Grave Dance

As it turned out, Falin did let me out of his sight, and at his own insistence. He requested that I wait in the car while he ran inside his office, so I sat in my own car, in the mid-August heat, glowering. Granted, his reasoning was sound. Letting on to Nori that Falin and I were friends probably wasn’t in anyone’s best interest, but I couldn’t help feeling that our very association was a secret he didn’t want his fae acquaintances to know. Hey, girls have feelings.

When he returned he carried only a single distressingly thin folder. It was my car, so I was driving, but with the case file so close, I was tempted to hand off my keys. I didn’t. I’d seen Falin drive before, and I didn’t trust him behind the wheel of my car.

He tore two pages from the file, folded them, and shoved them in his pocket. I twisted in my seat, never actually taking my eyes off the road, but only just barely.

He’d finished reading the file by the time we reached the restaurant. I debated driving through to save time, but I wanted to get my hands on the file before he changed his mind and decided not to share. Folding myself into one of the uncomfortable particleboard booths that tended to populate all fast-food chains, I pored over the file, barely noticing the chicken nuggets I ate while I read.

The main thing I learned was that Nori couldn’t document worth a damn, and unless she’d left out a lot—or the two pages Falin removed had contained the useful information—her investigation had gone all of nowhere. Most of the events in the files were ones where I’d been present, and my firsthand experience was much more informative than her abbreviated write-ups. If she’d heard back from the ABMU about the spells in the feet or the disk, she hadn’t included that information in her report. The only exhaustive record she kept was a list of fae who’d been questioned and relocated to Faerie, and that was a big, long list.

After flipping the last page, I shoved the file away in disgust and polished off the last of my fries. “Hey, agent in charge, I think your subordinate could stand to brush up on, well, everything.”

“She gets her job done,” he said, which didn’t quite count as disagreeing with me, but he focused on his hamburger, obviously not willing to discuss the matter further.

As we finished lunch, John’s ringtone—the theme song from Cops—cut through the air. I dug in my purse and grabbed the phone as the song started its second repetition.

“Good afternoon to you too, Alex,” he said, his deep voice full of amusement. “I did get your message. I also heard some water-cooler gossip that you might have had some trouble this morning. Everything okay?”

I gave him the summarized version of the morning’s predawn events, then asked him the question no one seemed to be able to answer. “Has the ABMU turned up any leads on the spells in the feet or the disks?”

“Definitely not on my case, but if you’re correct about the caster responsible for the feet being the same as the one who sent the construct, I can probably make a case to get a copy of the results from the disks. If there are any results, that is. No guarantee, and I’m not saying I’ll be able to pass it on to you, but I’ll check.”

“I’ll owe you one,” I said, and suddenly, sitting in the middle of a fast-food restaurant with John all the way across town, I felt the potential for imbalance grow between us. Damn. It’s going to take time to get used to that.

“Yeah, well, I’m inclined to tell you to let the police handle this, but with the attacks targeting you, and with Holly caught up in the middle of it, I know you won’t. Have you tried contacting Dr. Aaron Corrie?”

The name sounded familiar, but it took me a moment to remember why. “He was one of the founding members of the Organization for Magically Inclined Humans, wasn’t he?” I’d had to write a paper on him in academy. As well as being one of the founders of OMIH, he was from a family that had been practicing magic generations before the Awakening and reputedly had one of the largest collections of ancient grimoires in the world.

“Yeah, but did you know he was local?” John asked. “He consults for the police on occasion, and he likes puzzles, so he might help you for a modest fee. I’ll give you the address.”

Now I really did owe him, though I didn’t say as much—I seriously disliked the feeling of debt racking up around me. I jotted the address John gave me on a napkin and shoved it in my purse.

“I’ll bring another grave witch. I’m not promising it will work, but between the two of us, we might be able to pull a shade out of one of the feet. Can you get us access?”

