Grave Ransom

by Kalayna Price

  The cop in front of me radioed in Tamara’s order as his partner began drawing a circle around the corpse. Tamara kept backing away, never turning from the body.

  I took advantage of the sudden chaos and slipped around the officer so I could get a better look at the body. The shriveled lips had pulled away from the corpse’s teeth, giving him an eerie death grin as his skin had slipped down his face. This wasn’t decay that happened in less than half an hour—this was days of rot. Which corresponded with how long my magical senses claimed the man to have been dead.

  Tamara’s backward stride—steady and slow as if she were afraid that if she turned and ran, the corpse would jump up and give chase—had finally brought her to my side. I knew it wasn’t the decay that had her on edge—I’d seen her happily autopsy bodies in much worse states. No, it was a recent experience she’d had that had nearly killed her and her unborn child. An attack by a body that had transformed after death.

  She turned to me, her dark eyes wide. “What have you gotten me into now? And why do I hang out with you?” She hissed the question, her voice too fast, too breathy with fear. “You don’t think he is . . . ?”

  “A ghoul?” I shook my head. “Trust me, I’ll never forget what they feel like. No, this is something different. I don’t know what’s going on, but I definitely don’t like it.”

  • • •

  I sat in an uncomfortable folding chair at Central Precinct in a room that, if I were being generous, I’d call a waiting area. A more accurate description of the space was that it was a tucked-away closet where the cops could shuffle off someone they didn’t want to deal with but whom they couldn’t arrest. Yet.

  The Anti–Black Magic Unit had arrived at the scene before the homicide detectives. To secure the scene and better assess the situation, they’d decided to clear the civilians out. Which included me. I’d been asked to come down to Central Precinct to give a formal statement. Which was fine—I needed to explain what I’d seen and felt. Quick-rotting corpses walking around piloted by the wrong soul were not normal. In fact, I’d never heard of any other reported case. I was hoping the NCPD would put our prior differences behind us and resurrect our retainer agreement so I could raise the shade and get some answers about the whole thing. But sitting in a dingy room between two empty folding chairs for over an hour was not leaving me optimistic on that front.

  Standing, I paced around the small room, but there wasn’t enough room to make that a satisfying endeavor, and it left me more irritated instead. I could at least check and see if the detectives in charge were back from the scene. And if they weren’t, well, I had my own business to run. They could set up an appointment for me to come back. I was done waiting. With a decisive nod, I pulled open the door and walked down the short hall to the lobby of Central Precinct.

  The front lobby buzzed with activity. Tensions had been high in the city of late, and that translated into an increase of both petty and serious crime. Some of the detectives and supervisors had private offices deeper in the building, but the bulk of the officers had desks scattered mazelike in the front. Blue-clad cops sat at these desks typing up reports, talking to witnesses, informants, or concerned citizens, or working on cases. An officer I vaguely recognized pushed a handcuffed man past me, toward fingerprinting, the man blathering about how this was all a big misunderstanding. As he passed, the assortment of spells the well-dressed suspect carried tingled along my senses. Most were commonplace enough, but then my ability to sense magic zeroed in on something he should definitely not have been carrying.

  “You might want to check his right forearm,” I called after the officer. “He’s carrying at least a dozen primed knockout spells.”

  The officer glanced at me and frowned, but I saw the spark of recognition in his eye. He turned back to the man and pulled up the tailored suit sleeve. A pouch no larger than a small coin purse was secured to the man’s arm with a strap.

  “That’s not . . . Uh,” the man started, sweat pouring down his face. “Who the hell is she? I want my lawyer.”

  “You’re going to need one,” the cop muttered, pushing the suspect forward. He gave me half a nod of acknowledgment before I turned and resumed my trek to the front.

  “Why am I not surprised to see you here?” an eerily familiar, and not completely welcomed, voice asked from off to my right.

  I spun, my gaze darting around the busy front lobby of Central Precinct. I didn’t see the dark-haired woman, who had always been clad in black leather during my short experience with her a few months back and who should have stood out in the precinct. Of course, I didn’t fully expect to spot her with my eyes—she wore so many charms meant to make the gaze slide over her that, even knowing who and what you were looking for, it was often hard to focus on her. But I expected to sense the magical armory she carried. Any other time I’d encountered her, my ability to sense magic had zeroed in on the massive amount of weaponized magic she carried like a spotlight.

  At least half the people in the lobby carried a spell or two. Most were mundane, a couple were less so, but no one carried so many as to stand out in a crowd. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe I hadn’t heard—

  Briar Darque stepped directly in front of me.

  I jumped, stumbling back before catching myself.

  “I take it from your expression, this spell was worth every penny I paid,” Briar said, smiling a wolfish grin. I only frowned at her. It had annoyed her that she couldn’t sneak up on me during our previous acquaintance. Apparently she’d found a way around a sensitive’s abilities.

  Letting my ability to sense magic stretch, I mentally reached for Briar. At first all I could pick up was a single spell surrounding her like a haze. It was large, but not terribly interesting or threatening, which was why my magic had skimmed over it initially. Under that, though, when I focused on piercing that veil, I could sense her magical smorgasbord. I’d never encountered a spell that camouflaged magic before, at least not without it shining a huge blinking light on the thing it meant to hide.

