It hurt worse when the grief of Amelia’s death broke through my denial. She wasn’t coming back. No one ever did, except me.
Lunaris pulled the covers tightly around me in a hug, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
The cemetery’s morgue smelled more like a hospital than it did of death. The exterior had the look of a giant mausoleum, the interior a wash of cold white paint and fluorescent lighting with the odd religious symbol on the wall. Kessian greeted me outside with a facsimile of his usual warmth, looking as sleepless as I felt. The coroner, Ms. Carlisle, led us down a corridor, sterile tiles clicking cleanly under her heels, her starling familiar whisking after us.
“Normally, I wouldn’t allow a family member into the room for this sort of thing. Mr. Warwick insisted I make an exception in your case, but are you sure you’re ready?”
No, but I didn’t have much choice. Without a means to draw the wraith out, I had one less avenue for investigation into my grandfather’s murder.
I didn’t like the idea of seeing his body, though. I hadn’t wanted to see it at the funeral. It wouldn’t look any better a week later.
I said, “I’m ready.”
Kessian made no comment. He’d been unusually quiet.
Ms. Carlisle pushed through a door markedMorgue #5.“All right, well. This way.”
The fluorescent lights gave the room an icy feel as I took in the rows of metal drawers in the wall—a built-in cabinet of corpses—and the singular, thin figure on a table in the center, draped under a cloth. Standing over it was Warwick.
Kessian stiffened at the sight of him. I hadn’t expected him to attend either.
“Morning, boys,” he said. “Not the brightest way to start the day, digging up an old friend, but we might as well get on with it.”
“Do you need to be here?” I’d forgotten my manners, but couldn’t bring myself to regret asking. Far as I was concerned, Warwick was still a suspect. I didn’t need him sabotaging any evidence. The fact he’d arrived before us already put me in doubt that anything we found here today would represent the truth.
Warwick’s expression folded in affront. “I know he was your grandfather, but he was my friend as well. I deserve to know what really happened to him.”
Ms. Carlisle cleared her throat, detaching a tablet from a clip under the table. “I can begin by telling you my own findings.”
She said it to reassure us that she’d made her own, unbiased report from the autopsy, but I couldn’t trust that, either. Warwick had bribed all the authorities necessary to make this happen quickly and quietly. He could do the same thing to uncover only what he wanted uncovered.
Kessian folded his arms. We were of one mind on this.
“Go ahead,” I told her. “But if it’s all right, I’d like to conduct my own investigation as well.”
Ms. Carlisle lifted her chin. “Provided you only use spells approved by the magical morticians’ board, then of course.”
I’d offended her, but that was an acceptable consequence to trusting Warwick.
She took the sheet and pulled it down to the waist.
I thought the sight of my grandfather’s corpse might set me on a downward spiral, but as I took in the sallow, gray features still clouded with makeup and preserved by embalming, I hardly recognized them enough to connect this body with the man I’d known all those years ago. I tried to pick out anything familiar, and on a surface level his face had the same shape. But none of the life was in it.
It made all the difference. I could mentally separate the two. The body from my grandfather.
“During embalming, no signs of injury were present on any part of the body. The initial cause of death was presumed to be natural causes due to his age and general health. My autopsy confirmed the cause of death to be age-related heart failure.”
“So he wasn’t murdered?” Warwick asked.
“From the physical examination, that would be my conclusion, but I used a spell to detect any magic that might have been used to mimic natural causes. I’ll perform the same for you now so you can see the results for yourself.”
She directed this statement toward Kessian and me. She’d probably have shown us the findings on that tablet if my doubt in her integrity hadn’t prompted her to show us firsthand. I doubly didn’t regret offending her. Spells to detect magic were difficult to circumvent. Warwick could have used a spell to cleanse all magical traces, but a lack of any magical residue on a witch would itself be suspicious.
Ms. Carlisle pulled the necessary tithes from drawers in a rolling cart next to her—an oak leaf, poppy seeds, and a jaybird feather. She unfurled her fingers and cast the spell, green smoke sweeping over my grandfather’s body, leaving behind various runes, mostly along the wrist of his right hand. I recognized the runes for wakefulness spells, used in place of caffeine, and for hygiene spells, used in place of shower.
All functional spells, except for the signature glowing from his chest, which was such a slew of runes I could hardly read them. They layered over one another like onion skin and seemed to shift the longer I looked at them, but then words started to jump out.
Not words. Names.
