In the aftermath of being kidnapped by crazed mercury dragons, Kirani Kinsley Ramons dusts off her rusty skills and takes up the mantle of private investigator. With the dead growing more restless by the day and the fear of missing women in need of rescue looming before her, Kinsley dives into the case.
With her fiancé, her trusty carbunclo, and her hummingbird familiar at her side, Kinsley is ready for anything the world might toss at her.
As Kinsley unveils the identities of the missing and begins unraveling the mystery of their disappearances, she discovers there might be something far worse than a necromancer lurking within Dragon Heights. Uncertain of who to trust or where to turn, she seeks out the unlikeliest of allies: the restless dead.
To save those lost in the darkness, Kinsley will have to put everything on the line, embracing the full power of her line, no matter the cost.
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From Chapter One…
Wednesday, May 13, 2167
The Fringe
Dragon Heights, Wyoming
A woman darted out in front of my SUV, and I slammed the brakes, bracing for impact. The vehicle’s tires squealed, but I managed to skid to a halt without hitting anyone or anything. Sometime between my heart attempting to beat its way out of my chest and remembering I needed to breathe, the figure wavered, pointed at something off the side of the road, and then disappeared.
Before my venture into Death Mile, I wouldn’t have put much thought into the possibility of ghosts being real. I would have blamed the incident on a lack of sleep, as Erik had been called to a rather nasty crime scene in the evening, leaving Citrine in my care.
His carbunclo hadn’t handled separation well, although I’d managed to calm her with some help from Garnet and Tourmaline. However, as he hadn’t managed to come home until three in the morning, we all operated on fumes. As such, we’d changed our game plan, intending on driving three hours outside of Dragon Heights before calling it a day, finding a hotel, and crashing, leaving the entirety of Thursday to investigate the case of the missing women.
Death Mile and its ghosts had left a mark on me, one I doubted would ever fade. My brush with the dead through a Scrabble board and the disconcerting reality of possessions had done an excellent job of changing my opinion and perspective about death.
“Please tell me you saw her and didn’t just brake to wake me,” Erik whispered.
Early in our relationship, I’d done that a few times, keeping him on his toes and reminding him to pay more attention while a passenger. “She seemed rather substantial until she proved otherwise.” I took my time inhaling, counting to twenty before releasing my breath and counting to twenty once more. A quick check of the back seat revealed that Garnet and Citrine had somehow slept through the fuss. A sleepy Tourmaline clicked at me, but his nest had somehow remained fixed into place.
“Go back to sleep, baby. I’m sorry I woke you.” Whatever magic influenced the back seat had protected our furred and feathered children, and I would offer gratitude to my parents upon our return. “I have no idea how I didn’t wake the carbunclo with that stunt.”
“They’re tired from last night, and they’re kittens. Any other day, we would have had a chorus of protests from the back.”
The hummingbird clicked a few more times before settling back in his nest to resume his rest. No matter how many times someone told me it might be up to a month before my familiar fully woke up and became active, I worried for him.
I wanted the kittens and my bird to be happy and healthy.
I sighed. “I hate slamming the brakes like that.”
“The stop wasn’t all that violent. You felt the car skid, eased up on the brake, and resumed pressure to prevent a slide. You probably did it automatically. And anyway, you had at least twenty feet. You did fine. However, I’ll be enrolling you in a refresher course for evasive driving. You need it.”
While I appreciated the reassurance, I scowled. “You’re only saying that because you want to enroll and taunt me the entire time.”
“I do want to take a refresher, but not to taunt you. Dragon Heights has some pretty gnarly streets, and I want to handle them better at high speeds. I’m going to use this as an excuse to force you to take the class with me.”
If taking a driving course made him happy, I would take a driving course, just like I’d be taking a plethora of general self-defense and shooting courses to appease his protective ways. “I will accept this only if you’re paying me upon returning home from my lessons. You will have the choice of making dinner or serving me in bed.”
Erik chuckled. “That’s a small price to pay. Better now?”
I nodded, and I turned my attention to where the ghost had pointed, discovering an overgrown path large enough for the SUV to navigate with minimal issues, leading deep into a gnarled wood forest. While Wyoming had forests, very few of them reminded me of something best left for horror flicks on Halloween. “It looks like we’ll be going off the beaten path for this.” I checked the navigation system to discover we were close to the edge of the Fringe. “Please mark this location so we can get back to it later.”
Erik picked up his phone from the tray below the navigation system, tapped at the screen, and replied, “Done.”
I turned off onto the unpaved trail, wincing at the branches and leaves brushing against the side of our new baby. “We’re going to have to give her a new paint job, and we haven’t even had her a week.”
I blamed the past few years spent living a frugal life for my comment.
With a little help from my parents, should I be brave enough to accept their help, I could have my new baby repainted if we damaged her during the venture.
Erik dared to laugh at me. “She’s an SUV. She can have some battle scars. You’re already expecting to haul bodies in her, so what’s a few scratches?”
I sighed. “I wasn’t serious about hauling bodies. I would call the ME and have them haul the bodies.”
“So practical.” My fiancé reached over and patted my leg. “Once we’re farther from the main road, you can stop and take a breather if you need. You didn’t get much sleep, either. Sure, you got more than me, but the kittens didn’t exactly let you get a whole lot of rest until I got home.”
“We’re going to have to take turns adapting our babies to separation. Citrine did not handle you at work by yourself well at all.” I did as he instructed, going roughly a quarter of a mile before putting the SUV into park and taking a few moments to steady my nerves.
The only trouble I wished to court involved Erik and a bed, and if we courted more than a good time, we were armed with family members willing to babysit our children while we worked. I foresaw Erik’s family helping more than mine.
