Affairs of the Dead (21 page)

Before I attempted to clear enough room for me to start working, I headed over to Micah’s cubicle with trepidation in every step. I wasn’t expecting him to even grace me with eye contact, but I was going to try to speak to him and hoped he wouldn’t blow his fuse and expose me for the harlot I was. I probably shouldn’t be poking the beast when the suite was far from empty, but not being able to talk things out with Micah was leaving me feeling restless and distracted, and I couldn’t start to do any work without talking to him.

He probably saw me coming from the corner of his eye, but he never looked my way, just continued to stare at his computer screen. Even though I could see only the side of his face, I hesitated and almost turned around. His jaw was clenched so tightly, his teeth were probably crying out from abuse. I stopped a few feet away and waited a heartbeat, but he still didn’t look at me.

“Micah, we need to talk. I want to explain everything to you. Please, can’t you give me that much?” I kept my voice low because these cubicles were packed so tightly, there was no hope of having privacy.

“Were you sleeping with Andrew?” His voice was low and flat. I felt my heart constrict.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Then this conversation is over.” There was a steeliness in his voice that almost rivaled Andrew’s.

I wanted to implore some more, but I had a feeling if I kept pushing him, he would explode and this would get embarrassing. Some people were already giving us sidelong glances as though they picked up on the tension between us.

So much for trying to make things better. I wanted to ask him how things were going with the case, but I knew there was no chance he would tell me anything. I sighed and tried not to hang my head as I walked back to my desk. The only thing I could do now was work and hope it would distract me. I would try to talk to Micah later; maybe all he needed was some time to cool down.

Yeah, time would fix this. I wanted to bang my head against my desk. Instead, I settled for clearing it off and booting up my computer. Just as I was thinking Andrew could go fuck himself and I should just quit and go work somewhere else, I opened my e-mail to find a message from Andrew with yesterday’s date. My heart was suddenly slamming against my ribs as I read it. It was short and to the point, and it pissed me off.

Quit, and I’ll make sure no other agency ever hires you. You know I have the power to do it. You’re mine.

I had to sit back and take a few slow, deep breaths to calm myself down. What a bastard. If Andrew thought I was now going to be his punching bag he could think again. If he wanted to screw me in a different way now, he’d see that I was up for the challenge. I closed my e-mail, dragged Larry’s file over, and plunged in.

* * *

Before I knew it, three hours had passed, and I had made very little headway with my file organization. It had taken me about thirty minutes even to come up with a strategy for how I was going to get these damn files in order. Finally, I created a list of categories and started to make piles, putting similar information together. It was still daunting though, because when I thought I had all my categories set, I came across information that didn’t fit any of them and had to come up with new ones. My miscellaneous pile was bigger than any other.

I was going through a tattered folder that seemed to be making my job a little easier since it held mostly personal information on Larry, when something caught my eye. I pulled out some papers that were stapled together and had pictures of people along with a paragraph about them.

The first picture was Larry’s, below him was Leslie, then there were two elderly people that I read were his parents. The picture below that was what had caught my eye, because there was something about the man in the image that gave me a strong sense of familiarity. Even his name looked familiar. Didn’t I know someone named Michael Griffith? Michael was listed as Larry’s half brother, and when it finally clicked, the gasp I released was loud and forceful enough to cause some of the people sitting nearby to glance at me.

Michael Griffith was Trevor’s real name, and the reason his picture looked only vaguely familiar was because of how much he’d changed his appearance when he’d been found out as a reanimator and gone into hiding. Trevor was Larry’s brother? Not once had Trevor ever mentioned having a half brother when he’d worked here. He had talked about his two sisters but no brothers. Then again, seeing as Larry was a criminal, it made sense that Trevor wouldn’t have talked about him since that could have jeopardized his position at AOD. I wasn’t surprised that no one had made the connection between Michael and Larry, considering that Larry’s files were a disorganized mess that we largely tried not to think about. The wheels in my head were turning, and I felt like I was finally on the path I should be following, but I needed to look into something before I could try and bring my leaps and bounds together.

