Grave Dance

But for now I needed to hold on to my grave-sight a little longer. At least until I could get a good look at whatever ritual had happened around the rift. It might have been better if I’d walked the whole scene and not drawn attention to my interest in the rift, but if I was going to see that hole, I needed to do it now-ish. I said as much to Falin. His lips thinned to a grim line, but he nodded and led me on a more direct path.

“I think we have enough cadaver dogs on the scene already,” a snide voice said as I drew near the rift.

The skin along my neck prickled. Jenson. Haven’t I dealt with enough for one night? Unlike Nori or even Lusa, Detective Jenson wasn’t someone I could hope I’d never see again once the case was over. He was John’s partner, and I didn’t know if he blamed me for John’s getting shot and that was what was with the attitude for the last few weeks, but it would be better for everyone involved if we could at least be civil toward each other. So I forced a smile I didn’t feel as I turned toward his voice. And then I froze in my tracks.

Jenson stood a couple of yards away, his thumbs in his waistband, his right hand suspiciously close to his gun. But that wasn’t what stopped me; what gave me pause was his face. His jaw was wider than normal, and it jutted forward in an underbite that provided room for the two tusks protruding from where his lower cuspids should have been. The tusks curled over his upper lip, the skin around them dark and calloused from years of contact.

“What are you staring at, Craft?” he asked, glaring at me.

I shook my head, blinking. His image didn’t change. The rest of his face was normal and exactly the same as always. It was just his jaw and mouth that were different. His soul glimmered a normal bright yellow, which I’d come to associate with humans.

“Troll blood?” It was a testament to how tired I was that I asked the question out loud. I tried to bite the words back as soon as they escaped my mouth, but of course, by then it was too late.

Jenson’s expression darkened as the color built in his face. “Oh, so you can figure that out, can you?” He stalked forward. “Look at you. Homicide’s darling is a fucking faerie in hiding. Who would have guessed?”

As Jenson crowded my space, Falin moved to block his path, but I touched his arm, stopping him. This was something Jenson and I had to work out for ourselves. In the years I’d been working with the cops, I’d learned that for some of them, there were only two ways for me to earn any respect: be helpful in putting the bad guys away and be able to hold my own. Jenson had always been one of the former—or so I thought—but if he was swinging toward the latter, Falin running interference for me would only make things worse.

So I stood up straighter, exaggerating the inch or two of height I had on Jenson and tried to minimize my trembling. Jenson had decided to get in my face, and though I wasn’t about to get in a catfight at a crime scene, I would meet his challenge.

“That’s a rather ironic insult, all things considered,” I said, my voice low since it didn’t have to carry far at this distance. I let my gaze flicker to one tusk so he knew exactly what I was talking about.

The blotchy color filling his cheeks flushed a deeper crimson. “You think that’s funny?”

Funny? “I’m not following. Do you have a problem with me?” My newfound heritage? My job? My abilities? What exactly was he lashing out at? Yeah, I’d figured out he was feykin, but it wasn’t like I was going to out him.

“Yeah, I have a problem with you.”

I stared at him, waiting. “Okay. What’s the problem?”

Jenson sneered, his upper lip rolling back from his tusks. Then he brushed past me, knocking me with his shoulder hard enough to send me stumbling. I kept my feet under me, but only just barely. What the hell was that about?

I glanced at Falin, who looked just as perplexed as he watched Jenson’s retreating back. Jenson’s issues with my, or maybe his, heritage—or whatever his issue was—wasn’t a problem I needed to waste energy on tonight. Time was slipping away from me, the night speedily rushing toward morning. I closed my eyes for a moment, no more than a second, and the world felt like it swayed around me. Damn. I needed to wrap this up, get home, and get some sleep before I collapsed where I stood—which was starting to feel like a real possibility.

I turned my attention to the tear in reality.

I wasn’t sure what the area looked like if viewed just on the mortal plane, but with my psyche crossing several planes of existence, the scene was a mess. Residual magic hung in the air and pooled on the ground in murky patches. The smell of burned grass stung my nose, and the evidence of a struggle showed both in the way the Aetheric moved around patches of magic it didn’t like and on the ground. Numbered plastic markers littered the area, alerting the techs to evidence that needed to be processed. Most marked footprints, but here and there I saw a rune drawn in the dirt. Or at least what was left of a rune. Footprints obscured most, and the one that had drawn my attention on TV had a long tunnel of dirt bisecting it where it looked like someone’s heel had been dragged across the ground.

