Then a hand emerged from the roiling swirl of seawater. It reached upward, grasping as if to catch her by the hair. She opened her mouth to scream from the surprise of it but remained silent, transfixed as more of the attached body came into view. At last, the head crested and Aurora found herself face to face with the man she had been seeking.
Theophilus Abernathy stared up at her with pale, reanimated eyes. The white hair ringing his bald pate dripped and clung to him, and his mouth worked in a gaping plea. Below the line of his jaw, his throat had been slit with one clean, broad stroke. He’d been murdered and his body dumped.
“Oh my god,” Dane whispered. “Is that…”
But Aurora knew, and she was already shifting into gear. In her experience attempting to raise people, she knew she only had a moment.
“Mr. Abernathy,” she said quickly, power flowing through her like lava, “my name is Aurora Rhonelle and I’m the lead investigator on your case. Who did this to you, sir?”
It felt strange claiming such a lofty status but she didn’t have time to waste explaining the intricacies of her situation, nor would the dead man care. She kept her eyes locked on his and she saw the flicker behind them. Again, he worked his jaw, but only a putrid gurgling sound came out, and that was from his throat, not his mouth. Water spilled over his lips and down his neck through the gash in his throat.
Frustration bordering on rage took over his face. At last, he pointed directly at Aurora, then over their feet to the sky. It was clear he was trying to communicate something, but she was at a loss. Those dead eyes registered desperation, and he did it again, pointing toward her and then the sky.
“What is it? What are you trying to say?”
A corpse raised for questioning was incapable of lying, but that didn’t mean they could always be understood. And, as she watched him, the lights went out. Abernathy’s eyes went flat and his body rigid as he sank back into the deep. It felt like a deep loss, yet at the same time she had learned something very powerful.
The cord drew them back up toward the ship, and the entire way, she held Dane tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. He held her too, incapable of knowing the thoughts racketing around her brain. While she didn’t know what any of it meant, one thing was absolutely certain.
With her only witness murdered and dumped in the sea, it was clear that whatever was going on was much bigger than some petty burglary.
Thirteen
Yet again, Aurora found herself trapped at her family’s dinner table. With the weight of all that had been going on keeping her eyes glued to her plate, she nudged the food around and hoped it looked like she was eating something. Not that anyone was paying any attention to her.
“I led a mass reanimation for the retirement of one of the Guild Chairmen.” Lock took a sip of wine and leaned back in his chair to await the inevitable praise.
“Really?” Wisteria’s eyes went wide, and Aurora could feel them cutting to her without even having to look up.
“That’s quite the accomplishment, son,” her father said. “Who’s retiring?”
“Hubert Pendragon. He turned four hundred in March.”
“He’s earned it then,” Thersites said with some satisfaction. “That’s a lifetime of service, and with good fortune, he may have another century or more to enjoy himself.”
“Four hundred?” Onyx asked through a mouthful of food. “They just keep driving the retirement age up, huh?”
“He wanted to stay,” Lock replied. “Once you’ve made the Guild, it’s not something you want to step away from.” There was more than a hint of smugness in his voice, and it only made Aurora want to slide under the table.
“Rightly so,” Thersites added.
She wondered if anyone would notice if she cast an invisibility spell and bolted for the door. As if she wasn’t feeling low enough, the idea of her brothers sailing on to success wasn’t doing much to lift her spirits.
“How many was it?” Rhys asked Lock, just a hint of challenge in his voice.
Their father chuckled lightly. Everyone at the table knew that Rhys had managed to raise fifteen at once and had kept them reanimated for the better part of an hour for the Othercross Septicentennial. Out of the corner of her eye, Aurora saw Lock raise an eyebrow.
“Seven. Just some former members to wish him well. Nothing too ostentatious.”
Now Thersites laughed in earnest, and Aurora felt like she might split clean down the middle. Even at less than half Rhys’s number, it was still more than she would ever achieve, it seemed.
In the slab of meat on her plate, she kept seeing Theophilus Abernathy’s face. Her stomach curdled even more and she was sorely tempted to put her napkin over her food. Her brothers were warring over who had been able to reanimate the most corpses at a single stretch, and she hadn’t even managed to keep one alive for more than a few seconds—even though her career, not to mention pride, depended on it!
In the middle of all the congratulations and good cheer, she felt completely at a loss. The simple, open-and-shut case she’d been entrusted with had turned into a complicated nightmare, and she had no clue how to proceed. Before she even knew what she was doing, she said quietly, “I’m in trouble.”
A pall fell over the table and all eyes turned to her.
“What’s that?” Thersites’s chalice hung midway between the table and his lips.
“Things at the Judiciary… I think I’m in trouble.”
“Oh, Rory.” Her mother reached over and placed a hand on hers. On a normal night, she might have tugged it away out of defensiveness, but in that moment, she surrendered to her mother’s comfort.
“I was tapped to present a case, and I think I really screwed things up. I’ll probably lose my job.”
“What are you saying?” Duval met her eyes and he looked genuinely concerned.
“I guess I’m...asking for help.”
That last word was hard wrung from her. Aurora had always prided herself on being independent. It was the core of what made these dinners so hard for her. But with nowhere else to turn and everything in the balance, she looked to her family and saw something surprisingly akin to understanding.
“What is it, darling?” It was the first time her father had used that word since she was a little girl. At the sound of it, the dam broke.
“There was this theft case. It wasn’t anything major—a slam dunk, really—but I put a lot of time into it. When my boss took over a bigger case, he chose me to take his place as lead.”
“Oh, pet, that’s wonderful!” Wisteria gave her daughter’s hand a shake.
“As a junior investigator?” Onyx sounded oddly impressed.
“I know!” Aurora was unable to keep misery and pride from mingling in her voice. “But I messed it all up.”
“How?” Her father’s gaze was even, but there wasn’t a trace of judgement in it.
“Well,” she heaved a sigh. “The whole thing hung on the testimony of one eye witness, Theophilus Abernathy.”
“They just pulled his body out of the Sanguine Sea,” Rhys said, looking around the table. “I heard about it before coming over.”