Grave Witch

Rianna was free. We won.

A small smile crawled over my face. A siren sounded in the distance. Rianna looked up, her face alarmed as the siren hurtled closer.

“I have to go.” She backed away.

“Go? Go where?” I asked. I’d only just found her again, and she was going? I struggled to sit, but I didn’t have the energy.

Rianna’s pale lips tugged down at the edges.“Back to Faerie. I’m a changeling now, and so many more years have passed for me than for you. I’ll turn to dust if the moon sets and I’m still here.” She gathered magic to herself and then ripped a hole in space. “Visit me at the Eternal Bloom, Al. We have a lot to talk about.” She stepped through the rift and was gone.

The sirens stopped outside. A door burst open downstairs.

“Alex?” both Falin and Death said at the same time.

I just closed my eyes. I was so tired. “I think I’ll pass out now.”

Chapter 29

I spent the night in jail.

I probably should have gone to the hospital, but Rianna’s spell had fixed most of the damage I’d taken.

I’d been found with a suspended FIB agent, my unconscious and brutalized sister, and three dead bodies. I probably should have been glad I didn’t end up somewhere worse than jail.

I sat in the tiny isolation cell, waiting for them to decide what to do with me. I slept intermittently. Each time I woke, I found Death sitting across the room, his eyes pinched tight as he watched me. When he noticed I was awake, he’d disappear without a word.

Sweet, but sort of creepy. He’d said he loved me. The thought made me smile—and want to run.

I lay on the unpadded cot and stared at the ceiling—or at least stared at where the ceiling should have been.

I’d been completely blind since releasing my hold on the grave—and apparently on reality. I hadn’t noticed at first because I was experiencing the world on a psychic level. Currently the Aetheric swirled around me, illuminating the room with threads of magic. When I blinked, the color disappeared, the room turning gray as the walls crumbled. The land of the dead. I blinked again, and the room glowed with remembered energy, the walls radiating the frustration and anguish of those who had been in the cell before me. I didn’t even know the name of that plane of existence. I sighed.

The vision thing was disconcerting, but I’d screwed with reality and channeled way too much power. This was clearly the backlash. I just hoped it wasn’t permanent.

“Alex?”

Roy? I sat up and stared at the ghost.“Where did you go last night? I didn’t see you after Rianna broke away from you.”

He shrugged and pressed his glasses up with a finger.

“Those soul collectors were gathering up ghosts. I had to get out of there.” He smiled. “But guess what? My body looks like me again. I just checked out the morgue, and I’m there! I mean, I look like what I should.”

“Congrats. Guess that means you’ll be moving on soon? Go wherever ghosts go next?”

His shoulders hitched forward. “Well, you see, about that … I still have that TV interview, remember? And then I was thinking I might hang out for a while. I mean, now that I have someone to talk to, being a ghost isn’t so bad.”

“Someone to talk to” being me. Great—I really do have a ghostly sidekick. If I got out of jail anytime soon.

As if summoned by my thought, an electronic buzz sounded. Roy vanished as a cop stepped up to the cell bars.

“Alex Craft, you’re free to go,” he said as the door slid open.

I unfolded from the small cot and followed the waiting officer into the hall. He led me down a cement-floored hall to a door, where another officer returned my personal effects in a brown paper bag.

“That’s it? I can go?”

The uniformed officer pursed his lips. After where I’d been found, I hadn’t expected to see daylight for a long time. But the door buzzed in front of me, and I walked into the lobby.

A man waited for me just beyond the door. He tugged awkwardly at the front of his expensive suit.

“Alex Craft?”

The officer nodded. “She’s good to go.”

The man frowned at me but said, “Please follow me.”

I glanced at the officer who had escorted me to the lobby. Exactly whose care was he releasing me into and under what conditions? The officer’s face gave away nothing.

Well, I can’t stay here forever. I followed the nervous man.

He led me out of the building. Then he walked up to a limo and opened the door for me.

Okay. That is not normal.

I leaned down and peeked inside. My father sat on the seat, a document in one hand, a glass of red wine in the other.

He looked up and tucked the file aside. “Come in, Alexis.”

I almost didn’t. I almost turned around and walked straight back inside. But curiosity won me over, and I climbed into the seat across from him. This ought to be good. If nothing else, I had some questions for him.

