Chapter 33
The frantic, devouring energy that had pulsed from the place just an hour before was utterly gone. Not faded, not dissipated—gone, as if it had never existed. The only scents left were the sterile tang of ozone and the coppery, cloying smell of old blood.
Bowman’s body, which had been oddly propped up against the wall before as if it were some morbid Halloween decoration, lay on a gurney, a sheet over it to mask the horror of his expression. But if there was any remaining presence of his spirit, I couldn’t see it.
Remi crouched in the center of the living room, his fingers hovering inches above the charred sigils on the floor. His usual playful energy was absent, replaced by a sharp, academic focus. As we entered, his head snapped up, his fae-bright eyes narrowing on me.
I wondered how much he could see. The ritual, sure, but could he tell that a Reaper had taken the souls of the wife and daughter elsewhere?
Could he see the way the Veil had been stitched back together by my mediocre magical weaving skills?
He might be a teammate now, but I wasn’t certain I could trust him not to throw me to the virtual wolves of the military brass, who would salivate at the idea of someone who could close Veil tears.
“This is like the ritual we found across the Veil,” Remi said as his gaze landed on us. “But without the clean sweep that decimated the corpses. You broke the barrier?”
“The Veil tear closed, and with it the spell snapped,” Angel offered, mostly the truth. He didn’t say how the tear closed, only that it had.
Sergeant Hanna lingered in the doorway, as did Hardy, like they all expected me to perform tricks or something.
“Anything?” Angel asked, gaze on me.
I shook my head, a fresh wave of unease washing over me.
“Nothing. It’s empty. Like the remains that were drained of any trace.
” And that was a problem. Bowman should have been here.
A violent death, a life cut short by betrayal and dark magic—that was a recipe for a ghost, or at least a raging psychic stain.
But there was no rage, no sorrow, no faint impression of a man cut down in his own home.
Nor had Nat taken him. There was only a perfect, unsettling void where a ghost should have been.
Bowman’s soul hadn’t just moved on. It had been erased.
“We can trace some of the sigils,” Remi said, his gaze shifting to Hanna. “But I’ll need a reference point to compare them to.”
“Like the stuff from Cassidy’s building?” I wondered. “Across the Veil?”
Remi nodded. “Exactly. Practitioners are creatures of habit. They reuse runes, develop a personal flair; it’s like comparing handwriting. If we can get the archives from that scene, I might be able to confirm if this is the same caster, or at least the same school of magic.”
“We have records, right?” I asked Hanna. Angel and I had been pulled through some weird portal, but the rest of the team had been gathering evidence. “From the rest of the team?”
A tense silence fell. Hanna’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “The archives from that scene are… incomplete,” she said, choosing her words with obvious care. “The initial sweep was handled by NHV teams. What they submitted is fragmented. I’ve requested the full evidence logs three times.”
“And our team?” Angel prodded.
“Classified.” The unspoken truth hung in the blood scented air; someone higher up was stonewalling. They had pieces of the puzzle, but the picture was being kept from us. Did we even have enough of the records to make a comparison? Or were we deliberately being left in the dark?
Hanna’s sharp gaze cut back to me, the professional frustration shifting into a more urgent concern.
“Which brings us back to the original problem. You’re a walking, talking high value asset with a target on your back and no control.
This,” she gestured at the void where Bowman’s ghost should have been, “is a problem. You need training, Holt.”
“We’re working on it,” Angel said, his tone defensive.
“Me not seeing a ghost here isn’t a lack of training,” I argued back. “Something ate this guy’s soul.” Why I was certain of that, I couldn’t explain, but a heavy silence stretched across the scene.
“What about the two others?” Hardy asked, not intervening until that moment.
“Gone,” I said. “Not like Bowman. They crossed when the spell collapsed.” How could I explain the difference?
“The body on the gurney feels like a rock, a paperweight, lifeless, as if there has never been anything there. The two others feel human. Even though there’s nothing left to talk to.
” I waved my hands as if it could somehow make it all make sense.
“If you blindfolded me and asked me to point to a dead body in the room, I’d give you the duo on the floor and not even pick out the body on the gurney. ”
“What even is that?” Agent Smart asked Hardy, who shrugged in reply.
Hanna stepped aside and motioned for us to exit the crime scene, and while normally I’d have liked to dig in, I knew a roadblock when I saw one. She waited until we were in the hallway, arms folded across her chest and gaze narrowed. “You realize these are level five abilities,” she said.
As I had no idea what that meant, but Angel nodded, I assumed he did.
“Lilith would be a good shield.”
“I’m his shield,” Angel stated tightly.
“And if the military takes you both?”
“I’ve already stated my piece about that. Xavier will let us stay.”
“But will he stand between the mortals who seek power and a necromancer?”
“I have other obligations I can call in.”
I gripped Angel’s hand, not knowing what else to do. What if I went to Lilith? Would it be so bad?
“Our bookstore friend is a Reaper,” Angel offered in a low whisper. Would Hardy and Smart hear?
Hanna’s eyes widened.
“And you’ve read the report from across the Veil,” Angel added. “It’s not the first time.”
“You’re playing with fire,” she said.
“I disagree. We’ve got a great mentor for him.
Xavier supports me, and Jude’s little brother is also a shifter.
Which means Xavier’s got an interest in keeping Jude alive and safe, too.
” Angel’s grip on my arm was viselike. Allying with a force like that came with a price, a debt that could never be fully repaid.
It meant trading one kind of leash for another, potentially more dangerous one.
“I’ll need official paperwork,” Hanna said, her voice low and final. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Angel held up his hands, keeping me at his back. “Better to be indebted to the angel of death than the goddess of murder.”
And if that was the difference, I was all in on Angel’s plan myself.