Grave Dance(5)

Again I nodded, sliding my hands into my back pockets. It had been nearly an hour since I’d released my grave-sight, and my vision was returning to normal, but I stil squinted as I studied Agent Nori. She was a couple of inches shorter than me in her fat-heeled pumps, but she stood completely straight, making the most of her height. She wore her dark hair slicked back like shiny black armor and her piercing eyes were set close enough that her sharp features seemed to come to a point in the front of her face. Or at least, that’s what she looked like currently. Being an FIB

agent meant she was probably, but not necessarily, fae.

What she might look like under her glamour was anyone’s guess. I could have dropped my shields and found out, but one, it would have been rude, and two, and perhaps more important, my eyes glowed when my psyche peered across planes, so she would have been able to tel . I wanted to get out of here without any trouble.

“Can you tel me how you were able to pierce the glamour?” she asked, which was exactly the question I’d feared. Luckily I hadn’t been waiting idly. I’d been planning my answer.

“I was helping the police search for the remains of the . . .

remains, by using my grave magic. The glamour didn’t hide the grave essence emanating from the feet.” I left out that I’d been able to see them. Fae didn’t tend to like it when people could see through glamour. You could lose your eyes for less.

She pressed her lips together and jotted something on her notepad. “So you fol owed this . . . essence? Then what?”

“I tracked where the grave essence originated. I could

“I tracked where the grave essence originated. I could feel that the body parts were there. That no one else was able to see the feet was a good hint we might be dealing with glamour.” Al true—just not al of the truth.

Agent Nori clicked her pen closed. “Miss Craft, when you realized glamour was involved, you didn’t for a moment think it might have been more prudent to inform the FIB

rather than let the mortals blunder around the scene?”

I bristled at the insult toward John and his team. I had a lot of friends in the Nekros City Police Department. Placing a hand on my hip, I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “They hired me.”

“Yes, wel , I’m sure they appreciate your help, Miss Craft.

Your services wil no longer be needed.” She turned, gravel crunching under her pumps as she walked away. A few feet past the car, she glanced back over her shoulder. “You realize, of course, that this means we’l have to look into the independent fae in the area.” The smile that spread across her face made her bril iantly red lips stretch to flash a lot of white teeth, but it wasn’t a happy smile.

I didn’t balk. I’d recently learned I was feykin, but she couldn’t know that. Could she? Plastering on my own smile, I said, “I guess so.”

She left the smal gravel parking lot, no doubt headed back to the place where I’d found the pyramid of feet. As I turned to slide into the car again, movement at the tree line caught my eye. While my eyesight had recovered significantly, I’d been in touch with the land of the dead and the grave quite a bit, so at first al I could see was a moving man-shaped mesh of colors. But as the figure drew closer, I quickly realized that while male was the right gender, he wasn’t hu man, but fae.

He hunched, his stringy legs never ful y straightening as he slunk closer. Even bent, he stood a head tal er than me

—and I’m not short. He had the same features as a human, but they were al slightly off. His wide eyes were dark, and overly recessed in his skul , but not from il ness. His pale overly recessed in his skul , but not from il ness. His pale skin was the color of a worm’s bel y, as if he had never been exposed to daylight, and his hawkish nose extended nearly a hand’s width from his face, almost hiding the thin lips and pointed chin.

Even now, seventy years after the Magical Awakening, it was rare to see an unglamoured fae. The fae had come out of the mushroom ring, as some put it, because they were fading from memory and thus the world. They needed human belief to anchor them to reality, but aside from the fae celebrities and politicians, a human was likely to see an unglamoured fae only in a venue that profited from showcasing the fae’s differences. Most of those places were little better than tourist traps.

I glanced behind me. Across the parking pit, two officers huddled around the van that had been established as a temporary headquarters for the investigation. Well, at least I ’m not completely alone. Of course, just because the strange fae looked creepy and was near the place where we’d found feet masked in glamour, that didn’t make him guilty. It did make him a suspect, though. Or possibly a witness.