Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The city morgue was a gray cube with a parking lot Nick had to swipe his ID for us to get into. The chain link gate buzzed loudly and squealed as it trundled open. He found us a spot near the entrance and I took one last swallow of my coffee before leaving the empty cup in the cupholder.
When I glanced over, he was straightening his jacket on his shoulders, his expression blank and that was the Detective Nicholas King I knew, not the one who rolled up his shirt sleeves and healed me, when normally he could barely stand to be around me.
He jerked his head towards the building and I trailed behind him into the clean white entrance hall.
The receptionist made us both sign in, taking down my driver’s license number on the sign-in sheet.
She gestured to the waiting-room chairs, but I saw Nick stay standing, sliding off his sunglasses and tucking them into his jacket pocket.
I wandered over to the art on the walls that clearly hadn’t been updated since the eighties.
Tangerine-colored flowers and a teal background was not modern art.
After a few minutes, an assistant came by to collect us, leading us to a large, concrete room with drawers for dead bodies covering one wall, and a few tables for autopsies in the center.
An office was tucked to the side, and I watched a bald, portly man finish a mug of coffee at his desk before grabbing a clipboard and coming to greet us.
He pushed a set of narrow rectangular glasses up his nose with the knuckle of his forefinger, like he was used to adjusting them when his hands were covered in bodily fluids.
Before Nick could say anything, the man pointed at me. “Who’s this, Detective King?”
“Parker Ferro. He’s a consultant on fae matters,” Nick said.
“Doctor Rictor,” the ME introduced himself. He didn’t offer to shake my hand, and given what he touched daily, I was grateful. I raised my hand in a small wave.
“Is this fae-related?” Rictor asked. “I didn’t get any F.E. paperwork.”
“There isn’t any,” Nick said. “We’re trying to figure out if it is fae-related.”
Shaking his head, the ME said, “Well, it’s something-related. I’ve never seen magic readings like this, and I’ve been here for years. I even had the department witch come in to verify my findings.”
“What did you find?” Nick said.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Rictor pulled back the sheet and revealed a slender, gorgeous man. If he didn’t have a Y incision marking his chest, I wouldn’t have known he was dead.
Succubae and incubi are creatures from the Far Realm.
They share an unnatural beauty with my kind, although they aren’t able to practice any of the complicated magic fae can.
Instead, their magic comes from carnal pleasures.
They draw power from sex and sexual desire, and while fae are limited in how they can use magic on humans and other living creatures, succubae and incubi can use their magic to do a number of spells.
Most of them are sex and pleasure-related, which makes them excellent prostitutes.
“Okay, we’re looking at a who-knows-what aged incubus.
I asked around and the closest I can guess is seventy years old.
” Rictor looked down at his notes. “We don’t get a lot of fae-creatures in here.
Most of the time, they get left in the hills to get picked up by the fae if they die and I don’t know what the fae do with them in the Far Realm.
But, anatomy-wise they’re similar to us.
There’s some strangulation marks, but I don’t think that was what killed him. ”
“No?” Nick asked, frowning down at the body.
“In fact, I couldn’t tell you the cause of death.
Unlike the werewolves, where you could see physical injuries, this guy seemed to just…
stop.” Rictor pulled out a rectangular device that looked like a Geiger counter and offered it over to Nick.
“This is what we use to test for residual magic so we can find out if someone’s death was due to a spell.
I’ve never used it to look for a lack of magic before.
But when I ran it over the werewolves, they should have pinged at a four out of five.
Basic baseline magic for wolves. They were at a zero. ”
Nick waved the device over the incubus and the arrow stayed stubbornly at zero. “What’s normal for an incubus?”
Rictor shrugged. “Not a lot of studies on it. But definitely not zero.”
“Anything else suspicious?” Nick asked.
“We have some markings here, on his chest,” Rictor said. “It’s faint, but you can make it out. Looks like an alchemist's circle, but I’ve never seen one like this. You?”
