Precinct 13 (21 page)

The stepmonster.

Of course.

Turning, I slumped back down onto the couch. This time, Valentine came around to perch on the end table in order to face me. “She masked your signal very effectively for many years,” Valentine said. “I only began to hear the call after you left home for college.”

I’d been planning on medical school from the beginning and, in order to save money, had stayed close to home for undergraduate work. I had lived with my dad a lot on and off during those years, despite the atmosphere there. “You ‘heard’ me? I thought it was a smell.”

He cocked his head slightly. “Smell, yes, but more than that. I’m not sure I can describe the feeling to a creature with no sense of instinct. Sometimes, there are simply things I
must
do. Finding you was one of those.”

I felt weirdly flattered, but there was still so much I didn’t understand. Other than seeing things that no one else did,
I’d never felt especially magical. In fact, that’d just made me feel weird and out of place. Everyone else’s life seemed cooler. I couldn’t conjure things from my mind. I’d never been able to cast a spell in my life, at least none I ever knew about. I was even terrible at those card tricks and other phony illusions you could buy in magic shops. “Why? Why me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “All that was certain to me was that you were something I had to have, own, possess—
guard
, like the finest jewel in the hoard.”

Well, at least now I knew why he never told me he loved me. I wasn’t sure I liked this particular revelation, though. I pushed my back against the couch. “I’m your very best possession, huh?”

He surprised me by laughing. “You, my dear, have proven a surprisingly difficult gem to acquire. I don’t believe I have managed that feat just yet. You are far too wild, too…willful a thing to be owned in any decent fashion. I have had to satisfy myself with continual pursuit.”

My defensive posture melted slightly at that. After all, I thought of him the exact same way.

The mischievous glint in his eyes inspired me to duck under his arm. I dashed across the room.

“Okay, then,” I teased from around the archway. I enjoyed his stunned expression. With a laugh, I dashed into the dining room in the direction of the bedroom. “See if you can catch me!”

Though we played that game for a long time, I have to admit that at several points during the night, Valentine completely and quite thoroughly possessed me.

I woke up to an empty bed, however. When I reached over to give Valentine a morning cuddle, I found the big black stone ball instead. He’d stuck a Post-it note to the top of it. With blinking morning eyes, I read his scrawling, old-fashioned cursive: “Had to fly. (Ha. Ha.) Will be back.”

Of course, I had no idea if he meant tonight or sometime next year. I crumpled up the yellow paper and tossed it onto the floor. I should know by now that the easiest way to get rid of a dragon is to give him what he wants. I’d bored him by giving in last night.

At least I had his promise that he’d come back around eventually.

I was beginning to think that was a fairly big commitment from someone like Valentine. Despite myself, I smiled as I got up and dressed for work.

When I went in for the morning meeting, the precinct office was buzzing with excitement. Two zombies had been spotted at Big Tom’s diner. Stone and Jones were on their way out to collect them if they could. Everyone thought the reanimation was likely the work of the necromancer, and it could be the big break we were looking for in this case.

Devon stood next to the watercooler with an empty cup listing in his hand. He looked completely hungover. He wore the same college sweatshirt he’d had on days ago, but now it was rumpled and stained with dust and grime. A hole had been ripped in the knee of his jeans. Deep bags hung under his eyes and there was a bruise on his stubbled chin.

I decided not to ask the obvious question. Instead, after
he muttered a “morning” in my general direction, I asked, “Does Big Tom’s have brains on the breakfast menu or something?”

He stared at me blankly.

“Zombies,” I said. “Don’t they eat brains?”

Devon yawned and rubbed his neck, as if he had a sore muscle, and said, “Not in my experience.” He gave me a quick appraisal and added, “Rumor has it you’re shtupping a dragon. I told Margot I didn’t believe it for a minute.” He coughed out a laugh like he thought that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.

Because he was so smug about the impossibility, I said, very proudly, “It’s true.”

“Well, then, welcome to the unnatural club.” He gave me a salute with his paper cup. “I’m glad I won’t be the only one in the office everyone hates.”

