Grave Destiny (Alex Craft, #6) - Kalayna Price

Chapter 1

The first time I’d knowingly woven planes of existence was under the light of the Blood Moon. That was six months ago, and I’d been under the power of a madman at the time, the ability bursting from me in a magical hemorrhage. Since then, I’d shoved reality around a bit and occasionally pushed or pulled things between planes, but I hadn’t made many strides in learning to harness my planeweaving. Last month I’d intentionally woven a net of reality for the first time in an effort to save my best friend. My hands now bore the evidence. Dozens of shiny pink scars crossed over my palms and marred my fingers. Thankfully I hadn’t lost any function or feeling, but the scars acted as a daily reminder that I was fumbling my way around a magic I knew almost nothing about.

There had to be a better way.

I needed training. And the only two planeweavers anyone had heard about in generations—besides me, of course—resided in the high court. Which no one could tell me how to reach. I was surrounded by fae these days, even lived in my own Faerie castle, but information on the high court was limited.

My housemate, Caleb, had been born an independent fae and knew very little about the inner workings of the courts. The Winter Queen’s knight, Falin, was far more connected, but he was young for a fae and had been raised outside Faerie to increase his tolerance for iron and technology. Ms. B, the brownie who’d appointed herself office manager of Tongues for the Dead, had told me she didn’t pay much attention to the “overgrown” court fae when I’d asked her. Not even the rather ancient frost fae ghost who haunted my castle could tell me more than rumors. Unfortunately, that left the list of fae I could ask about the high court depressingly short.

I could request an audience with the Winter Queen—she had to know. But the price she would extract might be worse than my fumbling attempt to learn on my own. The other fae I could ask would be easier to approach, but he was a mystery wrapped in a contradiction. He was a fae in hiding who didn’t belong to the local court—which shouldn’t have been possible—as well as a prominent member in mortal government, in a party called the Humans First Party, which was basically a hate group against fae and witches. Oh yeah, and he was my father.

My name is Alex Craft, and as one might guess, I have a complicated relationship with my family. I’m a private investigator for Tongues for the Dead, a firm I run with my best friend and fellow grave witch, Rianna McBride. We specialize in raising shades of the dead so that they can be questioned, but we’d take about any case from missing persons to discerning curses on knickknacks. Unfortunately, because of a recent PR nightmare in which I was accused of magical mass murder, business was so dead we could barely justify keeping the lights on. It gave me a lot of time to study the scars and dwell on how very badly I needed a teacher. Which was why I was now staring at my father’s phone number. I didn’t want to call him, but where else could I turn?

I hit the dial button. He picked up on the third ring.

“My errant daughter. To what emergency do I owe this honor?”

Yeah, maybe I didn’t call my father often. But I didn’t exactly trust him. Plus, he’d kind of hidden the fact that he—and thus I—was fae, and oh yeah, he more or less excommunicated me when my grave magic appeared and couldn’t be hidden.

“No emergency. I just need some answers. How would I contact someone in the high court?”

The line was quiet so long that I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked the screen to make sure the call hadn’t been dropped.

“That’s not the kind of information I can just give away,” he finally said.

Great. “But you do know a way?”

“I do.”

“So what will it cost me? A favor? A quest?” If he said my firstborn, I was never speaking to him again.

Again the drawn-out silence. Finally he said, “I have a request of you. There is an . . . issue that I believe you will be asked to investigate very soon. Accept. Do what you can. Please.” The last word sounded like he’d had to painfully pluck it from his mouth.

I blinked