I stiffened, surprised. I stared at my hand caught in his. “What are you doing?”
He reached out and tilted my head back so I met his eyes. “We’re going to find him.” His gaze was intense, as though by his will alone we would find Coleman.
“Um, okay.” I wasn’t used to this. I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Is this a bad time?” Roy asked, appearing in the backseat.
I jerked back, pulling away from Falin.
“Roy—” I started, and realized I had no air. How did I end up breathless? I tried again. “What did you find? Was he there?”
The ghost shook his head. “The place is spotless. Looks like a model home or something. Furniture is still there, but not a personal item in the whole condo.”
I repeated Roy’s observations to Falin.
“Coleman took anything of importance. He doesn’t intend to return,” he said, cranking the car.
I nodded. It looked that way. Turning around, I grabbed Michelle’s file off the dash where Falin had tossed it. Now the only lead we had left was whatever we could learn from Coleman’s victims. For the first time since my grave magic emerged, the dead weren’t talking to me; they weren’t sharing their secrets. But we had to learn their secrets, had to find the connection, had to find the next slated victim. Coleman still needed one more soul.
Chapter 26
I paused on the top step of a small blue duplex. “Tamara said Julie was a precog.”
“Yeah?” Falin said, clearly not following.
I frowned. “There are no wards on her door.”
Almost all witches warded their thresholds. Of course, most witches in the city lived in the Glen. Julie’s house was miles from the Magic Quarter and Witches Glen, in a norm neighborhood, but it was still odd for her to have skipped warding her door. Unless she didn’t have the magical aptitude. I didn’t. Caleb maintained my house wards.
“Shall we?” Falin asked, slicing through the police seal on the door. He turned the doorknob, and I felt a flicker of magic as the lock tumbled.
Useful trick.
He pushed the door open, and I stepped into the dim house. It was sort of ironic, us breaking into a crime scene after he’d considered arresting me for the same thing a couple of nights ago. Probably best not to mention that fact.
“So, what are we looking for?” Roy asked, floating through a door in the side wall.
I headed for the door in the other wall. “Anything to tie the victims to each other.”
I knew before I opened the door that I’d found the bedroom—the tingle of dark magic seeping through the wall was unmistakable. The police had stripped the bed of linens, and fingerprint dust still covered most surfaces, but very little else in the room looked disturbed. Pictures still sat atop the dresser, and a small stack of books leaned against a chair that faced a window.
I closed my eyes, sensing the course of magic in the air. The spells that had been worked in the room had left an oily taint. It wriggled under my skin, making my shoulder burn, but nothing malicious was active.
Rubbing my bare arms as if I could wipe off the foul residue of magic, I stepped farther inside the room, Falin at my heels. He moved to the pictures, using a pen to turn them in his direction. I walked the circuit of the room. I used the edge of my shirt to open the closet.
It was a small walk-in with clothes on only one side.
The other side had been cleared, and a circle had been drawn on the floor. She worked magic in the closet? Like she was hiding. I looked over the limited collection of spell-crafting materials. They resonated with a hint of used magic, and I frowned. Gray magic?
I backed out of the closet and walked the rest of the room. My shoulder burned, the dark magic clearly calling to the spell devouring my soul. I can’t stay here. I let myself out of the bedroom and found Roy in the corner of the den.
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
He turned, stepping aside so I could see the wire cage he’d been staring at.“She had parakeets. I think we should let them go.”
“Do they have seed and water?”
His shimmering head nodded.
“Then leave them alone.”
“But—” he started.
I cut him off and walked over to point at the blue and gray birds. “They have lived their whole lives in that cage. You release them into the wild and they’ll die. We’ll call animal control.”
His bottom lip extended, and I rolled my eyes. Pouts from beyond the grave don’t work on me. I started to walk away, but a faint tingle of magic caught my attention.
I opened my senses, trying to distinguish the black seeping out of the bedroom from the signature of a—concealment charm? What was she hiding?
The spell clung to the birdcage. I reached out, running my finger under the plastic base. My nail caught in the edge of a small envelope taped to the bottom.
Pulling it free, I flipped it over.“AC” had been written on the front. A letter? Whatever was inside felt thicker than just paper, but it wasn’t lumpy. I opened it, pulling a tri-folded piece of stationery free.
