I jumped with a yelp, my eyes flying to the little table stationed next to the door to my apartment.
My phone. It sat there, plugged into the wall—because it must have needed charging.
ExceptIhadn’t plugged it in. I hadn’t set my alarm for six thirty, either.
But… someone had.
After only a beat of hesitation, I hurried over, skirting my couch until I arrived at the table, which, in addition to my phone, held a strange set… of keys.
“Oh,” I whispered, my hand bypassing my phone to clasp the silver metal keys looped by a simple key ring.
When I’d complained about my car, Grim had asked me if I could drive a stick.
I’d told him yes. Years ago, when I’d been in high school, my father had taught me to drive the family truck so I could take myself to Friday-night book club. That way he wouldn’t miss any football or March Madness games on TV…
Carefully, I scooped up the car keys—thevintagecar keys—letting the phone alarm pulse while I examined them.
Grim couldn’t seriously have lent me his car, though… could he?
Keys clenched hard in my fist, I abandoned the table and my phone, cutting a path straight across my apartment to the window overlooking the parking lot.
Sweeping aside the curtain, I peered down on the slowly brightening world, the sherbert horizon letting me know I’d reawakened to morning, and I found my parking spot.
My Bug wasn’t there, and I hadn’t expected it to be.
But neither had I anticipated seeing… The Judge.
27GRIM
After cleaning up after myself—and Cedric—I went to retrieve the asshole’s body from the morgue. Not because I gave a damn about what happened to it, what happened to him.
I did, however, care about the particulars of the shit shows at the library and, later, at the McDonald’s getting back to The Few.
A body disappearing from the morgue only to show up again would already raise enough red flags with the human authorities, and those of us who had dealings behind the veil and in the alternate dimensions all had our mortal-world contacts. Grapevines existed, too, and the last thing I needed at that moment with so much hanging in the balance was for someone to go snitching about Cedric’s ass sitting in a drawer.
There was also the episode with the self-driving cars and the runaway bookmobile I’d needed to cover up.
I’d already erased Helena’s involvement by retrieving her phone and removing her mangled Beetle from the scene.
Now I had Cedric, still in a body bag, laid out on the enormous oak desk in his pretentious, dark-academia-style yuppie office tucked away in the rear of the sprawling oval library of the Hallowed Halls.
Flora had deposited his soul here, too, setting the lantern thatheld his wretched spirit upon a nearby shelf crammed with Cedric’s books on magic and necromancy.
Back at the morgue, I’d unzipped the bag partially to make triple sure I had the right asswipe.
I did.
I’d left the bag that way, and glaring down at Cedric’s dead face with those chilling and now-sightless and unblinking ice-chip eyes, I frowned at catching something odd. Something I hadn’t noticed before.
A dark line, illuminated by the glow of Cedric’s own soul, marked his throat.
Indicating his decapitation scar… had bled.
Which must have happened in the restaurant. Or before. He’d been clothed then, of course. In a high-collared coat, which would have hidden the phenomenon. And to show signs of being bloody now, postmortem, the scar had to have reopened before death. His latest death.
All of this pointed to the idea that something had… upset him.
“You bled,” I said, trying not to sound startled as I peered up at the lantern. “Betthatwound confused the fuck out of the coroner.”
