Grave Visions(82)

“Good to meet you, Sam. I’m Alex, and I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

The boy emerged a little farther from under the blanket. “This is Lancelot,” he said, revealing a teddy bear nearly half his size that he’d been clutching under the blanket. “He’s been protecting me from the bad stuff.”

I looked down at the bear. I expected it to rot away in my gravesight, but it didn’t. Oh, it looked a little haggard, with matted fur and a couple of bald spots, but it looked more well-loved than decayed. He had a small sword made out of tinfoil attached to his paw with an old hair grip, and more tinfoil cupped his head in what I guessed was a makeshift helmet. Curious, I let my ability to sense magic trace over the bear and then the rest of the room—the one and only room in the house to be spared. But there was no magic. No witch magic at least. Just the power of a child’s trust and belief.

I forced a smile. “Lancelot did a good job, baby. Now come on, let’s go.”

Reaching out, I lifted both boy and his brave little bear. Sam wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, but then twisted, looking back at the tub.

“What about, Mol-mol?” he asked, looking at his big sister. “She’s sleeping.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again. I dealt in a business abundant with grieving loved ones, but I wasn’t equipped to explain death to a three-year-old. Or maybe I just wasn’t brave enough to tell a child his sister was gone. Either way, as I carried him out of the room, I simply said, “The firemen will come for her.”

He nodded, accepting that solution. Then he leaned his small head on my shoulder and hugged his bear close.

Belief magic really was the damnedest thing. It could enact a glamour that killed, but it could also guard a small boy who believed in the protection of a teddy bear.





Chapter 22





“The ledger,” I said, bolting upright in my bed. Then a wave of dizziness slammed into me and I collapsed back into my pillows.

“What?” Falin asked as he twisted around to look at me from where he sat on my one barstool in front of his laptop. PC, who was curled up in Falin’s lap, lifted his head.

My dog was officially a traitor.

I groaned, closing my eyes against the bright sunlight streaming into the room. I felt hungover. Hell, I wished I was hungover instead of slowly fading from magical withdrawal or whatever. But, no, there had been no drinking last night. Just a lot of creatively evasive statements given to the cops and firemen on how I’d entered the house and why the fire had abruptly vanished. Then an awkward drive home, my blind and shivering stumble upstairs, and my absolute refusal to let Falin share the bed to provide me with body heat—we’d played that game before and it didn’t end well for my heartstrings. I had a vague memory of Death kissing my cheek sometime in the middle of the night, but that may have been a dream.

“What about a ledger?” Falin asked again.

I peeled open my eyes and forced my mind to reexamine the first thought I’d had on waking. What was . . . “Oh, yeah. The ledger? The one everyone has to sign going into the VIP area of the Eternal Bloom. We know the alchemist is operating in Faerie, but the drug is being distributed in Nekros. That means our bogeymen have to be traveling back and forth. If we examine the ledger, we might find a pattern to their movements and be able to lie in wait.”

Falin nodded, but it was more of a dismissive gesture than one of agreement. “I sent agents to collect the Bloom’s ledger after you told me who we were looking for last night. I also have agents stationed both inside and outside the Bloom in case either bogeyman makes an appearance.”

Oh. Apparently I wasn’t half as clever as I thought I was. I rolled over, sighing, and squinted as light from the open blinds fell directly into my eyes. I stopped. There was an awful lot of light.

“What time is it?”

“Almost noon,” Falin said, without looking up from his laptop.

Noon? Crap. “I’m late. I’m so late. Why didn’t my alarm sound?”

“I turned it off,” he said, without the slightest hint of apology. “You looked like you needed the sleep.”

I gaped at him. Needed the sleep? I needed to open the office. With Rianna and Ms. B both holding up in Faerie to conserve energy, I was the only one left to run the office. But even more than that, I needed to be up working the case. Sleep wasn’t going to make me better—establishing a tie to Faerie was the only way.

Falin shrugged at the aghast look on my face. “I sent an agent to your office to hang a sign stating your office would be closed for the remainder of the week.”