Page 15 of These Unhallowed Halls (Equinox Seasons Duet #2)

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. “Not trash .”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Hey, not me. I’m just the interpreter. The stuff you can see clinging to her, it’s claimed her. 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.

I snapped out of it, back to the room around us, out of breathing and feeling like I was going to puke my guts out.

“Sharp teeth. Glowing hands. Ugh,” I gagged on nothing, gripping my stomach, “and all wrong. It definitely wasn’t some human.”

“Dammit.” Harkert slammed a fist down onto the table, making Temps jump. I wanted to tell him to knock it off, but I was too out of it, stumbling on my feet. After a moment, he looked over at me, and the anger on his face shifted to concern. “You look like you’re going to fall over.”

“Yeah,” I waved a hand around, getting dizzier by the second, “that’s the plan.”

Before I hit the ground, strong arms caught me, pulling me upright. I couldn’t really focus on anything else that was going on, dimly aware of a conversation being held right above my head.

“Lizzie!”

“We need to get her lying down. I have supplies in my office. Let’s go.”

And then I was moving, the world dark and fuzzy around me.