“Hey Jaz, it’s Lizzie—”
Her loud groan cut me off. “Don’t tell me you’ve found a body. Not tonight.”
“Technically, it’s more bones than body, and I have no idea if he was murdered or died naturally, but—”
“Your instincts are twitching, which likely means the former rather than the later,” she finished heavily.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Where are you?”
I gave her the directions and then added, “There’s a spell of some kind inside the van, so I’ll have to go in—”
“No,” she said firmly. “Not until we get there.”
“But—”
“Is Belle with you?”
“Well, no—”
“Then you’ve no one to take a record of events should things go ass up—and let’s be honest here, they quite often do in this sort of situation.”
“I’ve been recording everything I’ve discovered so far,” I said, “I’ve got this feeling that if I don’t go in, we’ll lose evidence of what happened in there.”
She swore. “Fine. Just be careful, and try not to disturb anything.”
“I’m not a newbie at this sort of stuff, Jaz. Not these days.”
“I know, and I’d be offering the same damn warning to Monty had he been on the other end of this call.” She drew in a breath and released it slowly, the sound vibrating with frustration. “It’ll take me twenty minutes to get out there. You want me to bring you out a coffee or hot chocolate?”
“Chocolate would be good.” I paused. “Sorry to ruin your night.”
“It’s fine. Levi will just have to finish off matters by himself. See you soon.”
She hung up on my laugh. After quickly returning to the rear of the van to make good my lie and record what I’d seen, I tugged a sleeve over my fingers then pressed them lightly against the door and murmured a quick incantation. Magic spun around the lock and, a heartbeat later, the door clicked open.
I stepped back to fully open it, but didn’t immediately enter. Instead, I carefully scanned the darkness, all senses on high alert.
The soft pulse of magic was coming from the left. I shone the light that way, spotlighting a small galley kitchen on one side and a seating area on the other. There was a closed door at the far end and, though I wasn’t entirely sure whether it led to the bathroom or something else, that’s where the spell was located.
I shifted positions and swept the light through the rest of the van. Nothing appeared out of place, and the air was free of the scent of death—which I supposed wasn’t that much of an oddity considering the state of the body and the fact it was winter.
I hit record again, then stepped into the van and slowly panned the phone, making sure I recorded absolutely everything.
Everything except the floating fragments of fear and horror that had filled this man’s last moments.
I shivered and did my best to both ignore and avoid them as I walked toward the double bed under the window. That was when I caught the faintest whiff of sweat and sex; he definitely hadn’t been masturbating. Someone had been here with him.
I slowly panned the camera down his body, then hit pause and returned to the front of the van, pressing sleeve-covered fingers against the door. Not to open it this time, but rather to gain some sense of what lay beyond. My psychic senses remained mute, but the pulse of magic was now a whole lot stronger than it had been.
There were no threads of magic on the door or the handle so, after a brief hesitation, I opened it. The room beyond was so small that there were only a few inches between the door and the wall. There was a toilet to my left and a washbasin directly in front. The pulse of magic was coming from the right.
I stepped in and closed the door. The spell sat in the base of the small shower and was a revolving, twisting mess of dark purplish threads—a color I’d not seen before and one that suggested evil even if it wasn’t radiating darkness in any way. I hit record again and softly described what I was seeing, as the orb wouldn’t show up on the video. With that done, I moved closer.
The spell’s pulsing jumped several notches, and so did my heart rate. While I’d yet to pinpoint its intent, I had a bad feeling it was something other than a protection spell.
And that meant it was far too dangerous to leave it active. I had to dismantle it if I could.
I squatted down and, through narrowed eyes, studied the thing. In many ways, spell creation was similar to weaving—each magical thread was a combination of words and energy that were spun together to make a whole. And, just like in weaving, its success often depended on the skill of the weaver.
The person behind this spell was very skilled indeed.
I shuffled closer and propped my phone against the shower’s frame so the light shone on the spell. Its magic crawled across my skin, feeling vaguely like midges that bit and stung. It was decidedly unpleasant, and I had to fight the desire to back away—which might well have been the intention.
There were, as far as I could see, eight layers within the spell. Its purpose wasn’t immediately obvious, which no doubt meant one of the layers was a concealment spell of some kind. I carefully reached out and untwined the first layer of the spell from its brethren. As I did, the charm at my neck sprang to life, its warm pulse telling me there was indeed a dark intent behind this spell, even if I couldn’t immediately see it. Tension wound through me as I deactivated the opening line; nothing untoward happened, but that didn’t ease the tension levels in any way. I repeated the process with the next four, but as each thread came free, the spell’s hum increased and the biting sensation got stronger. It felt like I’d stepped into the middle of a swarming bull ant nest, and that was the opposite of what was supposed to be happening.
It also meant that the main event spell-wise actually lay within the three remaining threads.
I dismantled another thread, leaving two. The bottom one—which was also the final line of the incantation—definitely looked “heavier” than it should have. Most closure lines were nothing more than a list of limitations and exemptions, but this definitely held a whole lot more than that.
It also wasn’t the first time I’d come across something like this.
My very first “case” in this reservation had been helping to track down a magic-capable vampire hell-bent on revenge, and the explosion spell he’d set to blow me up had a very similar feel to this.
Fear gathered, but I tried to ignore it and studied the penultimate line. It was, as far as I could see, the concealment portion of the spell and was almost too easy to deactivate.
One thread to go.
It hovered in the air, dark, heavy, and extremely unhealthy in its feel. Just like the vampire’s final spell line, this one consisted of three heavily entwined spells. One of them was certainly the limitations and closure line, but the other two felt unclean and dangerous.
The urge to leave the thing alone and get the hell out of there hit, and it was all I could do to remain in place. While Monty might not be within range to help out, he and I weren’t the only witches in the reservation now. But neither Ashworth nor his partner Eli would get here in time. This spell, whatever the hell it was, was working up to something.