Chapter 3

Close to dawn I put down the grimoire I was thumbing through, one I had thrifted from an occult shop in New Orleans, and I dressed to go for a run. Black on black on black. Bonaventure wasn't open for several hours yet, but I had to get out of my head for a bit. It beat sitting on the couch, pretending to read while I stared at the door, half expecting Harrow to bust in like a one-man SWAT team.

Until I heard from him, I wasn't sure what to do with myself. Contact Ormewood's next of kin to let them know…what…exactly? Ormewood was already dead. The body wasn't hers, and Brightman, the donor of the loaner body Ormewood had leased for her trip, had no family.

Ormewood's grandkids had been MIA from the scene, which weighed on me, but River Street was packed with stores, restaurants, and sweet shops. She could have sent them to get ice cream while she took out her mark. I was sure, had they gone missing, I would be in handcuffs and in need of a lawyer by now.

A light jog from the shop to the gates of Bonaventure took me five minutes and warmed my muscles.

Living less than half a mile from the front gate had its perks.

Dinner sat in a hard lump in my stomach, but I swallowed once to keep it down then climbed the fence. I jumped over at the top, absorbing the impact with loose knees, then set out down Stoddard Way, which ran along the northern edge of the property.

As I passed Jack Leigh's grave, a local photographer who made Sylvia Shaw Judson's Bird Girl statue famous when he photographed it for Random House to use as the cover image on John Berendt's novel, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, I noticed I was the only soul—living or dead—out and about.

The spirits tucked themselves into their beds before the sun rose, but there were always stragglers. I usually got to catch up on the gossip, but this morning, I was alone. The eerie silence grew deafening.

"He's here."

"Run."

"Go."

The spectral voices coasted over my skin like a breath of winter, and I shivered despite the muggy heat.

"Who's here?" I turned a slow circle, convinced Harrow would step from behind a monument. "Hello?"

"He'll gobble you up."

"He'll swallow you down."

"He'll devour you."

The warnings layered themselves over one another until I couldn't identify the individual speakers.

Pivoting on my heel, I turned to leave, but a blur of motion pulled me up short.

No one should be here this early, but it wasn't like the gate had ever stopped me.

"Hello," a quiet voice answered me. "I didn't mean to startle you."

With gooseflesh dappling my arms, I turned fully toward the speaker to find a tall man dressed in dove-gray slacks and a white button-down shirt standing with his hands shoved into his pockets. His chin-length black hair hung in his eyes, forming a curtain that concealed his expression.

"You didn't." I studied him, weighing any threat he might pose to me, but his posture was nonthreatening. "Startle me, I mean."

"Run. Run. Run."

The spirits pleaded with me, their window into the world of the living, but my gut told me he meant me no harm. I rationalized standing there by reminding myself running from a predator was never a good idea. Running was like asking it to consider you prey.

"I heard you calling out." He glanced up then, flashing eyes the color of mist rolling through graveyards.

Okay then. Definitely not human. Not that spirits would fear the average mortal. "I didn't expect company at this hour."

"Neither did I."

With his frozen beauty, he could have been one of the marble angels, fallen from heaven. Or, I guess, tumbled from the top of a mausoleum. But still. He had that chiseled look about him. Like he couldn't be real.

"I should be going." I took a careful step back toward the gate, uncertain whether to listen to my instincts or those of the spirits who resided here. "It's getting late."

"I didn't mean to disturb you." He kicked a clod of crushed oyster shell. "I'm no good with the living."

"The living, huh?" I noticed mud caking his expensive leather dress shoes. "As opposed to…?"

A buzz in my pocket distracted me, and I lowered my gaze to answer the call on my watch. "Yeah?"

"Harrow is banging on your office door," Josie said, her tone sharp. "Where are you?"

"On a run." I glanced over to the stranger, about to make my excuses, but he was already gone. "I'll be home in ten."

Harrow saton the bench outside my office holding a tray with two cups balanced on his knee.

The way he shot to his feet when I crunched up the gravel driveway told me I had surprised him.

"Officer Harrow." I flicked the sweat out of my eyes. "How can I help you this fine morning?"

