“Yeah?” Levi grunted as he stalked toward the stairs. “We’ll see about that.”
Levi led the way back upstairs, and Spencer gestured for Caitlin and her attorney to head on up. Both had to pass by Spencer and Fatima, and he didn’t miss the way Caitlin dropped her gaze to Fatima, now visible to everyone after her attempt to guide a malevolent spirit home.
“You have a psychopomp,” she said.
Spencer smiled tightly, gesturing at the steps. “Let’s get upstairs and have a little talk about the dead.”
That little talk devolved into an argument and a slew of legal threats, which wasn’t unsurprising. Ultimately, the Cascade Coven had to give up the body. Which meant taking the coffin from the basement and transporting it to the Seattle PCB’s morgue and the medical examiner waiting there. Caitlin promised an immediate lawsuit, to which Levi laughed in her face.
“Your coven worships ghosts, and I got possessed on your property. The courts aren’t going to look too kindly on that. But sure, sue away,” Levi told her.
“Rest assured, we shall. Is your search finished?” her attorney asked in an acidic voice.
“No, but even when we’re done, the SOA will have questions.”
“Then you can serve a subpoena.”
Despite the antagonism between the SOA and the Cascade Coven, they’d gotten more out of the search than Spencer thought they would. Sure, the coffin was outside the parameters of the search warrant, but a body being worshipped in a residential neighborhood and an active poltergeist would be difficult to overlook as inadmissible in court. The dead had always been handled differently, and the law carved out exceptions for society’s safety in every corner of the legal world. The Cascade Coven could demand their ancestor’s bones back all they wanted, but the body would have to go into a cemetery and be bound to the earth by a government mage.
He didn’t think Caitlin would appreciate the effort.
Caitlin and her people retreated to the living room, watched over by a couple of junior agents tasked with babysitting duty. Caitlin was holding it together, but the way she held herself spoke of her being one breath away from breaking apart the second everyone left the premises. Spencer had a feeling she hadn’t expected to wake up that morning and learn she’d lost a lover.
Spencer would’ve felt sorry for her if she wasn’t perpetuating possession and taking away people’s free will, so he got back to work overseeing the search. It took a few hours for the agents to catalogue what they found, though the Ouroboros Mirror didn’t show up in their search. The photograph of the dead sorceress went into an evidence bag, along with any other picture depicting her.
Spencer was the one responsible for all the souls on-site, so the body in the basement couldn’t leave until the search was finished, as he was the one Maricela wanted escorting it to the morgue. Wherever the poltergeist had fled to, it hadn’t found a home in any SOA agent prowling the property. Whether or not it’d found one in a coven member remained to be seen. Maricela was already working on their legal options to interview the coven members, minus one very dead sorceress.
Spencer checked everyone’s souls when they left the grounds as the search wound down, making sure every agent was in the clear. The street had been cordoned off except for people who could prove residency of the nearby houses. Even then, they were escorted to their homes by SOA special agents. The area in front of the home was crowded with SOA vehicles and the lone ME van that had been called in.
He met the medical examiner on the front porch, watching as she hurried through the morning rain that had started sometime while he’d been indoors. She was an older woman, in her late forties or early fifties, with ash-blonde hair tied back in a neat bun. She didn’t hesitate to shake Spencer’s hand when he offered it, getting a quick read on her oh-so-mundane soul while he was at it.
“Erica Sumner, with the ME’s office. Heard we have an old body to haul in?” she said.
“Yeah, in a coffin,” Spencer said.
“We aren’t a funeral home.”
“I’d send the body to one if we didn’t have ghosts and demons to worry about. The morgue will have better wards than a funeral home, which is why the SOA called you in.”
Erica made a face. “Sounds thrilling.”
“Just trying to take all the precautions we can. If your van is ready, we can bring it out to you.”
“I’m not a magic user, and neither is my driver. Do you have an agent who will ride with us?”
“That’d be me.”
“Then let’s haul the body out.”
Spencer and Levi, along with four other agents, returned to the cold basement and the coffin there. He double-checked to ensure no spells would be triggered by its removal, keeping a mageglobe burning just in case. Hauling the coffin off the marble plinth took all six of them, and everyone watched where they stepped on the way out, making sure not to touch any of the spellwork lines. They carried the coffin through the home and outside, bringing it to the van as quickly as they could beneath the rain that had started up and distant cameras. They shoved the coffin into the back of the transport van, secured it with straps, and closed the doors.
“I need to clear the scene first. Shouldn’t be too much longer,” Spencer said.
Erica swiped a hand over her hair, flicking water off her fingers. “I’ll be in the van.”
Spencer waved her off and would’ve headed back into the house to officially close the search and give Caitlin full access again when a shout reached his ears. “Spencer!”
He turned his head, squinting through the rain at where Wade stood across the street at the end of the driveway to William’s house. He waved at Spencer, clearly ignoring the agent that gestured for him to get back inside.
