I couldn’t see anything up there worth staring at. It was overcast, dense gray clouds. Not even the pretty kind.

  “Miss? Are you alright? Are you hurt?” Poppy asked.

  No answer. I tried not to shift around too much so I didn’t look impatient, but really, I could have told Poppy what the response was going to be.

  Poppy bit her lower lip, worrying the skin there. “Miss, it isn’t safe to lay out here on the road. It’s dark, and you could get hurt. Are you okay to get up so we can get you off the road?”

  Again, there wasn’t a response, but from the lax way the woman was sprawled out, the idea of being hurt didn’t seem to be causing her much concern. Poppy glanced up at me, her face twisted up in concern, but I didn’t know why she was looking to me. She was the expert in people, not me. That was why I’d called her over in the first place.

  Poppy squared her shoulders with new determination. “My friend and I are going to help you over to the sidewalk, okay? It isn’t far, and we’ll help you get there, but we need to get you to a safer place. You just have to let us know if anything hurts, okay? Do you mind if we get you up?”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to move her? Isn’t that what all those first aid people say?”

  Poppy looked up at me and shrugged. “As far as I can tell, I don’t think she’s hurt but she could be if she gets hit by a car.”

  “Okay, good point.”

  For the first time, the woman responded, if you could call it that. She did an odd, lopsided wriggle, and it took me a moment to realize she was shrugging. Poppy gave me an expectant look, and I realized that she’d meant for me to help her haul the stranger off the pavement with her. I winced, thinking about the fact that I was wearing heels and my favorite cashmere sweater that felt like I was dressed in a downy soft cloud. I just hoped the woman didn’t puke or drool on me, because so help me, it would be my very last act as a good samaritan.

  The woman didn’t fight us when we peeled her up and off the road, but she didn’t exactly go out of her way to help, either. As Poppy started trying to leverage the woman up, it became pretty clear that the woman was apathetic about where she ended up, and it felt more like she was allowing herself to be moved in hopes that we might leave her alone rather than with any sense of self preservation.

  After watching Poppy grunt and shift around for better leverage, I heaved an extremely put upon sigh and moved to help. The instant I grabbed the woman’s arm, I almost dropped her.

  What I hadn’t been able to sense from looking at her, became extremely apparent at the first contact between us. She was encased in horrible, clinging bits of dark magic. Whatever this spell was, it stuck to her in sticky strands, like spider webs, completely encasing her body. No wonder she didn’t care about anything, no wonder she wasn’t worried about her own safety. The magic was horrific, it must have felt smothering, like she was slowly having the life choked out of her and never knowing why.

  Poppy caught sight of my face, at the horror I didn’t even think about hiding. Her eyes went wide. “What, what is it?”

  I could barely think around the waves of malevolence rolling off the poor woman. I didn’t want to touch her. I wanted to drop her, to get as far away from her as it was possible to be. I couldn’t even comprehend how it would feel to be on the inside of that mess. Bile burned at the back of my throat, the sour edge coating my tongue, and I absolutely refused to be the one to throw up, so I grit my teeth against it and focused on hauling the woman over to the side of the road, because the faster I got her sitting down, the faster I could let go of her.

  Poppy was looking more and more alarmed though, so I managed to squeeze a few words out through my teeth without mortifying myself. “Dark magic. She’s covered in it.”

  Poppy, thankfully, took the hint and helped me shuffle faster.

  I couldn’t take my hands back fast enough, and I only just managed to resist scrubbing my palms against the legs of my pants because I knew it wouldn’t actually help. The strands tried to cling to me, and I summoned a bit of magic into my hands to burn it away.

  The magic was awful. The more I looked her over, the worse I realized it was. The magic wasn’t just engulfing the woman, it was doing something to her emotions. I hated the thought of touching her again, but I needed to know what was going on, mostly because Taliyah might freeze my butt if I let the opportunity slide because it was well, simply put: gross.

  Poppy knew enough about magic to not bother me when I lifted the woman’s hand again. I shuddered at the contact, as the stinging little barbs sank into me, trying to creep up my arm like a crude oil spill.

  As I teased the strands apart, feeling them with my magic, I realized they were enhancing whatever the woman felt. Wait, no, that wasn’t right. Not everything she felt, only the negative emotions. Anger, pain, fear, they all got the megaphone treatment. But the one the spell seemed to have latched onto like an engorged tick, was despair.

  Goddess, no wonder she’d just laid down in the road and given up. The feeling I was getting was like being sucked under quicksand. So deep in that you couldn’t even hope for a way out. I was shocked she could even function as much as she could. I didn’t know if this was a curse, or a haunting, or if she’d just brushed up against the wrong thing, but if it was anything like what had happened to the other victims, it was no wonder they’d just dropped dead on the spot.

  I tried to be delicate, I really did. I feathered my magic through the gaps in whatever curse this was, prying it loose strand by strand. I was trying for a surgeon’s touch, instead of going at it like someone with a weed whacker. The magic fought me, writhing, unwilling to give up its prey.

