Grave Witch

He curled up in the center of a pillow and closed his eyes.

Well, good to know my faithful companion isn’t worried.

“Detective Andrews, what do you want?”

He finally turned and looked at me. “Stay out of the Coleman case.”

“Okay.” I’d learned about as much as I wanted about the body in the morgue. I definitely wanted nothing to do with the spell I’d felt. As soon as I confirmed that my father hadn’t been the most recent victim, I was turning everything I’d learned over to cops in the Black Magic Unit, or maybe to the FIB, the Fae Investigation Bureau.

My phone buzzed, and I fumbled for the button to send it to voice mail without glancing at the display.

Falin scanned my face as if he was searching for a lie, but apparently I passed the test. “Are you going to tell me your client, or wait for the press to dig him up for me?”

“Why are you so convinced my client had anything to do with the”—Oh crap—“shooting?” If Coleman had stolen my father’s body, and then Casey told him she’d hired me to look at the discarded body, he might have been afraid of what I’d find. Falin might have been right in disagreeing with everyone else in the police force about the shooter’s motive. The shooting may have had absolutely nothing to do with the Holliday trial and everything to do with Coleman.

I tried not to let my thoughts show on my face. I was good at obstinate, and I pasted stubborn refusal all over my expression.

Falin frowned at me, but with a nod, he headed toward the door. He stopped before reaching it and turned back. “Keep your head down. You’ve attracted a lot of attention.”

“Right.” Like the mass of reporters circling my house hadn’t alerted me to that fact.

The phone buzzed again. Persistent much? I glanced at the display, and my hot dog decided to disagree with my stomach. CASEY flashed in bold on the phone’s screen. Damn. I had no idea what I was going to tell her.

Falin hadn’t failed to notice the change in my face, and he looked a little too interested. I flashed a smile at him.

“Personal call, Detective. If you please.” I gestured to the door.

His jaw clenched again, but he saw himself out. I locked the door behind him before flipping open my phone.

“Casey,” I said in greeting, holding the phone slightly away from my head and fully expecting an earful.

She didn’t disappoint me. “Alexis, what is the meaning of this? I haven’t heard from you, but I saw the video on the news, and—”

I cut her off. “I think maybe this is something we should discuss in person.”

Chapter 7

My old hatchback choked, sputtered, and then died in front of the wrought-iron security gate. I didn’t bother cranking her back up, but leaned out the window and twisted so I could use my right hand to hit the button on the intercom. Again.

I waited, drumming my thumb on the steering wheel as I stared at the gate. I hadn’t stepped foot on this property since the summer after I turned eighteen. That had also been the year my father joined the Humans First Party. Hopefully, my stalled-out hatchback was lowering his property value.

Finally the intercom squawked, filling with static before a gruff voice barked, “State your name and the purpose of your visit.”

Friendly guard—just the way my father liked them.

“Hi, how are you?” I smiled at the monitor.

The guard didn’t answer.

“Can you believe this heat wave? I have an appointment with Casey Caine.”

The box squawked again. “Name?”

“Alex Craft.”

The static cut off, and a sharp buzz announced the gate unlocking.Well, at least Casey had told the guard to expect me. I cranked my car and crept it up the magnolialined drive. The drive turned, and the house came into view. Scratch that; it was more a mansion than a house.

After all, normal houses didn’t have ballrooms.

I parked in the circle near the front entrance and pushed the car door, but it stuck. Again. I was going to have to get that looked at, you know, once I was eating regularly. I threw my weight into the door, and it swung open.

The butler, a graying man with a puffy red nose that betrayed his evening vice, answered the door. He stood out of the way, motioning me to enter in good butler fashion, but faltered in midstep, the door still only half open. “Miss Alexis?”

“How are you, Rodger? Father driven you insane yet?”

He smiled, and the smell of fermented fruit washed over me. Apparently Rodger no longer restricted his vices to his off hours. “Mr. Caine is his usual self. A busy man. He is at the statehouse this evening.”

Thank goodness for small favors.

Sharp footsteps clicked on the marble floor beyond the door. “Alexis?”

Rodger straightened at the female voice and moved aside so I could enter. Casey, younger than me by four years, couldn’t have been any more different. Where I was tall and sticklike, she was short and curvy. Normally she was all gloss and sophisticated charm, but today her blond hair hung limp around her face, and her blue eyes were red and swollen. Still, in her black silk top, black capri pants, and Gucci sandals, she looked like a fashion magazine had done a spread on a high-end mourners’ line.

