by the downward cast of Jasmine’s flashlight, his eyes were soulless mirrors. I could see my own internalized darkness and pain reflected within his silver-blue orbs.
“I thought we were done with dominance games,” I said, attempting to rein both myself and the situation in.
“Then stop playing them.” The vampire stepped by me, then Jasmine, and melted into the shadows. A moment later, he appeared before a set of swing doors twenty feet down the hall.
Jasmine gasped.
My heart rate spiked, though I tried to fight it. Oddly, it had been slow and steady while I’d been considering ripping the vampire’s own husk of a heart out of his cashmere-swathed chest.
Kett glanced back at us. At me. A red glow flashed across his eyes, so quickly that I might have imagined it. Then he exited the hall, leaving us alone.
I lowered my hand, releasing the magic I’d been holding. I’d never called forth my magic like that before. So Jade’s bracelet apparently worked, though I had no idea what it actually did and whether or not I had to be really angry to trigger it.
Jasmine was still staring after Kett.
“Just remember he’s not human,” I said. “Not anymore.” My voice was dark with unreleased anger.
“Spoken like a true Fairchild witch,” Jasmine said without ire.
“Some prejudices are held for our own protection.”
My cousin nodded absentmindedly. Her thoughts were apparently elsewhere.
I touched my platinum bracelet, running my fingers over its tiny house, fence, and tree charms. Then I started up the hall after Kett.
Jasmine wrapped her arm around my neck, tugging me close enough to press her lips against my ear. “Has it occurred to you …”
“That Kett’s hired us to investigate his own crimes?” I whispered back, barely moving my lips. “Yes.”
“He’d have to be crazy. The Godfreys …”
“We’ve seen crazier.”
“We’re related to crazier.” Jasmine’s words and the reference to our shared childhood settled around us with a stifling weight.
I stepped away from her loose embrace, strengthening my voice. “This isn’t that.”
I turned away from all the questions that had flooded my mind in the instant she’d vocalized her doubts about Kett, then compared him to our family. I clamped down on everything I wanted to ask — about vampires, this case, and why I was actually involved in any of it — and every can of worms I wanted to open about our family. Then I strode down the hall to do my job.
I was a reconstructionist. Teenaged boys were dying — being murdered, as far as I was concerned. That was my sole focus.
The image of another battered and bruised dark-haired boy in need of rescuing flashed through my mind. But I shoved the thought away, tucking it behind the wall that surrounded my heart.
That was ancient history.
Though not anywhere near as old as the vampire waiting for me to do my job, whether or not my findings exposed him as the perpetrator.
The swing doors led, predictably, to the morgue, or whatever it was called in a funeral home. The antiseptic smell deepened here, so much so that it seemed to coat my nasal passages. I tried to not breathe too deeply. The floor was tiled and slightly angled toward a drain in the center of the main room. Three white fiberglass trays — similar to hospital gurneys, but with a high lip running around their edges — sat empty before a large steel door that I assumed led to the refrigeration unit. Thankfully, the trays weren’t holding sheet-covered corpses. Though based on the equipment standing against three of the four walls, it seemed a safe guess that this was where the mortician did his preparation and embalming.
A small administration office stood to the far right of the main doors. Within, a desk lamp illuminated a paper-strewn desk. Either Kett had turned the lamp on or the occupant of the office had left it on all night. I had never understood how people could be so disorganized and still function.
In the office, Kett was scanning a bookshelf. Its shelves held a number of sealed brown cardboard boxes, each approximately six inches by six inches and tagged with white printed labels. Even without entering the room, I could guess that these contained cremated ashes that hadn’t been collected by a family member yet.
Kett selected a box, swiveling to set it on the desk.
I pulled the first of my candles out of my bag, closing the space between us. White for air. I placed the pillar to the east of the box, instinctively knowing which direction was which even when surrounded by walls of concrete and wood. I wouldn’t need a large circle for this reconstruction.
Jasmine, who’d followed me to the door, glanced around briefly. “I saw another office through the front door, with a computer,” she said. “It’s always worth a look. I might be able to uncover more information about the autopsy or see if the funeral home has dealt with any similar cases in the last couple of weeks.”
Kett nodded, watching me as I carefully placed the other three candles. Jasmine exited back through the swing doors. I wouldn’t want to hang out in a morgue either if I were her.
I paused, looking over at Kett expectantly.
“I’d like to watch,” he said.
“From behind the window.” I indicated the partially glassed door behind me. “And close the door. That should be enough of a barrier with a reconstruction as confined as this.”
