“Yes.” He hesitated. “Agent Pine, what happened to the courier?”

  “Jolly is recovering, if that’s what you’re asking. If you want to know why they crashed, I don’t know, but I intend to find out.”

  “So do I.”

  That made me like Major Friel. Not every officer cared.

  As soon as I got off the phone, I finished layering three more spells around the case. It shouldn’t have been going anywhere, even if someone dismantled the building to get to it.

  While I was securing the case, Wayne brought up a chair and book. He even had his lunch box on the floor next to him. Normally, I wouldn’t agree with eating in the lab, but since he had to stay with the case, it was the only option.

  “You need to go, or you’ll be late.” He settled in the chair, legs crossed at the ankles.

  “Sorry to leave you with this job.”

  He shrugged. “Not your fault. Besides, I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I wasn’t looking forward to a hike.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll keep you updated.” I checked to be sure my wand was still in my thigh sheath and then headed out.

  Personally, I was glad I didn’t have to sit there all day. Maybe it would be safer than leaving the building as far as avoiding Floyd, but guard duty was tiring even when nothing happened. Plus, if Floyd knew which car was my new car and where I was going, being in the TBI wasn’t going to be enough to protect me.

  Outside, I jogged across the parking lot to my new car. It sat in a line of identical cars: black, with sturdy tires and lots of custom police gear. It would do the job, but it lacked Fabian’s charm.

  The trip took every one of the scheduled fifty minutes thanks to traffic on the way out of town. I knew I would be late before I turned onto the gravel road in the wilderness area. As gravel roads went, this one was excellent. It was wide enough for two lanes, mostly free of holes, and packed down without being bare dirt.

  A few miles later, I spotted a parking area with a few cars. A white pickup truck splashed with mud stood out from the rest, and not because of the logo on the side. The officer leaning against the side of the truck had her gun resting comfortably on her hip, a badge on her shirt, and a hat over her strawberry-blonde hair. A few strands had escaped her bun and were enjoying the breeze.

  I parked and walked over to introduce myself. “Agent Kelsey Pine. I hear you need a witch.”

  She held out her hand. “Officer Sage Fuller. You can call me Sage.”

  Her grip was polite as I shook her hand. “Kelsey, nice to meet you.”

  “Lock up your car. It’s a few miles from here. There’s a trail I can get the truck down, but I doubt you have the clearance.” She pointed at the distance between my car and the ground.

  “Sounds good.” I locked my car and climbed into her truck. As the seat belt clicked, I realized I’d forgotten anything resembling gear. In the rush to secure the briefcase, I hadn’t prepared for this trip. At least I was wearing sturdy boots.

  Sage put the truck in gear, and we bounced down the road. “Got a call from some hunters. While they were cleaning a deer, they found some odd-looking trees. One of them got sick when they went closer, so they called me. Part of the ground looks dead.”

  “Dead? Plants, animals, or what?” There were different types of dead, each of which indicated a different issue.

  “Dead spiders and such for sure. The ground looks weird too.”

  “How so?” Weird wasn’t much of a descriptor.

  “Dead, empty. I can’t imagine anything living in it.” Her hands tightened on the steering-wheel.

  “Anything else?” A few different things could create dead-looking dirt and kill anything in the area. But spell, creature, or other, I didn’t want it roaming the woods.

  “You’ll have to see it.”

  The trail ended in a clearing just large enough for Sage to turn the truck around and point it back the way we’d come before she shut off the engine.

  Sage shouldered a bag. “I have water and bug repellent charms.”

  “No charms. I don’t want anything to interfere with what I sense.” Even if it meant being itchy.

  “Old-fashioned bug spray?”

  “Please.”

  Sage dug a small bottle out of her bag and sprayed both of us.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. If you’re ready, the trail is this way.” Sage took us to a small trail, likely used by deer and hunters.

  “Ready as I’m going to be.” I cracked open my shields, letting tendrils of my magic spread around us as we walked. They reached out about twenty feet and would giving me some warning before we stumbled into magic.

