Free Grave Memory: An Alex Craft Novel by Kalayna Price Page A

my eyesight continued to degenerate this rapidly, I might need to look into some alternatives. Maybe I could train PC as a Seeing Eye dog. Of course, I couldn’t even get the six pound Chinese crested to walk on a leash without pulling. Who knew where we’d end up if I relied on his guidance.
    I shuffled around Tamara’s office, searching for a place to sit. As I sank gratefully into Tamara’s spare chair, I heard the coffeemaker turn on. Central Precinct was infamous for the burnt sludge most of the cops choked down, but here in the morgue, Tamara kept her own machine and a stash of good dark roasted coffee beans.
    “So did anything strange stand out in Kingly’s autopsy?”I asked as the smell of rich coffee wafted through the small office.
    “Let me glance over my notes,” she said, and I could almost hear the frown on her face, even if I couldn’t see it. I knew her well enough to guess she was kicking herself, sure she’d missed something.
    “He likely jumped, even if he can’t remember,” I said as I heard the sound of her file cabinet opening. “You weren’t wrong about that.”
    Paper crinkled as she riffled through a file. “All the physical evidence pointed that way. But there had to be a spell involved, right?” She paused. “Or could brain damage have caused the memory loss?”
    I considered the idea. Memories were stored in every cell of the body, but they were limited to what the soul experienced and remembered. Dementia, brain damage, brainwashing, or spells affecting memory—if powerful enough—could change what the body recorded and what the shade reported. But I didn’t think brain damage was the issue in this case. “Kingly died too soon after impact for the damage to have changed his memory.”
    “Alex, he died
on
impact.”
    I didn’t bother arguing if life ceased when the body died or when the soul left the body. Remove the soul, and the body dies. Even if it takes a couple minutes for the person to be considered medically dead, the shade would have no memory of that time. On the other hand, a body could be medically dead but the soul still in it, and the shade would know everything that happened to the body after death until the soul was finally freed. Which equalled true death? It was a topic on which a medical professional and a grave witch were unlikely to ever agree.
    Tamara was silent as I heard her turning pages. My vision was finally recovering, and I could clearly make out the outline of her leaning over the file on her desk. I let her review it in silence. The pot of coffee finished brewing before she finished reading, so I stood and made a fumbling attempt to locate the Styrofoam cups that were always onthe shelf above the coffeemaker. Except, nothing I touched felt like a cup, and as I was still seeing mostly gray outlines, the one thing that looked like it might be cup shaped turned out to be a container of powdered creamer.
    “You’re out of cups.”
    “Oh, sorry. I meant to tell you. I’m using mugs now,” she said, and slid open her bottom drawer, retrieving two ceramic mugs.
    I’d cringed at her use of the word “sorry” though it had been more expression than true apology so the incursion of possible debt that hung between us was small. If it had a monetary value, it would have been worth no more than a penny or two, but I still hated the feeling of imbalance. Of course, it was an apology, not an expression of appreciation, so at least I had the option of not accepting.
    “Mugs. Really?” Yeah, my sarcasm sounded mean, but it was the only way not to forgive her. I was going to have to tell her I was fae—or, at least, fae enough to count—soon or we’d eventually run into unavoidable and weighty debt. But if I started telling people, it became more real. Not that the fact I spent time in a pocket of Faerie almost every single day didn’t highlight it nice and bright.
    “—and Ethan’s always going on about how bad Styrofoam is for the