Grave Visions(96)

“Rawhead’s ghost was present. It is gone now.” The words came out flat, with no inflection. “I’m ready to raise the shade,” I said, and then turned my back on her. I had a job to do and I didn’t want to look at the woman who’d ordered the execution of the body in front of me, and so, indirectly forced me to cannibalize a soul.

Or maybe I just wanted to stop thinking because it had been so easy to do this time. And it felt good. Which scared me. After all, even if it was in self-defense, how many souls could I consume without destroying my own?





Chapter 27





With Rawhead’s ghost gone, progressing with the ritual was little more than a familiar exercise. After the last several rituals with shades so depleted that I’d had to pour far too much energy into them to raise a mere shadow of my typical shades, the ease of which Rawhead’s shade rose from his body was a relief.

I glanced at the shade I’d raised and grimaced. Well, maybe relief was the wrong word. Falin had covered the body before I’d drawn my circle, and the ghost had more or less resembled Rawhead in life, but the shade resembled him in death, complete with neck ending in a bloody stump and his severed head in his lap. I looked away.

“What is your name?” I asked the shade.

“We know that already,” the queen all but spat from outside my circle.

I shot a frown over my shoulder at her, but she was correct. We knew that information, but I always started my interviews with the question. It was a habit.

Physics—or maybe biology—would insist that a head separated from its body couldn’t speak, but Rawhead was dead, a projection of memories, and the magic didn’t really care in what condition that projection appeared. So, the shade’s response of his name was clear and strong.

Behind me, the queen muttered something about moving on and asking the alchemist’s name, but I hesitated before asking my next question. I needed the alchemist’s identity, without a doubt, but in the queen’s frantic state, she’d likely demand an immediate end to my ritual as soon as we had a name. I didn’t want to be called to any more scenes with glamoured fires or homicidal clowns, so I needed a little more information about Glitter before I lost access to Rawhead’s shade.

“Have you been distributing the drug Glitter?”

“Yes.”

Well, at least I knew we had the right fae. I still felt sick that he’d been killed so that I could question him, but the reassurance that he was responsible for at least half a dozen deaths was something. Oh, and according to legend, he ate children. Major strike against him there.

“How many vials of Glitter did you distribute?”

“Seven.”

I blinked. Seven vials? I was expecting the number to be in the dozens if not the hundreds. I had assumed that our victims had overdosed or had a bad reaction to the drug, but if I assumed Gavin Murphy had used the drug—and Death had indicated that he had—I knew where five of the vials had ended up. That left only two vials unaccounted for. They could still be unused, or the results might not have been outlandish enough to warrant attention, the users dying in seemingly mundane ways. The operation Icelynne had described sounded, if not large, than at least as though more than seven vials had been produced.

“What was the point?” I said under my breath. It wasn’t really a question, or at least not one directed at anyone, but the shade answered anyway.

“Fear.”

“What?”

“Glitter was distributed to create fear among the humans and disorder in the court,” Rawhead said.

“Ask for the name now,” the queen yelled from outside my circle. “Or your head will be the next I send my knight to retrieve.”

Right. No more delaying. I would have liked to get a little more information, but at least I knew the operation was small. Once the alchemist was caught, production would stop. But where is the rest of the drug now? Icelynne had seen several other fae in the place where she was held, and she’d been held for days, slowly drained of her glamour. There must have been more than seven vials created.

I was out of time.

I turned toward the shade. “To which court do you belong?”

“I’m sworn to a noble of the winter court.”

As expected. “The name of that noble?”

“Ryese.”

The world hung for a moment on the silence after the shade spoke. Then a shriek burst from the queen and she threw herself at my barrier.

Pain crashed through my senses as she slammed into the circle. I fell to my knees, trying to ride out the backlash.

“Stop,” I said through gritted teeth. Not that she could hear me over her own wails.