Damn.

I walked closer, trying to find some pattern in what remained of the runes. I felt the residue of the circle as I reached the outer edge, and I stopped before crossing it, letting my senses stretch. Unlike the charms I’d felt in the tent city, the circle definitely held the signature of the witch behind the murders and I shivered at the touch despite the fact that a magical circle was completely neutral magic.

“This is where the witch cast the circle.”

“I guessed that much,” Falin said, and when I glanced at him in surprise, he pointed toward the ground. “That’s where the dead grass starts.”

I blinked and looked around. All the grass was withered and gray in my grave-sight, so I never would have known that if he hadn’t told me. What kind of ritual kills all the grass in the area?

I had no idea, but there was only one thing left to do.

I crossed the edge of the circle.

Crossing someone else’s circle, even one long ago dispelled, into someone’s ritual space is always a little uncomfortable for a sensitive. The area is almost guaranteed to be saturated with that witch’s magic, and even the trace of beneficial and friendly magic can be overwhelming. Not that I was expecting friendly spells on the other side of this barrier.

What I expected even less was to find no magic at all, but that was exactly what I found.

I blinked. Over the last few hours I’d grown so accustomed to seeing the world through hazy swirls of Aetheric that their sudden absence was jarring. I glanced behind me. Outside the edge of the circle the Aetheric still hung over the world, but inside the circle there were only a few thin wisps, like what the skimmers had been drawing from the tear. I’d heard of magical dead spots before, but that wasn’t what I was looking at, and I knew it. This was more like depletion. But what kind of spell uses that much energy?

Something major, that was for sure, and whatever it was, I definitely didn’t like it.

I squinted. I wasn’t used to my grave-sight opening multiple planes of existence to me, but I knew there were more planes than I had names for. I occasionally caught glimpses of different planes that didn’t “fit” with the land of the dead or the Aetheric, though those two were my only constants. Now I tried to look for another plane, one that might give me a hint of what had happened in this circle.

Colors splashed across the world. They weren’t the vivid, swirling colors of the Aetheric, but colors that seemed to emanate from inside objects and space. I’d seen this plane before, and from what I’d gathered, it absorbed the emotional resonance of the people who brushed against it. Around the rift I could make out the bright, blissed-out spots where the skimmers had stood, but those were just splashes of color, already fading. Under them, in the very center of the tear, was the most brilliant light I’d ever seen. It was no color, or all colors—I couldn’t be sure. It created a silhouette of light instead of shadow. I stared at it, realizing this was the profile of the witch we were looking for, but I could glean no details from the shape except that the witch had stood in that very spot and felt hope . . . joy.

Hope and joy? What had happened in this circle? Had I been wrong about who cast it?

I turned, walking farther from the tear, and then I stumbled because as soon as I left the glow of the witch’s hope, the air turned thick with a deep stain of pulsing red.

The color bled up from the ground and throbbed against my skin. Fear. Pain. Desperation. I crashed to my knees. I could almost see the shadows of rage closing in around me, as they twisted and writhed in the circle. The very air hummed with anger, prickling my flesh and burning my lungs. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

I slammed my shields closed, blocking out the dead, the color, the rage, the pain. Darkness fell over me, and I welcomed the sudden lack of sight as I sucked down gulps of the night air.

“Alex, what happened?”

Falin.

He was beside me, his hands on my arms as he tried to help me stand. I let him.

“They died here,” I whispered. “So much pain. So many people.” And the witch had stood in the center of all that misery and had felt hope.

I didn’t tell the police what I’d seen. The anti–black magic unit had both an auramancer and a wyrd clairvoyant who could tap into the reality I’d touched if the cops really wanted to know what the victims had felt, though I wouldn’t have wished what I’d just felt on anyone. When I saw John tomorrow—or really, later today, as it was long past midnight now—I would tell him that I’d sensed only one witch in that circle. That was something he needed to know. The rest? I didn’t see how it would help.

I fell asleep on the ride home and woke to Falin lifting me from the car.

“M-mm. Put me down; you’re hurt,” I mumbled, the words coming out slightly garbled in my half-awake state.

“I’m not that hurt.”

Right.

But he did put me down, and I stumbled up my stairs on my own. I let him use my keys to unlock the door, as I’d have just fumbled the job in my trembling, half-blind condition. I’d spent way too much time peering into other planes of existence. What I really wanted now was a hot shower and a good night’s sleep, though not necessarily in that order.