The line was silent for a long moment, and I could imagine John tugging his mustache as he considered the obstacles ahead. “Well, technically you were already hired to consult on the case, so I guess there wouldn’t be much need to file additional paperwork.” In other words, if I performed another ritual, the higher-ups, and presumably the FIBs, wouldn’t know about it. “But I couldn’t pay you for your time.”

Yeah, definitely off the books. “Don’t worry about that, John. The department is already paying me for my time in the floodplain. Think of this as tying up loose ends.” Besides, at this point, I was being paid to investigate by Malik—at least in a roundabout way—and it would have been sleazy to bill two different clients for one ritual.

The sound of papers fluttering on the other end of the line filtered over the phone and John said, “While we haven’t gotten any magical results yet, the DNA profile on the first three feet we found came in. Nothing. Not a single match. I’m still waiting on results for the second batch. I’m grasping at straws in this case.” There was a muffled sound of something hitting the mic on the phone, and I knew John had rubbed his hand over his face, his knuckles scraping the mouthpiece.

“Okay,” he said at last. “What could it hurt? Besides the FIB’s egos if NCPD finds the killer first. Maybe your ritual will be the case-breaker. How does tomorrow evening, about six thirty, sound? Those FIB suits never stay around here that late.”

I glanced at the address I’d written on the napkin and checked it against the large numbers in the brick. They matched. I nodded and shoved the napkin back in my purse.

While most witches lived in the Glen, the suburbs surrounding the Magic Quarter, Aaron Corrie lived in the Quarter. And not only in it, but in the very center of it. His house overlooked one side of Magic Square, the park in the middle of the Quarter. The streets this far inside the Quarter were narrow, cobbled, and reserved for pedestrian and horse-drawn carriages only, so I’d parked several blocks away and we’d walked. Now we stood on the sidewalk staring at the old house.

Okay, so in a city only about fifty years old, we didn’t really have old houses, but in Nekros, Corrie’s house was what passed as historic. Not that we could see much of it. The tall brick wall blocked most of the house from view. The only opening in the brick was a narrow walkway barely wide enough for two people to walk through side by side—I’d hate to see what Corrie would do if he ever decided to replace his furniture.

A tall cast-iron gate blocked the walkway. More fleur-de-lis had been worked into the gate’s intricate design, as well as several runes. From more than a yard away, I already could feel the buzz of Corrie’s wards—and the nausea from being near such a high concentration of iron.

“I don’t feel very welcome,” I said, staring at the gate. While cast iron had been popular pre–Magical Awakening, post–it was considered rude. And a sign of bigotry.

I nodded. I needed answers and I didn’t care if the person who had them happened to hate fae. Or maybe we were jumping to conclusions. Maybe he was just a fan of pre-Awakening architecture.

I scanned the wall, searching for a call box. There wasn’t one, and now that I really looked, I realized the gate didn’t have any electronic locking devices. I guess we let ourselves in. But I didn’t immediately try. Instead I reached out with my senses, feeling the magic in the wards and making sure old Corrie hadn’t cast anything nasty for unwelcome visitors.

His wards were powerful, but the only unexpected spell I found intensified the sting of the iron. So much for the theory on pre-Awakening architecture. I stepped closer to the gate and a wave of sickness washed over me. My stomach clenched, my tongue curled, and I stumbled back, farther from the gate.

He shrugged. “Hey, I can offer you hope, right?” He gave me a smile, but there wasn’t much to it. “You will grow accustomed to feeling sick, but remember that the symptoms are warning signs. Fae can die from iron poisoning, and if you’re experiencing the symptoms, you might be able to as well.”

The quip earned me another frown, and I immediately regretted it. Like most people raised in the mortal realm, I had only dodgy knowledge of the fae at best, more than likely filled with enough gaps to hold one of Faerie’s endless halls. If Falin was willing to share information without making me trade for it, I really shouldn’t discourage him.

“Come on, let’s do this,” I said, nodding toward the gate. The wave of sickness washed over me again, but this time I rolled with it and forced my hand to reach for the latch anyway. Falin caught my wrist before I reached the gate.

