Grave Dance Part 21

He muttered the word "omelets" under his breath and then focused on me again. "He has his own agenda."

I shrugged and turned on the water. "Most people do." I shoved the brush under the faucet, and then dragged the wet bristles through my hair to calm the frizz.

"Alex." He stepped closer, his hands molding around my hips. "What do you really know about him?"

I twisted in his grasp, not to get away but to face him. The position was close, intimate. If I had lifted onto my toes, I could have kissed him. As it was, I was close enough to see the kaleidoscope of colors hidden in his dark hazel eyes.

"What do I know about you?" I asked, and the skin around his eyes tightened in a small flinch, as if my question could wound. I lowered my gaze.

When I was a teenager, I'd had a major crush on Death. Yeah, imagine that, a teenager with a crush on Death-it took emo to a whole new level. He'd visited me less often then, stopping by apparently at random for reasons unknown. I think, back then, my company was an amus.e.m.e.nt or maybe an interesting novelty-a mortal who could see him, interact with him. For me, he was that dreamy, dark and mysterious older guy. I guess he was still all of those things, but I'd thought I'd outgrown that teenage crush. Clearly it had just grown up with me.

I took a deep breath, relishing the thrill of his hands on me, of his touch. Of the fact that we could touch. A month ago it would have been uncomfortable, him too cold and me too hot. But now things had changed.

Looking up again, I studied his face, recognizing every line of his jaw, the curve of his eyebrows. In some ways, he was my closest friend. In others he was a complete stranger. But even with our relationship in this strange, awkward, morphing mess of, well, whatever it was, I still felt like I could talk to him. Could tell him anything, everything, even if he couldn't do the same. After all, no one kept secrets like Death.

"You've always told me not to push," I said, moving my arms to his, my hands at his elbows, my forearms on top of his. We were too close for me not to touch him without making things more awkward. "Not to push for answers you can't give me, for secrets you can't reveal. Well, now it's my turn. Don't push me for commitments I can't make."

He closed his eyes and then leaned forward, propping his chin on the top of my head. The movement brought me in contact with his chest, and I leaned into him as well, feeling the softness of his T-shirt against my cheek-a T-shirt that I was pretty sure didn't exist, at least not in the terms with which I was familiar. I felt the sigh that escaped him as he wrapped his arms around me.

"Okay." His fingers trailed over the sliver of skin exposed between my halter top and my hip-huggers. "Okay, I'll stop pushing. But I expect you to tell him the same thing."

"Trust me, I intend to." Now, if Falin would listen? That would be a miracle.

As if he could hear my thoughts, Death laughed, one hard bark of air. "He's stubborn. You know he continued to talk at me-at empty air, for all he knew-for an hour after you fell asleep."

I hid my smile against Death's shoulder. "Yeah, he's stubborn."

"You could kick him out."

I groaned and pushed away from Death. "I told you, he's helping me with my investigation." I hadn't intended to rub Death's nose in the fact that he wasn't the one helping me, but it was there, in his eyes. He looked away, as if he knew I could see it.

"What marks the end of life?" Death asked, hooking his thumbs in his pockets.

"What?" Where did that question come from? Death didn't answer, or repeat himself; he just looked at me, his eyes intense, as if the words he wasn't saying were trying to burn through his gaze.

"Philosophically, scientifically, or . . . ?" I let the question trail off and lifted my hands, palms up, as I shrugged.

Still he didn't answer.

"Okay." I frowned and leaned back against the sink's counter. "Science would say life ends after the last breath leaves the body and the heart ceases to beat, or perhaps when brain activity stops. But . . ."

Death inclined his head, as if encouraging me to continue. He was a collector and I talked to the dead, so a scientific explanation probably wasn't what he was looking for. I'd seen bodies continue to have scientific signs of life for up to a minute or two after their souls had been collected, but I knew from experience that if I raised the shade of one of them, his memory would last only until the soul left the body. I'd also seen, though thankfully not often, bodies that had lost all signs of life but retained souls-their shades remembered being dead. "Mortal life ends when the soul leaves the body."

