Page 28 of Panther in the Shadows
"All of the sites." He indicates three other bags, each containing similar stones. "Thought they were just rocks until you told me what you found at the tidal pools. Your magic can read things mine can't."
Eyes closed, sea-witch senses expanding, the power in these stones reveals itself. Not just corrupted. Deliberatelywarped. Forced from its natural state into patterns that violate everything my grandmother taught me.
Water magic heals. Protects. Flows with natural rhythms older than human civilization. This magic drowns. Suffocates. Pulls life down into darkness and traps it there screaming.
"Ritual markers." The first stone goes back down carefully. "Whoever's doing this is using them to anchor the deaths to specific locations. Blood gets spilled. The victim drowns. And these stones trap both the death and the magic in place."
"For what purpose?"
"Building." The next stone carries the same corrupted signature. Same deliberate violation of natural law. "Each death adds power to a larger working. Like bricks in a foundation. Each death is a building block. But the structure isn't complete."
The previous vision pushes forward. "When I touched the water at the ritual site, I saw someone. A woman.”
Rafe's expression sharpens. "Did you see her face clearly?"
"Not clearly enough. The vision was fractured. But her features... enough to know she didn’t look familiar.”
"That's not enough to identify anyone." He sets down the evidence bag with controlled precision. "Visions can be unreliable. Symbolic rather than literal. We can't assume the woman you saw is actually the summoner. Could be the magic showing you something metaphorical."
Frustration builds in my chest. "But what if it wasn't? What if I saw the actual person doing this and I just don’t know who she is?"
"Then we figure it out through investigation, not assumptions." His tone gentles slightly. "I'm not dismissing what you saw. But jumping to conclusions gets people killed. We need evidence. Facts. Not just visions that might mean something or might mean nothing."
My hands shake reaching for the coffee. The warmth does nothing to chase away the cold settling in my bones. "At the tidal pools, I found partial patterns. Multiple locations. Multiple ritual markers." Meeting his gaze takes effort. "More deaths are needed to complete the working."
"How many more?"
"There's no way to know at this point. The full pattern isn't visible yet."
A map of the island spreads across the table as he pushes evidence aside. Red circles mark locations. The pattern forms an arc across the northern coast, following the curve where my waters meet the deep ocean.
"Show me." He hands me a marker. "Mark where you think the other deaths need to happen."
The pattern isn't random. Whoever's planning this understands how power flows through this island. How convergence points align with tidal currents and moon phases. How the oldest magic pools where stone meets water meets sky.
My hand moves with muscle memory from years studying my grandmother's charts. More locations that fit the pattern. The abandoned lighthouse on the eastern cliffs. The sea caves beneath Raven's Point. The standing stones overlooking the deepest channel.
"These, at minimum. But there could be more."
He studies the completed pattern. The points forming a shape from forbidden chapters in my grandmother's grimoire. Not a circle. Not a star. Older. A binding symbol used by those who practiced magic before written language.
"What's it for?" His finger traces the lines connecting the points. "What happens when the ritual is complete?"
My grandmother's grimoire weighs heavy as I pull it from my bag. Leather binding worn soft from generations of use. Pageswhisper, flipping to the section Gran made me promise never to read.
Hidden in the back. Written in her hand but copied from something much older.
"Necromancy. Instructions for binding drowned spirits." My voice drops. "Using their terror as anchors for summoning. The more violent the death, the more fear involved, the stronger the binding."
Rafe reads over my shoulder. His body heat radiates against my back, and awareness prickles across my skin. Close enough that his scent surrounds me. Shadow and expensive cologne and feral wildness underneath.
"This requires an anchor." He points to a passage in my grandmother's careful script. "Someone with power to control both the living and the dead. Someone who can command water and corpses simultaneously."
The page turns under my fingers, revealing diagrams that crawl across my skin. "Necromancy and sea-witch power. Both. At the same time."
His hand flattens on the page beside mine. Long fingers. Scarred knuckles. Hands that killed Elspeth's animated corpse last night. "That's not possible. Those magics are fundamentally opposed. Death magic corrupts. Water magic purifies. They can't exist in the same person."
The final page approaches, where my grandmother's handwriting becomes shaky. Frightened. "They can't. Unless someone made a bargain. Traded their humanity for power. Gave up their soul in exchange for the ability to wield both death and life simultaneously."
