Read Online Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel by Kalayna Price - Free Book Online

on the other hand, needed an escort who was on the VIP list.
    Rianna nodded, but her expression dropped slightly before her eyes returned to her book. I waved at Desmond as I passed him. The barghest ignored me, which was pretty typical.
    I’d just reached the front door when I paused.
    “Oh yeah, by the way,” I said, my hand hovering over the door handle. “I forgot to tell you. Roy moved into the broom closet.” And with that, I left.
    “She’s roped you into this wild-goose chase too, huh?” Tamara, the lead medical examiner and one of my best friends, said as she wheeled a sheet-covered gurney out of themorgue’s cold room. “I mean, it’s a terrible, tragic thing, and I pity her having to deal with it in her condition, but she needs to come to terms with the fact her husband jumped.”
    “So you don’t think there’s a chance this is anything other than suicide?” I asked, but I was only half paying attention. Grave essence was wafting out of the now shut door of the cold room, and despite the fact I once again had my shields locked as tightly as I could possibly maintain, I could feel its cold but seductive touch. I could also feel the fact she had nine bodies in the room, and the gender and approximate age of each—way too much was getting through my shields.
    Tamara didn’t notice my distraction, that or she was accustomed to me acting a little odd in the morgue. “Not a chance. This guy didn’t just jump, he dove off that building, and judging by the injures I found—and almost as important, those I didn’t find—he didn’t attempt to brace himself or break the fall.”
    Then why is the ghost so insistent?
I glanced at the gurney. The lumpy form the sheet covered was too flat, the outline wrong for an adult man’s body. But it was a body, and from my interaction with his ghost, I could tell without a doubt it was Kingly’s body. I was glad that sheet wouldn’t have to be removed, but I wasn’t looking forward to seeing the condition of his shade.
    “You staying for this or are you going to send in one of your interns?” Because chain of evidence demanded someone official stay with the body while I performed my ritual, but I knew Tamara had just acquired a couple of new interns and she enjoyed breaking them in by letting me freak them out.
    “Oh, I’m staying,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “After everything that woman put my office through, I want to hear this selfish prick admit he jumped. Besides, I’ve barely seen you in a month. Holly is suddenly too busy to go to lunch, ever. And you’ve stood me up for dinner twice. I’m seriously having a case of third wheel syndrome here. Too old to hang, maybe?”
    She made it sound like a joke, but I could hear something else, something hurt, in her voice. I cringed and tried to hide the reaction by focusing on digging through my purse.
    I found the tube of waxy chalk I used for drawing circles for indoor rituals and started working my way around the gurney.
    “You know that’s not it. The timing just hasn’t worked. Besides, you’re not that old.”
    Tamara huffed. “I’m a bride in my late thirties trying to plan a wedding without the help of my two closest friends.”
    I nearly dropped the chalk. “You and Ethan finally set a date?” She’d been wearing a huge diamond for at least four months now, but while Ethan had proposed, he wouldn’t commit to a date.
    “Yeah.” A dreamy smile spread across Tamara’s face, her eyes going distant and a slightly dopey expression claiming her face. Then her gaze snapped back to me and the softness faded. “And you’d know that, and that I want you and Holly to be my bridesmaids, if you weren’t avoiding me.”
    “I’m not avoiding you.” And it wasn’t a lie, or I wouldn’t have been able to say it—I was too fae to lie. And that was part of the problem. Holly and I were both dealing with issues tied in with Faerie, and well, we hadn’t told Tamara any of it.