Death smiled, but it wasn't exactly a happy smile. "So what is the fuel of life, and where else have you seen it?" he asked. Then he vanished.

I stared at the s.p.a.ce where he'd been. Souls. Souls as fuel. And I knew exactly where I'd seen souls recently-the constructs.

When I left the bathroom, I found Falin poking around my fridge, wearing only a pair of jeans.

"You need to go shopping," he said without looking up.

"Typically."

I grabbed PC's bag of kibble and flicked the coffeemaker on as I pa.s.sed it. The coffee had only just begun brewing by the time the small dog was chomping away at his meal. I pulled a mug out of the cabinet, then jerked the pot out of the coffeemaker and held my mug directly under the steaming liquid. When I looked up I found Falin grinning at me.

"Impatient?"

"In a hurry."

"You always need that stuff to wake you?"

No, having two of the best-looking guys I knew in my bedroom had pretty much taken care of getting my pulse moving. Not that I was going to tell either of them that. I shoved the pot back under the stream of coffee and cupped my half-full mug in my hands.

"You never answered me about the omelets," he said, still grinning at me over the door of the fridge.

"What's with you and cooking?"

He shrugged. "I live alone and I don't like eating junk."

Well, at least he didn't say he serves the Winter Queen breakfast in bed every morning. I also lived alone-when Falin wasn't randomly inviting himself into my house-but I'd never gotten into the cooking thing. Of course, eating junk tended to be cheaper, and that was a factor too. The only reason I had eggs in the house was because I'd had a craving for brownies last weekend and the supermarket didn't sell just two eggs.

"So yes or no on breakfast?"

I glanced at the afternoon light streaming into the room. Not exactly breakfast time anymore. But I wasn't going to pa.s.s up real food.

"Breakfast," I agreed.

I walked PC and showered while Falin cooked. Then, after our afternoon breakfast, I paid a visit downstairs. Caleb was unhappy that Falin was still in the house, but he told me Holly had been released from the hospital-and then promptly reported to work. He swore he hadn't felt any effects of the spell, but I still sensed the crystal-armored dormant spell where the ravens had scratched him. By the time Falin got out of the shower I'd brewed a second pot of coffee and was pacing around my apartment as I mulled over the case.

"I know that look," he said as he towel-dried his hair.

"You feel like you've got a dozen pieces of the puzzle but not only do they not seem to fit together, they don't even seem to reflect parts of the same picture."

"Yeah, that sums it up." I set my mug down on the counter. My mind kept circling back to what Death had said, or really, what he'd not said. I was sure he meant the constructs when he mentioned where else I'd seen souls, but he'd made me go through all that bit about the end of life first. Or, put another way, the cause of death. I grabbed my purse off the counter. "I'm going to head to the morgue a little early. I want to test a theory."

Falin returned the towel to the bathroom. "Okay, I'll be ready in five."

I stopped halfway to the door. "I don't think you should go with me." After all, John hadn't had the greatest reaction to my showing up with Falin at the crime scene.

"What if the constructs attack again?"

"If they get inside Central Precinct, past the wards, the guards, all the cops, and down to the morgue, I'm pretty sure I'm screwed. Even if you were there, I think it's a safe bet we'd all die."

Falin dropped me off at Central Precinct. I wasn't thrilled about his driving around in my car, but he hadn't replaced his after it was totaled a month ago, and he needed wheels to work the case. Besides, I wouldn't be able to drive after I raised the shade-if Rianna and I managed to do it-so it made sense for him to take the car.

