Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(69)

“I left the upper left-hand corner unconnected.”

“Perfect.” She folded the page in half. “Can I keep this?”

I nodded. I could always draw another copy. “You were going to tel me how you found the tear.”

“Yeah.” She tucked away the page of runes. “Fol ow me,”

she said, and careful y picked her footing as she and her designer shoes led me closer to the bridge.

We slid around the support pil ar that the fence butted up against, and then Lusa ducked under the bridge, her ankles wobbling as stones skipped down the steep incline.

Somewhere in the shadows under the bridge the river rushed by with an endless murmur. She grabbed one of the diagonal support beams to steady herself and then pointed beyond the beam.

“What do you see?”

I squinted, searching for what she was pointing at, but al I saw was inky darkness. “Nothing. Grave-sight has burned out my night vision.”

“Oh. I’d heard wyrd witches had trouble with their abilities burning out their senses, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. Wel , what you aren’t seeing is a tent city established by the homeless. I was looking into possible victims for the Sionan floodplain foot murders. That many people couldn’t have gone missing without anyone noticing, but there hasn’t been an abnormal rise in missing-persons reports. It didn’t add up.”

I nodded. I knew al this from what John had told me. She smiled and ran a hand through her brown hair, brushing it smiled and ran a hand through her brown hair, brushing it back from her face. “I went looking for people who wouldn’t be missed, and one of my searches turned up the fact that a homeless man who spent the night in jail for public intoxication seven days ago found al of his buddies missing when he was released the next morning. He reported it to the cops, but transient people disappear a lot.

No one looked into it. “

No one but a reporter on the trail of a story.

“When I interviewed Eddie, the homeless man, he swore everyone had to be dead. That they couldn’t have just relocated because they’d left everything behind: clothes, shoes, possessions—when you don’t have anything you can’t afford to abandon anything. I came out here to fol ow up. Stumbling over the tear was a very happy accident, though if you quote me on that I’l deny saying it.”

As she spoke, a car drove across the bridge and I jumped as a nearly deafening roar rumbled under the structure. The sound echoed against the supports, the bank, the columns, the water, and back again, like rol ing thunder.

Thunder.

Thundering.

My head snapped up. From underneath a bridge, a bridge didn’t look like a structure that joined two landmasses. It looked like a portal that the river passed through. A gate. The kelpie’s “thundering gate” wasn’t a gate at al . It was a bridge.

Maybe this bridge, if Lusa is onto anything with her missinghomeless angle.

I cracked my shields, slightly, ever so slightly, so just bits of my psyche crossed the planes of reality. The chil of the grave, of the dead, hung in the air, the grave essence reaching for me. Grave essence that emanated from something very close. And fresh.

I opened my shields a little wider. The shadows in my vision rol ed back to reveal the skeletal carcass of the vision rol ed back to reveal the skeletal carcass of the rusted and col apsed Lenore Street Bridge. Beyond the bent and sagging support beams—which I was careful not to touch, as I did not want to be responsible for a bridge col apse—I could see the remains of dilapidated lean-tos and weathered tents huddled on the bank. Grave essence leaked from amid the abandoned tents. Not a lot, just the smal est string that whispered across my skin like a northern wind. But essence meant a body—or at least part of one. And this one was human.

“Your eyes are doing that creepy glowing thing,” Lusa said, staring.

I slammed my shields shut. “Lusa, I suggest you find your cameraman. This place is about to be deemed a crime scene.”





Chapter 19


I hung back at the edge of the crowd as I waited for the site to be declared a crime scene. I’d told Tamara what I found before I cal ed John. The revelation that there was a body—or real y, part of one—on the scene garnered a low groan from her, but she rol ed her shoulders back and went to talk to the officer in charge.

John had been at home when I cal ed him, but by the time I finished tel ing him where I was, what I’d sensed, and what Lusa had uncovered, he’d already been on a second line, waking up a judge for his warrant. He, the warrant, and cadaver dogs were on their way. Now al that was left was to wait.

A scream rang through the darkness and the crowd around me went silent as dozens of heads turned toward the sound. I couldn’t see the screamer, but the voice was masculine, though pained, and distant. One of the skimmers? I squinted even though I knew I had no chance of spotting him—after my brush with the land of the dead under the bridge, the shadows were even darker.

“What happened?” someone beside me asked.

“Not sure,” another said.

“Can we get closer?” asked a third.

That question seemed to reflect the sentiment of the entire crowd. Shoulders brushed against mine and a hot hand pressed into my back as people shoved forward. The crowd surged toward the fence, carrying me along with it as everyone jockeyed for a better view.