“Oh no, Devon, don’t worry. I’m sure that will still be the case.”

His mouth hung open as I sauntered away.

Over my shoulder, I added, “Don’t forget your appointment at the morgue this afternoon. You and Stone have some cow heads to smash.”

He smiled a bit. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Finally a chance to show her which of us is strongest.”

“Good,” I said.

Without the morning meeting to attend, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I wished Jones had assigned me a desk. When he came back, I would ask him about it. Meanwhile, I found myself drifting over to where Jack sat reading the
Capitol Times
. Leaning against the edge of his wooden
desk to peer over his shoulder, I asked, “Does it mention Olson’s cows?”

“Yes,” he said, pointing to the piece. “And some neighbor mentioned seeing ‘dancing lights’ and space aliens.”

The article was buried in the community section, under the fold on a middle page. Still, I couldn’t imagine Jones would be very happy with this. “At least there’s no picture.”

“Small miracles,” Jack muttered, taking a sip from a mug at his desk. Whatever he was drinking smelled very green. “The interviewing officers said a lot of people mentioned lights. I wonder if they’re fairy?”

I shook my head. “The queen was very clear that the only fairy in Hughes County is Jones.”

“You should really learn to call him Spenser. Everyone does.”

It was the first time Jack pulled himself from the newspaper long enough to look me in the eye. I smiled at him sheepishly. “That’ll take some doing,” I admitted. “It’s a lot easier for me to believe in magic than call a cop by his first name.”

“Is it a respect thing?”

“Sort of,” I said. “And fear. Cops scare me.”

He didn’t ask me why; instead, he shrugged and returned his focus to the paper. “You, of all people, should have nothing to fear. Call him
Spense
, for oak’s sake.”

“Me, of all people? What does that mean?”

“You’re the one with the dragon,” he said stiffly.

Everyone seemed obsessed with that fact this morning and rather pissy about it as well. I’d thought Jack was cool with the fact I had a dragon familiar. Or was he feeling hurt about the other rumor Devon had heard? I’d told Jones that Valentine was my boyfriend. Had Jack not figured that out?

How ironic that Valentine had left me—with nothing but a note and a giant black ball. It made me wonder, though. Talk was clearly circulating. What did people think of me now? Where did I fit in the office politics hierarchy with my tendency toward the unnatural and a dragon on call?

I wasn’t sure I wanted the aggravation. I’d never asked for this gig. The only office mates I’d wanted to have to deal with were dead people—ones who didn’t talk back!

“I’ll be at the morgue if anyone needs me,” I told the back of Jack’s head as I walked out the door.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Finnegan was in an especially chatty mood today. She told me all about her daughter who was coming to pick up her body. I tried to make polite, interested comments for a while, but when I realized that only encouraged her, I gave up and put on my headphones.

My mind wandered as I listened to the music. Jack was jealous, that much was clear. It made no sense to me, however. In my mind, he’d gotten the better familiar. Sarah Jane was charming. She might come with a bullyish band of magpies, but I doubted she’d ever done time for grievous bodily harm. As far as familiars went, she seemed perfect. Mine was violent and temperamental, and even on his best days he could be crafty and deceitful. Our entire relationship was founded on a lie, or at least a dishonest disguise. Sarah Jane was exactly as advertised.

Of course, he might just be old-fashioned jealous, too. Maybe I was right and Jack hadn’t realized Valentine was my lover as well as my familiar until someone in the office told him.

I wished I could explain to Jack that, even with Valentine
in my life, there was room for more affection. Valentine was many wonderful things to me, but he’d always have the emotional distance…of a
dragon
.

That was such a relief to be able to say, because the coldness I got from Valentine used to eat me up. I thought there was something wrong with me, some part of my personality that wasn’t fulfilling him. But, now I knew. It was just his nature. He loved me in his own way; it just wasn’t the human way.

Jack had nothing to be jealous of.

Hell, Jack actually knew magic and how to perform it intentionally. The only thing I’d ever done, magically speaking, was accidentally graft someone else’s weapon to my arm. I couldn’t even hope to get rid of it without Jack’s help.

