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Out and out, her arcana stretched. I could feel it like an extension of herself. It ran across the ground and raced far past the extent of my own senses. I gaped at this small woman and the power packed within her. That was far more than I’d ever realized.
On it went, with no end in sight. I wondered if it bothered her, but she seemed to relax like she was stretching out her legs after a long road trip. A relaxed smile reached her lips. Her eyes drifted to the side like she was thinking. I figured she was feeling around with her arcana.
“Can you feel any bodies?” I quickly added, “Ones that seem hidden?”
Her brow furrowed. She bit her lip. The way her eyes went distant, I could tell she was turning over every little thing she could feel with her arcana. Could she tell the difference between dead frogs and dead humans from this distance? Or did all death feel the same?
That made me wonder how I felt to her. Was I alive? Or was I dead? Did I stand somewhere between the two? It made sense that I would considering how I felt inside most days. I hadn’t felt alive since Paige passed. Even before that, Paige had called me a walking corpse.
If it turned out that I was the one hunting and killing these people, I wouldn’t miss much when the big dragon had to put me down. Nothing would change. The world would keep turning. My job would be filled by someone else who could do it just as well as me.
The world would be a little safer, though. There would be one less killer.
The thought made me pause. Wasn’t this the rhetoric that the supernatural community used when allegedly protecting themselves? When I wanted to bring someone to justice through the judicial system, the supernatural community took things into their own hands. They levied justice with a bloody hand.
I’d fought tooth and nail against this ideology. Yet, when it came to myself, I was ready to let them have their way. I knew that, unhinged, I would be the kind of threat that no human system could contain. If my beast wanted out of prison, I could simply leap through the afterlife and run free.
“Something is wrong,” Addie said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
For a heartbeat, I wondered if she’d read my mind. I thought I had a good poker-face, but she’d been able to see through me before. This wouldn’t be a first.
But Addie’s eyes were closed. Her attention was on her arcana. The way her brows flattened, her lips pursed with determination, I realized that she meant there was something wrong with her arcana.
My heart leapt with fear. “Are you all right?”
“I’m…fine. I don’t think it’s me. I don’t know how to explain it.” She bit her lower lip. “I can’t feel the afterlife at all. And the dead refuse to answer to me. I don’t know what’s going on. Is it really me? Am I somehow broken?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. There was no definitive way to prove if this was her or something larger at work. So, I stayed silent. I wasn’t going to lie to her. There was no point. She wasn’t a victim dealing with trauma in one of my cases. She was a friend who deserved honesty.
“I wish I could ask Hel. If she could just tell me what is happening, then I’d be able to do something about it.” Addie opened her eyes and stared at the mug in her lap.
Her arcana snapped back into her. The moment it left, I missed it. Just like an alcoholic, I didn’t know how long I could go before I needed another drink.
My thoughts reeled with all sorts of need, urges that I would not give into. I should have been focused on Addie and the problem at hand, but the problems inside me were louder. Without her arcana to feed upon, I craved other things. The urge to touch her and pull her into me nearly pushed me to do something stupid.
Instead of staying, I stood. “We should get some sleep. Maybe things will be clearer in the morning.”
Addie’s expression fell. I could tell she’d wanted to talk about what was on her mind, but I didn’t trust myself to keep my hands to myself. I couldn’t listen in this state.
