Grim Rites by Bilinda Sheehan

opportunity he would do this and perhaps worse to me, I still couldn’t help but feel it was a cruel way to die.
    “It’s possible Lily caught up to him,” I said, the words aloud without thinking about it.
    “What makes you think that?” Victoria asked.
    “Because of the way he died. It had to have been painful; he went out in agony. Lily is the only witch I know with that kind of power and temperament.”
    “Could it have been a shifter, or a vamp?” Nic suggested.
    I shook my head. Of course, I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, but it didn’t stop me from having a hunch, and a hunch wasn’t something I was going to ignore.
    “Shouldn’t you walk the scene?” Victoria interjected, the look in her eyes unreadable.
    “Uh, I’ve been suspended, remember? Anything you find won’t be admissible in court.”
    “Is that the only reason you don’t want to do it?” she needled, and I clenched my fists at my sides.
    It wasn’t the only reason—it was a damn good one, but I certainly had a better one. Of course, that one made me look like a giant wimp, but it was bound to when I was discussing it with two people who didn’t understand it from my point of view.
    “No, and if you’ve met a witch hunter before, you should have a pretty clear idea of why I don’t want to,” I said, gritting my teeth.
    “Well, I can’t do it,” Victoria said, the matter-of-factness of her statement catching me by surprise. She may as well have declared that she enjoyed ice cream, or long walks on the beach.
    “What do you mean, you can’t do it? You’re an Elite officer, it’s your job,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
    “Amber, I’m a Changeling. The dead aren’t our thing—we cling to the living. Put us that close to death and it tends to get fatal….”
    “Why?” I asked, unable to stop the word before it erupted from my mouth.
    She sighed and shook her head. “Considering you work for the Elite—and who you are, the gifts you possess—you’re unbelievably innocent of the world you live in.”
    I opened my mouth to answer her but she held her hand up in a gesture of silence, and I found myself unable to speak. The smile that crept across her lips told me she was the cause of my sudden loss of words.
    “Look, faeries are immortal. Death doesn’t concern them, and why should it? However, just because they can live forever doesn’t mean they can’t be killed. Changelings, on the other hand—when we are born, our very existence hangs in the balance. If we are we not given the chance to thrive, we wither and die.”
    “And if you thrive?” Nic chipped in.
    Victoria’s smile broadened and she did a small spin on the spot. “If we thrive, then you end up with something like me. What will kill a faerie won’t even hurt me; our life spans run a thousand years, and if we spend too much time around death, it rubs off on us…. Banshees are definitely not on the friends list.”
    “If you can’t walk the scene, then you’ll need someone else down here to do it for you,” I said, my voice coming back with a squeak.
    “Not if you want the whole world knowing what happened to that guy up there and what he was. Do you really want to take that risk?”
    Her words made sense and I hated her a little for it. I didn’t want the world finding out about me. And if the threat of the witch hunters and their existence could be kept under wraps, then the better it would be for everyone involved. The second the Elite found out he was a witch hunter, it wouldn’t take them long to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
    “Fine, but like I said, it’s not going to be admissible in court,” I said from between gritted teeth.
    Victoria shrugged and the urge to punch her washed over me. Why was she so cold about everything? What was the point of working for the Elite if she simply didn’t care about those who died? I’d seen her form of justice and it wasn’t my kind, or at least I’d been certain