Dear AC:
You don’t know me, so let me start this by saying that I Saw you. You came here looking for something.
I’m not sure why, but the answer is blood. If you show the enclosed photo to the blond with you, he’ll understand what that means. Maybe he can explain it to me too—he’s cute.
Good luck,
Julie
I stared at the short letter, reading it over three times.
Julie was a precog, so “Saw” probably meant she’d had a vision. AC had to be Alex Craft, but how could the answer be blood?
Was the spell transferred through the blood? I’d gotten it from a scratch, and the spell had spread through Helena’s soul from where it had been carved into her skin. But what about Sally? Perhaps she’d cut herself while performing the autopsy? A blood-bound spell?
Death had told me it was contagious only to a specific target. Of course, the slaver had said it was more generic than wyrd witches. Actually, the word she used was “genetic.” I’d thought she’d made a mistake, but another interpretation of “blood” was the family line.
The Shadow Girl’s warning also mentioned blood. A ghost girl of blood is worth treasure in silver chains. I had a good idea what “silver chains” were, thanks to the slaver, but I’d thought “blood” meant flesh and blood.
Maybe it had something to do with ancestry?
I reached into the envelope and pulled out a photo.
Julie, wearing a graduation cap, stood between an older couple, probably her parents. Were all of the victims descended from nonmagical parents?
“What did you find?” Falin asked as he entered the room.
Well, the note says to show the photo to Falin. I handed it to him.
He glanced at the photo, shrugged.
“She said the answer is blood.”
His eyes narrowed, and he stared at the image. Then he looked up at me, his gaze running over my face as though the answers were there.
“Blood,” I said. “Genetics. Family line, right?”
“It’s feykin,” he said. “All the victims are descended from the fae. First-generation, maybe second-generation bloodline.”
“Bullshit. I caught it, remember.” And I knew damn well my father wouldn’t have married a fae. I shook my head. “I’ve heard the word feykin before. The slaver called you that at the Bloom.”
“Not me, Alex. You.”
Me? I laughed, but it was an ugly sound.
Falin stepped closer. “It fits. It even fits what you said in the car. Humans with fae blood would have a harder time manipulating Aetheric energies because fae do not craft magic in the same way. I’ve known two of the victims were feykin, and Julie is a third. If we look hard enough, we will probably find fae ancestry in all of them.”
“Except me.” Wasn’t I weird enough without him thinking I had mixed blood? “My father would never willingly have anything to do with the fae. He’s in the Humans First Party, for fuck’s sake.”
“So was Coleman.” Falin reached out and plucked a curl from the side of my face. “Alexis, you can see through glamour. I can’t even see through glamour unless I know it’s there.”
I stepped back, shrugging him off, and crossed my arms over my chest. “I think you need another theory.”
I stormed back into the bedroom. Black magic is safer than his theories. I walked over to a bookcase filled with knickknacks, only half paying attention to what I was looking at. How could he think … ? I could see through glamour. But that was a new development. There has to be some other explanation. A small piece of carved, petrified wood caught my attention. I recognized the glyph cut into the statue. It had haunted my nightmares. The fae symbol for a soul.
Why would Julie have a statue with a fae glyph on it?
Where would she have found it? The glyphs weren’t exactly common, and this one was apparently less common than most, based on Ashen’s reaction when I showed it to him. So where did Julie get it?
From the killer? It was too big a coincidence otherwise.
I frowned at the little statue. It looked familiar. Had I seen one in other crime scene photos? I seemed to remember just the statue, in the middle of a glass table. In an austere room.
I dropped the statue.
“Falin!” I ran back to the den. “I need your phone. I need your phone now!”
His brows creased, but he handed the cell phone over.
I stared at the display, my mind going blank. Come on, remember the number. I punched keys and hit the call button.
It rang.
And rang.
And went to voice mail.
“You’ve reached Casey Caine—”
I snapped the phone shut. She hadn’t answered. Now what? It could be nothing. It could be she’d found the statue … somewhere. Where would you find a statue with a magical fae glyph for a rare kind of soul? It could be nothing …
Or it could be everything.
The feykin aspect aside, if being susceptible to the spell was genetic, then she was predisposed. Plus, at least two of the victims had been using gray magic. Casey had recently found a witch mentor. He was teaching her gray magic.