Grave Visions(69)

I’d wanted to enjoy touching him without feeling the burning chill of the grave for so very long, and now I could, and it was thrilling, and comforting, but also wrong somehow. That thought made me frown, and I pushed it away, bringing my thoughts back around to safe topics. Like the case.

“So, like I said, it’s possible the light court is involved. Or maybe this is a wild-goose chase. I know you mentioned that creativity can be twisted and turned dark, but these people died from manifestations of their fears and nightmares. Maybe it’s not connected at all.”

Death didn’t say anything for a long moment, the silence stretching long enough for his lack of response to be noticeable. Finally he said, “Are you sure all the deaths have been from malicious manifestations?”

I straightened, meeting his gaze. “You know something.”

His eyes darted away, refusing to hold mine. He did know something. The secrets of soul collectors were well guarded and they were forbidden from speaking about those secrets. The souls he collected and their manner of death fell into that category. Still, he was also forbidden to see me, and for better or worse, he was breaking that rule, so I waited. If he decided he could tell me, he would. But I wouldn’t press him. Our relationship was already dangerous for him. Which made me feel guilty as hell, like I should send him away for his own safety. So I’d wait, let him set the pace.

Finally he looked at me again, and ran a hand through his dark, chin-length hair. “What have you found when you interacted with the bodies?”

“Weak shades.” I’d told him that already. I stopped. “Almost completely depleted shades. Like all the life energy of their being had been drawn out.” If the victims were unintentionally using the glamour in the drug to make their hallucinations real, they had to fuel that glamour somehow. Fae were born with the power to manipulate glamour, or maybe it was fueled through their tie to Faerie. But what happened when a mortal, especially a nonmagical mortal, used an artificial infusion of glamour? It still had to draw power from somewhere. I’d theorized that already. The victims felt like they’d been through some life-threatening magic burnout. But that wasn’t what had killed them. The hallucinations turned real had.

As if he could read the course of my thoughts, Death prompted me further. “And what if those children hadn’t manifested a nightmare, but something harmless?”

I thought about it. About how weak their shades were. About how much life force it must have taken to make that clown real. “They probably would have burned out completely and died anyway,” I said. Both sets of victims we’d found had died from violence, likely before they could get to a critical stage. But what if their hallucinations hadn’t been violent? “Are you saying there have been good manifestations?”

Death didn’t answer, not verbally at least, but he gave me the smallest incline of his head. My thoughts tumbled around my brain, a jumble of different half-realized ideas, until a memory rose to the surface. The homeless man on the unicorn. He’d been found dead several hours after I’d seen him, and from what I’d heard, the cause of death was unknown. I’d forgotten all about him with everything else that had happened, but I’d gotten a good look at that unicorn. It had definitely been glamour.

And nothing but glamour.

In the past I had seen constructs made from a mix of magic and glamour. And, of course, I’d seen fae disguising themselves with glamour. The unicorn hadn’t been either of those. If it had been something else, something with a soul or even something nonliving but with real components, I would have seen that when I opened my shields. But it hadn’t been. It had just been glamour. No more alive than a glamour-conjured chair and even less real than the cars my father transformed with his glamour.

I had been making assumptions about the hallucinations that had killed the victims. I’d assumed something that chased down and killed had to be sentient, cognizant. But if all of the nightmare-like images—and their actions—had come straight from the victim’s own minds? Maybe I wasn’t looking for any fae creatures, light or dark, that were possessing the glamours. Maybe it was all from the victim’s drug-addled mind. And of course, the dose of glamour in the drug itself.

Jeremy and the two high schoolers had had a bad drug trip. Their hallucinations had been frightening, deadly. How many users had partaken of Glitter and had a “good” trip? How many had gotten sucked into a fantasy until the glamour burned out their life force?

I repeated the question to Death, but I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer. He’d already given away more than he should have. Of course, technically he shouldn’t have been here at all.