When I opened my eyes, Lakshmi was staring at me but had the decency to hold the questions I could see in her face.
All I could think about was Jimmy’s song from the day before—the soap box derby memory, the smile in his eyes as he’d sung it.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Mr. Bates fought well, considering that he was fighting a wraith.”
Maybe the hellhound had come for me again. “How do you know it was a wraith?”
“Wraiths leave a trace where they do mortal business. Their shadows form a print—a ghost shadow. But ghost shadows fade. So, we try to inspect the crime scene as quickly as possible. This scene, however, had been tampered with before I got here.Someone brushed the whole place clean with lantern light. There won’t be much left.”
“Why would someone do that?” I asked.
“To keep me from finding the wraith, since if I do, I’ll stop it from killing you.” She leveled a hard stare at me. “I told you there’d been wraith activity near here. This isn’t your first brush with a wraith, is it, Mr. Solomon.”
I had to come clean. “Something’s come at me three times, some kind of great hound.”
“Three times?”
I gave her the times and places. “But I wasn’t even here this time.
Why kill Jimmy?”
“I don’t know. Opportunity, maybe. I assume he was an acquaintance of yours?”
“A friend.”
To her credit, she didn’t say that maybe if I’d been honest before that, Jimmy might still be alive. She hunkered back down, looking over Jimmy’s bloody body again. His arm had been torn off, his head was attached only by a piece of esophagus, and his blood was smeared all over the linoleum floor. She checked a note on her phone. “There was an attack last night that looked a lot like this in Kingston upon Thames. Happened not long before this hound came past your apartment.”
I nodded. “Angela DuFresne. I knew her, too.”
“I’ve known wraiths to cover distance quickly,” she said, “but never that fast.”
“It’s probably wounded now.” I told her about the fight at Westminster. Lakshmi looked up and gaped. “Youfoughtthis wraith?”
“Cassius and I did, yeah, but we weren’t able to kill it.” “But you survived.”
I couldn’t tell whether she thought me brave or foolish, so I just nodded. “From what I understand, my rebirth is likely what brought it topside, and it’s going to keep after me until we put it down.”
Cassius shot a look at the door. “I should guard the alley in case it returns.” I thanked him and he slipped outside.
Then I finally knelt next to Jimmy. His body was broken at angles it shouldn’t be able to make. Blood had dried around his mouth and nose and eyes. I got out my Zippo, lit it, and held it behind his body. I didn’t know what I thought I might see, but it was becoming something that felt right to do.
His short shadow was lifeless grey, the gleaming waltz pattern gone.
But there was a scar there that I hadn’t seen before, ragged and raw. “What’s this?” I asked Lakshmi, pointing at the scar.
“It’s just what it looks like,” she said. “The wraith not only harvested some of your friend’s flesh, it took his spirit as well.”
“But why Jimmy?” I asked again.
“You said he was a friend.” Lakshmi thought a moment. “It’s possible that whatever you share in common with the wraith, you likewise shared in common with your friend.”
“We wrote a song together yesterday . . .”
Then I remembered Angela DuFresne, and our moment in the Iron Horse greenroom, as well as the wraith attack on the classical musicians in the Modern Stratum. “Maybe it’s not just hunting me,” I said. “Maybe it’s after anyone who loves to write music.”
“Maybe,” Lakshmi said.
