Free Shadow Burns: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Preternatural Affairs Book 4) by S.M. Reine Page B

when I checked for a pulse. There was nothing there. To be honest, I didn’t know if there ever had been. But he was definitely a lot deader now than he had been a few minutes earlier, and he was the only person who might have known what had happened in the basement of the house.
    I rounded on Isobel. “What the hell was that for? I had him under control!”
    “He attacked us,” she said, breathless. “I had to do something.”
    “You mean, stake him like a vampire?”
    “Don’t be silly. Vampires don’t exist.” She was regaining her composure now that he was gone. She straightened her dress, gently probed her facial wounds with her fingertips, slowed her breathing. But there was still fear in her eyes. “He was already practically dead. I just…shuffled him off the mortal coil.”
    “And how did you do that, exactly?”
    “I’m a death witch,” Isobel said, moving to return the feather to her hair. “The other priestesses who worshipped the Hand of Death taught me a few things.”
    I caught her wrist. Pulled her hand away so I could see the feather. It glinted with magic, but not any kind of magic I’d seen before. “This banishes ghosts?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice.
    She gave me a flat look. “What do you think you just saw? Do you have a better explanation?”
    All right. That line of conversation wasn’t going anywhere.
    “It sounded like he knew you,” I said.
    “I’ve never seen him before in this life.” Isobel returned the feather to her hair. “We still need to find a way out of here, Cèsar.”
    She whirled and stalked toward the rear of the canyon again.
    I gaped after her for a long moment.
    Isobel knew what was happening here—or, at least, she knew more than I did. That wasn’t hard. I didn’t know anything aside from the fact that I was seriously regretting my return to Paradise Mile.
    But she wasn’t talking to me. I was pretty sure she was outright lying, actually.
    Who was Nichols? How had he known Isobel? Why had she wanted him dead so badly when he might have been able to save us?
    And why the fuck wasn’t she telling me anything?
    She disappeared into the fog. I had no choice but to rush to catch up.
    “Don’t walk away from me like that,” I said. “It’s dangerous. You hear me? You need to stick close.”
    Isobel didn’t respond or even look at me. Her cheeks were damp, but she tried to scrub her tears away when she caught me watching her. My annoyance melted away at the sight of it.
    Fuck, but I was weak for a crying woman.
    We didn’t have far to walk before reaching the back wall of the canyon. It seemed to loom out of nowhere. Everything was overwhelmed by empty gray mist one second, and then we butted up against creeper-covered stone the next.
    There was no back road out of the canyon.
    Isobel made a little choking noise at my side. Her momentary bravado had vanished again.
    “Don’t worry. I can climb this.” I dropped my jacket.
    Her voice went shrill. “What? And leave me behind?”
    “You can climb, too.”
    “I have the upper body strength of a hamster.” Isobel swung the antenna as if to illustrate. It whistled through the air and stirred the fog in gray curlicues.
    Her upper body strength had seemed good enough when she’d been wrestling with Nichols.
    “Climbing’s mostly in the legs. You’ll be fine.”
    But when I grabbed a bare patch of stone, creepers slithered over my hands. They felt like worms, soggy and muscular, twining around my fingers and clutching my wrists.
    I jerked back with a shout. The vines ripped free of the canyon wall and stuck to my sleeves.
    I’m not too much of a man to admit that I slapped them off like some fifties housewife freaking out over a mouse. I’d been coping with the creepy canyon pretty well, but I drew the line at worm-vines.
    They writhed on the ground where they landed. The ragged stumps oozed black.
    It looked like the creepers were bleeding.
    “We climb out of the