Chapter 2 #3
I swallowed again. “I—am not sure.” I wasn’t going to get sick, I wasn’t going to pass out, and I didn’t think I was going to have an overly emotional reaction, all the usual reasons people asked if you were alright.
But I was experiencing considerable stress, worry, and empathetic grief.
I’d been in this woman’s head in the last moments of her consciousness before the pendant drained her.
I knew that she’d been afraid, and I wished that my abilities would have let me somehow reach through the psychic impressions on the necklace to comfort her. Or save her.
But that wasn’t how it worked. I could see when people were about to die, could see their spirits if they lingered, could share dreams, and could hear the thoughts people had in their heads when they held or wore an object.
I couldn’t reach back into the past to change it. I couldn’t save her. I could only help to get her justice.
Hart looked over. “Rayn, if you’re not okay to do this—”
“I can do it,” I interrupted. “I want to do it. To help her.”
“If you’re certain,” Parikh said.
I swallowed again, then nodded. “I am.”
I was glad he hadn’t kept calling me ‘Mr. Alverno’ once Rodney Buckley had left.
I didn’t much like the last name I’d gotten from my family.
I didn’t particularly like most of what they’d given me—my innate magic, my psychological trauma, and whatever genetic deficiencies had caused my family to think that locking me up and pretending I didn’t exist was an appropriate way to deal with the actions I’d taken to save my mother and unborn sibling.
They’d given me my first name, too, but for some reason I hated that one less.
It wasn’t rational, but, in my experience, human beings very seldom are.
I had to force myself to look around the room.
There was blood everywhere.
Streaks on the back of the cream-colored loveseat. Pooled on the carpet where she must have died. Spattered on the ceiling, drips scattered on the carpet, the walls, the furniture.
“It’s hers?” I asked.
“Yes,” Parikh was the one who answered me.
I drew in a long breath, then let it out again. “Did you wash the necklace?” I asked, the words sticking in my throat.
“No,” came the low answer. “Why do you ask?”
I swallowed again. “Because I didn’t see her death,” I half-whispered. “So she didn’t have it on then.” I looked between Hart and Parikh. “Was she wearing it? When you found her?”
“No,” Parikh answered, exchanging a look with Hart.
I frowned. “Where did you find it?” There hadn’t been any blood on it. I knew that—because blood was something that the death witch in me would have felt.
“Fuck, kid. We should’ve been dragging you out to cases before now,” Hart remarked. “If you can put that shit together that fast.”
I blinked. “There was no blood on it,” I said softly. “But…” I gestured around the room because I didn’t have to say it out loud—there is blood everywhere else.
Parikh let out a soft grunt. “It was under the dresser.”
Low to the ground, the massive piece of furniture looked like it was trying to emulate something from the French seventeenth century. A few inches off the floor with little clawed feet, it rose up to chest height and was, like everything else in the room, spattered with blood.
“She threw it there?”
They both looked at me. Right. I took a deep breath. “Where do you want me to start?
“Will the blood interfere with your… results?” Parikh asked.
I grimaced. “It will be… distracting, but it won’t change anything about the visions.”
“Distracting how?” Parikh asked.
“I can feel the death in the blood,” I replied, knowing that it probably didn’t make that much sense. “That is… distracting, because it pulls my attention away from the psychic impressions. Especially if they belong to different people.”
“You feel… death?” Parikh’s eyebrows went up.
“Kid’s a death witch,” Hart put in. “He can talk to dead people, too.”
“You’re also a medium?” Parikh sounded surprised.
“No,” I told him. “I’m not. There is some overlap—death witches and mediums can both see ghosts, but summoning is much more difficult for me, for us, than it would be for a medium, like Ward.”
Hart snorted. “Fucking nothing is difficult for Ward,” he said. “He’s a fucking freak of nature.”
I felt a smile tugging at my lips. “He is both a medium and a warlock,” I explained to Parikh. “That does make his abilities different—but mediums attract spirits. I’m… neutral, I suppose. I can just see the dead and speak to them if I have reason to.”
“And you can hurt people,” Hart put in. “Kill them, even.”
I met the elf’s purple eyes, knowing that he knew my story—the mostly-true version. “Yes,” I confirmed.
“You can kill people with magic?” Parikh asked. He sounded alarmed.
“Fuck, Tony," Hart scoffed. “The entire goddamn office at BTV can kill people with magic. The kid’s the same as every-fucking-body else there. Same ice cream, different fucking flavors.”
Parikh appeared to think about this for a moment, then looked at me. “Please tell me that you don’t kill people with your magic.”
I looked at him blandly. “Not recently,” I replied.
This got an amused grunt out of him. I chose not to enlighten him that I wasn’t making a joke.
“Start with where you know she touched, then,” he said. “And work your way around the room. We want to know everyone who’s left an impression here.”