Grave Dance(19)

“Do you think it’s a threat or a warning?” Caleb asked, pul ing my phone back out of his pocket. Apparently now that Malik wasn’t the main suspect he would let me cal the police. “Or it could be a trap,” he said, frowning.

A trap? By the same person who’d sent the construct?

Only one way to know for sure. I took the phone from him, but I hesitated before dialing and reached with my senses.

Unfortunately, the same wards that protected me from outside interference locked my own magic inside the house. To sense spel s on the dagger I would have to leave the safety of the wards, which if this was a trap, didn’t sound like a great plan. Except . . . From my spot in the doorway, I studied the intricate hilt.

“I think that’s my dagger.” Which didn’t eliminate the possibility of a trap, especial y since I’d lost the dagger a month ago when I’d exhausted the spel s enchanting the blade by using it to overload a magical circle. After I’d escaped the circle, I’d lost track of the dagger and when I’d escaped the circle, I’d lost track of the dagger and when I’d gone back to search for it, it had vanished.

I glanced at the phone in my hand. Cal ing the police was the smartest move, but if it was the same dagger I’d lost . . .

I’ve already delayed this long; what would a few more minutes cost? After al , Caleb and Malik had entered my loft from the inner door, so the dagger could have been driven into the porch anytime since I’d arrived home last night.

I lowered my mental shields, letting my psyche span the chasm between planes. The wards kept my ability to sense magic locked inside, but they did nothing to my grave-sight.

Colors dul ed as in my vision the wood around the dagger rotted and the note browned and curled, but the dagger remained the same. Whatever metal the fae-wrought dagger had been forged from, it had never tarnished or rusted, not even in my grave-sight, and this dagger didn’t either. It shimmered with the enchantments bound in the metal, but again, my lost dagger had done the same. I glanced around the landing. The tendrils of Aetheric energy were as chaotic as ever, but I didn’t see any disturbance that looked like a spel ready to descend on the unwary. I also didn’t see any glamoured or spel ed forms ready to spring out as soon as I stepped through the door. If this was a trap, I wasn’t spotting a cage.

I snapped my shields closed and set PC down. He looked at me and then the door. Shaking my head, I nudged him and he grudgingly headed toward the bed, his nails clicking on the hardwood. Once he’d jumped onto the mattress, I headed for the door.

Caleb grabbed my arm, his fingers feverishly hot against my own lower body temperature. “I’l take a look,” he said, stepping into my path. He didn’t give me time to protest before he walked out onto the porch.

Nothing happened.

He squatted beside the dagger, not touching it. Caleb wasn’t a sensitive, so if there were malicious spel s on the wasn’t a sensitive, so if there were malicious spel s on the dagger, he wouldn’t be able to tel , not until it was too late. I, on the other hand, could sense magic. I ignored his disapproval as I joined him on the porch.

Without the shields in my bracelet or the house wards to block the grave essence, the chil of the grave swarmed around me. It clawed at my mental shields like dozens of spectral hands searching for cracks in my defenses. There was a graveyard a mile away, and there were other, smal er graves even closer than that, but I didn’t want to feel them. I blocked hard, concentrating on keeping the vines encircling my psyche sealed tight. The real trick was to shield while stil reaching with my ability to sense magic.

I focused on the gleaming hilt a foot from my toes.

Enchantments swirled inside the metal, but they didn’t feel malicious. They felt familiar.

Very familiar.

“It’s my dagger.” It seemed impossible, but somehow it was the same dagger, one of a pair. The enchanted blade could cut through almost any material. I’d thought I’d lost it forever. I reached out, tracing a single finger along the intricate design. Then I closed my hand around the hilt.

Magic purred across my palm and an eerie, alien consciousness touched the edge of my mind. But that wasn’t unexpected. The enchantments forged into the fae-wrought blade gave the dagger not so much an intel ect as a sense of awareness. It liked to be drawn, to be wielded, to cut through skin, through magic—and right now, it did not like being driven into wood.

“Al?” Caleb edged closer, the muscles in his legs bunching as if he were a moment from leaping to his feet.

I felt much the same way. I stil hadn’t spotted a trap, but I was ready to leave the exposed position of my porch. After a quick glance around, I tugged on the dagger. The blade slid free of the wood effortlessly, the note moving with it.