“The driver was obviously another walking corpse. Most likely the passenger was as well. I’m really good at finding corpses.” I tapped the spot beside my eye as I cracked open my shields.
He watched me, his expression unchanged even though I knew my eyes lit up as if they were backlit by lanterns. Then I turned toward the woods, letting my senses stretch. The corpse behind us called to me, but I blocked it out as well as I could, looking for other whispers of the grave.
There had been no ghost hanging around the car. While it was possible the spells holding the ghost inside the stolen body had broken after the crash, the witness report sounded more like a soul collector had been on the scene and collected the errant ghost. If that was true, then it was possible the soul collector had gone after the passenger as well. If not, well, she was probably still a walking corpse and might be giving out enough grave essence that I could feel her from a distance.
I closed my eyes, concentrating on the cold whispers that grabbed at me. Most were lifting from small animals, the trails of essence thin and easy to ignore. One to my left was stronger, pulling at my mind and my magic. I turned, walking in that direction. Falin followed without a word.
I walked down the shoulder for several minutes, then turned into the woods. The feel of the grave was almost overwhelming now as it clawed at my shields. It was a woman, not much older than the driver from the wreck, but this one didn’t feel like she’d been dead as long. We’d only passed the first few trees when I stopped abruptly, because we were almost on top of her. I looked around, letting my magic guide my gaze. Then I slammed my shields shut against the chill reaching for me.
“There,” I said, pointing. I couldn’t actually see a body yet, but it was there.
Falin walked forward slowly, careful not to trample through the heavy underbrush. I didn’t follow. I’d already seen one body today. I knew it was there, I didn’t need to see it. He stepped around a bush and stared at the ground.
“I’d wager this is her,” he said, nodding to me.
“I’ll go let those officers know,” I said, turning back the way we’d come. We weren’t even that far. I could still see the different-colored flashing lights from the emergency vehicles.
The officer I’d spoken to earlier was the first I ran across. He looked more than a little shocked when I told him I’d found the passenger’s body. He radioed to someone over at the wreck site, and soon we had a small party headed to the second body. I left them as soon as they were close enough to spot Falin.
No one stopped me as I made my way back to where Falin’s car was parked. I’d only noticed a hint of decomposition in the air when we first arrived, but now that I’d been close to the bodies, I couldn’t seem to escape the smell. It was like the scent had crawled into my nose and taken up residence.
Tamara had arrived while I’d been in the woods. I could see her with Briar directing the team that was trying to extract the body without destroying it. They were having to cut the car apart to get to the driver’s body, and the machines were deafening, even from a distance and with the top of Falin’s convertible tightly sealed, but that was okay. I didn’t really want to hear myself think right now. Nothing good was floating around my head.
I leaned the seat back and closed my eyes. Despite the hydraulic rescue tools loudly dismantling the red sedan, the press of gawking traffic, and the smell of decay, I fell asleep.
? ? ?
I was chased through my dreams by corpses. They herded me toward magical traps I sensed almost too late, and reached for me with hands full of rotting flesh that sloughed off when they managed to touch me.
At the sound of someone banging on the car window, I jolted awake to find Briar staring at me through the glass.
“You look a little green, Craft,” she said when I opened the door.
“I don’t do dead bodies.”
She frowned at me. “You’re a grave witch.”
“Yeah, not by choice. I just try to make the best of it.” I stepped out the car, rolling my shoulders to stretch my neck as I moved. “I’m good with shades and the magical part. Just not the blood and decay bits.”
Briar shrugged with a sort of “whatever” expression, and I gave a cautious look around. Tamara was supervising a body in its black bag being uploaded for transport back to the morgue. As I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been asleep, I wasn’t sure if it was the driver’s or the passenger’s body, but things were definitely wrapping up quickly at the scene. Falin was speaking to a small cluster of cops near where what was left of Remy’s car was being loaded on a flatbed tow truck. Even the morning commute traffic had finally cleared, so only the occasional car passed on the open lanes of the interstate.
“The ME says she can’t give us much information because of the advanced state of decay of the body,” Briar said, nodding toward Tamara. “But she did say only the driver’s lower legs were pinned, her rib cage and skull appear undamaged, and there isn’t enough blood at the scene to indicate she bled out. She’ll be able to tell us more post-autopsy, but right now, despite some obvious superficial damage from the crash, there is no obvious cause of death. Combined with the pickup driver’s statement about the driver yelling for her friend and then suddenly just dropping dead, this looks a whole lot like the other bodies that collapsed, dead, and then rapidly decayed, but this time you have a rock-solid alibi.”
“Lucky me.”
Briar frowned at me. “Who else can pull souls out of bodies?”
I returned her frown. “Soul collectors?” I didn’t add the duh at the end. I should have gotten points for that. With such a bad multivehicle accident, a collector must have been called to the scene by the possibility that one of the living accident victims might have died. The two walking corpses had probably been collected as soon as the collector noticed they were already dead.
Falin walked up. “I obviously missed something,” he said, glancing from me to Briar. “Anyway, the scene is wrapping up. They need to get this clear. We should head out.”
I couldn’t have agreed more.
“Morgue’s our next stop,” Briar said, turning toward her hulking SUV.
Goody. More dead bodies.
Chapter 20