And claiming the tear? “Roy, did you actual y see Bel rip the tear into the Aetheric?”
The ghost shook his head, pushing his glasses farther up his nose when they slipped forward. “He got the cal , hurried to the site, and then told the reporter and the officials that the tear was his possession and on his land, so they were trespassing.”
“So Bel might not have had any idea the tear was there until Lusa ran her report.” Which made a lot more sense.
After al , if he could rip a hole in reality on his own, why would he have approached me? Unless he found someone else to do it.
But who?
But who?
“Did you see another ghost at the scene?” I asked, remembering the figure I’d spotted in Lusa’s footage, the one Falin hadn’t been able to see. “Probably a man with dark hair. It looked like he was wearing some sort of trench coat?”
“You mean the reaper?” the ghost asked, and his form shimmered out of focus as he shivered. “Yeah. That’s why I got the hel out of there.”
A soul col ector? The col ectors were a secretive bunch.
I’d “known” Death most of my life, but in truth, I didn’t know anything about him or the other col ectors—I didn’t even know his name. What was a collector doing walking around a hole into the Aetheric?
Lusa was no longer on the screen of my TV, most likely because Bel had kicked her off his property. The studio reporter rerol ed Lusa’s footage of the tear, keeping his own running commentary as he pointed out parts of the tape. He paused to enlarge the shot when the cameraman had zoomed in on the tear, and a symbol scratched into the dirt caught my attention.
“Is that a rune?” I stepped closer, squinting as I al but shoved my nose against the screen trying to make out the smal shapes in an already overzoomed image. The symbols sure looked like runes, but the magnification had degraded the image quality to the point that someone could have drawn a tic-tac-toe board in the dirt and it probably would have looked like a rune.
I leaned back as the camera panned. Then a clump of pixels at the bottom of the screen jumped out at me. “That’s definitely a rune.” It was that same damn rune I’d spent half the morning staring at because it looked familiar but I couldn’t place.
“Got you,” I said, jabbing my finger against the TV screen.
Roy hunkered down beside me and looked from where my finger pressed against the screen to my face. He shoved his glasses farther up his nose again. “Alex, are you shoved his glasses farther up his nose again. “Alex, are you talking to the TV?”
“Not at al .” I jumped to my feet, unable to stay stil any longer. The rune proved that the tear and the constructs were connected. Maybe they weren’t from the same ritual, but they were definitely cast by the same witch or coven of witches—the chance that two unconnected witches would suddenly start casting unheard-of spel s using the same rare runes was too unlikely. “This is the break we need.”
“Would ‘we’ include me?” Roy asked, floating beside me as I paced. “Because if it does, I’m lost.”
“I’m thinking out loud, but sure, ‘we’ can include you.” I grabbed my purse and dug out the page of runes. “We’ve only had the end results of the witch’s spel s thus far. First there were the feet fil ed with dark magic. Then the constructs that left only a spel ed disk behind. We knew the two were created by the same person or group because the magic felt the same, but we haven’t been able to get anywhere with the remains of the spel s. But this rune”—I pointed to the fourth rune down on the page—“was cut into the dirt around that tear. Whoever ripped that tear has to be responsible for the other two as wel , but now we have a crime scene. There has to be something at that site that wil lead back to the caster.” And I wasn’t there. I glanced at the TV but a commercial was currently playing. “Roy, can you go check out the scene? Let me know what’s going on?”
“With that reaper there? No way.” He fanned his hands out away from his body to accent his no. “Being a ghost might not be the best gig in the world, but I have no idea what happens after the reapers nab you. The devil you know and al that.”
“Right, the soul col ector,” I said, pacing again without real y hearing the rest of what Roy said. “Why is he there?
Does he have a part in this? The col ectors take that . . .
soul mist . . . that appears when the constructs are disbelieved. Does he provide that?” But why would he?
Why would a col ector be involved at al ? “He might just be Why would a col ector be involved at al ? “He might just be passing through.”