Chapter 7
MOIRA
Morning doesn't bring relief.
Grey light filters through the screen that pretends to be a window, and for three heartbeats I forget where I am. Then memory floods back. Elspeth's drowned corpse. Rafe's teeth tearing into corrupted magic. Our boat capsizing while I reached for power that wouldn't answer.
The bed linens smell like expensive fabric softener and him. Shadow and danger wrapped in Spanish silk. The thought takes root before sense prevails, and heat climbs my neck.
Outside the guest room, coffee scent mingles with something else. The metallic tang of evidence bags. Death preserved in plastic.
Evidence spreads across the massive table when I emerge.
Photographs. Maps. Items sealed in plastic that carry the stench of death even through the barrier.
Rafe's already working, dark hair falling across his forehead as he studies something.
The burgundy shirt makes his golden eyes more prominent.
The shoulder I treated last night shows no sign of injury through the fabric, though the wounds must still be healing beneath.
"Coffee's fresh." He gestures toward the kitchen without looking up.
The expensive espresso machine gleams in his kitchen. Hand-blown glass catches the light. Even the coffee beans smell smuggled from somewhere specific and illegal.
"What is all this?" The evidence demands attention more than caffeine.
"Evidence from all the murder scenes." Exhaustion carves shadows under his eyes that weren't there yesterday. "Took me most of the night to gather it without alerting the brotherhood. They'll be here soon, but I wanted you to see it before they arrive."
The victims. Danny Morrison's father and two other dock workers among them. The whispers that travel through my inn made them names. Seeing the evidence laid out like this makes them real.
Photographs show rocky shores. Tidal pools. The old pier where fishing boats tie up during storms. Each one marked with symbols that appear to depict sea witch magic.
"May I?" Coffee forgotten, I gesture to the nearest evidence bag.
Rafe nods.
The bag contains what looks like an ordinary rock. Grey stone worn smooth by centuries of waves. But the moment my fingers touch the plastic, residual magic floods through me like ice water.
Sea power. Corrupted. Twisted into nausea and wrongness.
"This was at the first site?"
"All of the sites." He indicates three other bags, each containing similar stones. "Thought they were just rocks until you told me what you found at the tidal pools. Your magic can read things mine can't."
Eyes closed, sea-witch senses expanding, the power in these stones reveals itself. Not just corrupted. Deliberately warped. Forced from its natural state into patterns that violate everything my grandmother taught me.
Water magic heals. Protects. Flows with natural rhythms older than human civilization. This magic drowns. Suffocates. Pulls life down into darkness and traps it there screaming.
"Ritual markers." The first stone goes back down carefully. "Whoever's doing this is using them to anchor the deaths to specific locations. Blood gets spilled. The victim drowns. And these stones trap both the death and the magic in place."
"For what purpose?"
"Building." The next stone carries the same corrupted signature. Same deliberate violation of natural law. "Each death adds power to a larger working. Like bricks in a foundation. Each death is a building block. But the structure isn't complete."
The previous vision pushes forward. "When I touched the water at the ritual site, I saw someone. A woman.”
Rafe's expression sharpens. "Did you see her face clearly?"
"Not clearly enough. The vision was fractured. But her features... enough to know she didn’t look familiar.”
"That's not enough to identify anyone." He sets down the evidence bag with controlled precision. "Visions can be unreliable. Symbolic rather than literal. We can't assume the woman you saw is actually the summoner. Could be the magic showing you something metaphorical."
Frustration builds in my chest. "But what if it wasn't? What if I saw the actual person doing this and I just don’t know who she is?"
"Then we figure it out through investigation, not assumptions." His tone gentles slightly. "I'm not dismissing what you saw. But jumping to conclusions gets people killed. We need evidence. Facts. Not just visions that might mean something or might mean nothing."
My hands shake reaching for the coffee. The warmth does nothing to chase away the cold settling in my bones. "At the tidal pools, I found partial patterns. Multiple locations. Multiple ritual markers." Meeting his gaze takes effort. "More deaths are needed to complete the working."
"How many more?"
