Chapter 11
It was weird, thinking about how his uncle had been wrong about Rayn. Weird that Rayn was like the opposite of what they’d thought he was.
Not bad. Just… really weird.
I pushed Jackson’s thoughts out of my mind, carrying the pencil he’d apparently been playing with the few steps to the cup on the coffee table in the middle of the lobby.
I couldn’t say that I disagreed with Jackson’s feelings—it was really weird to think that I’d spent most of my life believing I was a death witch, and yet it seemed like Mason was right, and I wasn’t a death witch after all, but a life caster.
The spell he’d talked me through—giving energy to someone else—had felt strange, but somehow simple, even though it was one I’d never performed before. I’d taken Mason’s big green hand, closed my eyes, and tried to find the faint glimmer that was his life magic.
I’d been honestly terrified—worried that I’d somehow hurt him, drain his energy, something. But Mason had assured me that if he couldn’t manage to defend himself, Jackson would undoubtedly be able to stop me from doing irreparable damage, if it came to that. Not that he thought it would.
He’d probably been right—I was still fairly certain that Mason was stronger than me, and he was definitely far, far more practiced. If someone was going to lose in a magical conflict, it wasn’t going to be him.
So I’d followed Mason’s coaching, letting my careful protective walls down enough to feel the hum of Mason’s magic, a slight edge of coolness running through the warmth that was his magic. I felt it, and I thought about warming it, the soft heat of a candle-flame causing wax to puddle and melt.
He’d taken his hands from mine, the gold in his eyes sparkling. “Thank you for that, Rayn,” he’d said softly. “I think we have the answer to our question.”
I was a life-caster. I had the ability to restore energy, to rebuild life and warmth where it had been weakened or—apparently, if Victor was any indication—taken.
With a heavy sigh, I headed down the hall to Mason’s office, rapping my knuckles on the door frame.
The big orc looked up at me over the tops of his wire-framed reading glasses. “Rayn,” he said by way of greeting. “How are you feeling today?”
I shrugged. “Worried,” I admitted.
He set down the pen he’d been using to mark something, giving me his full attention. “About what?”
“Victor,” I answered. “And me.”
“What about Victor?” Mason asked. “Is he starting to… deteriorate further?”
I shook my head. “It seems like… the opposite, actually,” I told him. “He wanted to eat last night.”
“He’s… becoming more alive?” Mason asked, his eyebrows going up with his tone of voice.
I nodded.
“Well, that is unexpected,” he remarked. “And fascinating. Will you bring him in tomorrow?”
I nodded. “I—” I broke off, not entirely certain how to explain my worries about myself.
“This worries you?” he asked.
I nodded again.
Mason echoed the gesture. “Yes, I can see why,” he said, although he didn’t seem to be particularly concerned about it. Or, if he was, I wasn’t able to tell. He studied me for a moment. I waited. “Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally raised the family dog?” he asked.
“You mentioned it,” I replied. “But not the details.” I remembered that he’d said the dog hadn’t been right—that there’s been something wrong with it.
He nodded. “That’s right. I did—well, I was young. Barely older than Jackson.” He grimaced. “Mirabel had died a few weeks before, and we’d buried her in the yard.” I watched him swallow back something—emotion, maybe. “She was… not in good shape when she staggered into my room.”
I winced. “I’m sorry,” I said, since I knew that’s what you were supposed to say when someone lost a pet. I understood that losing a pet was like losing a family member, although I’d never experienced the loss of a family member I actually cared about, so it was hard to relate.
“Thanks,” came Mason’s response. “But I’m telling you because I need you to understand that what you’ve done with Victor both is and isn’t unusual.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand what that means,” I admitted.
Mason nodded once. “Accidentally resurrecting the dead can happen,” he said softly. “And I’m no death witch.”
I blinked. It was true that Mason wasn’t a death witch, and if he’d resurrected something, then it was less alarming that I had, too—death witch or not. “Because you have an affinity for life casting?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Yes. Although my capacity was not what yours appears to be.”
I frowned. “You’re stronger than I am,” I protested.
Mason smiled. “I doubt that,” he replied. “And definitely not at life casting. That’s not my primary affinity.” He drew in a breath. “But I’ll take a look at Victor—maybe have Ward do the same, or Vi, if she’s coming in tomorrow.”
“She is,” I replied. “She’s staying with me all weekend because of the gigs.
