Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(71)

The girl kept screaming, and I had no idea what her mind saw, but I felt the moment the glamour tried to wrap around me, to twist me into the nightmare she imagined. She’s the Glitter user. The glamour slid back off me, my own powers rejecting the version of reality her drug-addled mind had tried to cast me into. And her soul dimmed.

The Glitter was fueling the glamour with her life force, and she was running out.

“It’s time,” Death said, reaching for the girl.

I lunged forward. “No. Wait.”

It was already too late. Death’s hand was in her chest, his fingers grasping her soul. He gave me a small, sad frown, and said, “There was only one path for her after she took the drug.”

He lifted his arm, pulling her dwindling soul free. Her scream cut off, her body sagging. The boy in her arms shifted, but he didn’t move. He didn’t know she was gone. Not yet.

“At least let me question the ghost.” Because I could already feel the hollowness in her corpse—if I could raise a shade, it would be a mere echo, likely too faded to be of use. And we had to find who was distributing this drug. It needed to purged from the street. People couldn’t keep dying in these nightmares, or daymares, or whatever.

Death’s frown deepened. “She’s no restless spirit. She’s tired, ready to move on.” And to accent his point, he flicked his wrist, and Molly’s soul moved on to wherever souls went next.

Damn.

“What about . . . ?” My gaze moved to the boy.

“He’s safe,” Death said, and tension I hadn’t realized had sunk claws into my shoulders loosened. I nodded to acknowledge his words, and he glanced over my shoulder, toward the front of the house.

I finally registered that something about the house had changed with Molly’s death. I couldn’t tell, not directly, but the flames must have vanished as soon as her life force stopped feeding the glamour. Without the barricade of magical fire and creepy shadow monsters, the firemen were entering the house.

It was time to get Sam out, before his sister began to cool and he realized she wouldn’t respond. I stepped forward, approaching the tub. Death reached out, tracing the side of my face, but he didn’t say anything. Which was good. I was mad at him. It probably wasn’t a fair reaction—he was only doing his job. No, not job. He was fulfilling his function in the world. But I was mad, and a little hurt, unreasonable or not, and I didn’t want to talk to him in that moment. So, it was good that after that one, lingering caress, he vanished.

I knelt by the tub. “Hi, are you Sam?”

A tiny hand emerged from under the blanket, lifting it just enough that I could see two brown eyes peering out at me. After a moment, the boy nodded.

“Good to meet you, Sam. I’m Alex, and I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

The boy emerged a little farther from under the blanket. “This is Lancelot,” he said, revealing a teddy bear nearly half his size that he’d been clutching under the blanket. “He’s been protecting me from the bad stuff.”

I looked down at the bear. I expected it to rot away in my gravesight, but it didn’t. Oh, it looked a little haggard, with matted fur and a couple of bald spots, but it looked more well-loved than decayed. He had a small sword made out of tinfoil attached to his paw with an old hair grip, and more tinfoil cupped his head in what I guessed was a makeshift helmet. Curious, I let my ability to sense magic trace over the bear and then the rest of the room—the one and only room in the house to be spared. But there was no magic. No witch magic at least. Just the power of a child’s trust and belief.

I forced a smile. “Lancelot did a good job, baby. Now come on, let’s go.”

Reaching out, I lifted both boy and his brave little bear. Sam wrapped his free arm around my shoulders, but then twisted, looking back at the tub.

“What about, Mol-mol?” he asked, looking at his big sister. “She’s sleeping.”

I opened my mouth, closed it again. I dealt in a business abundant with grieving loved ones, but I wasn’t equipped to explain death to a three-year-old. Or maybe I just wasn’t brave enough to tell a child his sister was gone. Either way, as I carried him out of the room, I simply said, “The firemen will come for her.”

He nodded, accepting that solution. Then he leaned his small head on my shoulder and hugged his bear close.

Belief magic really was the damnedest thing. It could enact a glamour that killed, but it could also guard a small boy who believed in the protection of a teddy bear.





Chapter 22





“The ledger,” I said, bolting upright in my bed. Then a wave of dizziness slammed into me and I collapsed back into my pillows.

“What?” Falin asked as he twisted around to look at me from where he sat on my one barstool in front of his laptop. PC, who was curled up in Falin’s lap, lifted his head.

My dog was officially a traitor.

I groaned, closing my eyes against the bright sunlight streaming into the room. I felt hungover. Hell, I wished I was hungover instead of slowly fading from magical withdrawal or whatever. But, no, there had been no drinking last night. Just a lot of creatively evasive statements given to the cops and firemen on how I’d entered the house and why the fire had abruptly vanished. Then an awkward drive home, my blind and shivering stumble upstairs, and my absolute refusal to let Falin share the bed to provide me with body heat—we’d played that game before and it didn’t end well for my heartstrings. I had a vague memory of Death kissing my cheek sometime in the middle of the night, but that may have been a dream.