Curious, Avery reached in to touch Eira’s wrist. She expected it to be cold. It wasn’t. Her eyes widened and she felt for a pulse. None. Her right hand then rested over where Eira’s heart would be. Nothing.
No, this womanwasdead—wasn’t she? Or was this the very sleeping curse Avery herself had once suffered?
She searched for binding at her wrists—none. At least none that could be seen by the naked eye. Avery reached into her pocket and produced the hagstone. She held it up to her eye like a monocle.
What she dreaded, what she feared she would see, was a woman enclosed in armor. The curse of eternal sleep and nightmares bound up its victims and gave the appearance of death. To some relief, that’snotwhat she saw when she gazed upon Eira Goff.
To a new horror, what she saw was not Eira Goff at all, but straw. Straw that had been formed into a vaguely humanoid shape to make an impossibly large poppet. That poppet had then been dressed in Eira’s clothing, and by the smell that intermingled in the wheat, sprayed with her perfume. No magic glimmered around it save for the illusion which concealed its true appearance. Where Eira Goff—or at least her body—was now was a completely new mystery, but inside the casket lay an empty, lifeless fetch. It had been warm to the touch, but while it had been conjured, it had never been given animation—there was no need when imitating a dead body. More questions filled Avery’s mind, but one among them had finally been answered. Whoever was behind this was creating fetches, just as Bimo Shinwell had suggested.
Old magic.Bannedmagic. Someone powerful and educated.
There was a knock on the door, soft and cautious. “Ms. Heilman?”
Avery’s attention snapped back to the moment at hand. “One moment!” She dug into her pocket and drew out her cell phone. Could it takephotographs the way Saga’s had? She cursed under her breath. She should have asked Lahiri before taking off.
She tapped on the phone and a light turned on. Another quiet curse and frantic tap. She tapped another icon and a replication of the casket in front of her appeared on the small screen. Her heart leapt. Was this it? Was this…? She tapped the screen and something shifted, but she wasn’t sure if it took a photograph or not.
Another knock. “Ma’am, we’d be more than happy to help.”
“Gentlemen, I beg you, just a moment longer,” she called back, feeling her heart begin to race. She could see the wordphoto, and also something calledvideoandslow-moandportrait. She tapped the red circle on the screen and the image shifted again—something was happening. The circle was now a red square, the picture encircled in a yellow border. Frowning, she clicked the square and watched a small mirror of the image shrink into the far left corner.
Avery quirked an eyebrow and clicked the red circle again. Curiously, she moved the phone over Eira Goff’s form, then carefully maneuvered the hole of the hagstone in front of the camera so she could see the large straw poppet on the screen.
Another press of the square, only this it pulled up a small display of more tiny squares: three to be exact—the two she’d taken…and a picture of Esteri.
The door began to open. “Ms. Heilman?”
Avery quickly closed the casket lid and stood, trying to regain her composure. She pocketed her cell phone carefully and turned to serve them a practiced smile. “All yours, gentlemen.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” one of the pallbearers asked.
“I did,” said Avery. And so much more. She fingered the hagstone in her palm, allowing a glamour to wash over it so it appeared as a small envelope when she showed it to them. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem,” said the other pallbearer. “Anyone asks, you had it all along.”
“Thank you,” said Avery once more, walking out the door. She wavedthe envelope at the receptionist and paused in her exit. “If it is all the same to you, can we pretend this never happened?”
The receptionist smiled, still not entirely sure what had transpired, but had apparently worked long enough in a mortuary to put enough pieces together. “Pretend what never happened, ma’am?”
The fake Olivia smiled and nodded, taking her leave through the front doors once more and out to Detective Lahiri’s car.
Lahiri waited for Avery to fully situate herself, but when she didn’t immediately speak, he prodded. “Do we have another stolen heart?”
“No,” said Avery, the glamour shifting from Olivia Heilman to her usual choice that merely darkened her hair, warmed her complexion, colored her eyes and rounded out both the points on her fangs as well as her ears. “Thebodyis missing.”
Lahiri’s eyebrows shot up. “Missing? The casket was empty?”
“If only.” Avery shook her head again. “Someone has replaced it with a decoy.”
“A glamour?”
“A fetch. Not imbued with life, but a fetch all the same. The body even felt warm.” She showed him the last image on her phone.
Lahiri tapped the screen and the image began to move in the same way Avery had moved it around.
“That’s not a photograph, it captured my vision,” awed Avery.
“You took a video,” Lahiri explained, watching the recording. He raised a finger and scanned back in the footage, pausing it as the hagstone revealed the straw poppet. He remained silent for a moment. “Fetches are illegal.”