After I pa.s.sed through security and signed in with the attendant in her fishbowl office, I clipped on my visitor badge and headed down to the morgue in the subterranean levels of Central Precinct. Halogen bulbs lit the unadorned corridors, making the underground halls bright, if not cheery. I hadn't asked which medical examiners were working this afternoon. Considering that Tamara had been at the crime scene most of the night, I a.s.sumed it wouldn't be her, so I was surprised when I ran into her outside the coroner's office.

"I was already on the schedule," she said, covering a yawn with the back of her hand. "So what's happening? It best not be another emergency because I get off at seven and I swear if I don't make it home to my bed and sleep through the entire night there will be h.e.l.l to pay."

"No emergency this time. Remember when we were at lunch the other day and you mentioned that you had several bodies in the freezer that you couldn't find a cause of death for? Did you ever find one?"

She blew air through her teeth and pushed open the door to the autopsy room with all its stainless-steel gurneys and scary-looking medical equipment. "No, and now I have more of them. Why? You think you know?"

I had a theory.

"This is them," Tamara said, rolling a second gurney to the center of the morgue.

I nodded. Tamara and I had discussed it and she'd picked the two most inexplicable deaths for me to question. She hadn't given me any specifics about the victims, but even fully shielded I could feel that the bodies belonged to a male and a female. Young, too-my age or a little younger. I couldn't tell more than that through my shields, but the grave essence in them clawed at the edge of my mind.

"I'm at my wits' end," she said, watching as I dragged the tube of waxy chalk I used to draw indoor circles on the linoleum morgue floor. "In the last two weeks, I've had over a dozen suspicious deaths of undetermined cause cross my table. These two came in together. They're young, in good health, with no signs of foul play or disease. And yet they're dead." She shook her head, as if the movement could clear away the mystery. "I feel like the universe suddenly changed the rules and no one told me."

I knew exactly how she felt.

Standing, I recapped my chalk and walked to the center of the circle I'd drawn. Then I turned to her. "Ready?"

At her nod, I tapped into the magic stored in my ring. I spindled out the smallest amount of energy and funneled it into my circle, which shot up around me, glowing slightly blue to my senses.

With the barrier separating me from the outside world, I unclasped my charm bracelet and dropped my mental shields. A frigid wind whipped around me, through me, and my grave-sight blazed into existence, making the world wither and decay. The grave essence in the corpses on the gurneys reached for me, raking at my body and mind with icy claws. I opened myself and let the chill in, let it fill me. Part of me railed against the invasion of the grave. My warmth boiled in my veins, trying to remind me I was a creature of life, of-at least limited-heat. I pushed that living heat out of me, sending it into the two corpses. Only then did the chill of the grave settle comfortably under my skin, as if I'd reached some sort of balance, a kind of equilibrium with the grave and the land of the dead.

I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, I reached out with my magic. Using the part of my psyche that touched the dead, I guided the magic into the corpse of the girl, sending it deep into the sh.e.l.l that had once been a person. Her soul was long gone, everything that had once made her someone lost, but a shade, a collection of her memories stored in every cell of her body, had remained. She was recently deceased, and the shade was strong, emerging easily when I pulled with power.

A vaporish form sat up through the sheet that topped the body. She might have been nineteen when she died, her pixielike features round as if she hadn't yet lost all her baby fat. There was no shock in her face, no sorrow. Any trace of personality or sentience had left with her soul; now all that remained was a recording of who she'd once been.

"What's your name?" I asked, and the shade turned her head toward me.

"Jennifer McCormic."

"And how did you die, Jennifer?"

The shade c.o.c.ked its head to the side. "I don't know. I stopped living."

That's what I thought.

"What was the last thing you remember?"

"I met my boyfriend, Andrew. We were going to go for lunch. We were walking across campus and . . ." She fell silent.

"And what?" Tamara asked, stepping up to the very edge of my circle.

"And she died," I said because I knew the shade wouldn't. Once her soul was gone, her body had hit the STOP b.u.t.ton on the record of Jennifer's life. That was it. The end.

"Did anyone approach you before you died?" I asked the shade.