Nick squinted at the lines. They formed a broken circle, and where anchor points should be, there were instead open V shapes. Unlike all alchemy spells, there wasn’t any closing circle enveloping and limiting the spell. Instead, it was just a circle of words.
“Is it Latin?” I asked Nick.
He shook his head. “No. Not Greek, either. And the witch didn’t recognize it?”
“Nope, she thought it might be older alchemy.” Rictor held out his clipboard and Nick took it and skimmed the witch’s report.
Passing back the clipboard, Nick turned to me. “So? Fae magic?”
“No.” I shook my head. “The fae don’t need written spells to cast.”
“So we still don’t know anything other than that it’s not just affecting werewolves.” Nick raised his eyebrows, looking between me and Rictor.
I stepped close and took a better look at the spell.
It wasn’t like anything I’d seen before, but when I got close enough, I could almost smell the glamour on him.
I grabbed a pair of gloves from the head of the examination table and slid them on before leaning close again and touching the edge of the spell.
“What’s this written with?” I asked.
“Honestly? If I didn’t see it in front of me, I would tell you there wasn’t anything written there,” Rictor said. “It’s not ink, it’s not even alchemy paint.”
That must have been what Nick used in his spell last night.
“I think the spell is missing pieces,” I said. “The writing part isn’t fae, but I think it was written with fae magic. Look, it’s a glamour.”
I brought my hand over the incubus’s chest and, using a minor glamour, connected the broken lines so the inner circle was whole. The spell flashed, and the lines moved.
The spell slithered across the incubus’s body, like a snake that had been warming itself in the sun.
It raced towards me, arcing the distance between my finger and his skin even as Rictor pulled us apart.
I felt a drain immediately on my power. The spell was a leech attaching itself to my magic, sucking it so quickly I had no protection against it.
The spell grew fat with the influx of magic. It swelled and consumed more and more. I screamed, feeling the magic twist itself around my neck, cutting off my voice.
Picturing the sticks I’d put in my bag, I reached into my satchel and blindly grabbed for them. My desperate fingers wrapped around them, and I croaked out, “Help me, old one.”
Here’s the thing about trees. I don’t want to cast any aspersions on Shel Silverstein, who I’m sure was a nice guy, but most trees won’t voluntarily give you everything down to their trunks.
But—and here’s where I admit I don’t know any other books with a tree main character, so I’m going to turn to movies—if you look in the right place and ask around, you can find a tree like the talking one in Pocahontas.
A wise old crone of a tree, who’ll give you cryptic advice. A tree that could also save your life if you need it.
The branches in my hand exploded into growth.
The ends grew down through the concrete, shattering it under my feet, searching for a connection to the earth.
The body of sticks twisted together, thickening into a trunk and then rising into a canopy of leaves.
I pumped all the magic I could into the wood, even as the spell hunted across my torso, searching for the bubble of power I was using.
Nick was yelling something, his gun out, but he was keeping the barrel down, clearly unsure where to aim it.
When he caught my eyes, he holstered it and pulled out a small silver blade and a white handkerchief.
The blade was carved with miniature alchemy circles and two lit up as he began chanting.
He bent, grabbing his pen from inside his jacket and started drawing quick circles around me, trying to contain or end the spell.
I didn’t have the voice to explain I could feel the end of the spell, and it was when it had drained me dry and left me a magicless husk like the incubus on the table.
I coughed instead and saw Rictor pulling out an honest-to-god wand and starting his own counter spell.
A closet warlock hiding in the morgue. What a headache for the department.
The tree roots finally reached the earth and found the deep pool of magic there. It wasn’t one I could access on my own, but the tree could drink it like literal water. When the tree hooked in to the good stuff, it spoke.
“Parker Ferro,” it said. “This spell you are toying with is dangerous. What’s your plan here? Let it kill you? After I’ve invested so much time in making sure you don’t grow up to be one of those who would cut my kin down?”
Rictor stopped chanting, his mouth hanging open as he stared at the massive tree dripping sarcasm like sap in the middle of his morgue.
Nick had wrapped up the alchemist’s circle on the floor and grabbed my arm where one of the spell’s lines wiggled across my forearm.