Falin grabbed the latch, and as soon as his gloved fingers touched the iron, his glamour shattered, his ragged and bloodied clothing becoming visible for all to see. I noticed that this time his holster and gun didn’t disappear. He must have picked them up at his office. The gun added to his bloody clothing didn’t improve his appearance, and people on the street behind us stopped, staring.

I motioned him ahead of me as soon as he pushed the gate open. I followed close behind, and the moment we were inside he released the gate and let it swing shut behind us. It didn’t latch, but neither of us bothered touching it again to close it properly.

I expected Falin’s glamour to bounce back in place as soon as he released the gate, but it didn’t. I hoped Corrie didn’t peek out his window, because we certainly looked like disreputable guests at the moment.

“Give me a moment to rebuild the glamour,” Falin said. He wasn’t breathing hard, but the skin around his eyes was pinched and I knew that brief contact, even through the fabric of his gloves, had taxed him.

So what would it do to changelings? We were almost to Corrie’s front door, so I didn’t have time to ask, but I made a mental note to avoid iron when I was with Rianna. Not that I was exactly seeking it out now.

“Let me. I don’t have a glamour that will fail,” I said, and he acquiesced with a small smile that was either gratitude or amusement—I couldn’t tell which.

Digging through my purse, I pulled out the gloves Rianna had given me when I visited the Bloom. I didn’t put them on, as short white gloves really didn’t match my emerald green halter top, but I did use one of them to grip the knocker. After banging out three loud raps, I stepped back and dropped my gloves back in my purse, waiting. I was becoming afraid I’d have to knock again when the large door creaked open.

Aaron Corrie stood in the doorway, or at least I assumed the old man was Corrie simply because I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone older and Corrie had been a young man during the Magical Awakening seventy years ago. It was obvious that he’d been tall once, but age had stolen his height and curved his back so that the top of his head with its thin wisps of silver hair reached no higher than my nose. But his green eyes were clear and bright.

“Hi, I’m Alex Craft, a private investigator with Tongues for the Dead.” I held out my hand. Corrie’s handshake was firm but friendly, and almost unbearably painful. The heat of his skin did nothing but exacerbate the chilling ache as his ring pressed against my flesh. Iron jewelry? Seriously? I’d had a lot of practice recently in keeping my face impassive during handshakes, so I managed not to wince or jerk away. When he dropped my hand, he turned to Falin and I rushed on. “And this is—” I hesitated. I’d first met him as Detective Andrews, but now that I knew he wasn’t, introducing him as such would be a lie. I also couldn’t introduce him as Agent Andrews. Corrie was fae-phobic and “agent” was a dead giveaway for the FIB. Finally I said, “—my associate, Falin Andrews.”

Falin shook Corrie’s extended hand, his glamour holding against the small quantity of iron in the ring. The old man glanced at Falin’s gloved hand and then gave him a slow, scrutinizing appraisal.

I forced a smile. “My current case involves runes I’ve never seen before, and I haven’t been able to find them in my research.” Or at least not in four hours of Internet searching. “I’m told you might be able to help me decipher them.”

I nodded and riffled through my purse until I found the page where I’d sketched the runes. Corrie accepted the paper, and then patted his chest until his fingers found a thick leather cord. He pulled the cord until a mass of charms emerged from under his shirt. He flicked through the charms, finally stopping when his fingers landed on a silver charm shaped like a pair of glasses. He detached the charm and flipped it upside down before reattaching it. One of the charms around him shimmered and changed.

“I’m always having to change from a nearsighted to a farsighted charm,” he said as he dropped the knot of charms back under his shirt. He smiled, as if sharing some inside joke. “You’ll understand one day. Now let’s see what kind of runes you have here.” He lifted the page and studied the runes I’d meticulously copied from the charmed disk. As his gaze moved down the page, his eyes grew wider, his bushy white eyebrows lifting. “Now this is interesting. Very interesting.”

If Corrie hadn’t already disappeared deeper in the house, I’d have dawdled endlessly in the entry hall. The walls were lined with shelves and every square inch was filled with knickknacks. But this wasn’t just a collection of junk—it was a collection of magical junk. As soon as I passed the ward on the doorway, the press of hundreds of different charms and enchantments tumbled over me, threatening to overwhelm me.