"You run now." His brow furrowed as he swept his gaze over my gear. "On purpose."

"Nah. I pay a kid with a BB gun to chase me up and down the street a few times before he goes to school every morning. That way it's not choice but survival."

"Hmm." He appeared to remember his tray and offered me a cup. "Tea?"

Last night I got Bad Cop. This morning Good Cop came visiting. Go figure. "No thanks."

"I didn't poison it."

"I never said you did."

"You don't want anything from me," he said slowly. "That's what you mean."

"Don't read into it." I tightened my ponytail. "I'm hot." I cooled down with a few easy stretches. "If it was iced tea, I wouldn't hesitate, but those cups both have sleeves. That means they're hot drinks."

"All right." He set the tray on the bench, abandoning them. "Do you have a minute to talk?"

Jittery from the night before, I wanted to say no. "Do I have a choice?"

"I won't keep you long."

"So that's a no." I fidgeted with my watch, pretending to check my distance, aware I ought to play nice if I wanted Good Cop to stick around during my interrogation. "Let's do this in the office."

"If that makes you more comfortable." He pretended not to notice the tremble in my fingers as I pushed in the code to unlock the door. "Are all the higher floors apartments?"

The way his gaze skipped up the building told me he was deciding which level was mine.

"Are you living at home?" I spun the question around on him. "Or are you renting a place?"

His uncle had a three-bedroom house in the burbs. Harrow could take his old room back if he wanted it.

"We have a murder on our hands." He abandoned his slow perusal, killing that line of inquiry. "I'm hoping you can offer some insight."

Not what I expected him to lead with. No mention of the kids. They must be safe, thank God.

"Insight?" I held the door for him and pointed out the client chair. "What do you mean?"

The office was my domain, and the worst of my anxiety sloughed off as I sat behind my desk.

I was ten kinds of grateful Josie had parked Harrow on the bench outside instead of letting him go up and wait.

"We have reason to believe the perpetrator was already dead when she killed the victim."

"Savannah is the necromancy capital of the United States."

"Necromancers create vampires from dead humans and psychopomps from dead animals. The killer was neither. She was human, but not a vampire." He studied me while I fiddled with the lid from yesterday's water bottle. "Do you know who she was?" His expression grew sharper. "What she was?"

Time for evasive maneuvers. "Josie was accosted on the street while minding her own business?—"

"We both know that's a lie." He saw right through me, as always. "Try again."

"Based on how fast the humans in the crowd turned on us, an agitation spell of some kind was cast."

Already perched on the edge of his seat, he leaned in. "Are you saying Mimi Brightman was a witch?"

"No." I sat forward too. "That's not how it works."

And you know itperched on the tip of my tongue, but antagonizing him would only drag this out longer.

This wasn't the type of information he could write in his SPD report, so why the hard press? Human police couldn't do much about anything non-human. Except run screaming. However, this was exactly the sort of information a sentinel would require prior to throwing me in the hoosegow.

Gulp.

"So, you admit you knew Mimi Brightman." His gaze drifted to my computer, as if I was dumb enough to keep confidential materials in plain sight. "You rented out her remains, didn't you?"

Damn it. I was usually much better at evasion. But I couldn't find my footing with Harrow.

"You didn't read me my rights, so I'm under no obligation to answer you."

"We both know I can't charge you for practicing necromancy. I'm a cop. Not a sentinel. I don't answer to the Society. I'm here because a man is dead, and your fingerprints are all over this."

The Society embedded handpicked Low Society members into the police force to help cover their tracks. Had Harrow been a necromancer I would have expected them to tap his shoulder, but they would rather step in front of a trolley overflowing with tourists than give a sliver of authority to a non-necromancer.

"We both know you don't have a problem turning me over to people who can."

Just like he had the night I learned who he really was and just how little I meant to him.

"Frankie…"

"Not that I'm admitting to any wrongdoing, but if I did practice any form of necromancy—which I'm also not admitting to—I would secure permission from the human donor first to use their remains, and then I would bind the willing spirit from doing harm while walking the earthly plane."

"And if the spirit was stronger than the binding?"

Old rage made the muscles below my left cheek twitch. "I'm not a hack."