  My temper frayed. Who would have done something like this? Who had snared this woman, and left her to suffer, a slow, painful decline, while she didn’t even understand what was happening to her? The anger fed my magic, strands of bloody light snaking down my arms, burning away the miasma of despair where it clung. The curse’s grip loosened, losing strength, and I threw myself into the fight with a mix of stubbornness and spite.

  And it was working. With every new clump of clinging, toxic magic I cleared away, the woman became more lucid. She blinked, looking around with more awareness, and understanding slowly crept across her face, followed quickly by shock and horror.

  When the last few desperate pieces went up in a blaze of scarlet light, the woman stared at the spot on the road where she’d been lying, at the two cars blocking the space in, and she started to shake.

  “Oh my... what happened? Why would I… Oh my God.”

  Poppy gave the woman’s shoulder a squeeze, and whispered a quick murmur of comfort, and then she stepped away to call for an ambulance.

  It wasn’t a bad idea, after all. Sometimes curses, dark magic in general, could harm the immune system. And that nasty piece of work had depressed the woman’s body. She was probably going to be drained and exhausted for a few days, barely able to sit up. Even as it was, she needed me to prop her up, keeping her upright. The curse had really taken it out of her.

  Drained.

  That was the word Maverick had said, talking about the man who’d died in the street. Had this been what happened to him? Had he been cursed too? Only the curse had been on him longer or maybe it had come on faster? I was pretty sure the two incidents were related. And then I had the horrible thought that maybe the man, like the woman, hadn’t been dead, but more comatose. And no one around him had known what to do to help him?

  Horrible. I shook my head, not wanting to think about it.

  I jumped when the woman latched onto my hand with a desperate grip. Her eyes were wide, haunted, and I saw that she’d also grabbed onto Poppy, who was patting her shoulder.

  “Thank you for helping me. I don’t know why I did that. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.”

  I had no idea what to say to her, but shaking her grip off seemed a little callous, even for me. Fortunately, I’d called in an expert.

  “It’s okay,” Poppy said, in that soothing voice people usually used for children and small frightened animals. “We were happy to help. We’re just glad you’re okay. I called an ambulance. They’ll be here soon, just so you can get checked out and make sure everything is alright.”

  Whatever mother magic Poppy was weaving, it was working. The woman was relaxing by inches, backing away from the edge of what had looked like a panic attack waiting to happen. I didn’t have to do anything but stand here and tolerate being used as a handhold by a stranger, and in the grand scheme of things, it could have been a lot worse.

  At least with the attention off me, I could focus on what the spell had just happened. I had no idea what that awful, sticky magic had been, and I hoped I’d never see anything like it again. Just remembering the feel of it had my stomach rolling around in protest. I double checked, just to make sure none of those awful, sticky spider web strands weren’t still stuck to me.

  It didn’t take long for the ambulance to arrive, and after a brief chat with the paramedics, Poppy and I waited until our mystery woman was loaded up in the back and on her way to the hospital to get checked out by some mundane doctors, just in case the curse had caused any physical damage.

  After they were gone, we stood in silence for a long moment before I turned to Poppy.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry I dragged you out so late.”

  But just like I knew she would, Poppy shook her head and smiled. “I’m always happy to help. You know that.”

  The yawn seemed to take her by surprise at the end of her sentence, and she hastily threw a hand up in front of her mouth, like I might be offended by a glimpse of her molars.

  “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Go home. Get some rest. Finish your dinner or whatever the hell you were doing.”

  Poppy looked vaguely guilty, but did start drifting towards her Jeep. “What are you going to do?”

  A headache threatened behind my left eye, and I rubbed at the socket with a knuckle, hoping I might be able to stave it off before it really got started. “I’m going to have to figure out how to explain this all to Taliyah, because something is definitely up.”

  Chapter Eight

  For someone with no criminal record, I saw far too much of the inside of the Haven Hollow Police Department.

  It had always been a well-run place, especially for a smaller town. The previous Chief of Police, Cain Morgan, had run an extremely tight ship. I hadn’t had any complaints about him, other than the fact that he knew we were lying about the supernatural side of things in Haven Hollow, and he’d developed a theory involving a cult operating behind the scenes and ruling from the shadows.

  The worst part was, he hadn’t been wrong. The Council did have a lot of sway over things regarding anything paranormal, but it wasn’t nefarious. The Council was merely intended to keep the peace, keep the secrecy, and make sure both halves of the population were safe from each other. We couldn’t violate the rules of the Hollow to tell Cain, a mundane man, exactly who his neighbors were.

  And that’s what had gotten him killed, in the end. I still felt guilty about that.

  Of course, being dead hadn’t kept Cain Morgan away from work for long. Taliyah had needed his help with some serious cases and had hired Darla at the Spook Society.

  Darla was one of the most powerful mediums I’d ever encountered. She had a sensitivity to ghosts that was unmatched, probably from spending a century as a ghost herself. Taliyah and the society had a contract for Darla to act as Cain’s channel, so the cop and the flapper had become strange roommates.

  It was still strange to see Darla swanning around the precinct sometimes, with cop jargon coming out of her mouth in her nasal, New Jersey accent. But it seemed to be working out for everyone involved, so I was staying out of it. And maybe seeing him up and around, interacting with his nephews, made me feel a little less bad about Cain Morgan dying while he was trying to protect me.

