Felipe winced at the state of the dead man. If he hadn’t been told the corpse was human, he might not have realized it right away on his own. Mr. Ridder’s body had been eaten away by insects and whatever other creatures had gotten to him first, and his form was so bloated, discolored, and partly liquified that his features were barely recognizable. Oliver would have to confirm it, but Felipe guessed Ridder’s body had been left in water at some point. He had smelled that smell enough times when they fished bodies out of the Hudson or harbor to recognize it.
“Felipe, can you help Gwen get out?”
Hopping over the writhing mass of insects, Felipe went the long way to the altar around the other corpses. On the stone table, Gwen scooted to the edge and pulled her makeshift mask tighter against the swarm of flies and mosquitos. Oliver swatted away a beetle that flew too close to her and crawled between her and Ridder’s corpse as a buffer.
“Bride or back?” Felipe offered.
“Bride.” Half falling into Felipe’s arms, Gwen clung to his neck ashe readjusted his grip. “Not a word of this when we get back to the society.”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
Holding Gwen tightly, Felipe skirted the edge of the swarm as he made for the door. Bugs bounced off his face and tangled in his hair. He swore as something bit his leg. It instantly stung and itched, but he couldn’t do anything about it now. Mr. Allen held the door open as Felipe carried Gwen outside and placed her onto the grass. Smoothing out her navy dress, she shook out the fabric that had been around her face and frantically batted at her hair. Felipe staggered to the grave Mr. Allen had been sitting on to scratch at his calf. When he pulled up his trouser leg, he found an angry welt already forming.
“Ithadto be bugs,” Gwen grumbled. “Do you see any on me?”
As she turned in a slow circle, Felipe flicked away an errant maggot and brushed a beetle shell from her hair. He was about to return to Oliver with the Kodak when Mr. Allen pointed toward the cemetery gate.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we have company.”
Chapter Ten
The Living
Oliver watched Felipe carry Gwen outside through a tornado of insects and let out a weary sigh. He had spotted some maggots and evidence of creatures nibbling on their bodies while inspecting the others but nothing like this. Still, he would take bugs over bowel explosions any day. Picking up the shroud, Oliver waved it over the body to chase the flying insects toward the open windows.Thank god I left him for last, Oliver thought as the pests dissipated enough that he could look at Mr. Ridder more closely. His body was in abysmal shape: distended with water, bloated with gas, and rapidly decomposing. Bugs of the wiggly variety still burrowed deep into his skin and skittered around the perimeter of his corpse as if waiting for Oliver to finally leave. Unlike the others who were strangely clean, Mr. Ridder appeared covered in mud. It clung to his ragged clothes and the cracks of his hands where the skin hadn’t sloughed off.
At the sound of a new voice outside, Oliver raised his head but couldn’t see who it was. Whoever it was, they were unlikely to botherhim once they caught wind of the smell. Examining the dead man’s hands, Oliver noted there were cuts on the back of them along with a gash on his side, though he couldn’t be sure if they were from his body dragging along the rocky bottom of a river or creek or signs of a struggle. Poking the dead man’s head to the side with his tongs, Oliver found the back of his head had been smashed in. Oliver begrudgingly got down on all fours to see the wound better, but the remaining insects paid him little mind. The interior of the wound was mud free, which meant it was made postmortem, probably during his stroll through Aldorhaven.
Sitting back on his heels, Oliver wished they been the first team of investigators to come. Then, he might have been able to do a more thorough autopsy and maybe even determined a rough time of death, but with how decomposed Mr. Ridder was, that was nearly impossible, especially with water hastening the process. The most he could tell for certain without his full laboratory or microscope at his disposal was that he didn’t appear to have any ligature marks or wounds around his neck or any obvious bullet holes, though even that could have been obscured by being nibbled on. There was still one thing he needed to check.
Covering Mr. Ridder’s body and stepping back, Oliver drew in a long, centering breath and let his powers rise to the surface. Normally, he would have needed Felipe at his side to do a proper reanimation, but there was no point in going that far when they were all so far gone. Once decomposition fully set in, getting coherent answers out of a dead person was nearly impossible. All he needed was to see if another necromancer had left their magic behind. Closing his eyes, Oliver let his powers trail toward what was left of Mr. Ridder. Oliver gently coaxed the bacteria left behind that had always called Horace Ridder home, the muscles that once reached and caressed, the soul of the man who had once existed, and somewhere, deep, deep in his body a dim flame blinked to life. Oliver leaned into its meager warmth. What was left felt similar to what Oliver used to reanimate and interview the dead, but there wasn’t enough for him to do a reanimation, though hecouldn’t tell if decomposition or necromancy had stolen the rest of it.
