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Chapter Five
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MICAH'S WORDS ECHOED endlessly in Zari's mind as she climbed up the stairs leading to the same station exit between Broadway and Battery Place. Just as her boss not so subtly ordered, she had applied for a paid case, but just as expected...
Zari rolled her eyes as she remembered how things went down this morning at B2. Since the other trappers already hated her guts for being a pet and Micah's so-called favorite, she had decided to apply for the lowest-paying case, thinking that this would cut her some slack.
Unfortunately, it only made the other trappers think Zari was rubbing their noses on the fact that she didn't need to work for money. It was no secret that the Marquis of Sangre considered her family, not to mention the fact that she was also Alexandru's designated heir and thus owner of million-dollar estates and God knew what else.
Maybe she should care more about correcting their impressions, try a little harder at befriending the other trappers so they wouldn't think she was a stuck-up bitch, but...whatever.
The past year had turned her into quite the closet pessimist, and she wondered if her Master would still think she was cute once he realized how much she had changed.
So you better hurry up, Master, Zari thought. Or else it would be all your fault if you come back and find out I'm no longer the Zari you know. So please...
And even though she knew it was plain stupid—-
She found herself standing to the side as soon as she reached the top of the steps, and then she closed her eyes and waited.
Come back now.
But again, it was just radio silence, and in the end all she could do was open her eyes...
Optical peeing for the win.
Zari angrily wiped her tears with the back of her hand even as she forced herself to get moving. Unlike yesterday, the crowd was noticeably thinner outside Bowling Green, and by the time she made it to The Battery, the whole place was practically a ghost town.
Guess that makes sense, Zari thought. A dozen dead kids didn't exactly make the world a better place, and as tough as New Yorkers supposedly were, they were humans still, and thus naturally terrified of things that went bump—-
"This smells like a bad place."
The words, uttered in a singsong tone, had Zari quickly shaking her head. "It's fine, don't worry." She didn't bother lowering her voice, knowing that there wasn't anyone around to think her crazy for talking to herself. "This was a bad place, but not anymore—-"
"You're sure?" A woman's upside-down face suddenly popped up in front of her, and Zari barely managed to keep herself from yelping.
One eye missing, lips a grisly shade of red, and long, dark locks that only covered the left side of her scalp. The other half was bald and completely burnt, and so was the rest of her body, which was a crisp shade of black save for patches of vein-less skin.
"Elsa!" Sheesh, she almost had a heart attack a second ago. "Please stop doing that."
The still-upside-down ghost only blinked her one good eye at Zari. "Truly not a bad place?"
"Yes." Zari nodded fervently. "Truly." Elsa had become rather overprotective towards her lately, and the last time the ghost thought Zari had been in trouble, things had gone way, way south.
Like, dismembered evil men kind of south, and while Zari was grateful for Elsa saving her life, the ghost's rescue attempts tended to be somewhat unnecessarily messy.
So for now...
"It's alright," she said soothingly. "Really." Elsa's hair was basically the ghost's craze-o-meter, and only when the long knotted locks, currently standing on their ends, gradually settled back into place was Zari able to breathe a little more easily.
After that, she only had to continue distracting Elsa for a few minutes more, and once the ghost was busy playing with her doll, Zari was finally free to examine the crime scene.
Thirteen square meters, according to the police files on the case, and thirteen feet deep. Just the number thirteen all over, and it had her wondering if she was dealing with a satanic ghost.
She took her time circling the still-unfilled grave, its perimeter outlined by yellow caution tape, thinking that there was a clue the police could have missed, never mind if the murders actually happened decades ago.
But there was nothing.
She circled the grave a few more times, trying to look at it from the eyes of a human detective, a user of magic, a vampire's pet...she tried everything, but nothing jumped out.
Okay then.
Zari crouched down and slowly ran her fingers over the soil. She used to have to wait for a vision to come to her, but three years of impossibly hard work under her mentor, Lady Soleil, had changed that.
She closed her eyes.
Come on, now.
Come on.
But all she got was just dirt under her nails.
Shit.
She had been hoping it wouldn't come to this, but if this was what it took to figure out the mystery behind the missing thirteenth body...
Very well.
After taking a slow, deep breath, Zari ducked under the caution tape and jumped into the grave. Goosebumps popped all over her skin, and she gave her arms another brisk rub down.
Part of the job, Zari. Just part of the job.
And so she made herself lie down and tried not to think of the fact that just last night, a dozen corpses had been buried on the very same ground she was lying on—-
Wait a sec.
"Do you smell it, too?"
"Oh my God!" Zari nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Martin suddenly lying next to her. He was the newest ghost to make his home with her instead of moving on, and just like Elsa, he also had this unfortunate habit of popping out of nowhere and scaring the daylight out of her.
She forced herself to meet his gaze with its empty eye sockets, which she knew she'd eventually get used to, just like how she had become used to Elsa's not-exactly-calming appearance.
"So, um..." Zari was about to give the dead boy the same talk she gave all the other ghosts about the need for advance warning when she recalled his earlier words. "Martin..." She pushed herself up to a sitting position, and Martin did the same thing. "That smell you mentioned..." She sniffed the air, just to be sure it was still the same scent she had noticed, and it was.
Something fruity, but also somewhat smoky...
"So you also smell it?" Martin asked.
"Do you know what it is?"
"I grew up around it," the boy told her. "My mom's a weak one."
Zari tried making sense of the boy's words. "Do you mean she's sick?"
Martin shook his head. "No, no, not that. I mean, my mom's a weak one. It's like a religion..."
A religion?
His mother had a religion that made her a...
Oh.
"A Wiccan," Zari realized out loud.
The boy nodded eagerly. "Yes! My mother's a Wiccan, and she uses this plant all the time. She calls 'em the devil's apples."