They thundered through my senses, deafening my mind to anything else. Getting out and reorienting myself would have been best, but it was too late for that, and thinking above the magical roar to command my legs to move was beyond my ability. There was nothing malicious in the room, or at least nothing obvious, and not even anything terribly powerful. I felt a train that puffed out magic smoke, a doll that made children laugh, a mirror that reflected the image the viewer desired most, a spoon that kept soup hot, and other small, frivolous charms. But there were hundreds of them. And they overloaded my senses.

I rarely shielded with more than my bracelet and my mental shield of living vines, but now I had no choice. I squeezed my eyes closed and forced my focus inward—at least as much focus as I could summon. Outside my wall of briars I visualized a second wall enclosing my psyche. This wall I saw as a bubble of unbroken mirrors, the reflective surface deflecting the feel of magic.

As the bubble solidified in my mind, the roar of magic dulled and then fell away into eerie magical silence. I always felt blind, deaf, and dumb when I shielded this hard and completely cut myself off from the ebb of the world around me, but for now, it was better than being overwhelmed.

Falin stood with his face so close to mine that our noses brushed. The warmth of his palm pressed against the back of my neck, and I realized it wasn’t new warmth, but that he must have been standing there like that for some time. He must have been calling my name for a while too. When he saw my eyes open, he let out a breath of relief, and the warm air rolled over my skin. He stepped back and my gaze snapped to the gun in his hand.

Falin pointed at the hall, but he didn’t move, and he stared at me several more seconds before he finally holstered his gun. Then, apparently satisfied that the danger had passed, he headed for the hall. I followed, my steps slow and heavy. We found Corrie in a bedroom that had been converted into a library. He sat at a round table in the very center of the room, my page of runes directly in front of him and stacks of oversized and irregular leather-bound books piled around him.

Corrie looked up and squinted at me. “Oh, you’re that girl. Yes, I recognize you now.” He rubbed a finger against his chin, making the loose skin jiggle. “How interesting.”

He pushed away from the table and scurried to one of the bookshelves. “Where are my manners?” he said as he hauled a book with a cracked leather spine off the shelf. “Take a seat. I made tea.”

I’d have preferred coffee to tea, but as I saw where his finger pointed, I realized it wouldn’t have mattered what he served. In the center of the table sat a black iron kettle and three deceptively delicate teacups on saucers. Iron teacups, of course. Where did he even find these things?

His book thumped on the table and Corrie grabbed the kettle. He poured the tea and passed out cups as if we were dolls gathered at a child’s tea party. I gulped back the nausea clawing at my throat as he pushed a dark saucer into my hand, and I set it on the table as soon as possible. Falin held on to his cup and saucer, his gloves apparently shielding him. When Corrie turned to walk back to the other half of the table, Falin bumped my leg with his. I met his gaze and he lifted the mug and shook his head. The message was clear: Do not drink.

“How is the tea?” Corrie asked, sipping from his iron cup with his pinkie crooked. He didn’t look at me when he asked, but at Falin. And he more than just looked at him—he watched Falin, waiting.

“Ha, I knew it!” Corrie jumped to his feet. “Get out of my house. You’re not welcome here. And you.” He turned to me. “Were you knowingly associating with a fae or were you tricked?”

Falin and I exchanged glances and then both pushed back our chairs, letting the legs scrape on the floor as we stood. The irony was that if I’d been fully human I could have lied, and probably avoided being kicked out. But I wasn’t.

Corrie snatched it off the table, clutching the page between his wrinkled hands. He glanced between it and us and then stepped back, pulling the page closer to his chest. “This I’d like to keep.”

If I’d thought he would share what he learned I’d have let him; after all, I could always recopy the runes. But he wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t. I shook my head and extended my hand farther.

Corrie looked down at the page. His eyes glimmered with either greed or lust—it was hard to tell which, but whichever demon he struggled with also had to contend with his prejudice.