Grave Dance

How did he—? I turned and found him directly behind me, leaning in the corner where the porch rail and the side of the house met. After the morning I’d had, my frayed nerves didn’t take well to another surprise.

I yelped, stumbling backward, and my foot smashed through what my senses perceived as a decaying board. The wood crumbled around my calf as I lost my footing, and the porch swallowed my leg up to my thigh.

Falin jumped forward, catching my arms. He lips twisted in pain with the movement, the muscles in his jaw twitching. I slammed my shields closed, and the land of the dead slipped away.

But the damage was already done, my leg caught all the way to my midthigh. In fact, closing my shields might have made things worse because the wood was once again solid around my leg.

“Hold still,” Falin said, shifting his grip under my arms. He winced as he lifted me and I motioned him away.

“You’re hurt. I can do this.”

He glared at me, but I met the ice in his eyes with my own scowl. Finally he released me, holding his hands up in surrender and backing up a step. Of course, saying I could do it was easier than actually freeing myself.

It took me several minutes of repositioning my arms and my free leg before I found an angle where I could wiggle my leg out of the hole. I was breathing hard by the time both my feet were on the top side of the porch again. Blowing a curl out of my face, I wiped my palms on the front of my jeans and turned to face Falin. “So, was that parting quip meant to get me chasing after you for clarification or . . . ?”

“Just watching.”

“Me? Or for someone?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. “Falin, what is going on?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. His glamour once again cloaked his clothing and he leaned against the wall as if he had no intention of going anywhere. I sighed. Obstinacy was one of his reigning qualities.

“Well, if you are going to stick around, you might as well come back inside.” I pushed the door open, holding it wide. He pursed his lips but didn’t move.

I waited several heartbeats. Then I turned, letting the door swing shut behind me and headed toward the bathroom. It took me only a moment to find what I was looking for. Then gripping it hard enough that my knuckles turned white, I headed back outside.

“Here’s your damn toothbrush.” I shoved it at Falin, and he blinked, his blue eyes wide with surprise. “Now, it’s barely seven o’clock and I’ve already had a hell of a day. Why don’t we have some breakfast and swap notes. Maybe we can work together.”

If we didn’t throttle each other first.

“Alex, an oatmeal creme pie doesn’t count as breakfast,” Falin said, staring at the prepackaged sweet as if it had offended him.

I shrugged. “Don’t knock it,” I said. I perched in the one chair I owned and opened my laptop. I’d put fresh sheets on the bed and I hoped Falin would get a little more rest. He might have some super-fae healing powers, but the glimpses I’d caught of him unglamoured proved he still needed some recuperation time.

“So, did I draw the queen’s attention with the tear or the castle?”

“Castle?” Falin’s eyebrow lifted, and while he might have been faking ignorance, he sounded genuinely confused.

I shook my head, dismissing the question. “Okay, so I’m guessing this has something to do with the tear.”

“Something? This has everything to do with the tear. What were you thinking, merging realities in the middle of a crowded street?”

“Uh, I was thinking Holly was about to get shredded,” I said as I dug through my purse in search of the charmed disk. “What kind of fallout am I looking at?”

“Well, you drew the attention of at least two faerie courts. They are asking questions.”

“I’m guessing their curiosity would be bad for my health?”

Falin set the untouched oatmeal creme pie aside. Then he propped my pillows against the wall and reclined against them, his hands behind his head. “If not your health, then definitely your freedom. If the courts realize what you can do, you’ll likely end up sequestered in Faerie.”

Sequestered? I was not a fan of that outcome. I retrieved the disk and set my purse aside.

“Fred said, ‘They come.’ Think that’s about the courts?” Falin opened his eyes, which had drifted closed while we spoke. “Who’s Fred?”

“Oh, uh, the gargoyle?” I shrugged. “I sort of named it.”

He stared at me, and then burst out laughing. “The winged one with the cat face?” At my nod he laughed harder, which made him wince and grasp his injured side. “You realize that particular gargoyle is female and holds a position among gargoyles similar to that of a high priestess or a grand oracle?”

“Oh.” I guess that explained why she’d seemed so amused when I’d named her. But she’d refused to give me a name to call her, and it was hard to converse with someone who didn’t have a name—even if that someone happened to be made of stone. “Anyway,” I said, “just before I found you last night, she told me, ‘They come.’”