There was also something else. Oliver could sense it on the periphery like the brush of an unseen cobweb or the airy caress of static. While he had never felt the magic another necromancer left behind, this felt different. It was more like what he sensed from theClausum Librumor the island it produced than a discrete use of magic. Oliver let his powers expand ever so slightly against it. It vaguely reminded him of the tether, but instead of a single, strong braided cord or vine, this was more diffuse and web-like, like a million tiny, shadowy roots growing through Mr. Ridder’s being. Frowning, Oliver cautiously reached for the net of magic when the shadow stirred. Quick as a cat, it leapt toward Oliver’s magic.
Yanking his powers back with a gasp, Oliver slammed that door shut in his mind. He stumbled into the pew behind him, clutching his hand to his heart. His pulse thundered and his lungs strained against his ribs as Oliver looked around the darkened church for— He wasn’t sure what, but there had been something inside the dead man, something that felt sentient. Oliver shook out his hands as if he could wipe away the feeling of whatever still lurked in Mr. Ridder’s body before cautiously reaching for the weight of the tether. He found it, and only it, sitting solidly beneath his heart. Relief loosened his breath knowing that he hadn’t contaminated Felipe with whatever he had touched.
Oliver straightened and stared at the five bodies lying before the altar. Although they hadn’t moved or changed, he didn’t want to be alone with them a moment more. It was foolish. He hadn’t been afraid of the dead since his first medical school classes, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Mr. Ridder might suddenly rise and go for his throat should he linger too long. Whilehecouldn’t revive the dead more than once, he wasn’t certain that was the case with whoever woke them. Holding his breath, Oliver whipped off his gloves, threw his autopsy notebook into his gladstone, and headed for the door as fast as his legs could carry him.
He kept his gaze on Felipe’s form outside the church doors as hehurried up the aisle, but when Oliver reached the last pew, he froze. Behind him, one of the shrouds fluttered and the wooden boards creaked. Without looking back, Oliver reached the cemetery grounds in two strides, grabbed the iron handles, and pulled the church doors shut behind him. Gwen could close the windows from the outside. None of them would be going back into the church if he could help it. Not until he knew what they were dealing with.
***
Felipe followed Mr. Allen’s gaze to find a white man in a fine frock coat and a silk top hat storming across the cemetery lawn straight toward them. The man’s bushy brows were drawn low over his deep-set eyes as he murmured under his breath. Despite being at least as old as Felipe’s father, if not older, the man moved quickly, and his sturdy build gave the impression of once having a powerful frame. As he grew closer, Mr. Allen squared his shoulders and gave him a look that could curdle milk. Felipe debated going to alert Oliver, but he didn’t like the way the man glared at Gwen. Stepping in front of her, Felipe stood at Mr. Allen’s side and let the other man come to them. Oliver would want him to stay put, just in case. By the time the man crested the hill and reached the innkeeper, his face was red and his grey mustache and goatee trembled with bottled rage.
“What in the devil do you think you’re doing? No one is allowed to go in there without my say-so,” the man yelled far too close to Mr. Allen’s face. “Who are these people?”
“We are from the New York Paranormal Society.” When the man’s flinty gaze swung toward Felipe, he whipped out his badge and the official writ of jurisdiction from the New Jersey Branch. “We’re here to investigate the abnormal activity regarding your town’s dead.”
With a sneer, he batted the paper away and turned back to the innkeeper as if Felipe and Gwen weren’t even there. “I told you to keepout of this, Lewis.I’mthe mayor of Aldorhaven, not you. You have no right—”
“I have every right to call in the Paranormal Society whenyouwon’t do what’s best for the town. Admitting something is going on that you can’t explain isn’t going to ruin your reelection campaign, Luther. It isn’t as if anyone even runs against you.”
“We don’t need outsiders poking around.” Raking his pale green gaze over Felipe and Gwen, the mayor gave them a sneer and a dismissive wave. “Inspector, please take your helper and your belongings and go back to New York. We have no need for you, just as we had no need for the other investigators.”
“With all due respect, Mayor Stills,” Felipe began calmly, “you’ve had one murder, at least one suspicious death, and several assaults all within a short period of time on your watch. That is not something we can ignore now that we have been made aware of it, and if you force us to leave, wewillcall in the Federal Branch. We can’t bring you up on interference charges, but they can.”
Mayor Stills turned an apoplectic shade of purple, but Felipe continued, “Therefore, it would be in your best interest to let us complete our investigation. If you don’t, we will have to assume there’s a reason you don’t want us to investigate why Horace Ridder attacked your wife.”
“How dare you insinuate I had anything to do with that! I’ll have you know—”