  After a few minutes, Sage asked, “I thought witches uses spell components.”

  “Mine went up in flames yesterday.” Which felt like a fitting metaphor for my life at the moment.

  “Are we walking out here for nothing, or will you be able to tell me what happened?” Sage’s voice was loud enough to have birds abandoning their perches.

  “I’m a witch with a badge and wand. Do you have any better options?” With a forced sigh, I pushed back the flash of temper. “I’ll do everything I can to figure out what caused the disturbance.”

  She glared at me before turning and continuing down the path. A moment later, she sighed loudly. “I’m sorry. When you see, you’ll understand.”

  “I’m here to help.”

  Sage moved a branch out of my way. “I hope you can. I patrol alone, and I don’t want to meet whatever did this to the earth.”

  A foul odor reached my nose. I sniffed, then sniffed again in a few feet. “Do you smell that?”

  “Rot and old death?”

  “Yes.” I slammed my shields shut as a knot of dread settled into my stomach. She hadn’t mentioned a body, and the scent of death without a corpse to cause it was never good.

  “It’s what drew me over here in the first place.” She pointed off to the side of the path. “Thirty feet that way.”

  I went ahead of her, the odor growing stronger with every step. Fifteen feet from the path, a branch of an otherwise healthy tree caught my eyes. It had turned gray and seemed to be shedding ash.

  With each step, more of the trees I could see had been drained of life. Their pine needles were gray-brown and falling to the ground as powder, their bark peeling off the trunks, shattering into dust when it hit the ground. The thick layer of leaves that should’ve covered the earth had been reduced to a fine, ash-brown powder.

  I stepped out of the trees and into a clearing. The rough circle was littered with small dead creatures. Most of them were worms and spiders, but I also spotted two birds and a squirrel.

  In the center of the clearing lay the worst of it. Two desiccated husks of what had once been bull terriers lay next to each other. Their fur had turned to a fine layer of dust over gray skin sunken in around their bones.

  “Did you know they were here?” I asked.

  “No. I saw the danger and called you in.” Sage spoke softly. “I was afraid if it was magic and got me, no one would know until this blight expanded.”

  Thanks to my car exploding, I didn’t even have large evidence bags with me, never mind the rest of the supplies I would need to determine exactly what happened here. “Do you have evidence bags? I need to take these two back, and other samples.”

  Sage handed over gloves and helped me scoot each dog into a bag. As gentle as we tried to be, their skin powdered under the slightest touch. I hoped their bones were less affected, or I would be bringing bags of dust back as evidence.

  While Sage bagged the birds and squirrel, I took samples of the gray powder. I even scraped down to the dirt, which should’ve been a rich brown. Instead, what I found was dry taupe that felt nothing like local soil.

  I wasn’t sure what to think of this place. Horrible, yes, but the cause was harder to pinpoint. If it had smelled of sweet and decay, I would’ve been sure it was a sorcerer. Even if the smell didn’t fit, an area being drained of life and filled with sacrifices fit with a sorcerer. If I’d still had my travel kit, I could test for a sorcerer.

  Wishing I didn’t have to do this, I switched my vision to see magic.

  I’d thought I would see great flares of power. Instead, the area was stripped. The ambient magic that should’ve been around? Gone. The life energy that only the most twisted drew from? Drained from the trees and earth. There wasn’t a bit of magic in this area.

  I switched my vision back and strengthened my shields.

  “Are you finished?” Sage asked.

  “Yes.”

  She held open a bag for my gloves and then offered hand sanitizer.

  The hand sanitizer did nothing to make me feel clean.

  The bag of trash joined the samples and small creatures in her backpack. She’d found deadfall that hadn’t been turned to ash and rigged up a litter so we could carry out the dogs.

  Sage watched me. “You’re quiet.”

  “We should go.” The woods around us appeared empty, but there could be a sizable difference between appearance and reality.

