Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson #13)(66)

Probably, as Larry the goblin king had not-so-usefully warned me after the fact, it really hadn’t been a good idea to use my body to break the spider-fae’s web. Something about that surge of aimless magic had made me vulnerable enough for the abyss or whatever it was to connect with me.

I heard Adam open the office door and lock it behind him. That was smart; no need for a customer to come in and overhear us talking about a serial killer.

Adam walked in and I immediately felt better. His air of competence and confidence was contagious. It worked on the pack and it worked on me. With Adam in the room, I knew he would find a path forward that was, at the very least, less stupid than all the other paths forward—no matter how bad the situation was.

Adam glanced at Zee, who might have looked a little ridiculous squatting on the short stool if he hadn’t felt so dangerous. That Adam took note of Zee first told me that he considered Zee a threat. My mate is not stupid.

Adam looked at me—and I caught the moment he saw I was still wearing his coat, indoors where the temperature was fine for shirtsleeves. He met my eyes and smiled. It wasn’t amused, that smile. He liked it when I wore his clothes. I went from feeling ridiculous to feeling sexy in one smile.

“Let me start,” Adam said, holding up a finger. “Mercy’s been tied to some kind of intelligence since she broke the spell web at Stefan’s, and it is getting stronger.”

“This is true?” Zee turned to me.

I shrugged, glad of the warmth of Adam’s coat. “Yes.”

“That is not good.”

“Agreed,” Adam said with a growl. He held up a second finger and said, “At the grocery store, Mercy could tell that that intelligence was tied to the killing of the young man—which means presumably also the witch earlier this week. She thinks this intelligence is feeding off the deaths—and using them.”

Zee nodded.

Adam held up a third finger. “The ghost of the boy from last night is following Mercy around, unable to move on because he is being held by that intelligence. I think from your reactions to the bodies in the morgue and because we visited the cemetery afterward that the magic the intelligence is working is also tied to the bodies of its victims.”

He held up another finger without waiting for a reaction from either Zee or me. “Fourth.” Adam stopped speaking and shook his head. “You have no idea how much this disturbs me. And if I weren’t living with Mercy’s walking stick, I wouldn’t be able to conceive it was possible. Fourth, the intelligence Mercy found is the artifact that you, Zee, told us about, the one that killed people forty years ago. The cemetery we stopped at dates back to well before the time when those people were killed. I presume that some of the victims were buried there and you both were checking out their graves. I’d guess you found that those bodies were still bound to souls that should have gone on decades ago. Prisoners, in fact.”

He tilted his head and examined Zee’s face. “Some damned thing controls people, picks out victims, works magic to bind them, and defends that binding. And now it’s attached itself to Mercy.” Adam’s voice roughened with anger on the last bit, but his focus stayed on Zee.

“Ja,” said Zee. “To be fair, it is a very old thing.” He shrugged, the motion making his stool squeak. “And magic applied over time is a strange and powerful force.”

“Finally,” Adam said, “you’re mad as a wet hen because someone pulled the wool over your eyes all those decades ago by slipping you a sloppy ringer when you were hunting a powerful artifact.”

“Perceptive for someone who has no feel for magic,” said Zee sourly. He considered Adam a moment, then said, “I believe that the intelligence that Mercy is sensing is an artifact known as the Seelennehmer.”

“The Soul Taker?” I asked, dusting off my rusty German. “Like in the children’s prayer?”

Zee looked blank, so Adam recited it for him. I joined him on the last line, remembering that Stefan had quoted that, too. “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

Zee stared at us. “And that is a prayer for children to recite?”

I nodded.

He grimaced. “Charming. Yes. The Soul Taker. Or possibly the Soul Stealer. Ja. I have been hunting this artifact for a long time. Four decades ago I was told that it might be here, and that possibility was the reason I came.” He gave Adam a savage smile. “That I followed orders.”

“I get you,” Adam said.

Zee nodded. “When I came to look, the killer was found dead and I was given a weapon that could have been the murder weapon. It is my shame that I did not look beyond my disappointment.” He frowned, and for a moment the whole garage smelled of his rage before he quenched it into something colder. “Someone played a game with me.”

“They had a second sickle that could have killed people the way Aubrey was killed?” I asked, because that part of the story didn’t make sense. “Something just sitting around for them to use when you appeared on the scene?”

“That is why I did not look further,” Zee said in an aggrieved tone. “Who would have such a thing? It was inferior to the Soul Taker, but still an artifact that had taken a great deal of time and effort to craft, for all that it was mortal made. A few centuries old, it was valuable in its own way. And, too, a sickle is not a usual weapon to be so crafted. It is far more useful as a farming implement.”