Four hours later, after a good nap and five minutes of sheer panic at the plan, I parked next to Wayne.

  He hopped out of the Bronco and opened my door. “Are you sure you’re up to this? Don’t you need more magic?”

  “Not for this part.” That was as much truth as I was willing to give him. So much of this plan hinged on if this and then that. None of which was guaranteed. Raising the fey was as close to a sure thing, since I’d basically raised it before.

  He shook his head and backed up.

  Two small plastic bags and a folding knife sat on the back seat. The knife clipped to the pocket of my pants. The bag with a single giant salt crystal went in the pocket next to it. The other bag, filled with thick flakes of salt, went in my other pocket. Out of habit, I patted my hip sheath. Yup, my wand was still there.

  “Ready.” My badge was already in place, and my keys fit nicely in a back pocket. If things went wrong, which given how much fun Narzel had been having with my life lately was probable, I didn’t need a purse to get in the way.

  Wayne fell into step next to me. “Nash is expecting us. I told him I have questions about the scenes I haven’t been to, and you are going to explain the magical implications.”

  He went through the plan like we hadn’t talked about it ten times now, but I let him because I knew the real reason for the repetition. He was nervous. That made two of us.

  “I’ll be quick.” So far, raising the dead hadn’t taken much time, but that could change.

  Nash stepped out of the front door and waved.

  Beside me, the tension slid from Wayne’s shoulders, and he adopted an easy grin. If I hadn’t seen the transition, I’d never have known how tense he’d been a moment ago.

  Today, Nash was in his usual work attire, and with the exception of the four braids pulling his hair into a high ponytail, he looked nothing like the man who’d showed up for drinks at Walking Rug. He smiled at me, and it had a gleam that hadn’t been there on Tuesday. “Howdy, partner.”

  Chuckling and shaking my head, I said, “Nashville werebears don’t strike me as the type to use that phrase.”

  “My mistake.” he bowed his head slightly. His smile faded. “The two of you got stuck working through the weekend too? My condolences. Come on in.” He held the door open for us.

  On the way back to autopsy, Wayne kept up casual conversation about the change in lead officer. Agent Mitchell would be fine, but she needed more time to recover from working in daylight and going without sleep. Daytime wasn’t easy on dark elves.

  Guilt crept over me that I hadn’t visited her, and I promised myself I’d see her as soon as I had twelve hours off work when I wasn’t sleeping. With any luck, that would be tomorrow. Though if this week had taught me anything, it was that I should know better than to rely on luck.

  My faith, or lack thereof, in luck aside, the lab coat Nash insisted I wear before seeing the fey blocked access to my pockets. I’d forgotten about all the personal protective gear that was required down here in the morgue.

  When Nash’s back was turned, Wayne raised an eyebrow at me as he tugged on his lab coat. I shrugged and went back to putting on the gloves. I’d have to roll with it.

  Nash showed Wayne the werewolf’s remains first. I did my best not to look. They’d been bad before, and time didn’t help. Besides, a quick glance at the crushed face reaffirmed my memory that dead or undead, talking was out of the question for this poor person.

  From there, Nash went over to the table with the fey. He went through the wounds one by one, during which I developed a vivid mental image of the amount and type of damage the werewolf had done before the fey had bled to death. On the plus side, the face and neck were relatively untouched.

  “This,” Nash pointed to the fey’s side above his hip, “was where we isolated two separate blood samples, one from the deceased and the other from the werewolf we now identify as CJ.”

  “Could I see those and the process for separating them?” Wayne asked.

  Nash hesitated. “I still have several injuries to detail.”

  “And those would have more meaning to me if I understood the blood evidence the way you do. My area of expertise is ballistics.” His smile managed to be self-deprecating and charming.

  “Well, I could.” Nash’s eyes darted between Wayne and me. “Pine, would you like to join us?”

  “If you don’t mind, I still need to make sense of magical traces. Could I stay here? It’s easier to visualize when looking at the body.” That last part was a lie, and hopefully Nash couldn’t hear it in my voice.

