Which meant the body was both dead and alive. Considering it was up and walking around, it was a heck of a lot more alive than a dead body should have been.
The soul inside was the color I associated with humans, so this wasn’t a corpse being worn and walked around by something from Faerie or one of the other planes. I still couldn’t see spellwork shimmering across the dead flesh, but it had to be there, binding the soul inside the corpse. But whatever kind of half-life the man existed in wasn’t going to last much longer if I couldn’t get hold of my magic.
The hole in my shields wasn’t huge, but I could feel my magic filling the body. And the grave and souls didn’t get along. I couldn’t stop the hemorrhage of magic, but I managed to slow it to a trickle.
I’d barely noticed the crowd gathering around us until one of the museum guards began releasing the spell holding us. If the antitheft paralyzing spell was dropped, I’d be able to get my distance from the corpse.
But either he wasn’t a very good witch, or he was stalling—likely to wait for the cops—because he was taking his sweet time as more and more of my magic flowed out.
I’d ejected souls from dead bodies before. While souls didn’t like the touch of the grave, they tended to cling to their flesh pretty hard and it took directed magic to pry them free. I was actively fighting expelling the soul, and only a small portion of my magic had filled the corpse, but the soul’s connection to the body felt weak, tentative.
I couldn’t shift my gaze to the museum worker, but I could see him out of the corner of my eye. Oh please, release the damn immobility spell.
Too late.
In a burst of light, the soul popped free of the corpse.
Nothing about the body changed. It had already been dead and it was still held immobile by the spell, but the soul stood free. For a long moment it was almost too bright to look at, a shimmering, crystalline yellow. But souls can’t exist without a body, and in a heartbeat the glow dimmed, the form solidifying as the soul transitioned to the purgatory landscape of the land of the dead.
If I could have stumbled back in shock, I would have, but I couldn’t even blink in surprise. Not because the soul transitioned—that I expected—but because the ghost now standing in front of me was that of a young woman.
My focus shifted from the balding, middle-aged man to the woman who might not have been old enough to drink. Ghosts weren’t like shades. While shades were always an exact representation of the person at the moment of death, ghosts tended to reflect how a person perceived himself. Appearing a little younger or more attractive was common. I supposed it was even possible that if someone identified across gender lines, their ghost might reflect that discrepancy. But this ghost was a drastically different age as well as being a different gender and ethnicity. And that was unheard of.
The ghost-girl looked around, no longer inhibited by the spell holding the body she’d been inside. Her dark eyes rounded as her eyebrows flew upward and her motions took on the frantic quickness of panic.
A panic that didn’t last long as a figure appeared beside her. He was dressed from head to toe in gray and carrying a silver skull-topped cane. The Gray Man. A soul collector.
I wanted to scream No. To run between him and the girl who clearly hadn’t belonged in the dead body. Things didn’t add up here, and I wanted to talk to the ghost.
But I still couldn’t move.
I stood silently frozen in place as the Gray Man reached out, grabbed the soul, and sent her on to wherever souls went next. Then he turned and looked at the body she’d vacated. His expression gave away nothing as his gaze moved on to me. He gave me one stern shake of his head, which could have meant he didn’t know what was going on or that he knew but it wasn’t any business of mine.
Then he vanished.
Of course, that was the moment the guard released the spell. I stumbled back as the now truly dead body collapsed.
I barely registered the gasps and screams. I only half noted the gun that clattered across the marble as the lifeless body hit the floor. I was far too busy staring at the spot where the Gray Man and the ghost had been. She hadn’t belonged in the wrongly animated body. So how the hell had she gotten into someone else’s body? And why?
Chapter 2
“You’re saying the man was dead before he ran into the security system?” The cop interviewing me looked up from his notepad, one skeptical eyebrow raised. “And what makes you think that?”
“I’m a grave witch. I sensed him when he walked by on the street,” I said, not paying as much attention to the questions as I probably should have been. Most of my attention was focused on the body that someone had draped a black tablecloth over just a few yards away, still where it had collapsed near the door. When I’d first sensed the body—when it was still up and walking around—it had felt like the very recently dead. Now my magic told me it was older, days, maybe even a week, deceased.
I squinted, as if the action could reveal more about the body. It didn’t, of course. I could have reached out with my ability to sense the dead, thinned my shields so I gazed across the planes and spanned the chasm between the living and dead, but there was a lot of magic—both latent and active—in the museum, and my shields were already rather worse for the wear after getting caught in the antitheft spell with the corpse.
The cop’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re saying you noticed the deceased before he entered, and you followed him in?”
“I, uh . . .” Crap. Yeah, I definitely should have been paying more attention to the questions at hand. One look at the cop’s expression told me that I’d just gone from “unlucky witness” to “potential suspect.”
The door to the museum swung open and my gaze flicked over the cop’s head. Tamara stepped inside. She held out her laminated medical examiner ID as she assessed the scene, clearly trying to identify who was in charge.
“That was fast,” the other officer—the one interviewing the museum curator—said with a look of relief on his face. He wasn’t a homicide detective and he’d responded to a robbery call only to discover a dead body. He likely wanted to hand over his notes and be done with this mess.
Tamara shook her head. “I was across the street. At lunch.” The last words held the barest edge, no doubt aimed at me. “I let my office know I was at the scene. The rest of my team should be here soon.” She made her way toward the prone figure. Her baby bump was just barely showing, but her gait had changed slightly. Nothing major, but I’d known her long enough to notice. “Did anyone try to resuscitate the victim?”
The cop who’d been questioning me held up one hand, two fingers raised, clearly indicating I shouldn’t go anywhere. He half turned toward Tamara, never letting me out of his sight. Yup, I was officially in his suspect category, and I hadn’t even told him I’d been responsible for driving out the soul who’d hitched a ride in the man’s body.