All eyes in the van were on me.
“The place tried to eat his soul,” Angel explained.
“The energy drain,” I said, gesturing weakly toward the building. “That ritual was like a vacuum. A magical black hole. I felt it sucking the life out of everything, including me. That’s why we tried to clear everyone out. I think getting all the living people away from it is what finally made it collapse.”
It was a gamble, describing the death magic’s sensation but applying it to the wrong event. Agent Smart gave a slow nod, smelling the visceral truth of my exhaustion.
Angel seized the opening. “He’s in no state to be exposed to that residue again. Sending him back in could trigger another collapse. Can you send in a practitioner to nullify it first? I’m worried whatever that ritual did, it’s left a wound in the area.”
“Woodward is already upstairs reviewing the scene, but I want Holt to walk it,” Hanna stated, her decision final. “Tell me if the ghosts are there.”
“And if they are, how do we ensure credibility?” Hardy demanded with his gaze fixed on Hanna. “Anything he “hears” is just his word against the silence.”
The words landed like a physical blow. I’d thought we were friends, but he was treating me like a suspect. A bitter voice in my head admitted that if our roles were reversed, I’d be circling with the same professional suspicion. It didn’t make the sting any less sharp.
“We ensure credibility by having multiple agents witness the walk-through and by getting a statement before he sets foot in there,” Hanna countered, her tone leaving no room for debate. She looked at me. “Holt? Can you stand?”
It wasn’t a question. It was an order wrapped in a challenge.
With Angel’s steadying hand under my elbow, I pushed myself to my feet, the world tilting for a dizzying second before righting itself. “I can stand.”
The short walk from the van to the building’s entrance felt like a perp walk. I could feel the weight of a dozen stares from Hardy’s conflicted gaze to the curious and wary looks of other SED agents securing the perimeter. I was the necromancer, the variable, the walking contradiction who’d been at the center of the chaos. Now, they were all waiting to see what the freak show would do next.
Angel stayed glued to my side, a silent, solid barrier against the scrutiny. As we crossed the threshold back into the dim, ozone scented hallway, the feeling only intensified. Every agent we passed seemed to pause, their conversations dying as we moved by. They weren’t just watching a colleague; they were watching the mystery itself.
Up ahead, the door to Bowman’s apartment stood open, a dark maw waiting to swallow me whole. Again. Knowing he’d been the cop to pull me over, setting me up to nearly be killed, made my gut twist.
I didn’t want to talk to him. Or look at what Cassidy had done to him. Because the reality was, this sort of ritual was Cassidy’s work. Which meant Bowman had gotten on the wrong side of a shadow demon and his cult leader. And that was the last place I’d want to be.
33
The frantic,devouring energy that had pulsed from the place just an hour before was utterly gone. Not faded, not dissipated—gone, as if it had never existed. The only scents left were the sterile tang of ozone and the coppery, cloying smell of old blood.
Bowman’s body, which had been oddly propped up against the wall before as if it were some morbid Halloween decoration, lay on a gurney, a sheet over it to mask the horror of his expression. But if there was any remaining presence of his spirit, I couldn’t see it.
Remi crouched in the center of the living room, his fingers hovering inches above the charred sigils on the floor. His usual playful energy was absent, replaced by a sharp, academic focus. As we entered, his head snapped up, his fae-bright eyes narrowing on me.
I wondered how much he could see. The ritual, sure, but could he tell that a Reaper had taken the souls of the wife and daughter elsewhere? Could he see the way the Veil had been stitched back together by my mediocre magical weaving skills? He might be a teammate now, but I wasn’t certain I could trust him not to throw me to the virtual wolves of the military brass,who would salivate at the idea of someone who could close Veil tears.
“This is like the ritual we found across the Veil,” Remi said as his gaze landed on us. “But without the clean sweep that decimated the corpses. You broke the barrier?”
“The Veil tear closed, and with it the spell snapped,” Angel offered, mostly the truth. He didn’t say how the tear closed, only that it had.
Sergeant Hanna lingered in the doorway, as did Hardy, like they all expected me to perform tricks or something.
“Anything?” Angel asked, gaze on me.
I shook my head, a fresh wave of unease washing over me. “Nothing. It’s empty. Like the remains that were drained of any trace.” And that was a problem. Bowman should have been here. A violent death, a life cut short by betrayal and dark magic—that was a recipe for a ghost, or at least a raging psychic stain. But there was no rage, no sorrow, no faint impression of a man cut down in his own home. Nor had Nat taken him. There was only a perfect, unsettling void where a ghost should have been. Bowman’s soul hadn’t just moved on. It had been erased.
“We can trace some of the sigils,” Remi said, his gaze shifting to Hanna. “But I’ll need a reference point to compare them to.”
“Like the stuff from Cassidy’s building?” I wondered. “Across the Veil?”
Remi nodded. “Exactly. Practitioners are creatures of habit. They reuse runes, develop a personal flair; it’s like comparing handwriting. If we can get the archives from that scene, I might be able to confirm if this is the same caster, or at least the same school of magic.”
“We have records, right?” I asked Hanna. Angel and I had been pulled through some weird portal, but the rest of the team had been gathering evidence. “From the rest of the team?”
A tense silence fell. Hanna’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “The archives from that scene are… incomplete,” she said, choosing her words with obvious care. “The initial sweep was handled by NHV teams. What they submitted is fragmented. I’ve requested the full evidence logs three times.”