They had my family beat in numbers to a horrific degree.
While my fiancé wrinkled his nose, he nodded. “We’ll take turns once a week while the other runs errands. That should ease them into it. I think we just need to convince them we aren’t abandoning them, especially Garnet. Citrine is closer to the average for a carbunclo. They tend to have severe separation anxiety for the first month, and then they get better about staying home or having a babysitter. Garnet’s remarkable in her willingness to stay with me or your parents.”
“If you try to steal my kitten, you will pay for all eternity,” I warned him.
He laughed. “I’m not going to steal your kitten. At least we don’t have Peridot with us. If he’d gotten woken up from that, he would have lost his mind, and we would have had to call your parents to come get him.”
In a few months, I expected my parents’ kitten would be more willing to leave my father’s side, but much like Citrine, Peridot needed my father to reassure him every five minutes that he wouldn’t be displaced. “Why are carbunclo so anxious about their new people?”
“I’m not sure. Garnet’s situation makes sense. She’d been passed around. Citrine might have become like Garnet, but Mr. Acri put an end to that fiasco in a hurry. I’m not sure why Peridot is anxious. Your parents took him from his mother and father after proper introductions. Maybe it’s a carbunclo thing. The legends have them getting tossed a lot, and if I were a carbunclo, I wouldn’t like that.”
I would need to put some serious thought into the myths and legends surrounding the carbunclo. “Maybe they need time to realize they are the treasure? I wouldn’t give Garnet or Tourmaline up for anything. I’m sure you feel the same about Citrine.”
“I do,” he confirmed. “You’re in the same category, so should you try to run away again, I will chase you, I will throw you over my shoulder, and I will drag you back to our house, where I will indulge until confident you’re too tired to move for at least a few days.”
With his status as a yellow hatchling out of the bag, I had zero doubt of his willingness to implement such a plan. Should I be foolish enough to run, his plan would inevitably lead to children, and it would be a coin flip if we would have many or one. As such, I took his warning seriously. “I will wait until after we engage in unholy matrimony to run away.”
“Holy.”
I snickered, as we’d had numerous playful debates over the subject of marriage and my stance. As I believed matrimony led to many sinful and pleasant things, there was nothing holy about it. He preferred believing his worship of my person counted as the holiest of acts. Once confident I could drive without crashing into anything, I put the vehicle back into drive and resumed navigating down the trail, which consisted of two ruts large enough to accommodate a pickup. “It’s been used often enough the weeds haven’t taken it over.”
That could be problematic.
“We’re both armed, and we’re still within Dragon Heights,” he reminded me. “We’re also close enough help is a call away. We have parents, and we are willing to use them.”
“That seems like overkill. My mother is still fuming over the mercury dragons. Honestly, she’s going to take that grudge with her to her grave, and I pity any mercury foolish enough to cross her at this point. She isn’t going to be kind. She’s erased that entire concept from her personal dictionary.”
“I’m more worried about my mother. I saw clips of what she did to the one she caught, and it was horrifying.” Erik made a show of shuddering at the memory.
“She used his corpse as a landing pad, and then she skated on the body until she came to a halt.” I joined him in shuddering over the memory of the video, something I regretted watching. “The poor bastard who caught it on film gagged. I’m impressed he didn’t vomit. I’ve seen some nasty shit as a homicide detective, and I almost threw up.”
“I don’t know how I didn’t. A few cops did upon reviewing the evidence. The coroner is not happy with her over the whole thing. He had to at least attempt to figure out what killed him. He finally wrote dismemberment on the death certificate. You might have been able to figure out precisely how he died, but I suggested we not ask you or any of the other purples to check. Dismemberment was accurate enough.”
“Understatement,” I muttered. “We should get therapy over that. We can get therapy for our other issues at the same time. But I need therapy after watching that video. I don’t know how your mother doesn’t need therapy.”
“My mother would do it again without hesitation. If they hadn’t messed with one of her babies, she wouldn’t have had to give a demonstration of why you don’t screw around with a momma dragon. Nobody has been brave enough to tell her that you’re not technically one of her babies yet.”
Despite everything, I laughed at the insanity of it all. “It’s close enough. I already indicated I would accept whatever gaudy proposal you have in mind if your mother happens to defeat my mother in a cage fight.”
“They’re going to beat each other senseless over that. Your mother is going to destroy my mother because your mother will absolutely want to torment you and make you propose to me. She lives to embarrass you.”
“I’d just order you to get on your knees and beg like you mean it,” I confessed, shrugging. “Then you get to do your gaudy proposal anyway.”
Erik narrowed his eyes and considered me with interest. “But will you wear that leather outfit?”
“I could.”
“Please do not tell my mother this, but I want your mother to win now. That sounds like a great deal of fun, and I’ve been hoping you’ll wear that outfit again.”
My father had tried to warn me about yellow dragons, but I hadn’t listened. I foresaw many hopeful hints I should wear the leather shirt that had done an excellent job of making Erik’s common sense dribble out of his ears. “After we check out this lead, we can discuss that. I’m sure you can convince me to wear my leathers at our engagement party later tonight. But for now, it’s time to focus on learning what we can. With luck, there’ll be a few live bodies at the end of this trail.”
“I wish I could be optimistic, but the fact a ghost pointed us in the right direction tells me there aren’t.”
I sighed, wondering how many bodies we’d uncover before learning the full truth of the mercury dragons and the attacks on those within Dragon Heights. While I feared where the road would take us, I put the SUV into drive and hoped for the best despite the multitude of worries nipping away at me.