  “Damn,” I whispered, my voice breathy both from being startled and from respect for the piece of magical craftsmanship in front of me. “Who crafted that spell? And how?”

  Briar’s grin only widened. Then her gaze moved past me and she held up her badge, flashing it at the officer approaching us. “I need to talk to someone who can brief me on your current open cases, in particular your more bizarre or unexplained ones.” She paused and then jerked a thumb at me. “Probably anything she’s involved with.”

  The officer, who looked young and likely fresh out of academy, didn’t say anything. He scrutinized Briar’s badge for a moment, and then he turned on his heels and walked back the way he’d just come. I assumed he was going to retrieve someone with more authority.

  “So what’s been happening, Craft?” Briar asked, walking over to lean on an empty desk. Her big biker boots and leather made no sound as she moved, as if she were more mirage than flesh-and-blood woman. “Keeping your magical nose clean, I hope? I see you’re still glowing.”

  I cringed. “Can we not talk about that here?” Most people couldn’t see the telltale glow that emanated from under my skin, betraying my true heritage. The fae chameleon charm I wore let people see what they expected to see—which for most people was just a human witch. But once someone saw the truth of my fae nature, the charm didn’t work on them anymore. Briar was now immune to that particular visual deception. “How are you here already, Darque? The weird shit only started about an hour ago.”

  She lifted one leather-clad shoulder. “The MCIB has a robust staff of precogs. Sometimes I get sent places a little early. Works out better that way. So define ‘weird shit.’”

  I glanced around. No one was paying particular attention to us, and the officer Briar had sent scurrying for someone higher in rank hadn’t returned yet. Briar was an inspector with the Magical Crimes Investigation Bureau.
When we’d first met, she’d told me she was the one they sent to clean up magical messes—and those who’d made them. A corpse trying to steal priceless artifacts sounded to me like a “magical mess,” so I told her how I’d sensed the walking corpse before it had entered the museum, about the soul I saw, and about the body’s quick decay after the soul’s departure. I left out the part about my magic being instrumental in the body and soul’s separation because Briar was . . . unpredictable.

  Briar sat with her arms crossed over her chest as I spoke, attentive but unmoving, her expression unreadable. The situation made me twitchy, my fingers searching for something to fidget with as if to compensate for her uncanny stillness with excessive movement. I half expected her to pull out a file of neatly written facts about the case, like the one she’d shoved under my nose the first time we met, but when I finished, she only nodded.

  “And you’re sure the corpse wasn’t a vehicle for a ghoul to enter this realm?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. The ghouls we fought back in September had a tie back to the land of the dead. Once the soul left this body, it was just a corpse.”

  She pursed her lips, but I thought that there was a look of relief in her dark eyes. No one liked ghouls. “Did you sense any spells on the body?”

  “My best look at him was when we were both tied in a paralyzing spell, after he’d already successfully snatched an artifact from behind even more wards and we were inside a museum of magic—there was a lot of magic everywhere. I didn’t feel anything I would think would make a corpse walk, but I didn’t really have time to parse it out.”

  “Hmmm. Interesting.” She pushed off the desk, her gaze going over my shoulder.

  I turned. A visit from an MCIB investigator was clearly a big deal because the chief of police was headed straight for us, flanked on either side by a homicide detective.

  “Well, if I have any more questions, I know where to find you,” Briar said, as she stepped around me.

  “I’d like to talk to the man’s shade,” I called after her.

  She only half turned. “Like I said, I know where to find you.” Then she held out her hand, greeting the chief.

  I’d been dismissed.

  Chapter 3

  “You’re late,” Ms. B chided as I walked into the Tongues for the Dead office the next morning.

  I glanced at the large clock looming in the back of the small lobby as I set my dog, PC, down by my feet. I was only five minutes late, but punctuality was second only to neatness in the brownie’s personal priority list. Since she’d appointed herself as office manager for the firm, she’d held Rianna and me to her standards. I failed regularly.

  “I had some commute issues.” Which was true enough. Since the Faerie castle I’d inherited had forced itself into the mortal realm a month ago, my daily commute had gotten interesting, to say the least.

  Ms. B just looked at me with her large, dark eyes, and I forced myself not to cringe because, yeah, she and Rianna both lived in that castle as well, and they were both on time. Regardless of what she thought, Ms. B didn’t say anything, but dug into the top drawer of her desk, pulled out a bone-shaped dog biscuit, and threw it to PC. The small dog wagged his tail and gobbled it down happily. Then he pranced around, making the white plumes on his head and feet—the only places beside the tip of his tail where he had hair—flop around. Ms. B chuckled in her deep, gruff way and tossed him a second treat. She actually wasn’t that much taller than the small Chinese Crested, but she liked my silly dog. Which was good. That wasn’t the case with every brownie I’d encountered. Dogs were messy, and as a whole, brownies were fastidious.

  “My clients didn’t beat me here, did they?” I asked, as I noticed my office door was open—I always closed it at night.

