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Ward twitched a little in his chair, looking back at Rosemary. “That—she—Yeah, that sounds like what she’s saying.” He shook his head, slightly too-long curls brushing his forehead. “She’s hard to follow,” he admitted. “She keeps getting distracted and not finishing thoughts. Or sentences. But I think that’s right.” His grey eyes focused on me. “Where’d you come up with that?”
I shrugged, although I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. “One of the FBI agents who works with Raj is a future seer. She mentioned there being past seers and present seers, as well. And Cass only ever sees bad things—like murders. What if our ghost sawpastmurders instead of future ones? But if she didn’t understand what she was, she maybe just assumed that’s what mediums were?”
It happened sometimes with Arc-humans whose bout with Arcanavirus wasn’t so severe that they needed hospitalization—they developed an arcane ability, but because they weren’t at a hospital, they never really learned how to use that ability, or, apparently, even learned what it was.
Ward’s eyes skipped over to empty space, then back to me. “That… appears to be the case.” He smiled. “Well done, Detective Hart.”
The smile I gave him back was a little bitter, but mostly self-satisfied. I’m a clever sonofabitch, and I know it. I might not still be in RPD homicide, but detective work was in my bones.
“So she saw a murder, and she saw them bury the victim out here in the yard?” I confirmed.
Ward was nodding, his eyes tracking empty air as the ghost moved… closer to me? Fuck that. I tried stepping away from her, but then I felt a chill run down my arm.
“Oh, hell, no,” I said out loud to the ghost—or to where I assumed the ghost was, based on where the slimy cold feeling had appeared on my arm. “No fucking touching the elf.”
I could hear Ward trying—and failing—to smother a snicker behind me. I pointedly ignored him.
“She’s grateful,” he finally managed to say.
“And I would be grateful if shestopped fucking touching me,” I snapped, moving again as my arm once more went cold. I turned to glare at the medium in the wheelchair. “Seriously, get her to cut it the fuck out.” My arm was undulating with cold, and I had the deeply disturbing impression that the ghost was running her hands up and down it. It was making my skin crawl, and I really hated that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Ward had stopped laughing, and his brows drew together as he concentrated on sayingsomethingto the dead woman. His lips pursed together, and then the cold left my arm, which I quickly drew to my chest, rubbing it with my other hand. I briefly contemplated being polite and thanking her for cutting it the fuck out, then decided against it. Ghost or not, you don’t thank people when they show basic goddamn respect for personal space.
“Sorry, Hart,” Ward apologized.
Now I was extra cranky—as though ruining a pair of khakis and my shoesandhaving to wrestle a raspberry bush and throw around mud weren’t enough, now I had to be fucking petted by a goddamn ghost. “You aren’t the one who should be apologizing,” I muttered, still rubbing my arm.
“On her behalf,” he said, sounding a little worried. Or upset maybe.
I grunted, still not feeling particularly charitable.
“She wants to make it up to us, she should tell us whereshe’s fucking buried,” I muttered.
3
To his credit,Ward got the location of Rosemary’s body out of her eventually. Unfortunately for us, the answer was ‘nowhere fucking near here.’ According to Rosemary—by way of Ward—she’d beenkilledin the house, which was now about to become a museum, a little over a year ago, but then they’d taken her body out to a goddamn salt marsh.
I was so not happy.
Neither, for the record, was the Hampton PD.
Turns out everybody gets upset when some asshole decides to dump a body in a wildlife refuge.
Rosemary had led us out to the Bell Isle Marina, then explained that they’d put her on a boat and taken her out to the nearby river, then deeper into the nature preserve.
Somewhere Ward and I couldn’t get with a car.
Which meant we had to convince the local PD that Ward really did know what he was doing and that there would absolutely be a body at the other end of the chaos.
And that took the better part of two hours and a begging phone call to Captain Andreas Villanova of the Richmond PD. I’d contemplated calling Rajesh Parikh, federal agent and tiger shifter, but I wasn’t sure that getting vouched for by the FBI would actually get me anywhere with the local PD. So, instead, I’d asked my former boss—the guy I’d handed my service weapon and shield to when he’d asked me to drop the Faith Oldham murder—to vouch for both me and Ward.
I guess I hadn’t fucked up my career too badly, because Villanova came through for me. Ward and I were sitting down by one of the docks, waiting, when an unmarked pulled up. Two detectives got out—cops have a look, a walk, whether we have pointed ears or not, so it was easy to tell.
One of them came over, the other waiting by the car, leaning against it, his arms crossed over his chest.
“You Campion?” he asked me, his critical gaze raking up and down my form, an obvious curl to his upper lip. If he’d known anything about Arcanavirus transformations, he’d have known that was impossible—you can’t be both an elf and a medium. You can only get inflicted with one magical thing if you go that route instead of remaining a normie or pushing up daisies.
“He is,” I answered, gesturing to where Ward was sitting, presumably talking to Rosemary. Or Archie. Or both of them. “And you are?”
