Holy fuck!
31
He gavea little shake of his head, as though telling me to be silent. Then he slipped by everyone, including the two oblivious firefighters, gliding through the doorway as if there were no barrier. As soon as he appeared on the other side, his form stabilized into the ordinary bookstore guy again, vintage vest and slacks, gaze cast down and sad.
Angel gave me a questioning look. Couldn’t he see Nat? I mouthed the man’s name for him, and his eyes widened in alarm. After half a heartbeat, he nodded, turning to the firefighters instead. “The magic resonance is growing in this area. The two of you might be safer going downstairs.”
One of the firefighters frowned at him, glanced back at the apartment, and back to us. “There are people in there.”
“They are dead,” Angel said. “I can’t hear their heartbeats, and my partner is a necromancer variance. He can tell they are gone.”
The other firefighter’s jaw tightened, and he nodded, then tugged his partner toward the stairs. “We’ll send the SED up.”
“What about the smoke?” the first firefighter asked.
“It’s not a fire. It’s Veil smoke,” his partner answered. “The worse it gets, the more likely the Veil is to take over this building.”
The first firefighter cursed, but they vanished down the stairway.
Angel gazed through the open door, and I snuck a glance behind him, barely able to see bodies on the floor a good twenty feet inside, down a hall, and to what had likely been the living room. The epicenter, what little I could see from the doorway, encircled an open part of the floor, charring the rug and leaving patterns of runes around it.
“It’s like across the Veil, right?” I asked Angel.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
Against the far wall, what I thought might be the kitchen, a man’s body lay slumped in uniform. A cop.
His face was frozen in a scream, skin mottled as if he’d died a week ago instead of in the blast. Impossible if he had anything to do with the explosion.
Inside the apartment, Nat surveyed the scene. He knelt beside the woman, her child across the way, both arranged in the charred circle. His gaze flicked up to meet mine, sadness in his eyes. He pulled something from the woman, and then the child—not physical items, but threads.
I blinked as they solidified. The ghost of the woman took the child into her arms. But while Nat stood beside them, holding out his hand, the woman met a barrier. The edge of the charred rune circle stopped her from leaving. That couldn’t be good.
“What do you see?” Angel asked.
“You can’t see Nat or the ghosts?”
“No.”
“Did you know Nat was some sort of Reaper?”
“Yes,” Angel said. “What’s he doing?”
“Nat pulled the threads, freed them from their bodies, but the runes have them trapped.” Could I break that rune? We’d smudged the circle last time. But that had decimated the bodies and with them any evidence. We also couldn’t get close to the sigils due to the barrier over the door.
The expanding line of purple spread across the top of the opening, as if the pulled threads tore reality itself. I pushed Angel back a step. “The tear is growing.”
He tugged me away from the door, and a few seconds later, Nat appeared at the barrier, gaze on me, but as he passed through to the mortal side, he became the dark-robed skeleton rather than the pretty bookstore owner.
“I can’t reach the sigils to break them,” I said and waved at the doorway, which was quickly losing ground to the widening Veil tear. “Threads are pulling the Veil opening wider.”
“You see threads on a Veil tear?” Angel asked.
“Yeah. I was hoping Nat had an idea how to fix it.”
But the Reaper remained still and silent, waiting. Well, that wasn’t helpful. I held out the grimoire. “Is there something in here to fix this?”
A tiny shake of his head.
