Page 21 of Witch Queen

Their footsteps echoed quietly on the linoleum floor inside the morgue at Grandview General. A body bag floated ahead withinLevitate. It contained the remains of one of the Dark Council witches the New York coven had discovered the night before. Mae frowned.

Their mission to find Vedran had gotten even more urgent in the last couple of hours. Abraham had contacted Nikolai on their way to the hospital.

It wasn’t just Dark Council members who were going missing from every city they used to haunt. Witches and sorcerers belonging to smaller covens all around the world had vanished too, their disappearance only recently coming to light after the High Council issued an international announcement about their recent findings.

It’s like Philadelphia all over again.

Brimstone glanced at her.He already possesses theBook of Light. I hardly think he has the same use for them now as Barquiel and Oscar did at that time.

Mae feared what Vedran intended to do with the missing victims was far worse than having ghouls possess their mortal coil.

Pipes rattled overhead. Roman flinched.

Nikolai gave him a contemptuous look.

They had waited until after midnight to break into the hospital. To Mae’s utter lack of surprise, it had been child’s play to get in the basement.

Well, it isn’t as if this place is a bank vault.

Except for the dead people, Brimstone observed.There’s a lot you can do with magic and dead people.For example, you can?—

How about we change the subject.Mae shuddered.Maybe I should reinforce this place with some defensive spells.

She unlocked an autopsy lab with her passkey, crossed the office, and led the way into the inner room. The ventilation system hummed quietly in the cool darkness.

Mae flicked on the overhead lights and guided the body to an examination table. She was slipping on personal protective gear when she became aware of a battery of curious stares.

Mae lowered her face shield and eyed the three men watching her through the transparent, polycarbonate plate. “What?”

“It’s weird seeing you in work mode,” Vlad admitted.

Nikolai’s expression turned brooding. “That outfit looks good on you.”

Heat warmed Mae’s cheeks. Roman and Vlad curled a lip at the sorcerer.

“How about you keep your flirting to a minimum?” the incubus said icily.

A loud clatter made them jump.

Tarang blinked when he found himself the target of a score of spell bombs. His tail had brushed against an instrument tray on the counter and sent it crashing onto the floor while he’d been exploring the lab.

The tiger slinked over to Vlad and sat sheepishly beside him.

Mae eyed the door. “I hope no one heard that.”

“The dead did,” Roman said.

They fixed him with a leaden stare.

“Come on, I’m trying to lighten the mood,” he protested.

Mae sighed and opened the body bag.

The putrid smell of scorched, rotting flesh flooded the air. Roman gagged.

She narrowed her eyes when she got her first good look at the corpse. The black magic that had killed the woman had hastened the decomposition process by several days. The body was heavily bloated, livor mortis evident in the few patches of skin that had been spared by Vedran’s Hellfire Magic.

Roman turned slightly green when Mae picked up a scalpel and incised the victim’s chest with a practiced move.

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