Grave Dance

He smiled at her but all he said was, “If you’re up to it.”

I frowned as he focused on his plate again. Hadn’t he said she’d left this morning? Maybe he’d been mistaken, but the fact that he hadn’t pushed the subject made me think he’d already discussed it with her. Apparently it wasn’t any of my business. Not that I could complain about anyone else keeping secrets. I had more than enough of my own.

We finished dinner in a series of awkward silences separated by short bits of conversation. Afterward, as I headed for the stairs to my loft, I found I had a tagalong. A rather large, unhappy-looking tagalong.

“You planning on babysitting me all night?” I asked Caleb as I took the stairs two at a time.

“Actually, I was planning to tell you to grab some PJs and spend the night in the main portion of the house.”

Oh, he couldn’t be serious. I glanced back as I pushed open the door to my loft. He looked deadly serious.

“I’ll be fine.” I didn’t need a babysitter. He was overreacting. He had to be.

I checked on Falin. The three healing charms had puttered out already, and I tapped into the magic stored in my ring and channeled power into them, giving them a slight recharge. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Then I checked the wound. It had stopped bleeding, which was good, but I couldn’t have said for sure whether it actually looked any better.

When I turned, I found Caleb still shadowing me, and still looking just as determined about my not staying in my own loft.

“I want you downstairs, behind a locked door and my wards. You and PC can stay in the guest room,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You owe me a debt, and I’m calling it in.”

He’d helped me move Falin upstairs, and while I didn’t think he’d been any great help to the man other than that, I could feel the debt between us, and feel the fact that I had to do what he’d asked. I sighed. It wasn’t like staying in the guest room was a bad option—it certainly was more appealing than the floor, which was what I’d been planning, but I would have liked to be closer at hand if Falin needed anything during the night. Now I didn’t have the option.

I grabbed a pair of shorts and a sleeveless top and then headed to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When I emerged, Caleb was still waiting for me, PC dozing in his arms.

I made one more stop by the bed to tuck Falin in as much as possible with him lying on top of the unmade comforter. If you ignored all the blood, he looked almost peaceful, as if he were just sleeping. “You really think he’s that dangerous?”

“Al, I don’t think. I know. And he has the blood on his hands to prove it.”

Chapter 12

I woke with a jolt and slammed into the mattress a moment later as if I’d jumped in my sleep. My eyes snapped open and I blinked at the chaotic swirl of colors filling the darkness.

Something was wrong.

I snapped my shields closed and sat up, brushing aside the comforter as I moved. A comforter with a stiff, lacy trim. My comforter doesn’t have lace trim.

But I wasn’t in my room or my bed—I was in Caleb’s guest room. The glowing red numbers on the clock beside the bed told me it was 3:49 a.m. Is that it? Is it just the unfamiliar room?

No. There was something else wrong.

I blinked, trying to figure out what felt off. The air hummed with the familiar resonance of the Glen—the neighborhoods surrounding the Magic Quarter, where most of Nekros’s witches and fae lived—and the grave essence reaching from the nearest graveyard felt the same as it always did. Then I realized the issue was as much what I wasn’t feeling as what I was. I felt the magic in the Glen, and not the sheltering buzz of Caleb’s wards.

Why are the wards down?

I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.

Sliding out of bed, I padded as silently as possible across the room, but I wasn’t familiar with the layout and the moonlight streaming through the closed blinds wasn’t nearly enough to illuminate anything. I stubbed my toe against a box—Caleb used the room for storage—and cursed under my breath. PC’s tags clinked softly as he lifted his head, trying to decide where I was going.

“Stay,” I whispered in the general direction of the bed, but I heard his paws land on the hardwood a moment later.

I reached out, feeling along the wall until my fingers traced over the light switch. Then I blinked in the sudden glow of fluorescent lighting.

I hadn’t brought my boots downstairs, but I’d dropped my dagger in my purse and that was on the nightstand. I dug out the dagger and unsheathed it. I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but the wards going down in the middle of the night was seriously suspicious. Besides, if I didn’t take the dagger, I’d feel like that ditzy blonde in every horror movie who goes out unarmed to check on strange noises. Nothing ends well for those girls.

I crept across the room, cringing as the floorboards creaked under my bare feet. Of course, I’d turned on the light, so it wasn’t like I was being super stealthy. The oblivious dog trailing me didn’t help either.

