“I’m still against turning the book over.” I looked at Falin. “If we had another book to use as a base, do you think you could glamour it to look similar to this one?”
Falin glanced away from the road for barely a moment, evaluating. “It would depend on how deep an inspection you wanted it to pass. Just the cover? Sure. Believable contents? No. Not unless I had several hours to work on it, and then it would still revert to normal at sunset.”
We didn’t have a few hours. I directed my next question at my phone again.
“Remy. The place you’re supposed to deliver the book, have you been there before? What did you see before you were in this body? You said the necromancer’s friend called him Gauhter; what did this friend look like? Who else did you see there?”
“Man, I just finished answering similar questions from her,” he said, and he could only mean Briar. There were more reasons why she’d wanted to be the one to ride with Remy than escaping Falin’s cramped backseat. He let out a long sigh, which had to be intentional considering what we’d recently discussed about his breathing needs. “The other guy I saw was maybe a little younger than Gauhter, I don’t know.”
Right, Mister Observant, I forgot.
“I think I . . . died”—he paused, struggling over the word “died” before continuing—“somewhere else. He kept me in a bottle before putting me in this body, and the bottle was in a bag most of the time. When it wasn’t, it was still hard to see. The bottle had this weird, gold lacelike thing covering most of it.”
I went cold, not even daring to breathe. “You mean like a gold filigree?”
“He’s shrugging with a dumb look on his face,” Briar said, and I heard Remy make some sort of exclamation of dismay in the background.
“Were there gems inlaid in the glass? Sapphires? Rubies? Emeralds?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “I think my bottle had some stone. Blue maybe?”
“Alex, why does it sound like you’ve heard of these bottles before?” Falin asked, his grip tight on the steering wheel.
“Because I have,” I said. “I’ll call you back in a minute.”
I disconnected before Briar could reply and hit the speed dial for Rianna. It went to voice mail.
I started to leave a quick message for her to call me back, but then I hesitated. This was too important to put off or risk me missing her call when she returned mine.
“Stop working your case on the missing artifact,” I said, unsure how much I should leave on a recording. “I think the necromancer I’m chasing probably has it. Gather all your notes on the case and the original contract and e-mail them to me when you can, okay? Just whatever you do, don’t track the bottle.” I sagged in my seat. “Geez. I don’t think your client gave you enough information. That bottle? I think it’s been being used to store souls.”
Chapter 23
As soon as I disconnected, I tried Rianna’s number a second time, just in case. It went to voice mail again. If she was in the middle of a ritual, she wouldn’t have taken her phone in the circle with her. I just hoped she’d listen to her voice mail before she went chasing any leads.
Falin was staring at me as best he could out of the corner of his eye, not fully taking his attention from the road. I sighed and filled him in on the case Rianna had been working.
“And she was sure he was fae?” he asked when I finished.
I shrugged. “Desmond thought so.”
Falin pulled his phone from his pocket one-handed and dialed one of the numbers on his favorites list without ever slowing the car—he couldn’t have. Briar was the one driving Remy’s car, and we’d have lost them if Falin so much as blinked too long. The woman liked her gas pedal.
“I need you to see if we were brought a case about a missing artifact a few weeks ago. The item was a bottle.” He described the bottle to someone I could only guess was one of his FIB agents on the other side of the line and then paused a moment before saying, “Call me back as soon as you know.” Then he hung up.
I was about to dial Briar back when she turned off into the rest stop just outside town. Falin followed, pulling in beside her to park. We were a few miles outside the northeastern part of the city, only a dozen or so miles from where Briar and I had discovered the dead creatures. It wasn’t a particularly grand rest stop. It was perfunctory at best. There were a couple of covered picnic tables, a small building with bathrooms, and some vending machines. I think the city planners added it just because the last stop on the interstate had been a while, and when the city was still new, it made Nekros seem more official, but it was rarely used. It was faster to go around the folded space containing Nekros than to go through it, so anyone using this highway had somewhere they were headed in the city and could probably wait for a bathroom.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” Remy said, shouting to us from over the top of his car.
I climbed out of the car. It wasn’t like I’d expected Gauhter to have his circle drawn in the middle of the men’s bathroom, but aside from the rest stop and the wilds, there was theoretically nothing out here. I glanced around. There were a surprising number of cars parked in this lot, but no other people.
“Do you think all of these cars belong to Gauhter’s victims?” I asked, counting cars. There were nearly half a dozen besides ours.
Falin frowned. “Surely not all of them.” But he took his phone out of his pocket and began photographing license plates. “I’ll have an agent run these through the system.”
We followed Remy past the building and picnic shelters, into the woods behind the rest stop. He stopped just past the tree line and dug a small disc out of his coat pocket. It appeared to be just a clear glass disc until he set it in his palm. A small red arrow appeared in the disk, pointing deeper into the woods.
“This way,” he said, leading us in the direction the arrow pointed.
He had to consult the charmed disc several times as we navigated through the woods, making sure we continued on the right path. At times I was sure it was the arrow that turned, not us or the terrain, but a guidance charm that led the user on an indirect path so they’d have a hard time finding their way would be quite the spell. I itched to get a better look at it, but I was pulling up the rear of the group, far from where Remy led the way. Navigating through the woods under a thick canopy that cast the ground in gray shadows would have been a challenge for me on a good day. Today was not a good day. I kept tripping over roots I couldn’t differentiate from the rest of the forest floor and getting tangled in vines that snagged my boots.
“Can you possibly make more noise?” Briar asked, sounding disgusted with me. She slipped silently through the woods, her footing sure and steady.
I hated her a little.
Falin was just as silent—a graceful predator in a suit. Remy at least made a little noise as he tromped along, but not nearly as much as me.
I was concentrating so hard on my footing, I almost missed the feeling of magic ahead of us.