guys,” I said gently, and started off on the trail again, this time at a pace that allowed the dogs to walk.
I needed to push this out of my head. It’s fine, I told myself. Chip and Cody had a lot of good years left. There was no reason to freak out about—
I stumbled to a halt.
We were still a few hundred yards from the road, but I’d felt some kind of energy coming off an area to my right and maybe forty yards from the path. It was like a physical pull.
Whatever it was didn’t seem to affect the dogs, who continued on for a few seconds before they realized I’d stopped. They turned back to look at me, their wagging tails slowing as they looked at me with genial confusion, waiting for the reassurance of my voice.
But I couldn’t speak. My mind was too full of whatever was gleaming at me.
I’m not sure how else to describe it. When I’d first been discharged from the army, years ago, I could sort of feel the weapons safe I kept in the third bedroom. I was depressed and isolated, and it was as though that safe glowed in my subconscious—an easy and complete solution to all my problems.
I hadn’t felt suicidal in years, but the odd energy pulling at me from just up the trail reminded me of that gleam—or kind of how I felt when I was near Maven, the most powerful vampire I’d ever met.
But it was the middle of the day. Feeling the strange pull in broad daylight was so jarring it nearly made me dizzy. Automatically, I glanced around to see if anyone else could feel it, but the trail was still empty. My eyes went down to the dogs, but they just gazed up at me with the vacant pleasantness of Labs, their ears lifting hopefully in case we were stopping for treats.
“Sam?” I said aloud, to my dead twin sister. “Any ideas?”
I don’t know.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and dropped into my boundary magic mindset.
All witches can look at the magical spectrum in one way or another, but boundary witches can only see life forces and ghosts—and ghosts are only visible after dark. I wasn’t sure what else to do, though. Ignoring the gleam of energy didn’t really feel like an option.
My brain’s interpretation of the magical spectrum is kind of like looking at heat through thermal-imaging goggles, only with different colors: living things are blue and vampires glow red. My eyes were on Chip when I opened them, and I immediately took in the warm blue of the life essence in his chest, and a fainter blue outlining his limbs and head. Cody, when I looked over, was practically identical.
Steeling myself, I raised my eyes to the area where I’d felt the gleaming—and my breath caught. This was a faint yellow-gray outline in the shape of a human body—except unlike most humans, who always had a bright glow in their center representing their soul, this form was the same faded yellow all over.
I usually saw yellow only when someone was dying. I thought of that color as death-essence.
I blinked hard to return to my regular vision. I pulled the sling bag around on my chest and unzipped the side compartment, pulling out my M9, holding it low and close to my body. The dogs picked up on my sudden tension and began to rise, but I held up a flat palm. “Stay,” I said firmly. They sat back down, but they didn’t look happy about it, and I figured I had only a couple of minutes before they decided to follow me anyway.
I crept forward, glancing over my shoulder every minute or so to reinforce my command to the dogs. Finally, I cleared the tall grass—and found myself looking down at a human corpse.
He was probably in his seventies, dressed in a faded white T-shirt and black CU sweatpants. There was obviously no point in checking for a pulse—the man’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the blue sky, one hand out to the side, one flat on his chest. He didn’t smell, but his skin was mottled gray, and I wondered how long he’d been out here. A few hours? A day? The flies had just begun to find him, and as I watched, one landed on his open left eye.
Before I backed away, I saw a bright red medical alert bracelet. I was tempted to get close