Grave Dance Part 5

Malik huffed under his breath. "Who do you think is doing the questioning?" He shook his head. "The FIB are all court-loyal-not an independent in the bunch."

"Then go to the police." I knew for sure the NCPD wasn't answering to a queen.

Malik's dark eyes widened like I'd said something unbelievable, and Caleb shook his head.

"Al, there are certain . . . restrictions to being independent," Caleb said, stepping forward. "As we don't answer to any regent, we had to take vows before leaving Faerie. Involving mortals in affairs best settled among the fae is strictly forbidden. That's why Malik came to you."

"That's why?" The blood drained from my face. If the fae couldn't involve anyone mortal... "You know."

Caleb nodded.

So much for my heritage being a secret. "You didn't say anything."

"Neither did you."

True.

"I only suspected in the beginning," he said. "Even with you living in my house, under my wards, I wasn't sure. Until a month ago. Now I can hardly believe I missed it. Something about you changed."

Don't I know it. Discovering I had fae blood was only the tip of my problems, but Caleb wasn't done yet.

"You are in a unique position, Al," he said, stepping closer. "We can go to you. We can talk to you. But you've taken no vows. Yet. You can work as an intermediary with the police, and they already know you, already trust you."

I swallowed and glanced over Caleb's shoulder to where Malik had stopped pacing to watch me; his large, unblinking eyes fixed on me, waiting. I didn't like the "yet" that Caleb had worked into that little statement, but I didn't doubt he was right. It wasn't like I hadn't noticed the changes in myself since the Blood Moon: the sensitivity to metals, the inability to maintain my shields, and my increased ability to sense fae magic-and that was all on top of the whole seeing multiple planes of existence. Faerie would eventually notice me.

I grabbed my mug again because I had to do something with my hands or I'd start pacing and fidgeting like Malik. I swirled the dark contents, staring at the liquid instead of at Caleb. I could use something stronger than coffee right now. Still, coffee was what I had. I drained the mug in two swallows, barely tasting its lukewarm contents.

Yes, eventually someone important in Faerie would notice me, but that hadn't happened yet. The fae couldn't talk to the mortal police, and the FIB, which functioned as the fae police in the mortal realm, belonged to the courts, but Malik was right that they could talk to me.

"The queen is gathering the independents because I revealed those feet?"

Malik nodded. "That was likely only an excuse, but yes. As long as a fae is suspected of the crime, she has the authority to search for the criminal."

I sank onto my bed, my mind reeling. Did I really want to get involved-or actually, further involved-in this case? I raised shades, got some answers, and then cashed the check. That was the kind of investigator I was. I didn't hit the street and search for suspects in murder cases.

But the independent fae couldn't turn to anyone else, and the Winter Queen had free rein to gather the independents as long as the murderer was free. On top of that, since the fae couldn't talk to the police, there might be information out there that the police desperately needed that I could access and they couldn't.

I focused on Malik again. "So, what do you know about the feet?"

"Does that mean you're taking the case?"

"I'm considering it. Do you have some fact I can take to the police that would prove without a shadow of a doubt that the floodplain fae were not involved? Or do you know where the remainder of the bodies are located?"

Malik shook his head. "There were no bodies. Just the feet. They floated down the river all at once, like a fleet of toy boats-"

Lovely image.

"-I thought I'd gathered all of them, but obviously I missed a few in the flooding. I should have made the nixies help. They are silly, frivolous little things, but they know every disturbance in the water. They could tell if a fly hit the water in their territory."

I'd taken a course on fae races during academy and I vaguely remembered reading about nixies being some sort of water nymph. "Would you be able to arrange for me to question the nixies? If they are that attuned to the water, they might be able to point me to where the feet were dumped. The police are still searching for a primary crime scene and the dump site might shed some clues."

Malik's shoulders sagged, his head dipping. "There will be no questioning them unless you want to sneak into the queen's dungeons. My poor dears. The FIB brutes went after the nixies first. Everyone knows they're harmless, but that Agent Nori chained them in iron and dragged them away."

Great.

"What about the kelpie?" Caleb asked.

Malik c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "Maybe," he said, running one long finger down the length of his nose. "If those brutes haven't grabbed her as well."

I glanced from one to the other of them. "A kelpie? As in a carnivorous water horse?"

Malik nodded. "She has a . . . hungry disposition, but she claims the track of the Sionan River from north of the city down to the edge of the floodplain. She might not be as attuned to the river as my poor nixies, but if you can bargain with her, she might be able to point you toward a general area."

"That's miles of river. How do I find her?"

"She frequents the banks below the city. You know the old stone bridge?" Caleb asked, and I nodded.

The bridge, a forty-minute drive past the warehouse district south of the city, was a thing of mystery and rumor. After the Magical Awakening, when the s.p.a.ces between began to unfold and the perceivable world grew, Nekros had unfolded between Georgia and Alabama. The first settlers in what would quickly grow into Nekros City noted that the stone bridge was already there, and that it was already old.

