Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
“Defenses up?”
Kierse nodded, reinforcing her mind. But then she blinked at the door again. She was getting good at shuffling her magical intuition out of the foreground. She still usually saw the light of magic around reinforced doors. Only this time, there was no magic, no light.
Graves set his hand to the single ward next to the lock. He furrowed his brow.
“It’s down,” she said before he could tell her.
“The wards are dead.”
“There are no wards,” she told him.
His hand thumbed over something etched into the metal frame. “There are here.”
Kierse came over and saw an etched flower into the metal. A lily? A daffodil? She pursed her lips. “Let’s find out why it’s down.”
She picked the lock with a simple click and pushed the door open, holding the gun out before her. She coughed, gagged, and nearly threw up at the smell.
“Holy shit,” she gasped.
Graves covered his nose and mouth with a gloved hand as he pushed forward into the room. They both saw the body lying prone on the floor.
Dallas was dead.
Chapter Eighteen
Dallas Llewellyn had been dead a while. At least a couple days, if not longer. The whole room smelled like decomposing flesh. It was honestly more surprising that they hadn’t smelled it past the room. Or that no one else did. The only thing masking it was the assortment of burned incense, sage, crystals, and herbs scattered all over the room, making the whole thing more cloying than helpful.
“Graves,” Kierse muttered.
“I know,” he said softly.
“A second dead warlock,” she said, her eyes catching his. “If we’re not careful, it’s going to start to look like a pattern.”
He passed her a set of gloves. “Then be careful.”
She nodded and put them on as she stepped around the room. “I can’t believe no one else has come in here.”
Graves kicked over a pile of empty pizza boxes next to a cot. “Looks like she’s been living in her office.”
“Which explains why we couldn’t find a permanent address.”
He nodded. “Let’s look around. See if there’s anything else we can find.”
Graves filled the group in on what they were seeing. “Dallas is dead. We’re casing her office. Get everything you can from security and video footage and get out of there. We’re going to do the same. Meet back in the suite after.”
“What do you mean dead?” Laz asked.
“Dead?” Gen’s voice came through the line.
On and on and on. So many voices at once that it was giving Kierse a headache. There was too much to do and too little time.
“Enough,” Graves snapped. He ripped his earpiece out of his ear. “This is why I work alone.”
She managed a chuckle. “Curmudgeon.”
He shrugged as he dug through Dallas’s personal belongings. “Yeah, well, at least I can hear myself think.”
“You can hear other people think, too,” Kierse said as she rummaged through the paperwork on the desk.
“Not the dead,” he grumbled.
“I guess we’d need a necromancer for that.” She pulled out a notebook full of random numbers and letters, then glanced up at Graves. “Wait…are there necromancers?”
“Yes,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to meet one, though.”
“Are there people who want to meet necromancers?”
“I tracked a few down for a couple hundred years,” he said, going to the body and checking her pockets.
“You tracked down necromancers?”
“That’s what you do when you bring someone back to life.”
“That’s…” Kierse shook her head. “Who were you trying to bring back to life?”
Graves was silent a moment. “Emilie.”
“Oh,” she said. Of course, that made sense. Graves’s first love. Lorcan’s sister. The source of their displeasure. “And did you find anyone who would do it?”
“She’d still be dead, just reanimated,” he said, all nonchalant, as if it didn’t matter.
“Did you try other methods?”
“Sure,” he said. “A few hundred. Most require the body, which is buried in Ireland, or gives a twenty-four-hour timeline, which doesn’t work because of the intervening centuries.” He picked at Dallas’s clothing. “Wouldn’t work for Dallas, either, I’m afraid.”
“Did Lorcan know you were doing this?”
Graves glanced up at the name. His eyes searched hers, a knowing look into his storm-cloud-gray irises. “I didn’t tell him.”
“Why not?”
“His hatred is justified.” He returned to frisking the body. “As is mine.”
Kierse swallowed hard at those words. She’d heard them from Graves before, but it was different knowing he had spent several centuries trying to make amends for what he had done.
“There’s no cell phone,” Graves spat. “Anything up there?”
Kierse went back to digging. “It looks like there should have been a calendar. There’s a dust line where it sat undisturbed, but it’s missing now. Do you know how she was killed?”
“A warlock?” He shook his head. “There aren’t many options. Wisps, of course. Other warlocks can drain magic if they’re significantly more powerful. Most of the other ways don’t look plausible. She’s completely intact.”
“There’s this note to meet Rosetta Davis once a week for healing.” Kierse passed it to Graves. “I’d guess that has something to do with all the witchy, new-age stuff.”