I used our research software to look into Athena, specifically all the people she had been responsible for discovering as reanimators. It didn’t take long for me to find Michael Griffith’s name on that list. I sat back and frowned, thinking about how all of this might fit together, because my trail of thoughts was trying to get me to conclude that it could be Larry in Ethan’s body. For all the research Micah and I had done on who could be connected to the murders, Trevor and Larry fit the mold the best. From a recent conversation with Trevor, I knew how bitter he was about how far he’d fallen once he’d been found out as a reanimator, and Athena was directly responsible for that.

Had he then chosen to get his brother into a physical body and use him to exact revenge on Athena? And Leslie had been Larry’s cheating wife. Maybe Larry had exacted some revenge for himself? It had seemed like Leslie wasn’t too keen on the fact that Larry’s ghost was still hanging around. Maybe that was because she figured his unfinished business might have to do with…

“Revenge for cheating on him,” I whispered, my eyes growing wide. Larry had a laundry list of other unfinished business, sure, but what if the ultimate one, the one we couldn’t legally help him with, was getting revenge on his philandering wife?

I was growing excited now; I knew I couldn’t yet say I had the solution to the case, but this was definitely worth looking into. There was just one issue—I needed Micah’s backup on this, and he wanted nothing to do with me.

I still had to try. The case came before our personal issues, and I hoped Micah would see it that way. I gathered the papers with Larry’s family tree and headed back to Micah’s cubicle. This time, I saw his eyes narrow slightly as I walked up.

“I’m not here to try and force you to talk to me about the other night,” I said. “But I think I may have a break in the case that we should investigate. I’d go alone, but I can’t quite drive yet, and the last time I went out on my own, I got beat up, so…”

He said nothing, and I sighed.

“Look, Micah, this isn’t some ploy. I promise you I’ve come across something, and despite everything, isn’t the case more important?” I placed the papers in front of him and pointed to Michael’s picture. “Does he look familiar to you? That’s Larry’s half brother, though these days, he goes by Trevor, and he works in the Underground. And as you know, he’s a reanimator.”

Micah frowned as he stared at the paper.

“I think that if Trevor put Larry into Ethan’s body, then Larry went after Leslie for cheating on him, and Athena for being the one who discovered that Trevor was a reanimator. I looked into it; she was the one who found him out.”

Micah folded his arms and sat back, giving me the barest of glances. “It’s still inconclusive.”

“Have you come across any leads that are more worth following?”

His silence told me he had not.

“It’s enough of a connection to look into,” I said. “We need to try and find the body-jacker before he kills someone else Larry or Trevor has a grudge against.”

“Larry hasn’t been seen in a while,” Micah said, frowning. “I heard that some of the other necromancers have been looking for him the past few days.”

“There could be a good reason for that,” I said.

“What do you want to do?” Micah asked. His voice was still tight and flat, but at least he was talking to me.

“Seek Trevor out,” I said. “I know where his shop is in the Underground; it’s the perfect place to start. If he’s there, hell, if Larry in Ethan’s body is there, we could have this all taken care of before the day is done.”

“Only if your assumptions are correct,” Micah said, but he stood up and handed me back the papers. “Let’s go.”

* * *

I endured a painfully awkward car ride with Micah during which I didn’t even bother to attempt conversation. About twenty minutes later, we were walking into the Underground.

“How do you know where he sets up shop?” Micah asked, and I think I detected some suspicion in his voice. It would be just what I needed to have him think I was in cahoots with Trevor if he was up to no good, wouldn’t it?

“I come to the Underground a lot more than you probably think,” I said. “The rune I need to mask my reanimation power can’t exactly be found at the local rune shop. I came across Trevor a few years ago and realized that this was what he’d done with himself after escaping being stripped.” I stopped in front of the door I knew led down to Trevor’s shop. “This is it.”