She shook her head and I chewed at my bottom lip. Sometimes people caught a glimpse of their collector before they died, but not always, and Jennifer clearly hadn't. Since she hadn't seen the collector, it was possible that something else caused her death and she hadn't been reaped, but the unsettled feeling in my stomach had me leaning toward cause of death being soul s.n.a.t.c.hing.

"Rest now," I said, pushing the shade back into Jennifer's body. Then I turned to her boyfriend, Andrew.

"We were walking and Jennifer got this funny look on her face and collapsed," Andrew said without a trace of emotion in his voice, though watching his girlfriend die in front of him had probably made his last moments some of the worst in his life. Of course, it didn't sound like that moment had lasted long. "I turned, trying to catch her, and I saw this man. He stuck his hand in my chest."

Bingo.

"The man you saw directly before you died, what did he look like?"

"Older than me, but not too old. He could have been a grad student or a postdoc. He had dark hair and he wore a long, dark coat."

A trickle of icy sweat ran down my spine. That description sounded exactly like the collector I'd seen near the rift.

"How many of these unexplained deaths did you say you had?" I asked Tamara after I returned Andrew to his body.

Her cheeks caved inward as she chewed the inside of her mouth, and she glanced toward the cold room and the bodies stored inside. "More than a dozen. Maybe fourteen? But those are only the deaths deemed to be under suspicious circ.u.mstances."

Which meant that if the reaper had hit a hospital or anywhere else that deaths would be written off as due to natural causes or at least expected, it was probable there were a lot more victims than we knew about. But we were fairly certain of fourteen victims, plus the two skimmers I saw him take. Sixteen souls. I wasn't sure what process turned a soul into fuel for a spell, but the ravens had each dissipated into only small amounts of soul mist, so I guessed that the soul fueling them had been broken up somehow. So what, maybe three or four souls among the thirty-two birds? Adding in the soul for the cu sith attack, that accounted for no more than five of the victims. There were a lot of unaccountedfor souls out there.

And the potential for a lot of constructs.

Chapter 22.

John arrived at the morgue at six thirty on the dot wearing the same clothes I'd seen last night, now wrinklier, and with bags large enough to house a pixie under his eyes.

"Jeez, John, did you get any sleep?" I asked, as Tamara pushed Jennifer's body back into the morgue's cold storage room.

He pressed his palm against one eye and dragged it down his face. "Recently?"

The air around John buzzed slightly with magic, which was weird because John was a null-no magical affinity at all. He could walk through a magical barrier without even noticing it existed. He had nothing against magic-obviously; he was, after all, my first contact with the police-but he never used charms. I let my senses stretch, tasting the magic.

"A stay-awake charm? John, those things are dangerous."

"Yeah, well, it was this or an IV of caffeine. The charm was easier." He focused on me for the first time. "You okay?"

I shrugged, a movement that turned into a tremble. Raising a pair of shades probably wasn't the best way to prepare for a difficult ritual, but I now knew the reaper was stealing souls. I wasn't sure what to do about that fact-I mean, what does a mortal do about a rogue reaper?-and I couldn't yet prove he was supplying the souls for the constructs, but I was starting to put things together. Hopefully we would learn even more when we raised a shade from the foot.

"Rianna should be here soon," I said, glancing toward the large steel doors. At least I hoped Rianna was on her way. I'd never sent messages via brownie before.

John rubbed a hand over the ever-expanding bald spot on his head. "So, what is the story with you working for the FIB?"

c.r.a.p. I'd seriously been hoping he wouldn't ask. A little overoptimistic there, Alex. "It's complicated."

"Yeah?" His mustache twitched, a quick swish of displeasure, but I was saved from having to answer any more questions by the morgue door opening.

Rianna stood in the doorway, looking unsure until her deep-sunk eyes landed on me. Then a feeble smile broke on her face and she scuttled across the room, her woodensoled shoes clunking on the linoleum floor.