  “Go?” Sage shook her head. “We just got here. Aren’t you going to do magic? Wave your wand around and figure this out?”

  “We are leaving.”

  I knelt next to the litter. Nothing would entice me to discuss the problem out here. In the confines of the truck beating a hasty retreat, maybe.

  Sage lifted the front of the litter. “You’re serious.”

  “Yes.” I felt like we were being watched, though I hadn’t a clue by what. It didn’t matter how quickly or stealthily I checked around us. We were alone.

  Sage must’ve felt something too because she kept looking from side to side. About a quarter mile from the truck, the feeling finally faded.

  When we reached her vehicle, Sage didn’t waste any time securing the dogs in the back and getting us on the road. She kept checking the rear-view mirror.

  I didn’t look back. “I don’t know what caused that, but it sucked life and magic out of everything in that circle. Whatever did that is not an entity we want here, and until I figure out what it is, I can’t tell you how we get rid of it.”

  Sage swerved a little too hard to avoid a basketball-sized rock. “I’m sorry. I heard life-sucking, magic-eating creature in the woods. That sounds like an evil we should kill.”

  “I’m not hunting anything until I have more answers. Until we know what it is, we don’t know how to track it or how to kill it.” That creature wasn’t a run of the mill humanoid. It would take more than a bullet to stop it.

  “How can you be so sure it’ll be hard to kill?” A healthy dose of doubt filled her voice.

  “It took the life force from the earth. That’s more difficult than killing us, and every creature I’ve heard of having similar talents were nasty pieces of work.” I sighed. “It’s easy to think a quick spell will be the answer, but blindly depending on magic isn’t a good plan.”

  “Great. So I have an evil creature loose in my park and hungry for life?” Sage hardly slowed before turning onto the road back to the range.

  “Maybe. If you find more circles like that, then I’d say yes.” There was another option, one that did not make me feel better. “It also could’ve been the site of a ritual. In that case, the caster would be less powerful but isn’t likely to be in the forest.”

  She skidded to a stop next to my car. “You’re full of good news.”

  “Until I run some tests, it’s all theory, nothing more.”

  But I’d bet Fabian I was right. That smell... that type of death...

  Evil had come to these woods.

  Chapter Seven

  With dead creatures and samples in my trunk, I headed back to the TBI and parked in the shade. I couldn’t bring the samples into my lab, but I had to get supplies for a few tests. Hoping I wouldn’t have to convince a bunch of military people that I needed into my lab, I set a brisk pace through the building.

  To my surprise, Wayne was alone at my lab station, flipping through a gun magazine.

  He looked up. “What did you find?”

  “A lot of questions.” I filled him in as I added supplies to a small box. “I’m going to test to see if it could’ve been a sorcerer and take the remains to Nash. He might be able to give me time of death.”

  “That would tell us when the area was drained.”

  “Exactly.” I stuck a small bag of salt in the box. “I thought the military would be here by now.”

  “Me too.” Wayne shrugged. “They move on their own time scale. I informed Smith of the current situation. He said in the future, you need to make time to inform him when situations like this develop.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind next time I find Air Force property.”

  Wayne grinned. “I told him it was a unique situation.”

  “No kidding.” I eyed the layers of spells protecting the case. The only good news out of that situation was that I’d had enough time to write out the spells, so they hadn’t taken too much magic. Depending on what happened with the samples, the same couldn’t be said for them. “I need to test the remains and get them to Nash.”

  “I’ll let you know when the military shows up.” Wayne reached for his coffee but stopped mid-motion. “Tell Nash I said hi.”

  “Sure thing.” Box in hand, I was out the door, my mind already on the spells. Testing for a sorcerer was easy enough, but cleaning up anything that had come in contact with one was a pain.

  In the parking lot, I found three empty spaces. I set up in the middle one with the items from my lab and the bird’s remains. A few chalk runes and a touch of magic had a light protective barrier formed around my parking space, mostly to ensure no one interrupted me.