We headed through the basement door. When we got to the bottom, I saw Micah looking around warily as though he thought a trap was about to spring on him at any moment. I couldn’t really blame him. A lot of people who worked the Underground liked to set booby traps to trip up the cops and help them escape.

I opened the hidden door in the wall, then the one in the floor, and though Micah looked more hesitant about going down farther, he didn’t hem and haw over it. Soon, we were standing in Trevor’s small workroom, but it took only a second to realize that it was a lot different from the last time I was here. It was empty.

“Is there another door we have to go through or down?” Micah asked, stepping forward and looking around. Since the room had been cleared out, there was no candlelight to see by, and only the barest light filtered down from above. But it was enough to see that the room was empty. Micah and I pulled out flashlights.

“No,” I said. “He cleared out.”

Micah turned to me with a raised eyebrow.

“When I was here last week, this room was full of reanimated animals, candles, rune stones, and Trevor, of course, but he’s gone now.”

“Interesting,” Micah said.

“This was the block I chased Ethan’s body-jacker down, come to think of it,” I said. “If it is Larry in there, maybe he was here to see Trevor, and after our scuffle, he told Trevor I was on his tail, and they packed up and left. Damn it.” I pounded my fist against the wall. “Now how the hell are we supposed to find him?”

“There’s no essence to trace,” Micah said. He’d pulled out an absorption rune and had been moving it all over the room. He came back over to me, looking discouraged. “He must have cleaned up before he left.” Meaning, Trevor had used absorption runes to get rid of any essence left behind to ensure no one would be able to track him.

“Let’s see if there’s anything else we can find,” I said. We spent some time looking over every inch of the room but came away with nothing. We left the musty hole and headed back outside.

“What now?” Micah said, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets and staring off across the street. Honestly, I had no clue.

“Go back to the office, I guess,” I said as we headed back to his car. “This is discouraging, but the fact that Trevor hightailed it strengthens my theory about him and Larry being connected to who’s walking around in Ethan’s body.”

“Except we’re still no closer to finding them, and while we twiddle our thumbs, someone else could get murdered.” He glanced at me. “Why don’t you try to create another rune stone to track Ethan’s body?”

I smacked myself on the forehead, then regretted it and winced since my head was still a little sore. “Why didn’t I think of that?” I said. “The T-shirt Ethan brought me would be useless now since I absorbed everything from it for the first tracking stone, but I could have him get me something else from his house. Once he resurfaces.”

“Okay,” Micah said. We reached his car and got in, but Micah didn’t start it.

I looked at him. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his arms trembled, and he suddenly seemed unable to control his expression. I sensed an explosion coming; it had been only a matter of time. I braced myself for it.

“How could you do it?” He didn’t yell, but that was somehow worse. He was staring out the windshield and not at my face. “How could you do it?”

“Micah, just hear me out.”

Now he turned to me, and the hurt and anger I saw on his face made me shrink back against the car door.

“What’s there to hear?” he said. “You were fucking our married boss, Selene, then you made me feel like there was something between us, but the moment my back was turned, you go and…” He made an anguished sound and slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

“I didn’t do anything with Andrew that night!” I said, to which he just scoffed. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I went in there to tell him off for leaving me a diamond necklace and to tell him that it was over, but he didn’t take it well and tried to force himself on me!” Micah’s expression froze as he stared at me. “He ripped open my shirt and jeans, but I was able to get away from him. That’s the truth, Micah.”

His jaw was back to being tightly clenched. I hoped he wasn’t setting himself up for dental work down the line.

“He forced himself on you,” he stated.

I sighed and slumped back against the seat. “You know what a domineering man Andrew is at work,” I said. “Well, it crosses over into other things too. I realized that he saw me as a possession, and when I asserted otherwise, things went a lot worse than I anticipated.” I turned to him. “You have to believe me. I wouldn’t go from kissing you one minute to bent over in front of Andrew the next.”