“That’s a fairly vague warning.”

“Tell me about it.”

But he didn’t because his eyes had drifted closed again. I let him rest and turned my attention to the charmed disk. The spells in it were inert now that the glamour and soul had been separated from the magic, but somewhere in the tangle of residual magic, there had to be a hint of what spell infected my friends. If I could find the spell, I’d be that much closer to finding the counterspell. And hopefully to finding the witch behind the spell as well.

I copied the runes from the disk onto a blank sheet of paper, making sure to leave each one incomplete in case it could be invoked without knowing what it was or did. I had to dig out a magnifying glass to make sure I copied them all correctly—the disk’s design was intricate. And there had been over thirty of those ravens. Someone had way too much time on their hands.

Once I’d copied not only the runes but also the design they made on the disk, I flipped the disk over and broke the seal of wax. The wax covered a thin strip of paper, and I unfolded it, glancing over the heavy block-printed letters. The paper contained two words. A name. Mine.

Well, now there’s no question as to whether the attacks are targeted.

I dug through the trunk at the edge of my bed until I found a small enchanted box that one of my teachers gave me when I graduated academy. Like the ABMU’s magicaldampening evidence bags, the box locked magic safely away inside itself. It was one of my spellcasting instructors who’d given me the box, and I think she assumed I would eventually botch a charm so badly that it would have to be contained. I’d never used it before, but now I dumped the disk, paper, and wax inside and flipped the latch. The prickly tingle of dark magic that had been nibbling at my senses for the last hour cut off and I sighed from the sudden relief.

PC, who’d curled up beside Falin on the bed, lifted his head to see why I was making so much noise. He must have judged my activities uninteresting because after a single glance, he laid his head on Falin’s calf and closed his eyes again. I shook my head and settled in front of my computer.

Out of the sixteen runes from the disk, I thought that one looked similar to the rune for health—though it would have to be an archaic form of the rune—and that another looked like something I’d seen in academy, but couldn’t quite remember. The other fourteen were complete mysteries. Pulling up a search browser, I dove into the task of solving those mysteries.

Several hours later, I’d gained a serious crick in my back and learned that the rune I thought looked like health was, in fact, very similar to an archaic version of the rune, though the older version also meant life. Is that the spell that animates the constructs? I’d added the idea to my list of notes on the case—a very short list.

I pushed away from my laptop and stretched. I’d gone through a pot of coffee since I’d started scouring the Net, but my gritty eyes were blurring with exhaustion. I’d even switched gears at one point and searched maps for the kelpie’s “thundering gate.” After all, I had multiple directions from which to attack this case. Finding the killer would lead me to a counterspell for my friends and it would fulfill my obligation to Malik.

I searched the Net as well as studied several maps as I looked for the gate. The major interstates passing through Nekros had stylized gates, though they were just decoration, the recent beautification project downtown had added green space, some of which was gated, and even some “art” that looked more like gates than anything else, but none of those were near the river and thus they were not good candidates. Most of the warehouse district had chain-link fence blocking off the river, as did many of the residential areas, but I couldn’t see why they’d be considered “thundering.”

With my muscles cramping and my butt asleep from too many hours in a chair, I finally switched off the computer and gave the research a rest. Time for a little legwork. But first, lunch.

Falin woke as I ransacked my fridge.

“What else did she say?” he mumbled, still half asleep. Then his eyes popped open. He glanced at where the afternoon sun stretched across the floor and groaned. “I fell asleep? You should have woken me.”

I shrugged and pulled a cardboard container of Chinese takeout from the top shelf of the fridge. What day had I ordered it? I didn’t think it was more than a week ago.

“I got some stuff done,” I said, though what I’d actually done was establish where I wouldn’t find useful information.

Falin joined me at the fridge, his movements smoother and clearly less painful than before he’d fallen asleep. He glanced over the limited contents before plucking the carton of Chinese from my hands.

“Hey!”

He chucked the carton back on the top shelf and shut the fridge door. “I’ll buy lunch,” he said. Then cut off my protest with, “I need to stop by my office to grab Nori’s case files. We can grab lunch afterward.”