Grave Dance

I muted the TV again. All things considered, if whatever she’d said about me had been short enough that I didn’t catch it before hitting the volume, it probably wasn’t devastating. At least, I hope not.

“I’m going to cast my circle,” I told Roy as I gathered a quarter-sized wooden disk and a carving knife and headed for the small circle cut into the floor in the corner of the room.

The ghost shrugged, not looking up from the cereal bowl he was attempting to shove from one side of the kitchen counter to the other. When I’d first met Roy, he hadn’t been able to interact with anything on the living side of the chasm between his plane and mine. He’d received a serious power boost a month ago when I’d been overflowing with energy I couldn’t control and I’d siphoned a load of it into him. Ever since, he’d become a champion poltergeist: knocking things over, pushing buttons, and even managing to hold a pen long enough to write his name in uneven, crooked letters.

“Don’t break that bowl,” I said, and then settled down inside my circle. If I was going to have any shot at casting a spell that would alert me to glamour, I’d need to be focused—and not on the ghost haunting my apartment.

Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the raw magic stored in the obsidian ring I wore. I channeled it into the dormant circle, and the magical barrier sprang to life, pulsing with blue energy. Circle cast, I cleared my mind and let my consciousness sink deep inside until I reached the trancelike state I’d been taught to strive for while in academy.

I hit that place of perfect nothingness, perfect peace. Then the world exploded in a rainbow of colors.

Aetheric energy twisted around me in writhing swirls of light, but there was no land of the dead mixed in, no mortal realm. I’d reached the Aetheric plane the way a witch was meant to: my psyche, and only my psyche, projected into the magical plane. I could still feel my body sitting inside my circle, but it was a distant sensation—more a minor irritation, like a buzzing fly, than a solid connection.

In the Aetheric plane I wasn’t restrained by the rules of a body. I could float. I could fly. I laughed with the freedom of it, the sound turning to bright blue notes. Magic swirled around me, and I was a part of that magic. I felt invulnerable, limitless. And that was the dangerous part.

It would be so easy to forget I needed the tether to my body. To forget that I wasn’t just magic and energy like everything else in the Aetheric plane. To forget that I had a limit. So after I danced along a stream of vibrant green magic, years of training forced me to pull back and recenter myself.

I adjusted my perspective and did something that was possible only in the Aetheric plane: I moved outside myself and examined my projected self from the outside. The deep fissures where a soul-sucking spell had damaged my very being still cut through my astral body, but the wounds were clear, showing no signs of taint or dark magic. They also showed no sign of healing.

I changed my perspective again, this time focusing on the magic around me. I drew on the brilliant strands, pulling the magic into my body. I absorbed only the blue and green swirls, as those were the Aetheric strands that resonated with me. My astral body filled with the magic, shining a brilliant turquoise. I stepped out of myself once again and ensured that there were no dark points and that nothing malicious had attached to my psyche. Then, filled with magic, I free-fell back into my physical body.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in my apartment. Roy was gone, PC was stretched across my lap, and my back ached from too many hours sitting in one place. But though I registered the soreness, I was too giddy to care. Magic filled my body, rushed through my veins. I felt like I could do anything. Anything. But I couldn’t. That was another danger of magic, and why it needed to be stored or used immediately.

I refilled my ring first, pushing as much raw magic into it as the obsidian could hold. Then I focused on refreshing my personal shields and charms. The maintenance took more than half of the magic I was holding—my capacity had never been great—but what was left was more than enough for the charm I intended to craft.

I’d found no reference to a successful charm letting the bearer see through glamour. But I could already see through glamour. I just needed to know when to look.

I grabbed my knife and the wooden disk. As I cut the first stroke of the glyph for awareness into the disk, I released a steady trickle of magic and focused on what I wanted the charm to do. Once I’d finished the first glyph, I started on the rune meaning truth.

As I carved, the charm began to buzz with magic, the spell taking hold. By the time I cut the last stroke of the final rune, warning, the charm all but vibrated with power. I released the rest of the raw magic I held, allowing it to dissipate harmlessly. Then I clipped the disk to my charm bracelet. The wood looked out of place with all the silver, but it felt like the strongest charm I’d ever personally cast.

Now I just had to hope it worked.

Chapter 4

“Alex,” a deep voice said.

I buried my head in my pillow.

“Alex,” the voice said again, more insistent this time. A finger traced the ridge of my ear, the touch light enough to tickle.

