Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(69)

Taking an overheated gulp of air, I braced myself for lowering my shields in a location with a possibility of fresh corpses nearby. Releasing the breath, I pried apart the vines enclosing my psyche.

As if the wind blowing across from the land of the dead had snuffed it out, the fire vanished, the heat disappearing between one heartbeat and the next, and, in my eyesight at least, the street turned significantly darker. The sweat forming on my skin chilled, and I shivered.

“Glamour. It’s all glamour.”

I let my senses stretch. The fire chief had indicated that the two children were still inside, but no grave essence clawed at me. If they were in there, they were alive. Thank goodness. But how much longer could they last in that inferno?

I searched the house with both my senses and my sight that currently reached across planes and pierced glamour. Unless a fae had, for unknown reasons, decided to summon a glamoured fire on this family, this had to be the result of a Glitter user’s fears. I’d seen one other Glitter crime scene, and I’d heard accounts of two Glitter-glamour attacks, but I would never have guessed glamour could do so much damage. In my gravesight, the houses on either side of the Wilson residence were dilapidated, decayed, but the Wilson house was devastated. The glamoured fire appeared to have reduced the house to little more than rubble and ash. A few walls still stood, but most had crumbled. It was worse, I knew, seeing it across the planes, but still, the damage was beyond repair.

I shook my head, and my eyes skittered over a soft yellow glow emanating from somewhere in the center of the ruins, behind a wall that looked far more solid than the ones around it. I stopped, trying to focus on the glow. I could catch only small glimpses, but it looked like a . . .

“Soul. Falin, someone is still alive in there.” I squinted. “Maybe two someones. The kids.” I stepped toward the house.

Falin caught my arm, stopping me.

“What are you doing? They’re still alive in there, but who knows for how much longer.” I tried to jerk my arm away, but he held on tight.

He pulled me closer to him and dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. “You can’t just walk into a burning building.”

“But it isn’t burning. The fire is glamour.” And I couldn’t see it anymore. Couldn’t feel the heat or smell the smoke. It no longer existed for me, or at least, it didn’t as long as I gazed across planes.

“Okay, so you can break the glamour, but did it do real damage to the building?” He pointed to the crumbling rubble pile that had once been a house. “What if the ceiling collapses on you?”

I hadn’t considered that.

I stopped trying to jerk my arm away and turned back to try to study the glints of soul light. How much longer could the kids survive in there? How had they survived this long? I had to find out what was happening.

I let more of my psyche cross over to the land of the dead. Cold wind whipped around me, tousling my hair and ripping at my clothes. Now that I wasn’t struggling, Falin dropped my arm and stepped back, flexing his hand as if I’d burned him. As open as my psyche was, it was more likely I’d chilled him.

“Roy,” I said, not caring if my voice carried to those watching. Then I waited.

Roy had once told me that normally I looked much like any other living mortal to ghosts, until I straddled the chasm between the living and the dead. Then I lit up like a beacon. I only hoped he was paying attention.

I’d almost given up on him responding when I saw a pale shadow begin to materialize beside me. I’d never been straddling the chasm when a ghost appeared before—usually they either suddenly appeared or they walked into the area where I was. I knew there were multiple layers to the land of the dead. On one notable, and nearly deadly, occasion, I’d traveled down to the place where the living world was nothing but gray ash. But usually my psyche only brushed the uppermost layer where the living world was reflected as a slightly decaying version of mortal reality. Now I saw Roy push up from the deeper layers, becoming more solid and real as he emerged. Icelynne followed close behind.

“Heya, Al. What’s happen—?” He cut off abruptly as he caught sight of the scene around me.

I wasn’t sure if he could see the fire or not, but as it didn’t exist in the land of the dead, I knew it couldn’t hurt him. I pointed toward the house. “There are two kids in there. Can you go check on their condition, and as you go, see if you can find the safest route I could travel?”

Roy glanced from me to the house, and then shrugged. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, and then trudged toward the rubble.

Falin grunted behind me, and I turned to find him giving me a dubious look. “Did you just send your ghost to check the integrity of the structure?”

“Maybe.” I knew Falin couldn’t see Roy—I hadn’t expended the energy to manifest him—but he knew about the ghost. And it seemed like a good idea to me. If I couldn’t enter the house, why not send someone who couldn’t be hurt by the house falling down on him to check on the kids?

“How can someone who can walk through walls tell if the house is safe?” Falin asked, and I sighed.

“Ghosts don’t actually walk through solid objects. They just look like they do. In reality, if they pass through what we see as a closed door or wall on our plane of existence, that object doesn’t exist on their plane,” I said, turning back to the house. Then I frowned as Roy sprinted across the yard toward me. “That was fast.” Which was either good news, or very, very bad news.