Murder of Crows (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 2) Read online

  I couldn’t recall a time in my childhood that Sky Heart had ever said please. Score one for Alek, I suppose. Or score one for how dire this situation was. That was a pretty uncomfortable thought. Shishishiel was a powerful spirit, but these murders weren’t stopping without additional help, that much was clear.

  I turned from the staring contest as Alek nodded and forced myself to look more closely at the body.

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “Mark, my husband,” the woman who had broken the news said. I hadn’t heard her approach but she stood, thick shoulders shaking and eyes runny with tears, not ten feet away.

  Most of the People are named pretty generic names. It keeps it easy for records when they have to pretend to be further on generations of who they really are. There are a lot of biblical disciples in there, Matthews, Marks, Lukes, and Johns. For the women, flower names are pretty usual. Except in my family, of course. We all get rocks. The way the People often differentiated one John or Luke or Rose from another was using nicknames.

  “Redtail,” I said, half question, half vague recollection from decades ago.

  “Yes,” she sniffled. That made her Mary, or Marigold, I thought. Some things from childhood were so clear, other things faded away and lost. Sadly, the clear things were pretty much all the awful, hurtful parts.

  I looked away from the grieving woman and tried to look at Redtail in a clinical way. CSI: Magic edition, right? I could do this. I concentrated, bringing up a little power, trying to figure out what I wanted to know, to see. There wasn’t a Dungeons and Dragons spell for figuring out how someone was murdered, was there? Nothing came to my mind.

  I thought about how I could see my own sorcery, about how Samir used to demonstrate things to me and I could see and feel his power, familiar but different. Like how warm water and cold water are both water, but not the same to the touch.

  So. Detect magic. That’s what I needed, for the moment. I pushed on my power as I closed my eyes, visualizing it in my head as coating my sight and giving me the ability to see what I should be able to only sense.

  In DnD, detect magic can be dangerous. If there is too much magic or the spells used around you are too high of a level, you’ll knock yourself out. I hoped that real life wasn’t like that. With the warlock who had tried to kill my friends, I’d been able to sense his magic as a wrongness, like smelling rot or mold even if you can’t see it.

  I opened my eyes and looked at the body. Nothing. Maybe I was failing to do what I wanted to do, magically. There were no other sorcerers around to cast a spell so I could see if it was working. I hadn’t been able to sense the warlock’s magic until I touched his victim. I really didn’t want to do that, but if it would help, if it would save lives, well… Part of being an adult is doing things you don’t want to do, right?

  I swallowed bile and tried to not breathe as I bent down over the body and laid my hand on his arm. Fuck adulthood. His skin was cold. Very cold. Like he’d been frozen. A deep shiver twisted my spine, locking up my muscles for a moment, and darkness crept in at the corners of my vision. Then the world turned white, trees and sky and ripped up body disappearing under a blanket of freezing white light.

  “Jade.” Alek’s voice and warm hands brought me back. I wasn’t touching the body anymore, instead I was feet away, Alek holding me in his arms as I lay half prone on the churned up ground.

  “Rage,” I muttered. My tongue felt too thick, my mouth full of sourness, and an unnatural cold, deep hatred still rang inside me. “Something is really angry, and it isn’t normal.” I wasn’t sure I was making much sense.

  Alek lifted me up. “You’re freezing,” he muttered. “I’m taking her to my trailer. We will talk later, after you have spoken to your Crow spirit,” he said to Sky Heart.

  I let Alek carry me like a damsel in distress all the way back to his little home on wheels, my mind slowly un-fracturing as I tried to parse what had happened. There was magic at work, which I guess was pretty obvious from the whole exploded chest thing. It wasn’t sorcery though, not my brand of it. It wasn’t anything I had any experience with, which wasn’t saying much, alas. I’d spent the better part of twenty-five years running away from Samir and avoiding magic and magical things at all costs. I didn’t exactly have a talking skull or a giant library of musty tomes to research this stuff. Just impressions and guesses.