Opening the door a crack, I peeked into the hall beyond. My vision being what it was, I couldn’t see anything but the pillar of light escaping the guest room. I opened the door wider, and a shadow crossed the doorway.

I threw a hand over my mouth to strangle the sound that tried to escape my lips and jumped back, away from the door.

“Al, you okay?”

Caleb.

I pulled the door open wider. Like me, Caleb must have woken when the wards fell, because the light pouring from my room revealed light green skin and dark, pupil-less eyes. Caleb never walked around without his glamour intact. In one hand he held a mallet, and in the other a vial containing a spell that pricked at my senses, so it probably did something really nasty if released.

“What happened?” I asked as I joined him in the hall.

He shook his head. “Not sure yet. The wards were taken down from the inside. You want me to hazard a guess at who might have done that?” His whispered words were sharp, leaving no doubt whom he was referring to: Falin.

I couldn’t think of any reason Falin would dismantle the wards. He was unconscious when last I’d seen him, and even if he did wake, it wasn’t like the wards prevented him from leaving. I opened my mouth to say as much and then snapped it closed again. Now wasn’t the time to argue.

“Stay here,” Caleb whispered as he crept along the hallway.

That was a good suggestion. Unfortunately, I wasn’t taking it. I closed PC in the bedroom, and then, clutching the dagger tight, I followed Caleb.

Someone had turned the lights on in the front of the house, which was good for my eyes but probably not the best sign, since we’d turned them off after we’d finished the movie we’d watched before bed and I’d said good night to Caleb and Holly. Caleb motioned me to wait as he opened the door to the den. He stepped inside and then gave a sharp hiss. I followed a moment later.

What the hell? I mouthed as I gaped at the room beyond.

The front door of the house stood wide open and dozens of ravens filled the room. The inky black birds had gathered on every available surface. Four perched on the flatpanel TV, their talons scratching against the plastic. At least a dozen sat on the back of the couch, and more were on the coffee table and on the end tables.

They stared at us with beady black eyes. Every last one of them.

“Uh, Caleb?”

“I have no idea,” he said, his whisper so quiet I barely heard him.

Another raven swooped through the open front door. It screeched, wings flapping as it drew near, and I jumped aside. The bird landed on the doorframe we’d passed when we entered, and I backed farther away as a second raven joined the first. Crap, we would have to walk under the birds to get to the back of the house. Two more ravens flew into the room.

“This is like that Hitchcock movie,” I said, taking another slow step away from the birds. They were blocking access to the front door and the door to the hall, but there were no birds between us and the door to the garage Caleb used as a workshop or the door beside it, which led to the stairs to my loft. I backed toward those doors, trying to keep an eye on all the ravens. The birds continued to stare. “They’re giving me the creeps. Aren’t they big for birds?”

“That’s an understatement.” Caleb shifted his grip on his mallet. “I guess we call animal control? We should probably wake Holly and get a hotel room for the rest of the night.”

Yeah, except how were we supposed to reach Holly? And what had attracted the birds into the house in the first place? This couldn’t be normal. I reached out with my senses, looking for a spell or charm that would have attracted the birds. What I found was seriously not what I expected.

“Oh, crap.”

Caleb turned halfway around, but he never looked away from the ravens. “What?”

“Those aren’t birds. They’re constructs.”

Chapter 13

Constructs. Just like the cu sith in the Quarter. I opened my shields, already knowing what I’d find. In my second sight, the ravens vanished, becoming instead misty shapes surrounding a nasty clump of twisting magic. I snapped my shields closed again.

“We have to get out of here,” I whispered, reaching behind me for the doorknob to the stairwell. We could escape out through my room and then circle around to the back door to get Holly. My hand landed on the knob, and I twisted it quickly.

It didn’t turn.

Damn it! We never locked the doors to the stairs, but Caleb had insisted since Falin was staying upstairs. I fumbled with the lock, finally having to turn my back on the birds to unlock the door. I twisted the knob again, jerking the door, but it just shuddered.

“The bolt lock too?” I asked, my voice raising with a mix of exasperation and panic.

“Alex,” Caleb hissed, and as if my name were some sort of signal, the ravens screeched.

The room filled with the sound of wings beating the air, the roar almost loud enough to block out the screeching. The birds dove forward just as I threw the lock.