He nodded, exiting the office and shutting the door behind him.
I had expected him to argue. If I’d known the vampire better, I should have been able to call and manipulate the reconstruction spell with him in the room, and even walk him through it as I did so. But honestly, after glimpsing the glimmer of his magic roll across his eyes only momen
ts before in the corridor, I hoped to never know Kettil that well. Ever.
I rarely saw magic that way outside of a well-constructed circle. And I certainly never saw it with my personal shields locked down as firmly as I held them at all times around Adepts of power. Kett was way too powerful. I wasn’t going to be holding his hand through a reconstruction. Ever.
Ignoring the vampire standing at the half-window in the door, I lit the candles as I circled the desk, making quick work of it. Normally, I walked the room, feeling for any other residual, but that wasn’t necessary here. If the weakness of the previous reconstructions were anything to judge by, it was unlikely that I’d find even a glimmer of magic among Gavin Lowell’s ashes.
Lifting my palms between the two candles nearest me on the desk, I imbued the circle with my magic, snapping it into place around the box. I reached out for any energy contained within the ashes, any residual waiting to be uncovered.
There was nothing. I peered down at the box through the edge of my circle, seeing the printed label that bore Gavin’s name. I continued to stare at it, soft-focusing my eyes as if I might look through the cardboard. Pretending I could see within it. Imagining I could sense a spark of magic buried in the ashes.
I sensed nothing.
I lifted my gaze, shaking my head in Kett’s direction.
That was a mistake.
I had never looked directly at someone like him through an active circle, with my senses wide open and seeking magic. He pulsed with power. Magic gathered around him like a voluminous cloud … all shadows and smears, streaked with red and black, and — oddly — hints of gold. He raised his hand to the glass between us. Magic streaked after his movement, infinitely echoing his gesture. Twin pulses of red dwelled in the hollows of his eye sockets. A secondary smudge of blue appeared in his palm, then faded. As if he’d triggered some sort of dormant magic.
“Wisteria?” he asked. His voice was muffled by the glass door.
I’d never seen residual collect around an Adept in such a way. Even in the reconstructions I’d done of Kett, he hadn’t appeared this way. I’d seen his actions and his own residual magic, but this smear, this dark cloud —
I shook my head, dropping my gaze to my own hands. They pulsed with blue witch magic, just a shade lighter than my own eyes, than Jasmine’s eyes. All Fairchild witches had similar coloration. Blue magic in my palms. Blue magic in the vampire’s palm.
I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing my focus back within the circle and onto the box. This was my job. Staring at the vampire’s magic was just dangerous.
But no matter how carefully I looked or how long I waited, there wasn’t even a glimmer of magic among Gavin’s ashes. Nothing to reconstruct.
Stymied, I reached over to snuff the candle nearest me, but stopped when I felt a flicker of magic to my left. I reluctantly pivoted to look at the shelves that held the boxes of cremated remains, catching a glimmer on the edge of my vision. A flash of something.
A figure?
I reached for the circle I’d constructed on the desk, coaxing it to move toward the flickering residual.
The office was tiny. I might have unknowingly triggered a reconstruction outside the circle, accidentally brushing a deposit of residual magic with the energy called forth in my casting. It didn’t happen often. I kept my circles tight. But I hadn’t expected residual energy nearby, other than from Jasmine or Kett. And neither of them had been in the office long enough, nor wielded any magic that could have imprinted this way.
Though based on what I’d seen of the vampire a moment before, perhaps I shouldn’t have been so hasty to theorize. Maybe he left residual wherever he walked.
I successfully shifted the circle over to encompass the shelves, lifting it with my hands as if it had actual weight. Not many reconstructionists could move an established circle, which was why they often reached wildly out without a circle for their collections. Actually, not many witches could move a cast circle either. It was a Fairchild ability. I’d tried to teach Jasmine the technique when we were young and I was still casting standard witch spells, but her magic hadn’t cooperated.
The flickering reconstruction on the shelves took form.
A blond boy, who appeared to be around fifteen, was lying across the shelf, suspended in midair. I could still see the other boxes of remains through his faded image.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I murmured.
The boy appeared to be sleeping, though he was clad in a cheap navy-blue suit that was tight across his shoulders, rather than pajamas.
Then, without a warning or so much as a single breath, he woke up.
His eyes whirled with blood-red magic.
“I see the boy,” I called, assuming that Kett could hear me through the door. “He’s a vampire.”
I reached out to the manifested energy within the circle, hoping to pause the faded image and capture it within one of my cubes.
