I took a step back.

“What’s the matter?” Kieran said, checking the sleek little watch at his wrist. I wondered if he knew my birthday was coming up…

“The souls in there are powerful. They felt me feel them out. I’m worried about what I’ll see.”

Kieran looked behind him. Zorn, Donovan, Jack, and Boman took off walking, their phones out, headed for the tables. He turned back to me. “I’ll be right beside you. Nothing will happen to you.”

“I know they won’t hurt me, but that doesn’t make what’s about to happen any more pleasant.”

15

Kieran

Kieran followed Alexis as she hesitantly stepped into the room. She’d sensed the souls, but hadn’t been able to discern if they were spirits or people. Nor could she sense a living person’s soul without plunging her mental grip into his or her chest. She was so far behind in her magic, even the most basic things were foreign to her.

If his father got his hands on her, she’d be entirely vulnerable. Putty in his father’s experienced fingers. He could ruin armies with her on his arm. Ruin cities. Alexis had the power. His father had the drive.

Kieran forced the thought away. That was never going to happen. He’d tear down the world before he’d let his father, or anyone, mistreat her. He protected what was his, with his life, if need be.

“That smell is…unpleasant.” A look of disgust crossed Alexis’s beautiful features as she edged farther into the room.

A musty, sickly sweet sort of funk accosted his senses. Bria identified the source immediately.

“Cadavers,” she said, cutting across the medium-sized room to two rows of what looked like raised flower beds.

“Cadavers. Like…there are dead bodies in here?” Alexis weaved after her, occasionally jerking away from something unseen. “No touching,” she mumbled.

“Preserved—wait.” Bria stopped beside one of the barren flower beds, and Kieran had to admit the shape did compare to a grave. “This is legit dirt. Are these bastards fresh? Let’s have a little lookie and find out, shall we?”

“Part of your job is digging up dead people,” Alexis muttered, picking at her thumbnail. “That didn’t really register until this exact moment. And here I thought seeing spirits was…unfortunate.” She rolled her eyes. “You know I can see you. I just walked around you after the other lady cut through. Use your head.”

Kieran caught Thane’s eye and received a jerk of the head. Two tables hugged the back corner. Various items were spread out along their surfaces, much messier than the highly organized tables in the main warehouse. Whoever labored in here didn’t have a direct working relationship with Kieran’s father. Valens subscribed to the theory that a messy workspace denoted a messy mind.

“Necromancer supplies,” Thane said as Kieran reached him.

“What’s that?” Bria called.

“Necromancer supplies,” Kieran answered, picking out the few things he could identify. “Two sets of bells with scrollwork along the side, candle stubs of various colors, packets of incense, some sort of…meditation tape, I think. A cassette tape player—”

“A cassette tape player?” Bria looked up. “We’re dealing with someone old and set in their ways. Probably highly experienced. Likely a real shithead.”

“He’ll be at the top of his trade,” Kieran said, thinking of the many ways he could find out who it was.

“Why he?” Bria asked.

Thane smiled and flicked a packet of Viagra resting at the corner of the table. “Either a guy, or a woman who dates guys with performance issues.” He scratched at a couple brown rings marring the surface of the table. “He doesn’t clean, and he’s been in this work station for a while. Ten to one, Valens keeps him hidden just like he does this warehouse.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kieran said, turning away to survey the room. Barren white walls led up to an industrial ceiling, with beams and wires on full display, just like in the rest of the warehouse. Only one light of the dozen was on, casting the space in gloomy light. Shiny tile, clear of scuffs and not matching the desk, covered the whole of the floor. “Thanks to my mother, I’ve been able to glean a couple of new insights about the ways my father hides information. My father will have grouped him with this compound in his records. I’ll be able to figure out who he is.”

“Then what?” Thane asked quietly.

Kieran glanced at Alexis, her hands on her hips, staring hard at a fixed point in empty space. “We give the information to Alexis,” he replied in an undertone. “She might not be trained on most of the powerful facets of her magic, but she has excellent instincts. She’s goal orientated. Give her an end-game, and she’ll figure out the best way to get there.”