  I pressed my face against Alek’s chest, his shifter warmth seeping slowly into my body. I was supposed to be at home with my friends, leveling up in anticipation of all of us getting killed by my psycho ex, not back reliving childhood trauma and playing amateur detective. It wasn’t fair. Sky Heart and the People had cast me out. They deserved whatever they got. It wasn’t my problem.

  Whining about my lot in life and blaming the victims of terrible crimes? Weird.

  I called up my magic again, letting it flow through me, this time for warmth and to purge all feeling of whatever it was I’d sensed on Redtail’s corpse. I’m not a stranger to self-pity parties, but the anger rising in me felt off, unnatural. My power shoved it back, pushing away the cold and the resentment until I felt more like myself.

  Rage. Resentment. Hatred. All lingering strongly on the body of a man who had probably felt none of those things. I doubted it was his ghost or spirit.

  I didn’t know much about spirits, but I knew some. Samir had been interested in all that stuff. He had multiple giant libraries full of musty tomes, though I’d ever only seen one in person. He had kept me away from the book learning, being uninterested in me gaining real knowledge. He had only wanted me to gain power, the way the witch in fairytales fattens the kids before nomming down on them. There were sort of such a thing as ghosts, but they were more impressions than really the dead still somehow living on. Strong emotions, big events that were usually traumatic, powerful people dying, that kind of thing, all that could create a spirit. How powerful the spirit was and what it could do depended on how powerful the event or person creating it was.

  Alek set me down to unlock his door and I managed to stay on my feet. My body felt like I’d been punched repeatedly, but my magic had warmed me and cleared the cobwebs from my head. I was able to mount the handful of steps and enter the little cabin under my own power.

  The trailer he lives in is very small, about a hundred and ten square feet. It’s efficient, with a kitchenette on one side, a small gas heater and fold-out table and seats on the other, a bathroom at the back, and a ladder, leading to a sleeping loft, built up against the inner wall. Books were piled on cubby-like shelves built into the walls alongside jars of tea and dry goods. The whole place smelled of cedar, beeswax, and bay oil. Cozy, especially given Alek’s size, but he moved about the tiny space with the ease of long familiarity.

  I sank into one of the padded seats as soon as he’d unfolded it and leaned against the wall. Alek held up a hand and his face grew flat with concentration. A shimmering layer of power slipped up the walls, warding off the trailer. I knew no one would be able to overhear anything we said. Smart. That’s why they pay him the big bucks, I guess.

  “It’s not Samir,” I said. “Not a sorcerer; that I’m pretty sure of. But we are dealing with magic.”

  “You should warn me before you do things,” he said with a shake of his shaggy blond head.

  “You were busy with your who-is-the-alpha staring contest. I didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, why else would I touch a corpse? The whole ‘doing magic now’ thing was pretty obvious, I’d think.”

  “I’m going to get you a shirt that says ‘does not play well with others’,” he muttered.

  “I think I own that shirt,” I said, trying to smile. “Get Sky Heart one instead. Then we can be twinsies.” That got me a wry grin before he turned around and turned on the gas stove.

  “So what are we dealing with?” he asked as he filled a kettle for tea.

  “Besides a narcissistic cult leader?”

  “Jade…”

  “A spirit, I think. Al
l I felt was this horrible freezing rage. Not like a hot anger, the kind that flares and burns out. This was real hatred, true rage.” I knew, because I’d felt something similar once.

  Listening to your family die horribly while you could do nothing to stop it? Yeah. That’ll cause a feeling like the one I’d just touched.

  “Could a spirit affect the physical world like this without an intermediary?” Alek took the other seat and unfolded the table between us.