"Well," he said, "if you head out toward the bridge, the riverbanks in that area are your best bet. She's often spotted there."

Okay, questioning the kelpie would be a good starting point. Hopefully she'd know something. I could ask a few questions, poke around a bit, and hand off what I learned to John. This was legwork, the equivalent of knocking on doors. Except I'm going to be searching the banks for a carnivorous horse. I sighed and pushed myself off my bed.

"If I go looking for the kelpie, what kind of precautions should I take? I mean, according to folklore, kelpies drown their victims, then tear them to pieces to eat them. Is that accurate?"

"I definitely wouldn't suggest taking up equestrianism," Caleb said with a grin. "But as long as you don't climb on her back, you should be safe."

"If you have any trouble, you can use this." Malik pulled a leather harness from under his coat.

No, not a harness. A bridle. I c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. My father had sent my sister and me to camp one summer and we'd learned to ride and care for horses. Cleaning hooves had convinced Casey she didn't want a pony after all, but it was the bridling and saddling that had gotten to me-the mare I picked wasn't cooperative. I imagined struggling with a fae would be incalculably worse.

Malik read the skepticism on my face and shrugged. "If you bridle a kelpie, it's obliged to grant you a request in exchange for its freedom. This particular bridle is enchanted. Toss it over her head and she'll be caught."

Well, that changed things. I held out my hand, but Malik frowned. He gripped the leather tighter.

"This is hard for me, Miss Craft. Speaking so freely and giving away treasures-it is not in my nature."

Even though he was the one who wanted to hire me? "I'll return it."

He perked up. "Twice-fold?"

Twice-fold? Like what, two enchanted bridles? "No, oncefold."

He frowned. "I could help you look for the kelpie."

"That would be fine." Appreciated even, but I couldn't say as much-I didn't want him twisting this around so he was helping me instead of vice versa.

Malik hesitated a moment more. Then, turning his head away as if he couldn't bear to look, he handed over the bridle.

I smiled. "Well, Malik, looks like you're Tongues for the Dead's newest client."

It took another hour to work out a contract for the case-and only a verbal one at that. Wording and phrasing were important with the fae. I'd known that. What I hadn't realized was how difficult it could be to agree on a contract for hire. A normal contract of service was a type of trade: I performed a service in exchange for payment for my time.

"That won't work," Malik told me. "It is my nature to get the better deal in any trade and then I'll still try to trick you out of what you've earned." He inclined his head. "It is who I am."

Well, at least he was honest.

Then there was the issue of payment. A song? The first snowflake of winter-I think that offer was meant to be ironic, all things considered. The first flower of spring?

Yeah, no. Not appropriate.

I would have lost my patience if Caleb hadn't been present to arbitrate. In the end, I agreed to gift Malik my time on the case and Caleb agreed to gift me free rent depending on how many hours I spent on the case. I had no idea what agreement Caleb and Malik reached. Caleb also made a point of adding a verbal clause stating that any a.s.sistance-including information and magical help-that Malik provided wouldn't put me in the fae's debt. Malik looked miffed by the statement, but he agreed to the terms.

Once everything was settled, I moved to the door to show them out but stopped when a shimmering form floated through the wood.

"Hey, Al, I-Whoa, who's the ugly guy?" Roy asked, shoving his iridescent gla.s.ses higher on his nose.

"Malik," I answered, and then winced when Malik turned at the sound of his name.

"Yes?"

I shook my head. Only I could see or hear Roy. I used to be so good at not talking to people no one else could see. Of course, until recently, I couldn't have heard Roy unless I'd tried. That was another thing that had changed.

"There's a ghost," I said by way of explanation. "He asked who you were."

"A real specter?" Malik looked around, his dark eyes shining with interest. "Can he frighten the living by making the lights flicker or the table rock?"

"I don't own a table."

Malik frowned and glanced around the small apartment as if he hadn't noticed that before. "True."

I turned back toward Roy. He'd been excited when he first floated through the door, before he'd gotten sidetracked by my visitors. "What's up, Roy?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. So I was down visiting my grave, right? They delivered the headstone, and I wanted to see it again."

I nodded, waiting for him to get to the point. He'd spent twelve years watching his body walk around without him in it. Now that it was decaying in the ground like a corpse should, he visited his own grave regularly-kind of freaky in my opinion, but it was important to him, so I'd helped with the burial arrangements.

"So, yeah," he said, continuing. "I was at my grave, and this couple entered the cemetery, looking a little nervous. I didn't think anything about it, until I heard your name."

I blinked at him. Then my mouth went dry. "c.r.a.p. The Stromowskis. What time is it? I was supposed to raise their grandmother." I gave a glance at my slept-in clothes-I'd worn worse-and then I grabbed my purse. With all the excitement of Malik's case, reappearing daggers, and Faerie courts, I'd completely forgotten I had another client.

Chapter 6.

