“And how did you die, Angela?”
“I had been at the library, studying late for an exam. I live off campus, but only a few blocks away so I often walk home. Not many cars were on the road that night, so I noticed the one that slowed down as it passed me, but I didn’t think much of it until it pulled over. I started walking faster. I thought I was being paranoid until I heard the footsteps right behind me. I started to run, but someone grabbed my backpack, pulling me backward. I tried to slip out of it, but something cold pressed against my neck, and then heat and pain charged through me. I blacked out. When I woke, I was gagged and blindfolded, but I could hear a man chanting. When he stopped, I felt him move close to me. He pressed a knife into my chest. It pierced my skin and kept sinking. It hurt so bad. He pulled the gag out of my mouth and pressed something to my lips and then . . .”
I glanced at Falin when she finished speaking. This was very different from the other shades we’d spoken to. There was a kidnapping instead of a ruse to make the victim come willingly. And he’d stabbed her. He hadn’t physically harmed the others. Their autopsies had proven that fact.
“What day did this occur, Angela?” I asked.
“November ninth.”
Ten days before Remy had died and Angela’s ghost had wound up wearing his body. What had she said when she’d been trying to pull Remy’s body back on after I’d forced her out? “He said if I did this, he’d put me back.” Had the necromancer promised her that he would return her own body if she robbed the bank?
Briar and John asked the shade several more questions, but she couldn’t offer much information. She’d never seen her abductor, and it had been dark and she hadn’t been paying much attention to the car when it passed, so all she could recall was that the headlights were very bright, like halogen bulbs.
When everyone ran out of questions, I released her, drawing my heat back. After the last few days, the magic in me that usually existed in a barely contained threat of overfilling was starting to run low. It was both impressive and terrifying. I reactivated my external shields, pushing magic back into the charms containing them until they buzzed around my psyche once more. With my external shields up, I closed the last slivers of my mental shields and darkness blanketed the world. The blindness was absolute, but this ritual had lasted a very short time despite there being two shades, so I hoped my vision would return quickly.
With my shields up, all that was left was to drop my circle. My hands were trembling, so I didn’t lift one as I spindled the energy back out of the circle. As soon as the circle dropped, the warmth of another body crowded into my space. I backpedaled without thinking and bumped the gurney behind me. Only strong hands closing on my arms, steadying me, kept me from falling back against the body bag.
I recognized the touch immediately—Falin. It wasn’t that his hands were that familiar, but he was the only person in the room whose body temperature was similar enough to my own that his touch wasn’t physically painful.
“Steady,” he said, his voice equal parts concern and amusement. “Should you sit down?”
I nodded. “Tamara’s office.” I lifted my hand to point in the general direction where I thought the door was located.
Falin put a hand at the base of my back and guided me toward the office. Once inside, he deposited me in a chair. It was all feeling very déjà vu.
“You’re freezing,” he said, and something fell around my shoulders.
His suit jacket. It wouldn’t help much—the cold was coming from inside me, not outside—but it was still a sweet gesture.
“I was worse when I was here last,” I said with a shrug, but I pulled the jacket tighter around me, huddling in the silk lining. While it might not offer much warmth, it did offer some comfort. “I can feel you hovering. I’m fine.”
I was blind. And cold. But it was true that I was better off than I’d been the last time I sat in Tamara’s office.
“What can I do to help?”
He knew my go-to answer: whiskey and a warm body against mine doing some squishy, sweaty activities. But that last part was out. And the former wasn’t likely in Tamara’s office. I shook my head. Only time was going to help.
“Coffee again?” a female voice asked from the darkness several yards to my right. Tamara must have entered during one of my particularly racking shivers because I sure hadn’t heard her and she didn’t exactly move stealthily these days. “This’ll be the second time this week. I’m going to have to start charging you.”
“I thought you said it was good the beans weren’t going stale.”
She made some noncommittal sounds as she went about fixing the coffee.
“Tamara, if you’re going to be in here awhile, I need to make a few calls,” Falin said. Tamara must have waved him off because his voice grew farther away as he said, “I’ll be back in a few, Alex.”
“I don’t need a babysitter,” I muttered, but I heard the door shutting before I even finished.
“I can’t say I get the relationship between you two,” Tamara said, after the last echo of the door shutting faded away.
“What relationship? We’re just friends.”
Tamara made an uh-huh sound, and I frowned in the general direction her voice was coming from.
“I think that glare hit my file cabinet.”
“I wasn’t glaring.”
“You so were. Oh look, you’re doing it again.”
“Ha ha,” I said, but made an effort to relax the muscles in my face, forcing them to be more neutral.
I’d been hoping I’d at least be able to start making out shadows among the darkness at this point, but the blackness filling my eyes hadn’t abated one bit. So, I sat in silence and listened to the sound of the coffee being made.
Tamara brought over a mug and handed it to me. I accepted it, lifting it to inhale deeply, but not a single scent of coffee ticked my nose. The charm. Damn, not being able to smell anything would likely ruin the delicious dark roast coffee, but considering I was still in the morgue, there was no way I was deactivating the charm.
The door swooshed open behind me.
“How are the eyes today, Craft?” Briar asked as she entered the room.
I shrugged. “Not great. I’m probably out for an hour or two. Not that we have any new leads unless you heard something back there that I didn’t.”
“You’re not allowed to be out this time, Craft. For one thing, you’re my bait and, like you said, we don’t have any other leads. Bait is no good without the trap close by.”
And of course, she was the trap.
“What do you mean, ‘bait’?” Tamara asked, and she was getting that growly protective voice again.
I sighed. “I guess you haven’t seen the news, huh?”
Her answer was drowned out by my phone singing. I dug it out of my purse, mostly to avoid having to rehash the news report Briar had engineered.