  “Well.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Sure. We’ll be in the next room if you need us.”

  “Thanks.”

  Nash motioned for Harris to follow him. “What do you know about typing blood?”

  Wayne’s shoulder bumped Nash’s as they walked to the door. For as much space as Wayne seemed to take up, Nash was actually the taller of the two. “I recall something about different protein markers.”

  Closing my eyes, I relaxed my hold on my necromancy. Rather than flow through me, it rushed out, like a river bursting through a dam. It trembled along my skin, and it took every bit of my will to haul it back inside where it belonged. Standing by the fey and its unseeing eyes, I had the feeling that if I was even the slightest bit less disciplined, it would’ve filled the room with no regard for the consequences.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  A thick cord of necromancy gripped tightly in a metaphysical hand, my wand in my real hand pointed at the fey, and I was ready. “Eair Deyr.” It hurt to push the words past the lump in my throat.

  Icy necromancy shoved its way out of me and stampeded into the fey. The body twitched as cold power poured in.

  Not daring to breathe, I watched, unsure if I hoped this worked. If it failed, perhaps it had all been some terrible nightmare, and I’d wake up to find I’d been corrupted with the blood magic at the first scene and nothing else had been real.

  The fey sat up, mouth open, ribs expanding as if regaining the breath it had lost during death. The filmed over eyes turned ice blue and twitched in the now open orbital sockets. “Where am I?”

  “Shhh!” I took my eyes off the fey long enough to check the door. If they’d heard, Wayne was delaying Nash. “You have to be quiet.”

  That second was all it took for the fey to fling the sheet to the side and swing its legs over the side of the table. It gasped and clasped a hand over the grievous wound in its thigh. “I need a doctor!” it rasped, low enough to count for quiet but with an edge of panic that would carry.

  Oh, no. “A doctor can’t help you.”

  The fey jerked its head up to look at me. “Are you saying I’m going to die?” He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He snapped it shut, blinking rapidly before saying, “Why can’t I scream?”

  “Um.” Telling him I’d said he had to be quiet and that my order had made it impossible for him to scream didn’t seem like the best idea. Neither did informing him he was dead. Call me crazy, but I doubted he’d take the news well.

  He looked away from me long enough to take in the room. “Why am I in a morgue?”

  The knot in my stomach was the knowledge that I was well out of my depth. He hadn’t risen like Jameson, aware of the situation and ready to help, or remembered when he whispered to me about spells.

  He started to get off the table. Given the state of his body, that was unlikely to end well, especially since he needed to be back where he’d started when Nash returned.

  “Stop.”

  He froze.

  I let out a sigh of relief. At least that much was working. “Lay down as you were.”

  “No, I want to go to the doctor.” His body started moving into position. “Why is this happening to me?” A squeak joined the rasp of his voice.

  Murmurs reached me through the door. Narzel’s interfering bones. The fey had to be dead again before Nash came back.

  Wrapping necromancy around my voice, I tried again. “Tell me what charm, spell, or other type of magic you used on the werewolf.”

  “I didn’t… a charm, one that was destroyed in the creation of the attached spell.” His eyes widened. “Why am I telling you this?”

  “Because you have to. Now, tell me the rest.” Right then, when I forced a scared undead man to tell me his secrets, I felt a tarnish creep over my soul.

  “Do not mix. How was I to know he’d already activated a charm?” His arm shook as he tried to lift it off the table, but I’d raised him, and he couldn’t disobey my command.

  “Tell me about the spell you used.”

  “Drop of blood. Command him to obey. Cross not with other magics, or mayhem will you make.” If his eyes hadn’t been clouded with death, they would’ve been unfocused.

  “A compulsion? But those take power. How was it powered?” The voices in the other room were getting louder.

  “A drop of blood to tie into his energy. To end the spell, so mote it be.” The fey squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t know.”