” She was bringing an inflatable mattress and would be sleeping in my living room.
She was also calling it a ‘slumber party,’ which I’d looked up and very much doubted would be anything like dragging ourselves back to my apartment at three in the morning, exhausted and barely fed, only to get up in the morning and start it all over again.
“That will be a bonding experience,” he remarked.
“Bonding experience?” I echoed.
“Mmmm,” he confirmed with a hum. “An experience that brings you closer together. Bonding.”
I nodded. I supposed it would be that, or it would make us hate each other. I supposed we would find out.
The bell on the front door chimed, and I nodded to Mason before turning and heading out to the lobby to see who it was.
I frowned down at the table, not particularly pleased to be standing in the basement of the FBI with the collected evidence from all three hit-and-run cases—not just the fragments from the vehicles, but pieces of bloody clothing, shoes, battered wallets, and so on.
Raj was standing beside me, his body tight and tense.
He and Hart had come to Beyond the Veil looking for me—they needed me to read the case evidence, to look for anything relevant that might have been missed or that couldn’t have been determined by ordinary crime scene technicians.
I might have already read the pieces from the vehicles, but now they wanted me to touch literally everything else.
Just in case.
What that really meant, according to Hart, was that they had nothing else to go on except what I’d given them, and that apparently wasn’t enough for them to do anything.
He’d said that with a good deal more swearing and a bitter glance over at Raj, whose tight jaw and pressed-together lips told me he wasn’t happy about any of it—the lack of leads or the fact that I was getting dragged even deeper into the case.
I turned to him. “What do you want me to start with?” I asked.
He sighed, his expression unhappy. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
“Hey, Rayn,” came a friendly female voice from behind me.
“Hi, Cass,” I greeted the red-haired agent.
She offered me a quick smile. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said, and I recognized that the phrase was meant to be a joke. I didn’t actually understand the joke, but I smiled back at her anyway, because that’s what I was supposed to do.
“Let’s get this fucking over with,” Hart grumbled. “If you’re good, kid?”
I nodded, then stepped up to the table. On the far side was the cigarette butt from the first hit-and-run. “Do you want me to read it again?” I asked. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to read any of this stuff, so it didn’t much matter if I did the butt again or not.
“Nah,” Hart replied. “We’ve got the full transcript from it already.”
I swallowed, hard, staring down at the bloody pair of jean shorts the victim had been wearing. I didn’t want to hear the man’s dying thoughts. But I was absolutely going to.
“Rayn—” Raj cut himself off, but I could hear the stress—the worry—in his voice. He wasn’t happy about this, and I wondered whether or not he was secretly hoping I would refuse. But people were dying. Three, so far. And nothing I’d read from the three killers suggested that they were going to stop.
I supposed it was possible that there were three drivers because both of the first two had been wracked by guilt and weren’t going to commit any additional murders.
Having been in the heads of the first two killers, however, I very much doubted it.
“Ready, kid?” Hart asked, standing beside the table, a pair of blue nitrile gloves on his long-fingered hands.
I nodded once, lying to both him and myself.
Hart picked up a watch, the band scuffed, the face cracked. His pale purple eyes studied me intently, and then he put the watch in my open palm.
I stared at it for a moment, wishing I didn’t recognize that the stiffness of the fabric band was likely caused by dried blood that was now touching my skin. And then I let myself go in.
What the fuck had he done to piss this asshole off? He’d been followed by cops before, but not like this. Not with the swerving and riding the curb in places where there weren’t lights or bushes or trash cans.
He wished the buildings weren’t so damn close to the road.
Wished there were other people out here so that he could at least try to disappear into a crowd, although that was a lot harder with horns and hooves than it used to be.
Wished there were one of those damn alleys coming up that were all over the city.
He saw the break between the buildings, felt a surge of gratitude, and sped up.
The engine behind him revved.
His stomach dropped when he realized the alley was more than wide enough to accommodate a car or truck.
He prayed it wouldn’t make the turn.
Pain bloomed out from his knee, his hips, his back.
His chest felt tight.
His heart pounded, and every beat was like ice.
He tried to get up.
Couldn’t.
Too much pain.
Not enough air.
Fuck.
I drew a shuddering breath, painfully aware that the man whose watch I was holding hadn’t been able to in the last few panic-filled moments of his life.
I jumped when fingers touched my arm—Raj.