I glanced at the snake’s head on the back of my hand. It had moved again. The tip of its nose was tucked slightly under its scaly neck, almost like a sleeping cat, except its lidless black eye stared out at me.

It looked content and comfortable.

I should have been repulsed, but instead I had to resist the urge to give it a gentle, loving stroke.

What was wrong with me? Was Devon right? Had I gone over to the dark side finally?

I let out a frustrated snort.
Maybe I’d never left it.

The music switched to something that always reminded me of Valentine, Mariah Carey’s song “My All.” “If it’s wrong to love you,” I sang along, “then my heart just won’t let me be right.”

My emotions were a complete tangle. I made some headway on both cases, however.

The lab at the hospital came back with some preliminary results of the tox screen on the necromancer. They found
trace amounts of sorbitol and paradichlorobenzene on the skin samples I’d taken during the autopsy. Both were chemicals used in embalming. Sorbitol was used to return moisture to the body and the paradicholorobenzene was a mold inhibitor. I supposed he could have picked both up while handling the bodies he’d robbed from the graves, but there was another chemical present that made me wonder—borax. It was a common enough household chemical, but it was also used to adjust the pH of embalming fluids. That seemed more like the kind of thing you’d have on your skin if you were actively mixing those chemicals, like a mortician would.

Checking the department’s database, the necromancer’s last job was listed as a stocker at the local grocery. Unless embalming was a hobby of his—which, given his tendency to have body parts in his closet, it might be—he hung out at mortuaries a lot.

Maybe that was the sort of thing that was a “duh” for Precinct 13. I supposed that “necromancer = mortuaries” wasn’t a big stretch, but I thought it might be a clue as to where he’d gone off to. Given the state he’d left in, he may have wanted his body stitched back together. A mortician could certainly do a good job of it.

What had Nana Spider said? Something about a relative? Maybe our necromancer had family in the funerary business. I took a few notes and stored them in my phone.

I came across my previous notation to myself about Boyd. I needed to remember to tell Jones that it wasn’t Peterson who had been at the scene—or, at least if he had been there, Boyd had been, too.

Next, I spent some time really examining the cow’s head trauma, thinking about what Genevieve’s veterinarian
cousin had said about the force of a car. The shape of the wound had me thinking about every forensic scientist’s best friend, “the blunt instrument.” I’d have to wait to see the kind of shape that a supernaturally strong fist might make, but I should probably have a few more experiments ready for different kinds of shovels or tools.

I was on the office’s phone making arrangements with the butcher when my phone buzzed. I put the butcher on hold while I answered. The number was unidentified, but I didn’t know many people in town.

“We have a dead body for you.” The matter-of-fact no-introduction could only be Jones.

“Where?”

“In the interrogation room. The zombie stopped being cooperative and died. For real.”

For some reason, downtown was busy today. I found a parking spot several blocks away. As I rounded the corner, I saw the chief of police pacing back and forth in front of the storefront illusion. He wore a heavy leather police jacket and his breath came out in steamy huffs. “I know you’re in there,” he shouted.

I hesitated, wondering what I should do. I knew we had a camera pointed at the front door. Someone must know he was out here. Why weren’t they letting him in? I wondered if I should try to find a backdoor. Though, given how camouflaged the front was, I doubted I’d ever discover the back by accident.

The chief must have seen me out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, Connor,” he said, waving me over. “Tell these yahoos to let me in.”

Part of me still wanted to run, but I steeled myself and
approached him. The belt buckle today was a golden eagle. It glinted in the sunlight. “What’s going on, sir?”

“That’s what I want to know. Why were there zombies at the damn diner? And the newspaper is reporting aliens! You people are supposed to keep all that stuff under wraps.”

I could use a rescue about now. I stared bitterly at the front door, which remained closed. It was obvious no one wanted to deal with this. “I don’t know,” I said firmly. “I’m just the coroner.”

The chief poked a meaty finger at my chest. “You tell Jones that I want answers. He’d better have them for me by lunchtime, or I’m busting the battering ram out of storage and I’ll break this goddamn door down, you hear?”