  I tipped my head back against the wall and shut my eyes, trying to recall everything I could about spirits and the way they worked. I sort of had one following me around, after all, so you’d think I would know more. But Wolf was special, a creature outside of reality in many ways. She would probably know all sorts of things about spirits, but if she could speak, she certainly hadn’t demonstrated it in the last forty years. I thought about my guardian more and sighed.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. Wolf can’t do much about corporeal threats, only help with magic stuff as far as I can tell. I don’t know what rules the Undying follow, if any, but it seems likely that something or someone is enabling this spirit or using its power.”

  “Not Sky Heart,” Alek said with certainty in his tone. “He is terrified but he will not tell me anything. He speaks in half truths. Carlos went away, but I do not think he went far.”

  The kettle whistled and Alek prepared tea. I closed my eyes again and made myself remember the feelings I’d touched, the look of the scene, how the body had been cold, how it had smelled. Blood. But there hadn’t been that much blood on the ground. Killed elsewhere? I thought so. Redtail was a large man, weighed two-twenty easily. Not easy to move. And how did the killer stake the body and put a live crow into the chest so close to the trailers without someone hearing them? In daylight.

  I could see why Jasper was convinced there was magic at work here. It was pretty obvious no normal human was doing this. Too many ways a human could fuck it up and wouldn’t be strong enough to manage it on their own. Even more than one human would have left a trace, might have caught attention.

  “What did you smell?” I asked as Alek set down an earthen mug steaming with jasmine tea on the table and pushed it at me.

  “Blood,” he said. “Like in a slaughterhouse. Earth. Feces, I think from the body. I sensed no power, saw no obvious drag marks. It is odd.”

  “And the body was cold. Too cold. How did it get there? We know nothing.” I wrapped my hands around my mug, willing the steam and warm ceramic to push away the last of the chill clinging to me. “But the pageantry,” I said after a moment. “That feels human to me. It’s a statement.”

  “But what is the killer trying to say?” Alek sipped his tea and a line formed between his blond brows.

  “Hi, I’m totally bug-fucking crazy?” I resisted the urge to take my thumbs and smooth the line away.

  “But not all powerful, or the killer or killers would strike more often, no?”

  “Unsub,” I said. “We should call him or her the unsub. That’s what they do on TV. Didn’t they teach you that at Justice Academy?”

  “Unknown subject,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up in a faint smile. “Sure, along with how to use a toothpick and some gum to build a nuke, how to run counter-surveillance maneuvers, make crispy bacon, and kill someone with the five-finger death punch.”

  I grinned at him. My friends and I were clearly rubbing off on him if he could make jokes like that in a situation like this. My grin died quickly, however, as I remembered something else.

  “I don’t think Sky Heart can talk to Shishishiel anymore,” I said. “When I was little, I remember I could sense the spirit with him, like vast wings unfurling at the edges of my vision. Something has changed, and I don’t think it is just that I’m older now.”

  “I know,” Alek said. “He was lying about consulting the Crow spirit.”

  “What else did he lie about?” I asked. Alek had powers beyond just normal shifter powers, though I didn’t know what all of them were. He could do wards, like the one protecting us from eavesdroppers, and he was a walking lie detector. That latter part was a little annoying in a relationship, but it came in handy other times. Like now.

  Scratch, scratch, scritch. Our heads whipped toward the door. I summoned my power, preparing a nice bolt of welcome as Alek rose and moved into position. I stood up on the seat, wincing as it creaked under my weight, but keeping my eye and the summoned magic in my hand at the door over Alek’s broad shoulders.

  One hand drawing his side-arm and holding it at his thigh, Alek swung the door open and turned sideways to make sure we both had clear shots.

  It was Emerald, my half-sister. She held a towel that looked to be wrapped around something and looked up at us with huge, scared green eyes.

  “Please,” she whispered, then she cast a furtive look over her shoulder. “The kids. You have to find them.”

  After we ushered her inside, Alek offered Em the seat he’d been in but she shook her head, setting the bundle down on the table and unfolding it. Inside were three items. A teddy bear, hand sewn from the look of it. A hairbrush with dark hairs still caught in it. A braided friendship bracelet.

  “These belonged to the kids. So you can find them.” Em looked at me, her green eyes wary.

