Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(5)

rather than let the mortals blunder around the scene?”

I bristled at the insult toward John and his team. I had a lot of friends in the Nekros City Police Department. Placing a hand on my hip, I lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “They hired me.”

“Yes, wel , I’m sure they appreciate your help, Miss Craft.

Your services wil no longer be needed.” She turned, gravel crunching under her pumps as she walked away. A few feet past the car, she glanced back over her shoulder. “You realize, of course, that this means we’l have to look into the independent fae in the area.” The smile that spread across her face made her bril iantly red lips stretch to flash a lot of white teeth, but it wasn’t a happy smile.

I didn’t balk. I’d recently learned I was feykin, but she couldn’t know that. Could she? Plastering on my own smile, I said, “I guess so.”

She left the smal gravel parking lot, no doubt headed back to the place where I’d found the pyramid of feet. As I turned to slide into the car again, movement at the tree line caught my eye. While my eyesight had recovered significantly, I’d been in touch with the land of the dead and the grave quite a bit, so at first al I could see was a moving man-shaped mesh of colors. But as the figure drew closer, I quickly realized that while male was the right gender, he wasn’t hu man, but fae.

He hunched, his stringy legs never ful y straightening as he slunk closer. Even bent, he stood a head tal er than me

—and I’m not short. He had the same features as a human, but they were al slightly off. His wide eyes were dark, and overly recessed in his skul , but not from il ness. His pale overly recessed in his skul , but not from il ness. His pale skin was the color of a worm’s bel y, as if he had never been exposed to daylight, and his hawkish nose extended nearly a hand’s width from his face, almost hiding the thin lips and pointed chin.

Even now, seventy years after the Magical Awakening, it was rare to see an unglamoured fae. The fae had come out of the mushroom ring, as some put it, because they were fading from memory and thus the world. They needed human belief to anchor them to reality, but aside from the fae celebrities and politicians, a human was likely to see an unglamoured fae only in a venue that profited from showcasing the fae’s differences. Most of those places were little better than tourist traps.

I glanced behind me. Across the parking pit, two officers huddled around the van that had been established as a temporary headquarters for the investigation. Well, at least I ’m not completely alone. Of course, just because the strange fae looked creepy and was near the place where we’d found feet masked in glamour, that didn’t make him guilty. It did make him a suspect, though. Or possibly a witness.

“Can I help you?” I yel ed the question louder than needed, but I wanted to ensure that the officers also heard me. They would want to question the fae.

He paused, then hurried forward in a blur of movement.

He crossed from the far edge of the parking lot to the front of John’s car before my heart had time to crash in a loud, panicked beat. The cops yel ed something I didn’t catch above the blood rushing in my ears.

“Can I help you?” I asked again, not daring to look away from someone who could move as fast as this fae. I slid back a step, and then another, the movement far too slow.

“Are you daft?” he asked, his thin lips splitting with the words to reveal pointed teeth.

I blinked at him, startled, but not because of the implied insult in his words, or because of the threat in his insult in his words, or because of the threat in his expression. No, my shock came at the sound of his voice.

The voice that emerged from that thin, awkwardly threatening body was a rich, deep baritone that made even such an angry question sound musical. He had the kind of voice that, in the old folktales, would have drawn children and young women from their beds. Unfortunately, most of those stories didn’t end wel .

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, taking another step back. Across the parking pit, gravel crunched under the cops’ running steps. Close. Maybe not close enough.

“Those feet were hidden for a reason.” The fae’s gaze moved over my head, and his eyes narrowed. “This is your fault, and you wil regret your actions,” he said. Then, as the cops neared us, he turned, dashed back to the tree line, and disappeared.





Chapter 2


“So, the cops couldn’t find him?” Hol y, my housemate and best friend, asked as her fork slid smoothly through the slice of triple-chocolate cheesecake sitting in the center of the table.

I nodded. “He issued his threat that I would regret leading the police to the feet, and then he ran. Once he reached the tree line, he might as wel have been gone.” I’d been jumpy for hours after leaving the floodplain, but today, in the afternoon sun, my tension seemed foolish. “The only thing I regret at the moment is that the FIB took over the case.”

Hol y shot a conspiratorial glance at the third person at the table, my other best friend, Tamara, and then leaned forward. “Did you-know-who show?”

I frowned at my fork. “You-know-who” would be Falin, the only FIB agent the three of us knew on a first-name basis.

Wel , actual y, I knew him a lot better than just that. Even so, two days after we’d closed the Coleman case, he’d taken off without so much as a good-bye.