  “No, I’ve started scheduling around your repeated tardiness,” Ms. B said, the reprimand in her voice again. “You have a visitor who doesn’t seem to think I noticed she entered.” Now the little brownie sounded insulted.

  I frowned but nodded, heading for my office. PC tried to entice another treat from the brownie, but when she shooed him away, he trotted after me.

  I felt the varied and deadly collection of Briar’s arsenal of spells before I even reached the door. She wasn’t wearing that impressive magic-cloaking spell, though she did have a look-away spell active, as well as a sound-dampening charm. She was hiding, just not from me. Or maybe she kept those charms active by habit.

  Briar was sitting at my desk when I entered, her dark braid falling over one shoulder as she rummaged through the contents of my desk drawer. I frowned at her.

  “Do you have a search warrant?”

  She smiled as she looked up, a big, predatory smile, like a hunting cat. “Just looking for a pen while I waited for you.”

  I stepped up to the desk and pushed the small cylinder holding both pens and pencils toward her. She made an ah sound, as if she hadn’t noticed them before. I wasn’t fooled.

  “What are you doing here, Briar? You insulted my office manager by trying to sneak in.”

  “The little creature in the front lobby?”

  “Her name is Ms. B, and she’s a brownie.” Which most humans had never seen before. She scared some clients with her diminutive stature and noseless features, but she was good folk and my friend, and I didn’t take kindly to people calling her a creature.

  The thoughts must have been clear on my face because Briar’s false smile faded, her expression becoming serious. “‘Ms. B.’ I’ll remember that. I’d apologize, but . . .” She held out her hands, palms up, and I knew what she meant. Ms. B was fae, and you don’t apologize to fae unless you want to end up in their debt. “I didn’t actually come here to harass you.”

  “Good, because I have a client interview scheduled for this morning, so if you could . . .” I motioned to the door.

  Briar leaned back in my chair, tucking her hands behind her head. “I said I wasn’t here to harass you, not that I was leaving.”

  The chime of the bells on the main door sounded. My clients, no doubt.

  “Out,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “I apparently showed up to town too early,” she said, not only not leaving, but kicking her motorcycle-boot-clad feet onto the surface of my desk. “Fast-rotting corpses are interesting, but a relic thief who died while the crime was in progress isn’t exactly the kind of case I tend to get called in on. The precogs have no more clues for me yet, so I just have to cool my heels. I’m not good at that. But you seem to attract the scary and strange like it’s a hobby, so I figure I’ll stick close to you, at least until something more interesting arises.”

  Outside my open office door, I could hear Ms. B talking to someone. “Out,” I said again. “My clients have a right to privacy.”

  “You’re a magic-eye, not a doctor.” “Magic-eye” was an insulting term for a private investigator who used magic and no real investigative work to solve cases, and based on the way her eyes twinkled as she said it, she meant it as the insult it was. “No one will even know I’m here, unless you make a big fuss.”

  That at least was true. Unless my client was a sensitive.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. Since the door was open, Ms. B knocked on the frame.

  “Your scheduled appointment is here,” she said, her tone making it clear that Briar was not on her schedule.

  Briar dutifully dropped her legs and vacated my chair, but she didn’t leave the room. Instead she moved to the corner and leaned against the far wall. There wasn’t much I could do. Even if I called the cops, she outranked most of the locals in her role as an investigator for the Magical Crimes Investigation Bureau—I’d learned that the last time she’d been in town.

  So I chose to ignore her presence and hoped she’d keep her word about my clients not knowing she was present. Walking around my desk, I sat down and pulled my laptop out of my bag, setting it up before
turning and nodding at Ms. B.

  “Show them in.”

  • • •

  I pushed the box of tissues across my desk, closer to the clients sitting in the chairs in front of me. Rachael Saunders immediately grabbed two, dabbing them at her nose. Her husband, Rue Saunders, stared down at his hands. He’d done that since he’d sat down, letting his wife tell their sob-broken story of loss.

  “Katie was only six,” she said, grabbing a third tissue. “She was planned. Wished for. We were older already when she was born.”

  I nodded in what I hoped was a sympathetic manner. This story had been convoluted at best, and all I’d gathered so far was that they’d lost their daughter to a blood illness. Some days I wished I had time to take a couple of courses on grief counseling because while I was excellent when it came to speaking to the dead, I found it a lot harder to handle the bereaved families. Shades were just memories animated with magic. With the living I had to worry about offending, and I had to navigate a business contract while they were focused on lost loved ones. It didn’t help that I couldn’t utter the simple words “I’m sorry for your loss.” My recently awakened fae nature wouldn’t allow me to express even insincere condolences without creating a debt that could be called in.

  When Rachael paused for a particularly jagged breath, I seized my chance to interrupt her story.

  “Katie was very young,” I said. “What are you hoping to learn from speaking to her shade?”

  Rue looked up for the first time. His eyes were dry, hard, but bloodshot and tired. “‘Her shade’? We have no interest in her shade, Miss Craft. We want you to find her ghost.”

  “I don’t—” I started.

  His wife interrupted me. “We saw you on TV, last summer. With the ghost. You can talk to ghosts.”