“Yes?” Rosaleen said, standing beside me. Nico was listening, arms crossed, still guarding the door.
“These wounds correspond pretty accurately to the traditional locations on the body of the chakras,” I said.
“That New Age bullshit?” Nico grunted.
“Look,” I said, “you are always talking about me visualizing, focusing; well, I’ve been playing around with using chakras for visualizing workings. And that book I was telling you about, the one I’m reading? It’s talking about this, plexuses of power running through the body. What if the killer wanted to, I don’t know, take her power away?”
“You think she was one of us, a magic worker?” Nico said.
I shrugged.
“Not a clue, supposedly every human has chakras, and they are connected to our mental, physical, and spiritual health. This guy may just want to … deface them in her for some reason.”
“It’s a valid theory,” Rosaleen said. “I’ve read some works equating the chakra system to the Kabbalic Tree of Life, so Laytham may be onto something here, Nico.”
Nico sighed and made the raspberry sound in frustration as he did.
“’Cept that there are supposed to be two chakras on the head, right? One at the crown and another at the forehead. He left her head alone, kept it perfect, not a bruise, not a mark. Shit, even her hair is not messed up too bad. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, let’s see if you can wake her up, Rosie, and we’ll see if she was killed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi,” Nico said. I stepped away from Jane’s body and let Rosaleen begin her working. Besides a formal and impressive education in the forensic sciences and criminalistics, Rosaleen had discovered early in her life that she had an affinity for the dead. She was one of the most powerful and prominent necromancers and necropaths in the world. I watched and tried to keep up. Rosaleen took wide, squat black candles out of her case, placed them meticulously around Jane, and lit them with a lighter. She also took a small glass vial from her case; it almost looked like a cocaine grinder. Rosaleen uttered something in Arabic, standing at the head of the table, gesturing over the skull and the candle behind it.
“تأتي من الخروج من الظلام و الغبار. ترك القاعات التي لا نهاية لها من ذوي القربى الجديد الخاص بك. يأتي الى النور أقدم لكم. التحدث مع اللسان البارد بك في فمي, ورأيي. التحدث معي, الظل .”
She sniffed from the vial as she repeated the incantation. I was pretty certain it was grave dust. I felt the power build around her, move through her like she was a breathing window. The temperature dropped in the already cool room, and all the metal drawers of the morgue cabinets began to shudder, as if they were being pushed against from within. Rosaleen, her eyes closed, cocked her head quizzically and motioned with her hands as if she were coaxing some unseen force up and out of Jane’s still form.
“إذا كنت لن تأتي بحرية, وأنا آمرك, أطالب تتكلم, وإعطاء اسمه الحقيقي كا ل لي. هل هذا الآن.”
The candles’ flames shot up, and the room was now arctic, yet Jane remained still and silent. After a few moments of her power surging and crashing against the walls between worlds, Rosaleen’s hands swept out, and all the candles snuffed out. The pall began to depart the room. Rosaleen opened her eyes. She looked confused and perhaps a bit frightened.
“Rosie, you okay?” Nico asked, stepping toward the necromancer. Rosaleen waved him off.
“Fine, I’m fine,” she said. She looked at both Nico and me and shook her head in disbelief. “Gone, she’s completely gone.”
“Gone?” I said.
“Her life force, her soul,” Rosaleen said, “every single thing she was, or ever might be again, is gone, devoured. The bastard ate her soul, Laytham.”
* * *
We found the one place to drink and eat at Bombay Beach; it was a dive called the Ski Inn. The food smelled good, but none of us was much in the mood to eat. The beer was cold, and the shots weren’t watered. I tossed back my second shot of tequila. Rosaleen and Nico kept pace with me. The smoky heat of the drink swirled in my chest.
“How is it even possible?” I asked. We all looked at each other; we all knew the answer. Someone in the Life, someone with real power could mess up a soul, tear it, break it, but to completely remove every trace of a human soul, that took a degree of power and malice that it was almost impossible for me to comprehend.
“We’re looking for a seriously twisted fuck,” Nico said, and raised his beer. “Doubtful it’s a Satanist, or those Elder God freaks; those guys send the power down a hole. The crime scene doesn’t show any signs of that.” He drained his beer and ordered another round of shots.
“I really shouldn’t,” Rosaleen said. “I have to drive back to L.A. tomorrow.”
“Me too,” I said. “I’m running the beach in the morning.” Nico laughed and lit a cigarette.
“Okay, kids. One more each and then you two can go back to the flop, brush your teeth, put on your jammies, and hop in bed. Me, I plan on having trouble sleeping tonight.”
“So where did her energy go?” Rosaleen asked. “If it had been destroyed, it would have bled over into the scene. It didn’t. A healthy, whole human soul can’t just be snuffed out without leaving some residue, like those shadows of the people who were atomized at Hiroshima.”
“A whole, healthy soul,” I said, and drained the shot Nico put in front of me. “She had been tortured, drugged, raped over a long period of time. What if … what if he kept her … and slowly … wore her down, degraded her, corrupted her? What if he rotted out her soul before the son of a bitch killed her and pulled it out like a bad tooth?” Everyone at the table was silent. Nico had a look I