"There's no way to know at this point. The full pattern isn't visible yet."
A map of the island spreads across the table as he pushes evidence aside. Red circles mark locations. The pattern forms an arc across the northern coast, following the curve where my waters meet the deep ocean.
"Show me." He hands me a marker. "Mark where you think the other deaths need to happen."
The pattern isn't random. Whoever's planning this understands how power flows through this island. How convergence points align with tidal currents and moon phases. How the oldest magic pools where stone meets water meets sky.
My hand moves with muscle memory from years studying my grandmother's charts. More locations that fit the pattern. The abandoned lighthouse on the eastern cliffs. The sea caves beneath Raven's Point. The standing stones overlooking the deepest channel.
"These, at minimum. But there could be more."
He studies the completed pattern. The points forming a shape from forbidden chapters in my grandmother's grimoire. Not a circle. Not a star. Older. A binding symbol used by those who practiced magic before written language.
"What's it for?" His finger traces the lines connecting the points. "What happens when the ritual is complete?"
My grandmother's grimoire weighs heavy as I pull it from my bag. Leather binding worn soft from generations of use. Pages whisper, flipping to the section Gran made me promise never to read.
Hidden in the back. Written in her hand but copied from something much older.
"Necromancy. Instructions for binding drowned spirits." My voice drops. "Using their terror as anchors for summoning. The more violent the death, the more fear involved, the stronger the binding."
Rafe reads over my shoulder. His body heat radiates against my back, and awareness prickles across my skin. Close enough that his scent surrounds me. Shadow and expensive cologne and feral wildness underneath.
"This requires an anchor." He points to a passage in my grandmother's careful script. "Someone with power to control both the living and the dead. Someone who can command water and corpses simultaneously."
The page turns under my fingers, revealing diagrams that crawl across my skin. "Necromancy and sea-witch power. Both. At the same time."
His hand flattens on the page beside mine. Long fingers. Scarred knuckles. Hands that killed Elspeth's animated corpse last night. "That's not possible. Those magics are fundamentally opposed. Death magic corrupts. Water magic purifies. They can't exist in the same person."
The final page approaches, where my grandmother's handwriting becomes shaky. Frightened. "They can't. Unless someone made a bargain. Traded their humanity for power. Gave up their soul in exchange for the ability to wield both death and life simultaneously."
The words hang between us. Heavy. Terrible.
"Someone did that." Flat. Dangerous. "Someone looked at necromancy and sea-witch magic and decided they wanted both badly enough to trade their humanity for it."
My throat closes. “Someone was able to raise Elspeth from the dead and bind her spirit. They've been feeding on her terror for a long time. Building power. Waiting for the right moment to complete this ritual."
Tension radiates through his frame. "And people are already dead because of it."
Words won't come past the grief and rage.
Rafe's hand covers mine where it rests on the grimoire. Warm. Solid. Grounding me when screaming seems like the only reasonable response. My sister. Used. Tortured. Turned into a weapon against me.
"We're going to find them." His thumb traces circles on my knuckles. "The person who did this. The one who bound Elspeth. Who's killing people to complete this ritual. We're going to find them and end this."
"How? They have both types of magic. I only have one. You have shifter magic but not this kind. We're outmatched."
"Maybe. But I don't need magic to kill someone. I just need to get close enough. And you're going to help me figure out where the next death will happen so we can be waiting when they show up."
The map draws my attention again. Multiple locations marked with evidence of completed rituals. More remaining. The pattern suggests an order. Not random. Building power methodically. Moving from weaker convergence points to stronger ones.
"The next death will likely be at the lighthouse." The eastern cliff marker gets a tap. "It's the next point in the sequence based on the pattern. If I'm reading this correctly, they'll need to complete it soon. Within days. Maybe tonight if the tide and moon align properly."
"Then we stake it out." His phone appears, fingers typing rapidly. "I'll have my men watch the other locations in case the sequence is wrong. But you and I are going to the lighthouse. When this summoner shows up, we take them down before they can kill again."
"What about the brotherhood meeting?"