“But the end-game is freeing your mother. If this isn’t directly related…”

Kieran shook his head. “She’s got a big heart. The end-game was freeing my mother, but she can’t stand to see all of these trapped souls. I can hear it in her voice when she talks about it. In an effort to make the situation morally correct, she’ll release them all, if she can. She won’t be able to help it. And in the process, she’ll help my end-game.”

“Whatever’s going on in this warehouse is far from morally correct,” Thane murmured. “Valens has something wicked up his sleeve.”

“Yes, he does.” Kieran glanced at the door leading out into the larger portion of the warehouse. “Magically wicked. He’s prepared for war. Has been prepared for a good while, I’d guess. He’s ready to defend his territory against a hostile takeover.”

16

Alexis

“You and your derelicts aren’t supposed to be in here,” the man with the fierce gaze said, staring me down. “This is a government facility. Authorized personnel only.”

“Dude. You’re dead. You’re not supposed to be in here.” I pointed at the color-shifting wall blocking off the Line. “But they locked you in. Doesn’t that piss you off?”

The man puffed out his muscular chest. “I’m here because I want to be. I’m here for the greater good.”

“Were you this stupid in life?” I held up my hand. “I already know the answer. Clearly you didn’t grow out of the habit of blindly following authority. You’re the worst sort of soldier.”

“I’m the best soldier,” the man said, and his bushy mustache wiggled as if he were swishing his lips under it. The other hard-bodied, grim-faced men around us nodded in agreement. “Decorated on three different continents. Active duty for ten years. Retired to special forces.” He pointedly looked around.

“Retirement…as in death?” I asked incredulously. “You were so good they killed you when you hit middle age instead of letting you live out the rest of your life in peace, which you’d clearly earned?”

“We were retired to glory,” the mustachioed man said. The rest nodded.

“You gotta stop believing what people tell you.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I mean, it’s probably too late now, but I bet someone told you that mustaches looked good, right?” I put up a finger. “And maybe they do on some people. You, sir, are not one of those people.”

“How many are there?” Bria asked, still crouched by the graves masquerading as flower beds.

I counted them up really quickly, easy to do with such a small number. “Eight. All hard soldier types.”

“Magical?” she asked.

I lifted my eyebrows at Mustache. He stared back at me.

“Are you magical?” I relayed. “Honestly, I know you can hear her. Let’s move this along.”

“I don’t have to answer your questions,” Mustache said. His groupies shifted, advertising their confidence in him.

“Bria, can you make spirits answer questions?” I asked, not looking away from his defiant, annoyingly arrogant stare.

“We both can,” she answered. “You just don’t know how yet.”

I gestured at her, lifting my eyebrows at Mustache again. “So?”

Mustache’s jaw tightened and uncertainty crossed his expression for the first time. It disappeared so fast I wondered if I’d imagined it. “We are all magical.”

I relayed the info.

“And they’re all getting stuffed into fresh bodies.” Bria rose, leaving the exposed torso of a dead man in the raised grave as she crossed to Kieran and Thane. She looked over the items strewn across the surface of the tables. “How long have they been here?”

“They won’t be able to tell time like that,” I said.

“Right, right. I always forget that.” Bria shook her head. “How many times have they inhabited different bodies?”

I repeated the question.

Mustache’s brow furrowed, and uncertainty crossed his features again. He didn’t answer. A quick look around revealed he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure. I let Bria know.

“Huh,” she said. “Their brains must’ve been scrambled before they were killed. It’s a way to keep someone’s skill set but erase their short-term memory, including some of the memories that drift with them into the spirit world. I’ve seen the practice used in the field. It makes dangerous, powerful spirits easy to control, but it dumbs them down. They go from extremely skilled and great in the field to nothing more than blunt instruments who need simplistic instructions.”

“But if those instructions are to simply kill…” I said.

She shrugged, turning around. “You said they were soldiers, right?”

I nodded. “Highly decorated, apparently.”

She crossed to a chair tucked in the corner of the room and sat down with a sigh. “There are a million spirits you can call back to use as killing devices. Dumb, easy-to-manage spirits. So many. They practically wait by the gate for a chance to do what they love. But soldiers have a higher-level skill set. They have an increased functionality due to their adaptability, their ease in problem solving. You’d want them for more advanced tasks. You wouldn’t want to waste their potential by scrambling their brains.”