The water splashed up to the knees of my waterproof suit as I waded through it, my steps slow, both from the water rushing around me and because I was concentrating on feeling the grave essence while holding it at bay so I didn’t feeling the grave essence while holding it at bay so I didn’t accidental y raise any shades.
Something . . . I turned in a smal circle, reaching with my mind, my power. Yes, there was something. My power told me it was touching a body, a human body. Male. And I felt a female too. And . . . two more males?
“This isn’t good.”
John stopped beside me. “You found something?”
“Bodies. And I hope I’m wrong, but I’m sensing four different essence signatures.”
“A fourth victim?”
I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t answer. I wished I could close my eyes and concentrate just on the feel of the bodies, to get a better sense of where they were located, but it was hard enough to navigate the flooded forest with my eyes open. I waded farther in, the water lapping up to my midthighs. I slipped once, and only John’s quick reflexes kept me from landing on my ass in the murky water.
“We might be getting too deep,” John said as one of the officers, the shortest in our group, lost his footing and slipped forward in the current. He dug in his toes and righted himself a moment later.
I shook my head at John. “We’re almost there.” I could feel the bodies just ahead.
The rushing water broke around a fal en tree a couple of yards in front of us. The ancient hardwood’s giant roots stretched out in every direction, dirt stil covering them, so the root-bal formed a massive mound. The tree hadn’t fal en in this particular flood—moss covered the mound and saplings clung to the root-packed earth. The grave essence emanated from somewhere around that tree, and not only grave essence but a dark knot of magic.
I stepped closer, searching with both my power and my eyes. Then I saw them.
“Feet.”
“Where?” John asked, looking around.
I pointed. In a hol ow near the base of the tree was a I pointed. In a hol ow near the base of the tree was a neatly stacked pile of bloated and decomposing feet.
John’s bushy eyebrows drew together, his mustache twitching downward as he frowned. He mopped sweat off his forehead before tilting his head to the side and giving me a confused look.
He doesn’t see them? I pointed again, but I wasn’t wearing gloves, so I didn’t want to contaminate the scene.
Trying to figure out the differences between what I could see and what he could see was impossible while staring over multiple planes of reality, so I closed my mental shields, blocking my psyche from the land of the dead—
and whatever other planes it touched. My grave-sight faded. The gray coating of the world washed away, as did the swirls of the Aetheric. And so did the feet.
I blinked as I clasped my shield bracelet back around my wrist. Releasing my grave-sight made dark shadows crawl over my vision—I couldn’t peer across planes without paying a price—but when I squinted I could make out the hol ow where I’d seen the feet. An empty hol ow. Or, at least, it looked empty, but I could stil feel the grave essence and the taint of magic lifting off the dead appendages. The essence raked at my shields like icy claws, trying to sink under my skin, into my mind. I shivered.
The feet were definitely there.
“John, we have a problem,” I said, leaning back and trying to shove my hands in my jean pockets—which were blocked by the rubber hip waders. I dropped my hands by my side as everyone looked at me. “There’s a pyramid of feet stacked in that hol ow. I counted four and at a guess, they are al lefts.”
One of the uniformed officers stepped forward. He lifted a long sticklike object with a glass bead on the end.
Spellchecker wand. He waved the wand over the hol ow.
The bead flashed a deep crimson to indicate malicious magic, but the glow was dim, the magic only traces of residual spel s.
residual spel s.
Stepping back, the officer shook his head. “No active spel s, sir.”
I stared at the empty-looking hol ow. “If they’re not hidden behind a spel , it has to be glamour.”
“Crap,” John said, and turned toward the cop beside him.
“Someone get the FIB on the phone. We’ve got a situation.”
The FIB, as in the Fae Investigation Bureau. Glamour was exclusively fae magic, which meant John had just lost jurisdiction.
I slouched in the front of John’s police cruiser, one foot on the dash, one hanging out the open door. I’d rather have been out of the car—or more accurately, out of the floodplain. The FIB had arrived and ruffled the cops’
feathers. In turn, the cops dashed around, trying to look busy. I was just trying to stay out of the way. But being in the car made me claustrophobic. Actual y, if I was honest with myself, it was more than that. Ever since the Blood Moon, being locked inside a car made me jumpy and made my skin itch. I had a sinking suspicion the sensation had something to do with the iron content in the metal. No wonder Falin drove that hot plastic convertible.