  I still didn’t like being here, though. It was all steel and glass but done in a way that seemed sterile and cold instead of sleek and modern. The chairs were uncomfortable, the air smelled like burnt coffee and body odor, and there were just too many people moving around and talking on the phone or typing. I just wanted to get in and out and get things over with.

  One of the deputies actually asked me to take a seat to wait for Chief Morgan to see me, but I wasn’t spending one more second in this place longer than I had to. I just smiled brightly at him and sailed on by, and he was too shocked to actually stop me. Audacity could open doors that no other power in the world could budge.

  Taliyah was typing away at the ancient computer at her desk. I was half surprised the thing didn’t have a floppy drive. She didn’t glance up when I came in, but she didn’t seem surprised or put out that I’d let myself in. No, by now she probably expected it.

  The chair across from her was just as uncomfortable as I remembered, sticking to the back of my thighs where my skirt didn’t cover. I had to wonder if it was some kind of socially approved method of torture. Just make someone sit in the fake leather chair of doom, with the metal bar at the front that dug into their legs, and then glare at them until the confessions started rolling out.

  Taliyah left me waiting for a few minutes, but I couldn’t find it in me to get worked up about it. She was all wrapped up in the glamour that made her still look human, like she always did when she was around people who’d known her before. But even the illusion that turned her hair gray-streaked-brown, and left lines around her mouth and the corner of her eyes, couldn’t hide the air of exhaustion following her around like the world’s worst perfume.

  Taliyah looked tired, and considering she wasn’t human, not any part of her, that took some doing. So, even though I was eager to get out of there, and Maverick would be waiting for me to start my shift at the store, I just waited quietly. The only thing that might have given away my impatience was the bouncing of my crossed foot, and Taliyah was capable of ignoring far more obvious signs than that.

  Finally, Taliyah sat back from her keyboard with a wince-worthy crack of her spine. She reached for the coffee cup at the corner of her desk and took a swig, grimacing at the taste. That didn’t stop her from taking a few more gulps of it before setting it back down, though.

  “You said you had something to report.”

  The words came out with no inflection, turning a question into a statement. It wasn’t meant as an insult, I knew that. Taliyah had enough on her plate that she didn’t have time to beat around with social niceties all the time. I could appreciate that.

  “I assume you heard about the woman taken to the hospital last night?” I waited for her to nod in confirmation before I continued. “Well, I thought you might find it interesting that I found her lying down in the middle of the road when I was driving home.”

  “Why is that interesting?”

  I shrugged. “No obvious wounds, no signs of an attack, and she was conscious, just staring up at the sky like she was in her bed or something.”

  Taliyah raised a brow at me. Glamour or real life, her eyes were the same; a pale, glacial blue. “Was she intoxicated?”

  I thought about it and shrugged. “I didn’t smell anything on her, but I didn’t ask those kinds of questions either. It was pretty obvious there was something wrong, but when I touched her to help her off the road…”

  Just the memory of that evil spell locked my throat up and wouldn’t let the words by. I shuddered, like I could still feel it brushing over my skin.

  “When you touched her?” Taliyah prodded.

  In short, terse terms, I explained what I’d learned from my magical examination of the woman. Taliyah listened attentively, taking notes while I spoke. Her face was set in the intense mask of the Chief of Police, completely focused on her task.

  I finally paused, and Taliyah got up to grab me a bottle of water from the mini fridge in the corner. The chilled water felt amazing on my throat, which was raw, like it had hurt to spit the words out. After a few sips, I twisted the cap back on and met her eyes.

  “I know you have someone who looks into these things, Fifi told me about the creepy magical coroner.”

  It was a subtle change in topic, but Taliyah stiffened slightly around her shoulders.

  “I do. Why?”

  My lips pressed into a flat line. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped. Still, a Depraysie never backed down. “I want to talk to them.”

  There was no change in Taliyah’s expression. “Why?” she repeated.

  I actually sputtered for a second, since the answer was so obvious to me. “To compare notes! I want to know what he found on the other two victims—and if they had any sign of the same curse or spell clinging to them. I don’t know if said curse would have degraded once the victim was dead, and that was why Maverick didn’t sense the same thing when he helped you examine the second man, but I can’t believe that two people in as many days found drained of life, and a third person wrapped up in a hideous siphoning spell, aren’t related.”

  Taliyah mulled that over for a moment, and I wanted to shake her a bit. I didn’t, not just because she was technically royalty, even if she hated it, but because even I refrained myself from randomly shaking people, even if I might want to.

  “He doesn’t like speaking to people, and there’s no need for you to talk to him,” she said finally.

  I glared. “Are you kidding? I’m the town’s magical expert.”

  “So?”

  “So, you don’t want my help in figuring out why people are being cursed?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said that there’s no reason for you to go and talk to my medical examiner. I prefer to limit people from bothering him. Besides.” Taliyah picked up a manila folder that had been sitting on her desk blotter. “I have his reported findings here. Everything he detected with both victims.”