Despite the evidence of crying, she was the picture of poise. She stood with one hand on the balcony and the other on her hip. “Rodger, can you prepare coffee? We’ll take it in my suite.” She turned without waiting for his reply, her heels snapping softly on the marble stairs.

The old house hadn’t changed much in the years I’d been gone. When we reached the second floor, I pointedly ignored the first door on the left, which led to what had been my rooms when I’d lived here. Not that I’d spent a lot of time in the suite even then. Once it became clear I couldn’t hide my grave magic, my father had shipped me off to a wyrd boarding school. After that, I’d spent only summers at the house.

Casey ushered me into the sitting room in her suite, and I gaped. The last time I’d been here she’d been only fourteen, but no sign of the boy band– obsessed teenager she’d been was left in the room. Everything reflected a sophisticated debutante, which I guess was what she was.

The room catered to a minimalist’s style. Everything was glass, black, or white, and the only decoration was a small black statue in the center of the glass coffee table.

The blunt little statue appeared to be carved of petrified wood with an intricate symbol cut in the center. I reached for it, and Casey cleared her throat.

“Alexis, what is going on?” She lowered herself onto a white-cushioned love seat and motioned for me to sit across from her.

Casey watched me, waiting. I bit my lower lip and sank into the chair. How am I going to explain?

I’d thought about it on the drive but hadn’t reached a satisfactory solution. I couldn’t tell her that I suspected Coleman, the poster boy for the Humans First Party—a party that wanted to restrict the rights of witches and fae—of being something inhuman and full of dark magic. Oh yeah, and when I asked “So, have you noticed Dad acting rather strange lately? Because I think Coleman might have stolen his body” I was sure to endear myself to her. Obviously, the truth just wasn’t going to cut it.

Casey’s eyes flicked to where my teeth worried my lip—a habit I’d had since I was a kid—and I forced myself to stop. While we were far from close, Casey and I weren’t complete strangers. We’d spent every summer together until I was eighteen. She the perfect daughter who could do no wrong, me the one who accidently raised the shade of her pet parrot when I was twelve, and our older brother, Brad—well, we didn’t talk about Brad. He’d disappeared when I was eleven.After I graduated from academy, changed my name, and left this house for what I’d thought had been for good, Casey and I had exchanged impersonal e-mails on holidays, and once, three years back on my birthday, we’d met for coffee. We didn’t hate each other; we just didn’t have much in common.

I took a deep breath before saying, “Someone or something tampered with the body. I couldn’t raise the shade.”

Her tweezed eyebrows pinched together.“Obviously. The whole world knows that. You made sure of it.”

I blinked, lost for words. She thinks I released the video? I suppressed a groan. A lot of people probably did. Hell, that was probably what Falin was looking for at my house.

A knock sounded on the door, and I was saved from comment by Rodger’s arrival with the coffee. He placed it on the glass table between us and excused himself without a word.

Casey leaned forward, scooping sugar into her cup.

She lifted a small pitcher. “Cream?”

I rescued my coffee before she could dilute it. I inhaled the scent of the rich dark roast and all but melted with contentment against the plush white chair. Then Casey’s gaze speared into me.

“What I want to know is what the spell you saw does. Who cast it? The fae, obviously, but what type?”

And just like that, she broke my moment of bliss.The Humans First Party saw the fae as public enemies: dangerous, unpredictable, and—most important to them if you actually read their propaganda—uncontrolled.They didn’t paint witches as being much better. I took a sip of the coffee, but the contented moment had passed, and there was no recapturing the feeling. I set the cup on the table. Time to play dangerously.

“This goes no further than you, but I believe the body is a fake. It is only spelled to look like Coleman.” Okay, that wasn’t completely what I believed, but it touched the truth in quite a few places.

Casey’s cup clattered against her saucer. The light brown liquid—too full with cream—sloshed over the edges. She looked down at it, then lowered the cup and saucer to the table.

“So what you’re saying is that Teddy might be alive?”

“Yes.” Unfortunately.

She collapsed into her seat as if she had deflated, but a faint smile clung to her lips. A smile so thin it seemed that someone had turned off her happiness and it was taking time to charge back up.