  “What kids?” I asked, forcing my breathing to normalize and my hands to stop shaking after the adrenaline hit I’d just given myself.

  “This is where you live?” She looked around the trailer as though she hadn’t heard me.

  “Phenomenal cosmic power,” I said. “Itty-bitty living space.”

  Em gave me a blank look and then glanced toward Alek where he leaned on the kitchen counter with an expression that asked if I’d always been nuts or not. I guess the reference was lost on her. Probably one of the few kids in the entire United States who hadn’t been raised on Disney movies.

  “What kids?” Alek repeated, gifting me with a slight shake of his head.

  “The fledglings. Like me. There are three others. They’ve all gone missing,” Em whispered, glancing around again.

  “The trailer is warded, no one can hear us,” I said.

  She hunched her shoulders, the news not relaxing her like I thought it would, and cast another look toward the door.

  “Should we go invite Pearl inside?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how I felt about her using Emerald to talk to us, but maybe she thought we’d be more sympathetic to a kid. Or maybe she worried that I wouldn’t listen to her after what they’d done to me. Or she was a coward. I mentally filled in the bubble for option D: all of the above.

  “No,” Em said, her hands coming up like a suspect surrendering to the police. “Please. Grandfather is already angry with dad over him leaving and bringing you here. I can’t get mom in trouble, too. I’m a fledgling, nobody will be too mad at me for being curious about you.”

  “The kids are missing?” Alek said, his voice taking on a slight growl now.

  Right, the kids. Probably more important than family politics. I swallowed my opinions on my mother and tried to look attentive and open.

  “Grandfather says they are dead, that the evil spirit got them because they didn’t obey, but mom thinks they are alive. She said with these things that your magic could find them if they are. Can you?” She put that last question out there with a defiant jut of her chin.

  Pearl was right, but I wondered how she knew that. She had clearly spent more than just a night or two with my biological father if she knew things that sorcerers were capable of and how our magic might work.

  “Yes,” I said. “I probably can. You said they are fledglings, so they haven’t shifted yet?” She’d said other fledglings, which meant she hadn’t, either. It made me a little sad and a lot angry. Her fate in the Tribe was unknown, then.

  “No, they are too little. I will be Crow any day now, dad said so.”

  “I hope he is right,” I said softly.

  “When did the children
go missing?” Alek asked.

  “Thomas and Primrose disappeared two weeks ago, after Night Singer got killed. Peter,” she said, then stopped and took a quick gulping breath. “He went beyond the boundary stones a couple days ago. Said he could hear Thomas calling to him. They are cousins and almost the same age. That’s Peter’s hair brush.”

  “Boundary stones?” I thought of the tingle I’d felt when approaching Redtail’s body.

  “Grandfather set them, to protect us from the evil.”

  “Bang-up job he’s doing, too,” I muttered.

  “Grandfather and Shishishiel will protect us,” she said. She spoke the words with the strength of a zealot, but the quiver in her chin and the desperation in her eyes turned them from conviction into prayer.

  I hurriedly asked another question, not wanting an argument. “Your parents said something about this happening before, do you know when? And what happened?”

  Em shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’ve heard some of the elders talk about it, but they always shut up when they notice me. It was a long time ago, like a hundred years or something, I think.”

  A hundred years. Long before my time as well. I sighed and looked at Alek. “Without more answers from Sky Heart, I don’t see how we can help.”

  “You can’t find them?” Em asked. Her face closed off again, eyes narrowing, lips pressing together into a pale line.

  “I can try,” I said. “But we don’t know what we are facing out there.”

  “We will look for them,” Alek said. I raised an eyebrow at him and he shrugged as if to say “what else can we do?”

  “Okay,” Em said, edging toward the door. “Can I go now?”

  “Yes,” Alek said, cutting me off before my mouth was half open to ask more questions. He pressed himself to the side and let her squeeze by him.

  “She was our best source of information,” I said.