It was late afternoon before I drove through the warehouse district and headed for the old stone bridge to meet Malik. Legally I couldn't drive for two hours after raising shades-the havoc that grave-sight wreaked on a grave witch's eyesight was well doc.u.mented-but even after I'd waited a couple of hours for my sight to recover, the dimness under the branches overhanging the road made me nervous. Of course, taking any of the back roads out of the city made me nervous.

Like any other large city in the nation, Nekros City had its bad neighborhoods and high-crime areas. But it was outside the city, once you left the suburbs behind, that gave most human citizens pause. The fae had initiated the Magical Awakening when they had come out of the mushroom ring, as some said, seventy years ago. Their announcement altered the course of the-until that moment-technologyfocused world.

And that was only the beginning.

Ancient history might have been riddled with stories of witchcraft, but in the decades-maybe even the centuries-before the Magical Awakening, magic was considered a myth. After the Awakening? Well, then, as if the magic had just been waiting for humans to be primed to channel it, the veil between the Aetheric and mortal reality thinned. Magic was accessible, and a good third of the population proved capable of reaching it, of shaping it. When s.p.a.ce unfolded, opening new areas, both the witches seeking a place where they could practice in peace and the norms who didn't want to a.s.sociate with the magically inclined moved into the new territory. The two groups didn't mix well, and several violent clashes had occurred in the years following the Magical Awakening, but witches and norms alike agreed on one thing-humans were safer in the city because strange, long-forgotten legends were waking in the wilds.

Now here I was, out in the middle of nowhere, searching for a carnivorous water horse.

I pulled my car off the road and parked under a cove of tree branches at one side of the bridge. The bridge itself was a hulking gray stone monstrosity with no obvious seams, no bolts, and no metal infrastructure-just solid stone. As I pulled up the soft top on the convertible-trees meant birds and I did not want to have to clean bird c.r.a.p off my seats-Malik approached.

"Nice car," he said, circling the little blue convertible. "Thanks. It's new." New used, but it was still a major step up from the hulking metal junker I'd driven until it had gotten stolen and stripped while I worked the Coleman case. Of course, since the Blood Moon, sitting inside my old car for an extended period of time probably would have made me retch. The convertible had been designed for the filthy rich or fae and had no iron in its construction. Even used, it hadn't been cheap, and I was almost surprised it didn't run on rainbows. Actually, rainbows would probably be a pain-in-the-a.s.s power source. I'd used most of the money I'd made from the Coleman case on the down payment, and I still owed the bank, but business had been good and as long as that lasted, I wouldn't have trouble with the monthly payments.

Since Malik wasn't glamoured, I pulled the charm I'd made for detecting glamour from the cup holder and snapped it onto my bracelet. Better safe than sorry. I checked that the magic bridle was in easy reach in the top of my purse and then leaned across the seat to grab the plastic grocery bag on the pa.s.senger side. "I brought what you asked for. Do I want to know why we need raw hamburger meat?"

Malik's thin lips cracked into a smile full of small, yellow teeth. "We have to get the kelpie's attention, now, don't we?"

Great.

I followed him down the bank to the edge of the water. When he held out one long-fingered hand I gave him the grocery bag. He dug inside, pulling out the three pounds of raw hamburger. Tearing off the plastic, he studied the pink meat.

"Bloodier would have been better," he said, "but this will do."

He sank his fingers into the meat, and after pinching off a clump, hurled it into the rushing water. It vanished into the current, and I waited, shuffling from foot to foot on the uneven bank.

Nothing happened.

"Now what?" I asked, staring at the water.

Malik flicked his fingers, dislodging bits of pink hamburger, but he continued to watch the river. After several minutes, he shook his head. "Let's try farther upstream."

The walk couldn't be described as companionable. Malik hummed to himself, clearly not interested in casual conversation as he waltzed through the thick underbrush crowding the edge of the bank. My progress was considerably less effortless as dry twigs snapped under my steps and vines tugged at my ankles. This was the second time this week I'd tromped through the wilderness, and my boots just weren't made for it. Then there were the bugs. I seriously should have packed an insect repellent charm, or at least the spray that norms used. Not that any of this seemed to bother Malik as he led us farther upstream. In between swatting mosquitos on my bare arms and watching for raised roots waiting to trip me, I scanned the water, the banks, and the woods beyond, but nothing bigger than a squirrel moved in the wilderness.

We stopped several times, and at each stop Malik tossed more hamburger into the river. But no water horse emerged from the current.

"Do you think the court already captured the kelpie?" I asked once we'd exhausted all three pounds of meat.

Malik shrugged. "She might not be hungry."

Maybe because she snacked on some human remains? Actually, that theory didn't hold with the evidence we had. Tamara had said there were no tool marks-or any other indication of how the feet were severed from the legs-and I didn't think she'd miss something like gnaw marks on the bones.

"So how can we draw her out?" I asked as Malik handed me the grocery bag.

"We could offer her something she'd find more appetizing." Malik smiled, flashing discolored teeth. "She's not my biggest fan, but I bet she'd find you . . . sweet."

My stomach, already a little sour after tossing raw meat around, knotted tight. I backed up a step. "What are you suggesting?"