“Maggie what are you—” My words cut off when she began to speak.
“She’s been asleep since eleven o’clock,” Maggie said to the group, eyes still closed. The room seemed to let out a collective sigh at her words, but the flinty stares didn’t go away.
She opened her eyes and loosened her hold on my hand. I pulled it from her grasp and shot her an accusing look.
Inspector Comfrey was a psychometric, meaning that she could pull memories and facts from objects—including skin. Only she was so good at it that it was essentially the same thing as mind reading. No memory was safe from her.
However, unlike Leanne, who could foresee events, Maggie could only get a read on past events. It was a useful trait for an inspector, and I was sure I’d been paired with her for this reason. She was a walking lie detector, and I was untrustworthy.
Maggie shrugged. “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “You haven’t seen the victim yet.”
Before I could ask what she’d meant by that, the door opened and a bleary-eyed Caleb walked in, carrying a cardboard tray of coffee.
He nodded to his dad then flashed me a sleepy smile. “Hey partner,” he said. “Got you a coffee. Thought you might need it.”
“Awesome—thanks.” I didn’t bother to mention my vampy abilities made waking up and staying up at night increasingly easy. Not while I was one comment away from getting shanked by these angry villagers—I mean inspectors.
“Ah, perfect,” Inspector Comfrey said. “Now that you two are here, let’s get going.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the morgue.”
***
Maggie, Caleb, and I entered the morgue, appropriately located in the castle’s basement. My nostrils flared at the smell of preservatives, bodily fluids, and decay. The taste of coffee on my tongue soured.
“Knock knock,” Maggie said.
Chief Constable Eugene Morgan was already in the room chatting with the pathologist, and at the interruption Morgan glanced up. “Ah,” he said, noticing us, “you’re all here.” His gaze rested on mine. “Sergeant Fiori, glad you came,”—as if I had a choice—“perhaps you in particular can lend us some of your vampiric insight.”
I glanced between him and the pathologist, uncomfortable by the attention and confused about what exactly the chief constable wanted me to do. Chief Constable Morgan was the head of the Politia, and though I had met him before, this was the first time I’d ever worked directly with him.
“Uh, sure,” I said.
“Good, good.” He nodded to himself and rubbed his cinnamon and salt mustache. “Maggie,” he said, turning to Inspector Comfry, “have you had a chance to read the victim?”
Maggie nodded once. “I touched the body earlier, but it’s no good. The overwhelming impression was fear. It overrode anything important I might’ve otherwise been able to pick up on.”
“Damn. That’s too bad.” Chief Constable Morgan looked up at the pathologist. “Well then, why don’t you pull out our victim?”
Caleb, Maggie, and I moved towards the wall of metal human-sized drawers. Involuntarily I shivered, the movement causing the coffee I held to slosh inside its container. The last time I was in a room like this, I was on the other side of those drawers.
The pathologist grabbed the handle for one of the drawers and pulled. He rolled out a petite woman with fiery red hair.
My stomach clenched at the sight and smell of her. Her body was too pale, even for her alabaster complexion. And the smell . . . ammonia overpowered my olfactory senses. Whoever she was, she was scared before she died.
Then my eyes traveled to her neck. Or what used to be her neck. What must’ve once been a delicate swathe of skin was now a red, meaty pulp. Someone had torn it apart.
The pathologist clucked his tongue. “The victim’s body was drained of nearly every drop of blood.”
***
“You okay?” Caleb asked not coming too close.
He found me in the hallway outside the morgue, bent over a trashcan; my coffee and the contents of my stomach now rested at the bottom of it.
I nodded, but I wasn’t okay. Far from it.
Was it Andre? Someone else? Do they think I killed her? Maggie’s earlier behavior suddenly made sense. She wanted to know if I’d done it.
As if reading my mind, Caleb said, “They don’t think you did it.”
Yeah right.
I glanced up at him. “And how would you know that?” I asked. Either he was lying, or the inspectors were telling Caleb more than they were telling me.
He was silent, but only for a moment. “Think you can go back in?” he asked, switching subjects.
“Do I have to?” Please say no, please say n—
“We’ve been assigned to the investigation.”
Of course we’d been.
I exhaled. “Fine.” I rose to my feet.
When we walked back into the morgue, the rest of the group was waiting for us.