Grave Visions (Alex Craft #4)(40)

“What can do that?” John asked, stepping to the very edge of my circle. I tensed—John was a null with absolutely no magical sensitivity. He had a bad habit of walking through my circles.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Some sort of massive energy drain before death?” I’d read a study once that explained how a death due to magical depletion damaged a body down to its DNA. Maybe it could damage the shade as well. It was so rare, I doubted it had ever been studied. “Do we know if either of these victims was a witch?”

John pressed his lips together and then shrugged. “They attended public high school, but that’s not always a good indicator. As high school students, of course, neither had achieved any OMIH certifications, so they aren’t card carriers. Without questioning them or their friends and family, or running a Relative Magic Compatibility test, it’s hard to say. What are you thinking?”

What was I thinking? Magic couldn’t cause knife wounds. Sure, there were offensive spells that could rend flesh, but I doubted that was what we were dealing with in this situation. For one thing, that would still require an outside caster to have delivered fatal blows to both kids, which meant they hadn’t been the ones performing a ritual that had gone out of control and drained their life essence. And if the wounds were magical backlash, they should have been inflicted from the inside out, and while I was no medical examiner, even I could tell the wounds started at the flesh and not vice versa.

I turned back toward the bodies. “I’m going to raise the boy now.”

No one said anything as I pushed my magic into the boy’s body again. It took a lot of magic, and I felt the strain before my heat even rushed out of me, but the shade sat up, solidifying. While the corpse was a mess of lacerations, the killing blow must have come pretty quickly because the shade looked fairly normal, at least from the front. I could have walked around and seen how much damage he’d taken premortem, but I wasn’t that curious.

“What is your name?”

The shade turned his head toward me, his eyes dull, unfocused. Not surprising. “Bruce Martain.”

I nodded in acknowledgment—not that the shade noticed, but even if they weren’t sentient, they looked like people and I tried to be polite. Then I turned toward John. I could have questioned Bruce without guidance—I’d done this dance before—but he’d hired me, so I’d take his lead. Besides, he was recording this. It was better if the cop directed the questions.

“How did you die?” John asked, and I repeated the question for the shade.

“The clown crawled out of the TV. It had a knife.”

The room went utterly silent, as if everyone present had drawn in a breath and then held it. Even Roy’s constant whispered prattling paused. All eyes stared at the placid shade.

If I’d been asked to make a list of the top one hundred possible explanations for what happened to these kids, going from most to least likely scenarios, “a clown crawled out of the TV” wouldn’t have made said list. I blinked at the shade. It couldn’t lie. I knew that. It could only repeat what he had seen or thought while alive.

“A clown?” I asked, hearing the uncertainty in my own voice. “Bruce, did you take any drugs recently?”

Okay, I should have waited for John to ask that, but it was too obvious a question to not follow up “a clown crawled out of the TV” with drugs.

“Yes, and not a clown. The clown,” Bruce clarified, as if that actually helped. “We were watching a movie. I picked a scary one because when Shannon is scared she all but climbs in my lap, and I’d already talked her into her slip so she didn’t wrinkle her dress.” The shade said all this with no shame, and I groaned under my breath for all teenagers everywhere. “We’d just watched the scene where the killer dressed up as a clown at a frat party and started hunting down co-eds. Then he turned and called us out by name. He said he was coming after us next. And he did. He crawled right out of the TV. I thought it was the drugs taking effect at first, until Shannon started screaming and I realized she was seeing the same thing.”

“What drugs did you take?” I already had an idea. I wanted to be wrong but . . .

“A guy was giving out samples in the parking lot outside the dance. He said it was like a magical hit of ecstasy. Everything would feel more intense for a few hours, and he suggested it would really get Shannon in the mood. He called it Glitter.”

Shit. I turned to Jenson, my eyes wide. The detective looked away from me. Actually, from everyone. Had he told anyone about the shades I’d raised for him? I’d thought that was why the FIB was here now, but maybe not. Actually, by his response, I was sure not. Damn. That would make things more difficult.

John opened his little flip notebook, trying to write notes while simultaneously holding the camera steady on the shade. It wasn’t working out well for him, but with him distracted by the task, I couldn’t read from his expression if he was familiar with the drug or not. I looked at Falin.

“Have you heard of Glitter before? Did you guys find any drug paraphernalia?” I knew they hadn’t at Jeremy and Emma’s crime scene, but then, they hadn’t been looking. Whatever Glitter was, it didn’t pop on a drug screen. Not the normal ones the ME usually ran, at least.

Falin’s face gave away nothing. “Some personal items were bagged in the bathroom, but no syringes, pipes, or pills.”