Grave Visions (Alex Craft, #4)(83)

Rawhead’s bloody grin grew.

On the other side of my circle, Falin, the queen, and her council were yelling. What, I didn’t have time to listen to now, but at least no one was trying to break down my barrier anymore.

Rawhead lunged, but this time I managed to duck to the side. He slammed into the edge of my circle, and it shuddered, the barrier sparking. I yelped as the backlash tore through me. If the circle took another hit like that, the ghost would win this fight without even having to catch me because I’d be unconscious. I had to turn the tables.

Ghosts were just will and energy.

There had been nothing I could do about the fact that Tommy Rawhead had been a nasty bogeyman in life, or that he blamed me, at least in part, for his death. But energy? Yeah, that I could affect.

Lifting my uninjured arm, I reached for Rawhead with my ability to touch the dead. But this time, instead of pushing magic at him, I pulled.

Energy leapt from Rawhead to me.

Most of the magics associated with the grave were cold, but ghosts weren’t actually of the land of the dead. They were souls trapped in the land of the dead when they left their body without transitioning to wherever collectors sent them.

So as the energy slipped under my skin, it was the warm life energy of a soul that I absorbed, not the chill of the grave. I had drawn energy from souls twice before. The first time from Coleman, who’d used so much dark magic his soul was stained black with it, and the second from a creature native to the land of the dead. Both of their essences had been tainted and sludgelike. Rawhead, as reprehensible as he’d been in life, hadn’t actually damaged his soul. I drew on his energy and it rushed into me, warm and sweet as a spring breeze. It felt good. Which was so wrong.

But I didn’t dare stop as he reared back to charge again. He rushed toward me, and I pulled with all my might, drinking down the pure energy. Rawhead faded with each running step he took, his form becoming hazy, less solid. He crashed into me, but it was too late.

He dissolved, like morning dew in the sun. Then I was alone in my circle.

I collapsed to my knees, panting, but honestly, aside from the pain burning along my gnawed-upon arm, I felt better than I had in days. A fact that made me queasy.

I hugged my injured arm to my chest and pushed off the ground. Only then did I look around and take stock of what was happening beyond my circle. The queen was right on the edge of the barrier, Falin physically restraining her from slamming her fists into the circle. It said something about her mental state that she didn’t command him to release her. Maeve had backed away from both queen and circle. Lyell had a small scythelike weapon in his hands, but his arms were lowered as his gaze swept around my circle, searching for an enemy he hadn’t been able to see.

“What have you done, planeweaver?” the queen asked, struggling in Falin’s arms. “What injury have you inflicted on yourself? Are you attempting to skirt finding the answers I demand? Are you part of this conspiracy against me?”

I looked into her fevered gaze and felt hate, cold and pure, for this queen who regarded the value of others’ lives on a sliding scale of what she could gain from them. And yet, I also felt the smallest amount of pity for her. Something was wrong with her. I wasn’t sure if she’d snapped under the stress of her position or if something more malicious was at play, but this hateful queen was out of her mind.

“Rawhead’s ghost was present. It is gone now.” The words came out flat, with no inflection. “I’m ready to raise the shade,” I said, and then turned my back on her. I had a job to do and I didn’t want to look at the woman who’d ordered the execution of the body in front of me, and so, indirectly forced me to cannibalize a soul.

Or maybe I just wanted to stop thinking because it had been so easy to do this time. And it felt good. Which scared me. After all, even if it was in self-defense, how many souls could I consume without destroying my own?





Chapter 27





With Rawhead’s ghost gone, progressing with the ritual was little more than a familiar exercise. After the last several rituals with shades so depleted that I’d had to pour far too much energy into them to raise a mere shadow of my typical shades, the ease of which Rawhead’s shade rose from his body was a relief.

I glanced at the shade I’d raised and grimaced. Well, maybe relief was the wrong word. Falin had covered the body before I’d drawn my circle, and the ghost had more or less resembled Rawhead in life, but the shade resembled him in death, complete with neck ending in a bloody stump and his severed head in his lap. I looked away.

“What is your name?” I asked the shade.

“We know that already,” the queen all but spat from outside my circle.

I shot a frown over my shoulder at her, but she was correct. We knew that information, but I always started my interviews with the question. It was a habit.

Physics—or maybe biology—would insist that a head separated from its body couldn’t speak, but Rawhead was dead, a projection of memories, and the magic didn’t really care in what condition that projection appeared. So, the shade’s response of his name was clear and strong.

Behind me, the queen muttered something about moving on and asking the alchemist’s name, but I hesitated before asking my next question. I needed the alchemist’s identity, without a doubt, but in the queen’s frantic state, she’d likely demand an immediate end to my ritual as soon as we had a name. I didn’t want to be called to any more scenes with glamoured fires or homicidal clowns, so I needed a little more information about Glitter before I lost access to Rawhead’s shade.