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Rayn had pushed his chair back away from his desk, the back of it up against the wall, and he was staring with wide eyes at Raj, who was staring back at him.
“Uh. Guys?” It wasn’t the most eloquent thing that’s come out of my mouth—although I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t the least, either—but I really had no idea why on earth these two were having a staring contest.
Both of them startled, Rayn jumping and squeaking again, and turned to stare at me.
And then Raj’s expression turned dark, and I started to worry.
“What?” I asked him.
His brown-gold eyes were wide. “When—when was the last time you heard from Taavi?” he asked, his voice disturbingly soft.
My heartrate immediately picked up.
There was only one reason Raj would ask me that question in that voice, and that’s because he thought—
I couldn’t even think it.
“Call him,” Raj told me.
It rang. And rang.
And went to voicemail.
Which did exactly nothing to calm me down.
My pulse was hammering now, pushing against the back of my throat. This time I called Ward.
And got voicemail.
“Fuck!”
“Hart—”
“So help me God, Rajesh—”
Raj walked up to me and put his hands on my shoulders, heavy and solid. I tried to shrug them off, not wanting him to feel me shaking.
“Hart.”
I struggled through a breath. “Fuckingwhat?”
“It might not be—” He stopped, licked his lips, then started over. “It’s—” He tried again, his voice flat and clinical. “A canine cadaver, approximately a hundred to a hundred-twenty pounds, was discovered this morning along the bank of the James near Pony Pasture. The… condition of the body made identification of breed… difficult.”
Nausea rolled through me, and I had to swallow a couple of times to make sure that my morning coffee and taco bowl lunch stayed where they were, more or less. “So you came here?”
“I was hoping to find Ward, since we don’t know whether we’re looking at a shifter or an actual dog, and lab testing will probably take twelve to twenty-four hours.”
I nodded once, sharply.
“Rayn?” I asked. Rayn was a death-witch. I knew death witches shared some abilities with mediums, although I couldn’t have told you if summoning a specific dead person was one of them.
“Yes, detective?” I didn’t bother correcting him.
“Can you summon the dead?”
“Yes, but not… Not this one. I am… sorry?” He sounded hesitant. “I can only summon a ghost I already know.”
“You met Taavi,” I whispered, terror all but stealing my voice. “He was in dog form.”
