I once again stood in the center of a magical circle while flanked by corpses. There were no uniformed officers this time, so either I was no longer being treated as a suspect, or they couldn’t find anyone else who could stomach being down in the morgue right now.
The morgue had decent air purifiers, but they were no match for the two putrid bodies from the wreck. Jenson looked positively green and had already excused himself once, returning paler and covered with sweat. Even John looked a little queasy, and he typically had the constitution of a stone. Falin hid his disgust better, only the smallest tightening of skin around his eyes and nose revealing that the smell had any effect on him. Briar was cool as a corpse, but she had so much magic on her, she likely had a charm that mitigated the scent. That was the only reason I was able to stand in the circle. When I’d first walked into the morgue, Tamara had slipped me a charm that knocked out my sense of smell. Usually I was kind of touchy about losing another sense, but in this case I was grateful. Tamara, having the same charm, was also unaffected by the smell, but she did preemptively pull a chair up to the outskirts of the circle this time so she could sit.
“Let’s keep this short and to the point so we don’t exhaust our grave witch,” Briar said as I prepared. “I might need her after.”
“I second the short bit,” Jenson said, looking like he was about to lose anything still left inside his stomach onto his shoes.
“I’m going to begin.” I nodded to John to turn on the camera and moved to unclasp my charm bracelet, but then hesitated. The bracelet contained the new protection spell Briar’s partner had given me. Taking off the protection from a premonition witch seemed like a bad plan. Instead I tapped into the charms with the shields and drained the magic back into my ring, deactivating them. It was a lot slower than just taking the bracelet off, and it would suck when I had to reactivate them after the ritual, but at least I didn’t lose the protection charm. As a side bonus, I also didn’t lose Tamara’s charm and suddenly get assaulted with the smell of decomposition.
Closing my eyes, I poured magic into the body to my right. I wasn’t sure if she’d been the driver or the passenger, but I could tell she’d been dead slightly longer than the woman to my left. She was a few years older than the other woman as well. Neither body had been autopsied yet, or even removed from their black transport bags. It had been decided that a quick interview would be prudent. Then Tamara would begin her work.
The shade of a woman in her early twenties sat free from the bag. Her dark hair had been pulled up high in a ponytail on the top of her head, and she wore a sports bra with tight spandex running shorts.
“What is your name?”
“Elisa Lambie.”
Outside my circle, Briar and John pulled out notebooks and jotted down the name, but Tamara jumped out of her chair at the name. I glanced back at her, hoping the question in my expression was clear even though my face would be lit by the eerie green glow of my eyes. Tamara just shook her head, motioning me to continue.
“How did you die, Elisa?”
“I was running with my training partner, Linda. It was our normal path, but I’d had a headache all morning and I was considering turning back early. Then pain exploded in my head. My vision got weird. I fell to the ground. Linda started screaming. Someone loaded me onto a gurney and into the back of an ambulance. They kept shining lights into my eyes and asking my name, if I could squeeze their hands. Then a man stuck his hand into my chest and I . . .”
Died.
No one said anything for several heartbeats after the shade fell silent. Finally Briar cleared her throat.
“Is it just me, or does it sound like she died in the back of an ambulance?”
I nodded. “Or possibly at a hospital. Shades can be a little fuzzy on time when they were barely conscious surrounding their death, but it sounds like her soul was collected normally.”
“So how the hell did she end up in that car this morning?”
I had no idea.
“Her body was stolen,” Tamara said, her voice so soft, I wasn’t sure I’d heard her at first. “I knew I recognized that name.”
She marched off toward her office. I watched her go and then turned to John. He looked as confused as I felt. Tamara didn’t immediately come running back out, so I turned back to the shade.
“Have you recently taken part in any studies involving ghosts or the dead?” I asked, because no one else had supplied any questions yet.
“No.”
John flipped back a few pages in his notebook and asked, “In the last few weeks have you met anyone with the last name Hadisty, Vogel, Basselet, or Moyer, or anyone who claimed to hold a PhD in any witchcraft fields?”
I repeated the questions.
“No.”
Well, we were striking out everywhere.
“What was the date of your last memory?” Falin asked, which I really should have thought to ask earlier.
“November fifth.”
Over two weeks ago.
Tamara rushed back out of her office, a folder in her hands. “I was right. Elisa Lambie, suspected aneurysm,” she said, reading from a sheet of paper in the file.
“You autopsied her?” Briar asked.
Tamara shook her head. “She arrived at the hospital unresponsive. She was admitted but died later that evening and was moved to the hospital morgue. Because she was young and described as healthy, she was slotted for autopsy, but when the body movers went to pick her up, the body couldn’t be found. The hospital initially claimed it must have been a clerical error or a toe tag mixup, but after inventorying the cadavers, it turned out two bodies were unaccounted for: Elisa Lambie and Morgan McKenzie.”
We all turned toward the body on the other gurney.
“Anyone have any more questions for Elisa?” I asked, and received a chorus of “No.”
I released the shade. She couldn’t help us. She’d never interacted with our necromancer, at least not while she was alive with her own soul in her body.
I turned to the second woman and let my magic fill her. The shade of a woman around my own age sat up from under the sheet. A shock of recognition jolted through me. I must have made some sound because Falin stepped up to the very edge of my circle, but thankfully he didn’t actually touch it.
“What is it, Alex?”
“I know her, well, at the very least I’ve seen her.” I stared at the shade. The nature of being a shade had washed out some of her skin tone, and she’d had her hair natural when she’d died while her mental image of herself as portrayed by her ghost had worn dozens of braids, but she was the same girl. I was positive. “Her ghost was piloting Remy’s body.”
“You’re sure?” Briar asked.
I nodded. I’d only seen her for a moment, but she’d left an impression.
“What is your name?” I asked the shade.
“Angela Moore.”