  Luck had been on my side, and my Sorc-O-Meters had been in the lab, not my car. They weren’t much to look at, simply oversized cotton swabs with runes covering the stick portion, but they would do the job. I carefully removed one from a glass jar, opened the evidence bag, and rubbed it across what was left of the feathers.

  I slowly counted to twenty, waiting for the swab to turn purple and prove this was the work of a sorcerer. When I reached thirty and the swab was the same white with ash smudges from the bird, I didn’t know if I should have been relieved or worried. Sorcerers could be nasty, but they were a known nasty.

  “Dagaz.”

  The used Sorc-O-Meter went up in flames.

  While it burned to ash, I extended a probe. Before I touched that small bit of my magic to the bird, I checked my shields, making sure nothing could use the probe to access the rest of my power. Assured my magic was safe, I lightly brushed the probe against the bird.

  Nothing.

  It didn’t eat my magic, but the probe couldn’t tell me anything either. Other than a bird devoid of life, energy, magic, and anything else it took for a creature to function, there was nothing to find.

  “Narzel.” Without more magical evidence, I would have to read up on what could’ve caused this type of damage.

  The last ember faded from the ash that was all that remained of the Sorc-O-Meter. I cleaned up and loaded up my car. If magic wasn’t going to give me answers, maybe science could.

  It wasn’t a long drive over to the medical examiner. I went through the front, and the receptionist waved me back.

  Nash’s office door was open. I knocked anyway. Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what to say.

  He looked up, surprise giving way to a smile. As usual, he was impeccably groomed, his hair pulled back from his face and braided in an eight-strand masterpiece, showing off his pointed ears. “To what do I owe this surprise?”

  “Work, sadly.” I took the chair opposite of him. “I need an accurate time of death on a bird and anything else you can tell me about how it died.”

  One sculpted eyebrow crept up. “Forgive me, I heard bird. You do know I’m a doctor, correct?”

  I shrugged. “You did well enough with those deer on the last case.”

  His lips pressed into a thin line. “Perhaps, but the need was there, and time was short.”

  “Nash,” I sighed. “Do you think I’d be asking if there were better options?”

  “No.” Any traces of attitude fell away. “Bird?”

  “Yup. Full contamination protocols. It died during a ceremony that stripped the life from the area. I have a squirrel and two dogs who were killed during the ceremony too, if you’d rather work on those.”

  He asked, “Where are the remains?”

  “My car.”

  Nash pushed away from his desk. “Let’s get them into proper storage. Bring your car around to the back. I’ll meet you there.”

  It only took a moment to pull around. The covered entrance was spacious, and true to his word, Nash was waiting there with a stretcher. He helped me transfer the remains and pushed them inside.

  “Can I leave my car here while we sign chain of evidence?”

  “Should be fine.”

  I followed him inside and to the morgue. Cool threads of necromancy crept up my leg. The entire middle row was full. And I could raise any one of them.

  Necromancy wasn’t picky. I could make one of the humanoid bodies walk again, or I could raise the dogs, birds, or squirrel. My gaze went to the dogs, likely sacrificed to fuel the foul ritual.

  “Can you sign this?” Nash asked.

  My necromancy retreated. The chill that followed it had nothing to do with the room. Raising the dead was what got my biological mother killed. I had to be in control. I couldn’t raise whoever, whenever, not if I wanted to live longer than Monique.

  “Kelsey?”

  “Sorry.” I forced a neutral expression. “I was thinking about the case.”

  Nash eyed me for a moment before nodding. “There isn’t much to work with, but I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thanks.” I filled out the paperwork. “Everything was turning to dust where we found them. I tried to be gentle, but they had to be carried out.”

  “The bones look fine, so that’s something.” Nash closed the bay and washed up. “I got the results back on the victim of the fire. Not a witch, human.”

  “Narzel.” I swore. “Someone with magic was making those charms and supplying the shop.”