Face Off

CHAPTER 28

MORGUES WERE ALWAYS in basements, Laura thought as she stepped out of the elevator. The dead didn’t need sunlight. The living didn’t want to be disturbed by their presence. Between the InterSec offices and the local Guild crime-liaison department, the Guildhouse’s morgue was larger than other fey facilities. The Guild and InterSec used separate staff to perform autopsies and forensics. What redundancies the situation created was balanced by less friction over who had priority on research staff.

Laura Blackstone had never had a reason to be seen in the morgue, which made transitioning to Mariel Tate necessary after returning from seeing Cress. Mariel didn’t attract undue attention there by her mere presence. Part of her job was following up on deaths. People did look at her, though. That was one of the points in making the Mariel glamour so attractive—to distract from whatever she was doing. It worked most of the time.

She pushed open the door to the cool room. That late in the day, no one was working, and the lights were dimmed. As she moved toward Sean Carr’s locker, she stopped. Her mnemonic memory worked on several levels, recording body signatures, data, events, and places. Things like places logged themselves into her memory like subroutines, something she didn’t consciously do and didn’t pay attention to most of the time. When she entered the cool room, on a subconscious level, her awareness noted several changes, changes that were filtered as normal and disregarded. Gurneys had been moved. Counters cleared. The lights, of course.

Except one thing flared out in her memory as out of place. In the kick space in front of the cooler sat a small granite plate. To the casual eye, it appeared innocuous, a forgotten piece of discarded stone on the floor and swept out of view. Laura saw it for what it was: a listening ward. Someone was keeping tabs on who entered the room. If that was the case, she didn’t want anyone to know she was looking at the body.

She retraced her steps and texted Sinclair to meet her. As she lingered near the elevators, she used her PDA to catch up on public-relations emails until Sinclair arrived. He made a show of looking up and down the hallway. “Not the dinner spot I was hoping for.”

“I need your help with something,” she said.

He feigned surprise. “My help? Me? If this is about changing a lightbulb because I’m taller than you, I’ll be very disappointed.”

She led him down the hallway. “Not a lightbulb, but I’ll keep that in mind. Follow me.”

“Anywhere,” he said.

Her fear that he was able to mask his truthfulness through some ability she didn’t know warred with her desire to believe him. The desire was winning out over the fear more and more lately. She was starting to think that wasn’t a bad thing. She stopped shy of the door to the examining room. Can you pull out your medallion for me? she sent.

He waggled his eyebrows. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

Although it wasn’t the time for jokes, she realized that it was the perfect time for Sinclair. His joking was a mask, she decided, a way of glossing over the seriousness of a situation. She, of all people, knew about masks. She glowered playfully and held her fingers to his lips. There’s a listening ward in the room, she sent.

Sinclair threaded his medallion from beneath his shirt. The metal held an odd coolness, unwarmed by his skin. Essence burned both hot and cold depending on how it was used. Laura didn’t understand the spell that suppressed Sinclair’s fey essence, but she had been able to enhance it before. She pushed essence into the medallion. Her skin prickled as the spell expanded to cover her, too.

Sinclair smirked. “You made it bigger.”

Ignoring the comment, she released the medallion. “I need you to stand near the listening ward to dampen it.”

She opened a door in the wall of coolers and rolled out a long metal shelf. Sean Carr lay on the shelf, a thin white sheet covering him to the waist. Cress’s stasis spell surrounded him, already weakening. Laura estimated it would be gone within a day and with it any trace of essence-related evidence.

The spell prevented his wings from curling inward. They lay flat to either side, a tattered hole in the left one near the shoulder. A cratered burn mark on his chest splayed out like a bloody star against his pale skin. Laura lifted her gaze to see Sinclair’s reaction. He leaned against a counter on the opposite side of the table, posture relaxed, arms folded against his chest.

She lifted the shroud, the stark white overhead lamps accentuating Carr’s pale skin. Carr might have been a failed assassin, but Laura still respected the dead. Playful banter with Sinclair could wait. She pulled on latex gloves and handed Sinclair a pair. “Can you hold up a wing for me?”

The thin appendage draped over his fingers as Sinclair lifted the soft folds. Laura scanned the drab mauve surface, searching for anomalies. Fairy wings were resilient to incidental injuries, but essence could damage them.

“What are you looking for?” Sinclair asked.

“Cress wanted me to get body-signature imprints before they faded.”

The dead man’s body signature shone as Inverni a day after his death. Not a surprise for a member of a powerful group, even if he was from a subclan. She gestured for Sinclair to move closer. “Do you sense anything here?”

“Just the guy’s shape. There are layers of other essence on him, but they mean nothing to me.”

She moved her hand along Carr’s body, sensing residual essence. “They’re multiple body signatures, likely contaminants from the way he was brought in.”

“Sounds like poor procedure to me,” said Sinclair.

Laura sensed her own essence on the body. “Agreed. This wing burn is mine. I’m getting a nice strong tag on the kill shot. That will help identify the killer once we have someone in custody.”

As Sinclair released the wing and adjusted it along the rolling slab, Laura started to push the body into the locker but paused. This close to the body, her sensing ability picked up nuances in Carr’s body signature. The strength of the field didn’t surprise her. As an Inverni, that was a given. She leaned closer. Still nothing. “There’s nothing there.”

Laura lifted Carr’s hands and scanned them. “There’s gunshot residue from firing at Draigen, but there’s no residual essence concentration in his hands. Essence-fire pools on the skin surface before it discharges. It leaves a ghost image behind, like gunshot residue. There’s no afterimage in these hands.”

“So?” asked Sinclair.

“He didn’t fire essence at whoever killed him, Jono.”

Sinclair met her gaze. “Which means he was either surrendering or wasn’t expecting to be fired on because he knew the fey who shot him.”

Laura pulled the shroud back over Carr and pushed the slab back into the locker. “Either way, Jono, it means he was murdered.”