My vision peered into the Aetheric plane. My father was a silver soul of light surrounded by swirls of color, but none reached for him. The magic threads almost seemed to be avoiding him. Fae?

I blinked. He’s the fae in my blood?

“Your sister has asked about you,” he said, steepling his fingers and balancing his elbows on his knees.

I shook my head, too shocked to process his words. I had to blink several times—and watch the world change drastically before my eyes—before I figured out what he was talking about. “What did Casey say?”

“Just that you saved her. She is refusing to talk about what happened. Are you going to ask how she is?”

When I didn’t, he continued. “She is confused and will probably need counseling after this traumatic event, but she is a resilient girl. She will have scars, but she can acquire complexion charms to cover them. Otherwise, she is fine.”

She was cut up and needed counseling, but yeah—no problem; she was fine. Clearly using a different definition of the word “fine” than the rest of the world.

He leaned back, watching me. I waited. He’d gone out of his way to see me, so I assumed he had a reason, but he didn’t say anything. I shuffled in my seat, overly aware that I’d been through a car wreck, a magical battle, and a night in jail, while he looked fresh enough to have walked off a magazine cover.

When he still didn’t say anything, I grew annoyed.

“So, were you ever planning to tell us you were fae? Court fae from the look of it.”

My father didn’t even have the decency to look shocked that I’d figured out his secret. He just sat there, watching me.

Under his glamour, his short, professionally cut hair was longer, paler. His features were sharper—not grossly inhuman, but striking. And he looked young. My father didn’t look much older than me. His fae-mien also looked extremely familiar.

I frowned, trying to place this face that he kept hidden. Suddenly it clicked. The portrait of Greggory Delane at the statehouse. My father was the first governor of Nekros? That was over fifty years ago. My already aching head began to throb, and I shook it as if the movement could help settle my thoughts in place. It didn’t.

Still my father said nothing.

I glared at him. “You didn’t think being feykin was something your kids should know?”

“Feykin.” His lips twisted around the word as though he disliked the taste, and he shook his head. “There are humans with fae blood, Alexis. Then there are fae with human blood. The difference is the soul.” He leaned forward. “The Blood Moon called to the soul of Faerie. It woke many who were still sleeping, but its approach only quickened the inevitable.”

And just when I thought I was done with cryptic riddles.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is the long game,Alexis.” He smiled as if amused by my confusion.Then he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. He passed it to me. “I’d like to hire you retroactively for your part in uncovering the murder of my chief of staff and disrupting the plans of a megalomaniac.”

I plucked the slip of paper from his fingers and unfolded it. It was a check. A check with a lot of zeros on it.

Do I accept this? It was hard to refuse money, especially since I’d been working for free the past week and a half.

But I didn’t trust his motives. “What do you want?”

“The money is for services rendered. Nothing more.”

I stared at him. He was fae. He couldn’t lie. I pocketed the check. “Fine.”

He said nothing else, so I let myself out of the limo.

As I turned to slam the door his voice followed me out.

“Alexis, can you fix the rift in my house? Or should I lock the door and toss the key?”

I cringed. I hadn’t been able to fix reality, so a circular area in the middle of the Caine mansion was now a crossover point for the Aetheric into our plane of existence.

There were also a couple of spots of decay where the land of the dead had merged with reality. It probably wasn’t safe to leave it the way it was, but I didn’t know how to put things back in the right plane.

I met my father’s eyes. “Call a good locksmith.”

I stood back as the limo took off. Then I didn’t know what to do. Wonder if the cops will let me call home for a ride? I turned to head back up the stairs.

“Al!”

I turned as a car stopped on the curb. Caleb jumped out of the front passenger side. His huge arms wrapped around me, all but squeezing me in half. “We’ve been so worried about you, girl.”

We?

Holly and Tamara were right behind him, and I found myself in the center of a giant hug sandwich. They were warm, nearly too hot to touch comfortably, but right at that moment I didn’t care.

“Thanks for coming for me, guys,” I said, blinking back tears.

“We’re not the only ones here,” Holly said. “We brought you a surprise.”

She opened the back door of the car, and a smile cracked across my face. “John!”