Page 17 of Whispers of the Magical Forest

"That's going to leave a mark," Aislinn muttered, looking at the scorch marks our cleansing had left on the floor.

My phone buzzed, interrupting what would have been a brilliant comeback about home improvement. The message was from Gadross.Need you at the morgue. More bodies. Must contain situation before mundane authorities arrive. Hurry.

I showed the message to the others. "Well," Aislinn sighedas she rubbed her arms where frost still clung to her jacket, "at least we won't have to worry about finding parking?"

"Small mercies," I agreed, giving the now-cleansed barrels one last suspicious look. "Think they have coffee at the morgue? I could murder a latte right now."

"Terrible choice of words," Violet said as we climbed the stairs. Her golden magic still flickered around her hands, refusing to settle after channeling so much power. "Also, you still owe me ten quid from the robes bet."

"I'll buy you a coffee instead?"

"Deal."

Behind us, the cellar stood clean and quiet, free of its purple corruption but still holding echoes of what had happened there. The leader's words about vessels echoed in my mind, mixing with memories of those bodies on the altar. We'd stopped whatever was coming at midnight and made sure they couldn't use this place again. That didn't mean they wouldn't regroup and try somewhere else. I had a feeling we were going to need something stronger than coffee to deal with it. The morgue was going to be fun. At least we still had that bottle of Winter's Embrace waiting in the car. Something told me we'd need it before this night was over.

CHAPTER 6

FIONA

The medical examiner's office looked exactly like you'd expect. It was sterile, cold, and about as welcoming as my mother-in-law on a bad day. Which, given that she's a socialite with a perpetual stick up her ass, was saying something. The gray concrete building loomed against the winter sky like a tombstone. I supposed that was fitting given what went on inside. We'd left the wine cellars after finding more questions than answers. Now here we were. Trying to piece together this mess before more bodies dropped.

The wind carried the scent of dying leaves and something that made my Fae senses tingle with warning. Magic lingered in the air. It was faint but unmistakable. Like the metallic taste before a storm. My power responded to the residual energy and stirred restlessly under my skin.

"I still think we should have tried to follow those assholes," Violet muttered as we approached the entrance. "We might have been able to lock onto their energy signature. This feels like a waste of time when we could be tracking them down and kicking their asses."

The sentiment was pure Violet. She was all action with minimal planning. Usually, I'd be right there with her, ready to crash through whatever stood in our way. But something about those bodies in the wine cellar had set off every warning bell I had. And I had a lot of them, courtesy of solving countless supernatural cases.

"Knowledge is power," I reminded her, channeling my inner Grams. My grandmother had drilled that into my head often enough. Usually, after I'd done something monumentally stupid, and called her to complain. "Besides, we need to know what we're dealing with before we go charging into a trap. They'll be expecting us this time. We won't scare them off as easily."

"Since when are you the voice of reason?" Aislinn asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Since we found ritualistic murder victims with creepy runes carved into them. I may be reckless, but I'm not stupid. At least not most days," I smirked at her, though the expression felt forced. The weight of what we'd encountered in those wine cellars still sat heavy in my gut. The bodies had been bad enough, but the magic lingering around them had been worse.

Gadross was waiting for us in the lobby. He looked decidedly out of place and completely unbothered by that fact. The dwarf's perfectly tailored charcoal suit couldn't quite disguise his stocky frame. It probably cost more than my monthly mortgage. His meticulously groomed beard – now streaked with more silver than auburn – caught more than a few curious glances from passing staff. Not that he seemed to notice or care.

He was rolling something between his fingers. It was a small copper disk that seemed to shift and shimmer in the fluorescent lighting. Its surface was etched with spiraling patterns. Power emanated from it in subtle waves.They were barely noticeable unless you knew what to look for. Which, unfortunately for my curiosity, I did.

"You're late," he said by way of greeting. His dark eyes held that keen intelligence that always made me wonder just how much he really knew about any given situation. In my experience, the answer was usually ‘way more than he was telling us’.

"Traffic was hell," I replied, which wasn't entirely a lie. There had been traffic. "We had to cleanse the cellar so the cult can’t use it again.”

"Mhmm," he hummed, clearly not buying it. "I've already laid the groundwork with the staff. Amazing what a little Third Age artificing can do. The receptionist thinks we're from the NHS, investigating a possible new strain of influenza. The security guard believes we're with MI5's special taskforce. The custodian is convinced we're making a documentary for the BBC about modern mortuary practices."

The receptionist barely glanced up as we passed. Her eyes glazed over like she'd had one too many tequila shots at happy hour. At least I knew why. Gadross's relic was working its magic and spreading through the building like ink in water.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" he said, catching my scrutiny of the disk. "The copper holds the magical resonance better than silver would. The artificers who created this understood that copper's natural conductivity could be enhanced through specific runes. Quite brilliant, really. They were doing things with metal harmonics that we're only beginning to understand now."

My fingers twitched with the urge to snatch the disk and examine it more closely. The way it pulsed with each rotation was fascinating. The subtle variations in its energy signature were like catnip for my inner magic nerd.

Gadross must have caught my expression because he added, "And no, you can't examine it right now. We have work to do. Though I suppose I could be persuaded to give you a proper lesson sometime. Provided you stop trying to reverse-engineer every artifact you come across."

I felt my cheeks warm. "It’s not every relic. I’ve given all of the dangerous ones to the proper authorities. Improving on what came before is part of being a witch. Besides, you can’t blame a girl for being curious.”

He shook his head at me as we walked down the too-bright corridor. I kept stealing glances at how the relic pulsed with each rotation of Gadross's fingers. The magic it emanated was subtle but effective. Employees milled around without giving us a second look. My magical senses picked up how it bent perception around us like a silk veil and made people's eyes slide right past. It was far more elegant than any glamour I could have managed. My magic tended to be about as subtle as a brick to the face.

"We couldn’t do our jobs without the Third Age. It doesn’t injure the minds in the process," Gadross explained as we walked. "It doesn't force the mind to accept our presence. That would scar and leave traces. It would also cause resistance. Instead, it suggests that we're simply not interesting enough to notice. Like background noise in a crowded room. The human mind is remarkably good at ignoring things it doesn't want to deal with."

"How does it maintain the effect across multiple targets?" I asked. "The power requirements alone should be massive. And the interference patterns between different consciousness streams?—"

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