Page 25 of These Unhallowed Halls
It was strange to hear him use her first name, but I knew he was trying to make like my stepsister was his assistant, and they’d be on a first-name basis if they’d been working together for a while, like the dean said.Hurrying over to the cart at the side of the room, Temps pulled it over to Harkert, doing her best to keep her attention on his until there was no choice left but to look at the dead body.
Together, Temps and I silently took in exactly what we were looking at.
It was a young woman, probably our age.She had dark hair with a blue streak in the front.Neither of us had spoken to her, but she lived in our dorm.I’d noticed her walking to class nearby when we were heading to spellcasting.That stung.
But worse were the criss-crossing slashes that littered her body.She was covered with a thin, white sheet, which gave her a modicum of privacy, but I could tell that the markings extended across her entire body because her arms were exposed, and the fabric didn’t hide the red that hid beneath it.
Her skin was so damned pale, and on her forehead a symbol had been carved into her flesh.I had to assume that when they’d found her—whoever it had been—she’d been a ghastly sight.It would be hard to see the person behind all that blood.The girl was cleaned up now, much like how I’d seen bodies presented at the morgue in TV shows.
“Do we know what the symbol means?”My voice was scratchy when I spoke.
As I flicked my eyes up to the people around me, Temps met my stare.Her brow furrowed ever so slightly, but she didn’t fall apart, using me as a bit of an anchor even though I was doing the same damned thing.
“No.We have people researching it, but it doesn’t show up in any of our usual rituals or occult iconography.”
Dean Owens crossed from behind me to stand near Temps, who was right by Harkert’s side at the foot of the table.For everything I was starting to dislike about the woman, I had to admit that the look of sorrow on her face was at least believable right now.
“The butter of antimony, Temperance, and an alembic to dulcify with akahest and agrimony.”
The sound of glass bottles clinking against each other echoed in the nearly empty room as Temps inspected the ingredients laid out in a tall, sectioned case on the cart.She pulled out three long tubes and then reached for the alembic, placing it over the burner and sparking it with the striker.Pouring the liquids inside, a fuming concoction slowly formed as the chemicals and herbs mingled together.It looks weird as hell, this putrid yellow color that morphed through the clear liquid, almost like ink.The agrimony was well known for revealing secrets, and as the other supplies coalesced into a thick smoke contained in the alembic, it sort of charred and turned the mixture black, with deep gray smoke wafting around in the vessel.
“Excellent.Now,” Harkert held his hands over the smoke, “use your innate energy to manipulate the smoke from the alembic over the body, keep it slow and controlled, demanding the truth be revealed to you.”
Temps nodded, her hands hovering in the air with Harkert’s as they drew the smoke out of the vessel and over the girl’s cold form.Owens and I watched it gradually work its way across her face all the way down to her toes.The smoke sank into her skin, lingering in the cuts and deep within her chest.I could sense the anticipation of the entire board as they looked on from their round table.
What a load.It was clear who was in charge there.
But there along the edges of the cuts and in a strange flicker that glowed inside the woman’s ribcage, lighting her up from within but shorter than a blink, gold specs.
“What is that?”
Temps looked over a she manipulated the smoke to circle back around, Harkert’s attention dropping to the glowing sediment forming on the injuries, especially the sigil carved into the woman’s forehead.Dean Owens leaned over, getting a closer look at the almost glitter-like flecks that stuck to the slashes.
“That is proof this was not a human attack,” Harkert spoke through gritted teeth, exhaling hard.“Magic residue.It’s left over when a spell targets someone, but this is…nothing I’ve seen before.Spells track over the entire person, but these.It’s like it’s only where the instrument used to cut her touched her skin.”
“And behind her ribs.”Three pairs of eyes shot up to meet mine, and it hit me.
They couldn’t see it.
“Oh, right.”Leaning over the body, I focused on that tiny glimmer of something behind her ribs, reading it like I would emotions.“It’s like…it doesn’t like that you’re nosing about.As if the lingering magic is pissed you’re digging through its trash.”
“This is a young woman, a student.”Dean Owen sounded horrified.“Nottrash.”
I held up my hands in surrender.“Hey, not me.I’m just the interpreter.The stuff you can see clinging to her, it’sclaimedher.She belongs to whatever killed her.Her body, but more importantly,” I breathed deep, tasting the malignance on my tongue, “her soul.It was torn from her.”
“How in the hell—” Harkert shook his head, pointing at the dead woman’s chest.“Can you see who did this?”
A shiver raked through me, and I did my best to stifle it.“I can’t guarantee what I’ll see, but…I’ll try.”
I hated this part.It felt like being the wrong kind of high while someone else was behind the wheel of your mind.But whoever had done this to her was one fucked up piece of shit.It wasn’t like souls got torn from people on the regular.That was some heavy-duty shit.
Reaching out, I gingerly lowered my fingertips to the symbol on the woman’s head, which was clearly important to whoever killed her.As soon as I made contact with her icy flesh, I was rocket hard by the wave of a vision, my head snapping back as I no longer saw the room around me.
Hazy images settled in my mind’s eye like the mixture had in that alembic.The edges wavering like inky puddles, I focused on what the woman was seeing since I was looking out at the world from her perspective.The terror in her was so intense, making me nauseated and dizzy.Lights flickered around her, and as she’d turned her head to the side, unable to call out for the help she so desperately wanted, I saw faded red and white stripes.
“She was at the carnival.Or near it.”
Another wave, and now I couldn’t tell where she was.Only that there was a figure, all black and impossible to distinguish, standing above her with a knife.It was intricate, almost ceremonial, and the person above her smiled wide, wider, wider, and then too wide to be right, revealing sharp teeth as the hands began to glow gold.
