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And, like always, I shook away the thought. Iwashuman. Maybe I had skills most didn’t, but like so many other humans, the unique ones, the ones who were cursed with something different, I was still human.
Instead of arguing with her—what was the point when Gran never listened?—I switched subjects. “What I really need is a spell.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes returning to normal, her regaining the look of an old woman. “Well, then you came to the right place. What sort of spell?”
“I need to hold a seance.”
* * * *
Grant looked far less tough leaning against the wall across thestreet from Gran’s shop, pouting. He had his arms crossed and his green eyes locked on the door, so the weight of his gaze struck me the moment I exited the building.
He was something between pissed and properly put in his place, like a dog who had been thrown out of the house when guests came over.
I crossed the small street since Grant didn’t seem willing to come any closer to the shop than that. “Okay, so tell me, what did you do?”
He huffed and shook his head. “Does it really matter?”
“Well, I mean, it was goat worthy, so I feel like it’s a good story.”
He let out a long sigh. “It was just after I gained my immortality. I’ll admit, I was a bit of a dick. It’s a weird moment, to realize you’re not aging anymore. It’s like the entire world opens up, like you have something you never thought you would before. When we grow up, we’re held to certain beliefs, to certain rules, and with one swoop, it all changes.”
That youngness he’d had didn’t seem so obvious anymore, as he spoke about how it used to be, about how people changed and grew.
He uncrossed his arms and tucked his thumbs into his pockets. “So I went into her shop—it was somewhere else at the time—and I was acting like some big-shot mage in some little human’s occult store. I deserved to be taken down afew pegs, but her—” He pointed at the store. “She’s dangerous.”
“She hasn’t turned me into a goat, yet.”
He shook his head. “You know how things like to announce they’re dangerous? You have the red hourglass on black widows, the stripes on a tiger, the brighter colors that say ‘stay the fuck back,’ right? Dangerous things like others toknowthey’re dangerous because it means fewer fights. Some things, though, the really lethal things, they don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. Gran has looked likethatfor years. I talked to someone who knew her two hundred years ago, and she looked exactly the same. Whatever she is, with the power she has, she could look like anything, but she chooses to look like some harmless old woman.” He whistled low. “Let’s just say that isn’t the sort of being I want to mess with any more than absolutely necessary.”
I turned to gaze at the shop, trying to connectthe woman I’d come to know with the person he was talking about. It seemed impossible for them to be the same, for her to be whatever he seemed to think.
She was odd, sure, but she’d looked after me, helped me understand when no one else would.
Could she be as dangerous as he’d said?
Then her words to me turned sinister, threatening. If she was what Grant thought, what exactly did she thinkIwas?
* * * *
I rubbed my eyes as I looked around the large, open room Kase had rented for me. It was in an office building, and I didn’t bother to ask how he’d managed to secure it so quickly. In fact, the entire floor seemed empty.
It was better not to ask such questions.
I could have done this in my own living room, but death magicalwayshad a scent of brimstone that was impossible to get out of carpets.
I didn’t wantmyhouse to be the one stinking after all was said and done.
Kase held up the item I’d asked him for, then set it in my open palm. Rachel’s heavy necklace—the one she’d worn both when she’d died and in the picture—was cool against my skin. “Are you sure about this?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Magic like this, it’s not much fun.”
“Why didn’t you just call a medium? They’ll do this sort of thing for a good cost.”
I curled my fingers around the necklace. “Because if someone else did it, they might have lied, or didn’t find the echo, or who knows what.” I shook my head. “I need to do it to be sure. I mean, letting the echo of a murdered woman speak through me? That’s not my idea of a good time, but it’s the only way to know exactly what happened.”
“We know what happened. He killed her in her apartment. I saw the room. There wasn’t much ambiguity.”
“Butwhy?” I pulled the picture from my pocket and held it out to him. “They were happy, Kase. You failed to mention that to me, that heknewher, that they weren’t just strangers. How did he go fromthatto brutally killing her?”
