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Author: Kalayna Price Tamara was silent as I heard her turning pages. My vision was finally recovering, and I could clearly make out the outline of her leaning over the file on her desk. I let her review it in silence. The pot of coffee finished brewing before she finished reading, so I stood and made a fumbling attempt to locate the Styrofoam cups that were always on the shelf above the coffeemaker. Except, nothing I touched felt like a cup, and as I was still seeing mostly gray outlines, the one thing that looked like it might be cup shaped turned out to be a container of powdered creamer.
“You’re out of cups. ”
“Oh, sorry. I meant to tell you. I’m using mugs now,” she said, and slid open her bottom drawer, retrieving two ceramic mugs.
I’d cringed at her use of the word “sorry” though it had been more expression than true apology so the incursion of possible debt that hung between us was small. If it had a monetary value, it would have been worth no more than a penny or two, but I still hated the feeling of imbalance. Of course, it was an apology, not an expression of appreciation, so at least I had the option of not accepting.
“Mugs. Really?” Yeah, my sarcasm sounded mean, but it was the only way not to forgive her. I was going to have to tell her I was fae—or, at least, fae enough to count—soon or we’d eventually run into unavoidable and weighty debt. But if I started telling people, it became more real. Not that the fact I spent time in a pocket of Faerie almost every single day didn’t highlight it nice and bright.
“—and Ethan’s always going on about how bad Styrofoam is for the environment,” Tamara was saying. I’d been so caught up in my own thoughts that I hadn’t been listening, but it sounded like she was still talking about the mugs and I hadn’t missed anything important.
“So you didn’t tell me the date you two picked,” I said, picking up the steaming coffeepot.
Tamara took the pot away from me, which was probably a good plan. Color was returning, but the world was still blurry. After she filled both mugs, she handed me one and then added a heaping spoonful of creamer to the other. She didn’t ask if I wanted any, we’d been friends long enough for her to know I took my coffee black.
I clutched the hot mug and inhaled the heady aroma, but a pang of sorrow washed through me at the scent. Death loved coffee. It was something we shared, literally. Even before I’d realized I was a planeweaver, Death and I discovered if we were in physical contact, he could interact with whatever else I was touching. Both of us holding one mug, while he watched me with those deep hazel eyes over the rim as he took a sip? I swallowed. It wasn’t one memory, it was dozens. Every time I drank coffee—and I drank a lot of coffee—I half expected him to show up, that easy smile on his face. But he didn’t, or at least, he hadn’t in over a month.
“I’d offer you a penny for you’re thoughts, but they look more valuable than that,” Tamara said, and I startled, sloshing hot coffee on my fingers.
I didn’t yelp, or curse, but it was a near thing.
“Napkin?” Tamara held out something I could barely make out, and I accepted the napkin. As I dabbed at the spilt coffee, Tamara said, “So you were pretty deep in thought. ”
I shrugged. “It was—” I waved a hand, not finishing because I didn’t want to talk about Death and I couldn’t lie and say it was nothing. “But you were going to tell me the date you and Ethan picked. ”
For a moment I didn’t think she was going to let me get away with changing the subject, but then she said, “Well, after much debate, we’ve settled on October fifteenth. ”
I nodded, my lips pressing together as I considered the date. “That gives us a little over a year to plan the wedding. This should be fun. ”
Tamara was so silent the very air in the room stilled. I squinted, trying to see her expression. I couldn’t.
“What is it?” I asked. Silence. “Tam?”
“Not October of next year,” she said, her voice quiet. Too quiet. “This October. ”
“That’s less than a month away. ”
“Well, you would have known sooner if you and Holly hadn’t stood me up for dinner last week. ” Her voice was most certainly not quiet anymore.
I cringed. “It wasn’t intentional. Something—”
She cut me off. “Came up. I know. I heard the excuse already. ”
A lump of guilt settled in my stomach, and the coffee that had smelled tempting a moment before no longer held any appeal. Everything was so complicated these days. I opened my mouth to tell her about the trips to the Eternal Bloom, of how time sometimes got a little screwy—she already knew the VIP room was a pocket of Faerie. I’d told her that much after losing three days there a few months back. But the reasons we were going was Holly’s secret, not mine, and it wasn’t my place to share. I snapped my mouth shut so hard my jaw clicked, and Tamara turned back to the file on her desk.