I rolled away and pried open my sleep-encrusted eyes. A confusing array of colors swirled in my vision. I squinted, trying to decipher the different layers of reality. One of the first lessons taught in academy had been how to maintain mental shields, even during sleep. But every morning for the last month I’d woken to the madness of colors and multiple planes of reality.

I concentrated on my mental shields, envisioning the vines surrounding my psyche as a solid wall with no gaps. Slowly the world resolved itself back into my bedroom, washed in morning light. I sat up. Death stood less than a foot from the side of my bed. He smiled at me, his dark hair loose around his face and his thumbs tucked in the pockets of his jeans.

“Is this a social or a business call?” I asked, brushing back a tangle of curls from where they’d fallen in front of my eyes.

“I was thinking it had been a while since I had coffee.”

Social.

I collapsed back against my pillow and PC lifted his head to grunt at me in disapproval. After voicing his general upset, the dog tucked his white-plumed tail over his nose and closed his eyes again. I seriously wished I could do the same, but Death was still standing there, watching me with a grin on his face.

“Why am I awake?”

Death shrugged. “I could watch anyone sleep.”

But only I could see him. Well, that wasn’t completely true. Any grave witch could see and talk to soul collectors if the witch straddled the chasm between the living and the dead, but I was the only grave witch I knew who could see collectors while not in touch with the grave. And, more important, I was the only grave witch who could physically interact with collectors. Death had been visiting me since I was a child.

Forcing myself awake, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and fought to untangle my feet from the sheets. I frowned when I realized I was still wearing yesterday’s jeans and tank. Right, I spent most of the night watching old movies with Holly. Caleb, my landlord and third housemate, had urged me back upstairs after I’d fallen asleep on his couch. Changing had seemed overrated by the time I’d made it to my bed.

After a few fruitless kicks at the ensnaring sheets, which didn’t free me, I reached down to unwind them from my legs. Death watched, his expression losing some of its playful edge.

“Nightmares again?” he asked, his voice serious.

I shrugged off the question. I’d had nightmares every night since my final confrontation with Coleman. Facing off with a madman and finally destroying him by accelerating the decomposition of his body and cannibalizing his soul? Yeah, that was nightmare inducing, but I really didn’t want to think about it.

Yawning, I stretched, trying to work the kinks out of my back. The night of poor sleep—to say nothing of the nights before it—had left me sore and still exhausted, but a glance at my clock told me it was past time I should be getting up. I couldn’t remember when I was supposed to meet today’s client, though I was pretty sure I was scheduled to raise a shade. I’d check my calendar as soon as I got some muchneeded caffeine. Snapping my jaw shut, I shuffled toward my kitchenette.

Death watched me, amusement once again lifting to his dark eyes. Unlike me with my bedraggled clothes and knotted hair, he looked good in the morning light streaming into my apartment. Okay, actually, he looked exactly the same as when I’d first seen him when I was five years old, but recently I’d come to appreciate the way his black T-shirt pulled tight over the expanse of his shoulders and his faded jeans hugged his ass. Not that I was looking, of course. I mean, he was Death.

Yeah, he was Death, and a month ago, when I lay dying under the Blood Moon, I was pretty sure he’d said he loved me. Neither one of us had mentioned it since. In fact, for the first week after that night, whenever I’d catch sight of him, he would vanish without saying anything. Then he’d started visiting again as if nothing had changed between us. Well, almost nothing.

“You want coffee?” I asked, riffling through my cabinet.

“Among other things.”

And there went my pulse rate.

When I’d been in academy I’d discovered I could make the objects I interacted with tangible to Death, but the trick worked only if we both remained in contact with the object in question. As a teenager, when I’d first offered him coffee, I’d been flirting. Since I had to hold on to the mug for him to touch it, sharing a cup of coffee put us in close contact, but over the last few weeks he’d taken the flirting to a whole new level.

I focused on scooping coffee grounds into the filter. Never in my life had I measured my grounds more meticulously, though with the way my fingers trembled, I was surprised I didn’t miss the coffeemaker. Come on, Alex. Get a grip. Death was my oldest friend. The one constant in my life.

And he’d said he loved me.

I hit the BREW button on my coffeemaker harder than needed. Then, after taking a deep breath, I turned back around.

Death stood directly behind me, much closer than I’d expected. He filled my space, his wide shoulders blocking out everything else. Once he wouldn’t have been able to move so close without my noticing—his very presence would have chilled the air between us. Now our temperatures were about the same. I was pretty sure he hadn’t become warmer.