With a quick slash, the silver blade made a shallow cut across my skin and the line died off.
But it was only partial, plucking off one leg of a spider, leaving the bulk of it limping and hungry, crawling over my chest.
“Not mine.” My voice was a hoarse croak. Nick cut across my neck, barely a paper cut deep, but it worked and left my voice free. I gasped and began coaxing the tree. “It’ll kill me before I can plant more of your seeds.”
The tree hrumphed, and her voice was the brush of leaves on a windy day. “And how many have you yet planted? And how many of those survive?”
Still, she grew branches to cradle me close, enveloping me in an embrace, winding me into her trunk until we were one and the spell calmed for a moment, feeding on the deep, pure magic of the earth.
The tree wound her own magic into the spell, and then, like a root cracking the pavement, she ripped the spell apart.
I felt it shatter and used what was left of my own magic to stomp out the wriggling remains—smothering them like the sparks that jump off a campfire.
“In exchange, you will plant more of me,” she intoned, and released me, dropping five small seed pods into my hands before stilling. “I see a new debt on your soul. You should be careful who you pledge your favors to, young one.”
Her trunk opened, the light a brilliant white after the safe darkness. Two hands reached in and pulled apart the gap, forcing it wider. The tree sighed, opening farther, even as her being seemed to shrink until I couldn’t hear her anymore.
Nick grabbed me as soon as I was free and pulled up the hem on my shirt, his knife ready to slice at any bit of spell that remained. I held up my hands and said, “Whoa, whoa. We’re good. The spell is gone.”
“Shirt off,” Nick commanded. “I need to check.”
I shrugged off my jacket and pulled my shirt over my head. His fingers stroked firmly down my neck to my hip. He spun me and checked my back with equal thoroughness. He even parted my hair to check if the spell was hiding there.
“What was that?” he snapped.
At the same time, Rictor said, “This is a sentient tree.”
His glasses askew, he carefully brushed a finger over a leaf nearby.
The leaf fell. The tree itself shrank, cracking like old paint.
Like a prop built for some children’s play, the whole thing caved in.
After a few moments, the only thing left was the sticks I started with and a giant hole in the ground.
I scooped up the sticks and stowed them back in my bag with the new seeds.
“That tree talked,” Rictor said. “What—Why—How?”
“The universe is vast, warlock,” I asked. “And my comprehension is incomplete.”
It snapped him out of it. Some covens rely on accepting the mystery of the universe, their tenets claiming for every piece of knowledge there are additional questions and pursuing them rather than accepting truth is the way to madness.
He shook his head like he was clearing a fog, and then he looked between me and the incubus on the table.
The incubus looked the same. Only the spell was missing.
“The universe is vast,” he said. “My comprehension is incomplete, but ever expanding. I seek knowledge over answers.”
“What happened?” Nicholas interrupted. He pointed at me. “What was that spell and what was that magic? I’ve never felt anything like it. Was that witchcraft?”
That sort of question has dogged most of my childhood. Half the foster homes that kicked me out were because of what I could do with my magic. The other half were just a “bad fit” or “no longer willing to be foster parents.” Which I translated pretty clearly as not liking me.
“I have no idea what the spell was. I’m pretty sure the spell must have broken apart when the incubus died.
Maybe even before whoever cast it got what he wanted, because I could still feel some of the incubus’s magic sliding around in there,” I said.
The incubus’s magic felt odd with mine, oil and water, taking up space together, but I doubted I’d be able to use it. I’d have to drain it out somehow.
“Okay, well.” Nick shook his head. “Crap.”
“Crap?” I snorted. “I almost got killed and the best you can manage is ‘crap’?”
“Hey, according to you, almost doesn’t even count!”
“Well, it counts now!” I said. “You were slicing and dicing me!”
“To save you from a spell which had killed an incubus!”
“Stop!” Rictor held up his hand. “The paperwork on this is going to be a nightmare. In the meantime.”
He walked back to his office and returned with two clipboards with a thick stack of blank paper on each. “Start on your statements.”