  A compulsion that fed off the werewolf’s energy would explain a lot. “Did you do any other spells?”

  “Tried to make him bleed, but it went wrong.” His voice trailed off, but his lips continued to move.

  I fumbled with the knife, not used to handling it while wearing gloves, and flicked it open. He flinched. Not sure how to comfort a confused undead, I tugged the hunk of salt out of my pocket.

  The door swung open. “A four-minute mile? I’ve never heard of a human matching an elf’s speed.” The sound of a smile wove its way through Nash’s voice. “Care to put action behind those words?”

  Wayne chuckled, and his voice lowered. “I run every morning. You’re welcome to join—”

  “Pine? What in Syed’s name is going on?”

  The earth wasn’t merciful enough to open up the ground and have it swallow me. Holding on to my blank police face, I turned around.

  “Help! She has a knife, and I’m afraid of what she’s going to do to me.” The fey couldn’t yell, but that didn’t stop him from making an annoying amount of noise.

  I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, struggling against my command to stay on the table. A claim of innocence wasn’t going to be believed. “Deyr.”

  The fey relaxed against the table, as dead as he’d been before I’d gone all necromancer on him.

  Nash’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

  Wayne snorted.

  While they stared at me, I folded the knife and returned both it and the salt to my pocket. Nash managed to close his mouth.

  “I take it, it didn’t go as planned?” Wayne broke the silence.

  Nash turned to him, brows pulling together.

  “No.” I didn’t elaborate. What could I say that would make the situation better?

  Nash’s fingers dug into Wayne’s arm. “You knew about this?”

  Lips pressed in a flat line, Wayne nodded.

  He released Wayne, giving him a shove in the process, and crossed the room. In one motion Nash snatched the sheet off the floor and deposited it in bin labeled “Dirty.” Ignoring us, he examined the fey.

  While he worked, I shuffled back to Wayne. It occurred to me we hadn’t come up with a plan for what to do if we got caught and no one screamed “Kill the necromancer!” Nothing came to mind. Leaving the fey undead and talking hadn’t been an option, but now Nash had seen me practicing necromancy. Like Wayne, he could tell the clan what I was.

  Earth protect me, or this case would be the death of me.

  Satisfied I hadn’t been hacking little or big pieces out of the fey, Nash covered him with a fresh sheet. Standing between the bodies and us, he folded his arm over his chest. “What was going on?”

  Not even to save my life could I think of what to say.

  Wayne took a half-step forward, putting himself slightly in front of me. “I asked Kelsey to do additional magical research.”

  Nash arched an eyebrow. “The body was talking.”

  “The spell had the side-effect of seemingly real illusions.”

  Only years of keeping a straight face while hearing outlandish stories on the job kept me from rolling my eyes.

  “Don’t insult me with a lie that pathetic.” Nash pointed to a small camera with its damning red light. “You tell me the truth, or I review the recording for this room.”

  “On my honor,” Wayne said, pressing a hand over his heart, “no harm was done to the fey, and everything done today will be used to catch the werewolf terrorizing the town and spreading blood magic. Kelsey is no danger to you or anyone on the right side of the law.”

  “On my honor,” Nash replied as he squared his shoulders and stepped forward, his own power raising the hair on my arms, “nothing happens to a person in my morgue without my permission. You violated the trust between me and the dead. You violated my trust.”

  I moved beside Wayne. “Yes, we did.” Truth was all I had to offer, and if the earth was kind, it would be enough. “Watch the video. Then decide what to do with us. Nothing done here was done with malicious intent. The werewolf out there is harming people, and with this, I have enough information to stop him.”

  “No more bodies?”

  “Not if I can help it.” A promise I’d only be able to keep if he didn’t turn me over to the clan.

  Enough anger left Nash to soften the set of his shoulders. “Strip off the gear, and go into the hall. Don’t touch anything. Don’t leave.”

  He watched us follow orders and then turned and walked away. I hoped the keys to solving this case hadn’t come at the cost of the trust of a good man.