I changed the subject. “So after five months of being engaged, why the sudden rush?”
Tamara’s chair creaked, the sound loud in the suddenly thick silence.
“You’re not—” I started, but she cut me off.
“I see only one abnormality in this autopsy. ”
I wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “You are. You’re pregnant. ”
Again her chair squeaked, and even if I couldn’t see her features, I could feel her glare. “Do you want to hear about Kingly’s autopsy results or not?”
“Yes, but…” I suddenly didn’t know what to say. It seemed we were all keeping secrets, and I’d just blundered into Tamara’s. She and Ethan had been living together since they got engaged, but once he’d popped the question—and claimed half her closet—he’d proven reluctant to agree on a date. But how could Tamara be pregnant? I could feel the charm that protected against both STDs and pregnancy near her left foot, where it must have been attached to an ankle bracelet. It was easy to pick out because I wore the exact same charm on my bracelet.
Tamara sighed, and as if sensing my thoughts said, “No charm works perfectly all the time. Now do you want to get back to Kingly?”
I gave her a minute nod, and she pulled the file in front of her, running her finger down the page. “The only odd finding in autopsy was that James Kingly’s glycogen stores were low, as were his red blood cell count. If he hadn’t killed himself, he might have eventually died of inanition. ”
I cupped my mug of coffee and frowned. “So in English, what does that mean?”
“Basically, he appeared to be starving to death. Which is odd, because his stomach contents included veal, haricot vert, escargot, and a really expensive cabernet sauvignon—not any beer, by the way, no matter what his shade claimed. Kingly also had digested food in his intestines, so he was definitely eating. I’d guess he had some sort of wasting disease, though I didn’t find any mention of it in his medical records. He had to know though. When he went in for a physical two months ago he was pushing the top of his ideal weight range for a man of his age. He’d lost nearly seventy-five pounds since then. ”
“That’s odd. His widow didn’t mention anything about the rapid weight loss. ” Or about a disease. And the ghost certainly didn’t look like a man wasting away, though that didn’t mean anything as he may not have accepted the illness as part of his identity. “Did you send blood work off to find out what was killing him?”
I could almost feel Tamara frown. “Those tests are expensive and the lab is constantly backlogged. The man jumped off a building. Why? Maybe he realized he was dying anyway. Maybe being a father late in life terrified him. I don’t know. But regardless of his reason, his cause of death wasn’t a mystery. It still isn’t. He died from massive blunt force trauma when he slammed into that car. ”
She had a point. I considered questioning the shade again, but it was getting late and my eyes were only just recovering. Another ritual so soon would compound the damage. I could ask Mrs. Kingly, or James himself as I was sure he was still following hi
s wife around. Of course, none of them may know if the anomalies weren’t from a disease but from a spell. I ran the idea past Tamara and she sighed.
“I guess I’ll have to send a sample to the lab now because I take it that you’re going to tell Mrs. Kingly all of this. ”
I gave her a sympathetic smile that verged on a wince. “That’s what she hired me to do. But even if the near inanition thing was caused by a spell, it wasn’t what made him jump off that building. ” The darkest of magics could kill, and compulsion spells could make people do terrible things, but no compulsion spell could overcome the will to survive and make someone jump off a building. “Did any spells show up during the autopsy?”
I still couldn’t see clear enough to make out Tamara’s features, but I could tell by the way the brown of her hair filled the space where her face had been that she’d looked away. “I had several bodies from major cases when Mr. Kingly arrived. The detective in charge was already convinced Kingly was a jumper, and I sort of deprioritized him. If there had been any spells, they were gone by the time I examined him. ” She paused. “Is it possible this is some kind of elaborate scam? Could his memories have been erased after he died?”
I chewed at my bottom lip. “I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but it would take some major magic. If dark magic was used to erase a living person’s memory, it would be a spell aimed at the core of the person. But once the soul is gone and the STOP button is hit on a body, the magic would have to change every single cell in the body. I was at the scene within a minute or two of Kingly’s death. If someone had worked a spell like that, I’d have felt it. I saw them take the body away, theoretically directly to here, so if a spell was cast on Kingly, it would had to have been during transport. But, the ghost’s story matches the shade, which pretty much guarantees the shade wasn’t tampered with postmortem. ”