"I never claimed you—" He clicked his teeth together. "I can't just let this go."

"Tell the truth. Do you have any other suspects? Or did you start and stop with me?"

"That's not fair." He shut his eyes, drew in a long breath. "I need to know why Brightman killed a man."

"Brightman was already dead." I was so tired all of a sudden. Exhausted. I didn't want to fight. I just wanted him to go and take this tangle of feelings with him. "Bernadette Ormewood, a white witch, leased the body to take her grandkids to Disney for a week. She was two days overdue, so I went out on a repo call and took Josie with me. The second we spotted Ormewood, she turned the crowd on us."

"Spirits retain none of their gifts after death, correct?"

In for a penny, in for a pound. "Correct."

"She had help then." He sat back. "Either she bought a spell or charm…"

"Or—" I finished the thought for him, "—she paid a living witch to cast one."

Except how had the witch known to be right then and there? And, knowing I was on her trail, why would Ormewood have killed a man? How had she done it? Or had the witch who cast the spell done it for her?

Afraid of digging my hole with Harrow any deeper, I kept those thoughts to myself.

Better to answer the questions he already had than inspire new ones.

"That's all I can figure." I drank the warm water with a grimace. "Maybe the witch is the real killer."

Black witches killed for hearts, though. They consumed them for power. Harrow hadn't mentioned if the victim still had his, but I hadn't seen more than the gash across his throat. And if a black witch had taken his heart, then the victim wasn't human. Black witches had no use for magicless hearts.

Butblack witches also preferred preying on white witches. Ormewood might be powerless, therefore no longer a tempting target, but what had she hoped to accomplish? What was worth bloodying her hands in death when she had resisted the pull to practicing dark magic in life? Unless they identified the victim, and his connection to her, I couldn't fathom why Ormewood would turn to her sworn enemy for help.

Quiet for a moment, he posed his question with care. "Can a witch expel a spirit from a body?"

"That's your area of expertise," I reminded him with a smidge of glee. "Can a witch expel a spirit?"

For a full minute, I waited to see if he would enlighten me, but the word witch was a powder keg under his tongue. One wrong word, and he might blow this conversation sky high. This was a topic he wanted defused, and fast.

"More than witches cast spells and use charms. The caster could have been something else."

"Yeah." I bobbed a shoulder. "It's possible." I tossed the water bottle in the trash. "Most things are."

"True." Unhappiness carved his features. "Can you bring Ormewood back?"

"Back how?"

"She was renting Brightman's body." He made a rolling gesture with his hand. "Can she use it again?"

Summon Ormewood, shove her back into her loaner, and let him question her.

Hahaha.

No.

"Are you serious?" I couldn't believe it. "You're on my ass about me performing illegal necromancy for a living, but it's all good if you need it for a case?" I planted my palms on my desk. "This smells like a trap."

Maybe the murder was reaching, maybe he didn't have enough for a human police force to pin it on me, but he damn well could get me hauled away in cuffs by sentinels if I performed right in front of his eyes.

"You honestly believe I would risk my job smuggling you into the morgue just to catch you in the act?"

The morgue. Where they took Brightman's body. Which I had to get back to bury as per her final wishes.

"You honestly believe I trust a word that comes out of your mouth?"

"You need to cooperate," he clipped out. "Otherwise, you're tying my hands."

"The way the sentinel you sicced on me tied my hands?"

Okay, so the guy used handcuffs. Not a rope. But I wasn't the best with words when I got mad.

Much to my horror, I had a habit of crying when I got truly furious, which convinced people I was soft.

"Work with me to solve this case," he bargained, "and I'll keep your involvement under my hat."

About to tell him where he could shove his hat, maybe draw him an anatomically correct picture on a sticky note, I reminded myself of the bitter truth.

One word from him, and the sentinels who worked alongside him, hidden within the SPD's ranks, would appear at my door. And they wouldn't bring me tea or take no for an answer.

"I'll walk you out." I flipped off all the lights. "I'm going to shower and then to bed."

"Promise me you'll think about it."

To get him out of my sight, I agreed. "I'll think about it."

About how he had the chance to turn me in, again, but hadn't taken it.