Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4)(30)
“So?”
“I can’t raise her shade unless I eject her soul and force her to become a ghost.”
Ryese scoffed under his breath. “See. I told you this would be more trouble than it’s worth.”
Lyell nodded in agreement, but the queen ignored both men. She looked more harassed than concerned. “Ghost. Shade. I don’t care what you have to raise as long as I get my answers.”
Right. I wasn’t actually suggesting questioning the ghost. “Ghosts aren’t reliable witnesses. Unlike a shade, they have an ego, their own motivations, and they can—” I cut off because I’d been about to say a ghost could lie, but fae couldn’t lie during life so it was unlikely being dead would change that fact. Besides, while a shade might be an ideal witness, a ghost was basically a person minus the fleshy bits, and most eyewitness accounts came from the living. I might value the blunt honesty of a shade, but most people were accustomed to dealing with the living, and aside from the obvious corporeal limitations, ghosts weren’t all that different personality-wise from a live witness.
So maybe questioning the ghost wouldn’t be the worst thing, if she cooperated. The problem was, I had no idea what kind of ghost would emerge from that bag. How long had she been dead? Nothing decayed in Faerie, so she might have been a savaged skeleton for centuries—and aware of it the entire time. She clearly hadn’t died of natural causes. What tortures might have been inflicted on her premortem? And speaking of torture, Falin had disassembled her skeleton and shoved her in a bag. This ghost might emerge insane.
And I’d be trapped in a circle with her.
I eyed the bag with the glowing soul trapped inside. Whether the ghost could be questioned or if I’d eject her from the body and then have to try to get her out of my circle quickly so she could wander until a collector found her, was uncertain, but I had to get the answers for the queen if I was going to get my independent status. I palmed my dagger again. If the ghost emerged enraged, the dagger was not the best of weapons, but it was better than nothing.
Taking a deep breath, I reached with my magic. I didn’t usually use magic to manipulate souls, but honestly, I was surprised it hadn’t self-ejected yet. A soul clinging to a fairly well-preserved corpse was one thing, but this one was barely a body anymore. I lifted my empty hand, and gave a small shove with my magic.
The soul moved under my magic’s touch, and it felt kind of like tugging saltwater taffy apart, as though the soul clutched to the bones with every bit of strength it had left, unwilling to give up the body that had sustained it. But it did move. I drew on more magic, and shoved harder. A shimmering shape sprang out of the bag, the glow fading as it transitioned to the land of the dead, until a pale figure stood in the grass before me.
The fae woman was shorter than I expected, at least a foot and a half smaller than me, and her frame was thin, delicate. I hadn’t noticed those details when she’d been just a skeleton sitting on the throne, but then I hadn’t been looking too hard. Her eyes were dark, with no distinction between pupil and iris, and no white areas. They were her largest feature, dominating her face and overshadowing a very small pointed nose and a thin slit of a mouth. Her hair, if you wanted to call it that, swept back from her head in long crystalline projections, like icicles exploding from her scalp. From my angle, I could just barely catch sight of wings growing from her back, but I had no idea if they’d actually carried her in life because what I could see of them had dozens of holes in the gauzy flesh, like lace. Or a snowflake.
Now that the body was empty, the grave tugged on me hard, trying to draw my magic and heat to it. I closed my shields, blocking it out as best I could. I didn’t need the distraction right now.
The fae ghost hadn’t moved, and she looked more shocked than anything I’d categorize as angry or enraged, so I took a chance. “Hi, I’m Alex. What’s your name?”
Her enormous, dark eyes moved to me, rounding out as she studied me. I kept the dagger pressed by my side, hidden in the folds of the gown where I hoped she didn’t notice. I didn’t know if it was her small stature or huge eyes, but she looked very childlike and more than a little scared. I didn’t want to come off as threatening. But I wasn’t going to put the dagger away. Looks could be deceiving.
She wrapped her twig-thin arms around her chest like she was hugging herself, and her bottom eyelids quivered. I thought for a moment she might start crying.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice high-pitched and clear as a bell. She looked down, where the knapsack slumped by her ankles. She didn’t have eyebrows, but her forehead creased, and now I was sure she’d start crying any second. “What is that?”
“Give me your hand,” I said, holding mine toward her.
She didn’t. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was staring at the bag. I didn’t know exactly what she was seeing—it really depended on how close to the chasm between the land of the dead and the living she was, but I guessed she could see her bones through the bag. That couldn’t be good. I was pretty sure if I were in her shoes, the last thing I’d want to focus on would be my own desecrated body. I had to get her attention.
Besides, she seemed rational so it was quite possible she could answer the queen’s questions. Making the ghost manifest in reality would be a whole lot simpler than raising a shade from mere bones—and take a lot less energy. As exhausted as I already was, expending less magic definitely sounded like a plus. I wasn’t sure if questioning her would be kinder or crueler than questioning her shade, but the horrified way she stared at her own bones made me think seeing her shade would not be good for her mental health—not that I thought it would be for anyone. I took a step toward her, my hand still extended, and she pushed off the ground, her snowflake wings fluttering into motion behind her as she lifted three feet in the air.