Page 8 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

“I don’t see active spellwork on her,” Nish said quietly, still twisting her ring. “Her aura isn’t flaring.”

Lucinda snapped her gaze to Nishi as if she didn’t appreciate being contradicted.

Carnell chuckled, low and lazy. “That is comforting, isn’t it, Lucinda?”

Lucinda glared. “This is not a joke.”

“I rarely joke,” Carnell said, and the lie was so obvious it almost made me dizzy.

I forced myself to keep going, because if I stopped talking, Lucinda would fill the silence with blame.

“I didn’t sense the casting,” I said. “And that bothers me. It should have left residue. It should have felt like something.”

Caton’s eyes narrowed. “So you missed it.”

“I was asleep,” I snapped, irritation cracking through. “And I took a tincture because I haven’t been sleeping lately. It dulled my senses. If you want to criticize my insomnia schedule, get in line.”

Lucinda’s mouth tightened. “Then what good are you?”

The words landed hard.

Before I could respond, Faith stepped forward, voice flat and dangerous. “Careful, Lucinda. You called her here.”

Lucinda’s gaze flicked to Faith, and for a moment she looked like she wanted to sneer harder, but something in Faith’s expression stopped her.

Hunter rumbled, “Enough. If it’s necromancy, we need the source.”

All eyes went back to me.

I hated that. I hated being the point on the map everyone stared at when things got ugly.

I lifted my chin anyway.

“I don’t know who did it,” I said, slow and clear. “But whatever is animating those bodies doesn’t feel like normal necromancy. It feels… covered. Masked. Like someone is hiding their fingerprints.”

Lucinda’s voice cut through the room again, colder now. “And you expect us to believe you didn’t do it.”

I stared at her, pulse steadying into something dangerous.

“I expect you to believe what makes sense,” I said. “If I wanted to raise the dead, Lucinda, I wouldn’t start in the middle of town where everyone could see it. I’d start somewhere quiet. Somewhere no one would notice until it was too late.”

The silence that followed was worse than shouting.

Because I saw it in Lucinda’s eyes.

She believed it made sense.

She just didn’t like where that line of thinking led.

CHAPTER 2

Lucinda held my gaze a moment longer, like she expected me to flinch. Like she expected guilt to leak out of my pores if she stared hard enough.

I did not flinch.

Mostly because I was too tired for theatrics. Also, because if I started flinching every time Lucinda glared at me like I was a suspicious stain on her marble floor, I would develop a permanent neck twitch. Caton already had the market cornered on that.

She finally broke eye contact, then turned her head toward the rest of the room as if she had decided I was not worth the energy. That should have been a relief.