The boy reared up, smacking his head on something above him. He cradled his head for a moment, confused. Then he pressed his hands above his head and to the sides.
I couldn’t see what he was touching. The residual magic was simply too weak. It was also playing out in real time from beginning to end, which confirmed that I’d triggered the reconstruction process when I’d first cast. I really needed to be more careful.
“This is odd,” I said, speaking out loud for Kett’s benefit. “He’s acting as if he’s been buried —”
The boy started screaming. Horrible shrieks of unspeakable pain. Fire sprang up alongside him, then spread across his body. His suit ignited, instantly aflame.
“No,” I whispered. “No. No …”
I reached for the residual magic. I tried to grab it, control it. To disconnect myself from Gavin’s terrible second death.
The boy screamed and screamed.
I couldn’t disconnect. I couldn’t stop it. I watched with utter, frozen horror as he burned, fully aware of every moment of his tortuous cremation.
Cool fingers touched my outstretched arms, wrapping around my wrists and trying to pull me away from the reconstruction.
I was the one screaming.
I couldn’t stop screaming.
Gavin’s skin melted, then curled into ash. His shrieking faded. My own voice became louder as his died.
Cool hands pressed over my eyes, shutting out the vision.
The magic tying me to the reconstruction snapped.
My legs gave out. I fell, collapsing against what felt like a marble pillar with arms. The statue of stone that was Kett. He held me upright, slumped against him.
“They mislabeled the box,” I said, sobbing. “They burned the boy. He woke up. He woke up right before they burned him.”
Kett still held his hand across my face, blocking my sight.
“Death vision,” Jasmine said. She’d entered the office without me knowing, perhaps when I was in the thrall of the reconstruction. “Not being at the actual site of the boy’s death, she wouldn’t have expected it. She’s caught in the echo.”
Kett lifted me, cradling me while still managing to hold his hand over my eyes. He was carrying me with one arm as if I weighed nothing, which I most certainly did not.
Air stirred around me. My hair had fallen out of its French twist, the pins tangled within it. We were moving. The vampire’s footfalls crunched on something.
“Glass,” I murmured, trying to focus on the now and not on what had been.
“You broke the windows,” Jasmine said. “Every bloody piece of glass in the bloody place.”
I didn’t remember doing anything of the sort.
“With your magic, witch,” Kett said. “I assume you were trying to break free from the reconstruction.”
“My magic doesn’t work like that,” I said. But my protest sounded lame, even to me.
No one answered me. Or, rather, everything went quiet all around me. Then I couldn’t see or hear or feel anymore.
❒ ❒ ❒
I woke to the sound of Jasmine’s fingernails clicking on a keyboard, the familiar noise instantly comforting. Then I realized I was crammed into the back seat of Kett’s SUV.
I opened my eyes. Lights blurred past the window. It was still late evening, and we were still in the city.
A magic hangover hit me like a sledgehammer to the center of my forehead. I groaned, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Good morning, sunshine.” Jasmine sounded far too cheerful in the front passenger seat.
“I hope you’re taking me home,” I said.
“You will be useless until you sleep.” Kett’s cool voice emanated from the driver’s seat next to my left shoulder. “Jasmine explained that you’d be more comfortable in your own bed.”
“I didn’t know I’d see —” I cut myself off before I started sobbing again. The recollection of Gavin’s suffering was still fresh in my mind.
“We were in a funeral home,” Kett said without obvious inflection or condemnation. “You should have expected such a thing.”
“It doesn’t happen like that,” I retorted, attempting to sit up. I was rewarded for my effort with another blistering pulse of pain behind my eyes.
“Normally, a reconstructionist needs to be at the actual site of the death, or murder, or whatever,” Jasmine said, defending me. “The trauma of Gavin’s death must have somehow imprinted on the residual magic in his ashes —”
“A rare but not impossible occurrence,” Kett said dismissively.
“Maybe,” I said edgily. “When reconstructing the death of a newly turned vampire. You can’t expect me to have a solid frame of reference for that.”
“You need to collect more than one rising to learn a lesson?” Kett asked, completely rhetorically. “What about two?”
“I guess I’m a slow learner.”
“Obviously.”
“Well, it’s good to get that cleared up.” Jasmine turned to offer me a sliver of a smile when the vampire didn’t respond to her snark. “Okay, Betty-Sue?”
I nodded, braving a second attempt at sitting up. Kett was correct, though. I’d been sloppy. I’d gone in with preconceived expectations, then had been thrown when I saw Kett’s magic through the lens of my circle.
Catching Echoes (Reconstructionist 1) Page 12