Grave Destiny (Alex Craft, #6) - Kalayna Price Page 0,31
to not sense the whispers from the grave and know for certain. He slung the small body up, over his shoulder, and I cringed. This was totally not the proper way to handle evidence, let alone a person, but it was admittedly better than the last time we’d removed a corpse from Faerie. That time we’d walked out with a duffle bag crammed to bursting with disassembled bones.
Falin turned, heading for the pillar, Nori and Dugan following.
“Uh, are we seriously going to walk down the streets of the Magic Quarter with bodies slung over your shoulders?” I asked, not following. “We’ll have SWAT after us before we reach the parking garage.”
“I would assume the plan is to not be seen by mortals?” Dugan looked to Falin for confirmation. The other fae nodded and stepped forward, vanishing around the edge of the pillar. The other followed and I trudged behind.
I emerged into the Bloom last. A complete hush had fallen over the crowd, the only sound in the room the distant strands of fiddle music from the eternal dance, which I tried to ignore. There were fewer fae than when we’d passed through the first time, but there was still a big enough crowd that the silence was eerie. I could only imagine how it looked, the queen’s bloody hands and the Prince of Shadows and Secrets emerging from Faerie with bodies slung over their shoulders. Every eye was on us as we wove around the tables. I stared straight ahead, but I could feel the stares, the skin between my shoulder blades tightening until I was sure it would crawl off if we didn’t reach the door soon.
The sense of relief I felt once we reached the street was palpable. And bonus, less than fifteen minutes had passed in the mortal realm while we’d been inside Faerie. I couldn’t sense the glamour that covered us as we walked toward the car, but no one stared at the two fae carrying body bags, so clearly it was in place.
When we reached the garage, Nori split off from us, carrying the weapons to her own car to be taken back to FIB headquarters for processing. Since they’d obviously been planted at the scene, that likely wouldn’t turn up anything useful. But then again, old fae versus modern forensics might just work in our favor. Especially if they’d assumed that awful staging job would fool everyone.
After a brief debate, we loaded the bodies into the trunk and headed back to Tongues for the Dead. Did I want two dead bodies in my office? No. I wanted them in the morgue—where dead bodies belonged. But there would be jurisdictional red tape and official records if we took them to the city morgue. I briefly considered performing the ritual in the parking garage. I’d raised a shade for the winter court there in the past, but my office offered a permanent circle and privacy. The latter we likely could have achieved with glamour, but the former was the real tipping point. My circles weren’t terribly strong, especially circles drawn in a public place with a little wax chalk. Considering one of the bodies still contained a soul, so I’d have to evict the ghost, I wanted the strongest circle I could cast. The permanent circle carved into my office floor offered me that.
“How secure are the doors into the winter court?” I asked as we drove. “Or the shadow court, for that matter?”
Falin glanced away from the road only long enough to frown at me. “The true doors of the court are very secure. Some of the borders, though . . . They are like their equivalents in the mortal realm. We try to monitor who passes through checkpoints, but sometimes people slip through.”
“So assuming Kordon was the killer,” I said, and when Dugan began to protest in the backseat, I held up a hand. “Yes, it looks like his body was brought to the scene, but hypothetically, if it had been him, where would he have been able to slip into winter?”
“One of the private holdings, most likely. Some land that connects to something in a neutral territory.” Falin gave me a look that indicated there was something more he wanted to say but wouldn’t in present company. Most likely something about the castle I currently called home. It wasn’t common knowledge inside Faerie that I owned it, and he clearly didn’t want to discuss it in front of Dugan. After a moment he