For a Few Demons More (6 page)

Glenn shot me a sideways look. “Um, actually, I've got a list,” he said, fumbling in an inner coat pocket to bring out a narrow strip of paper with his distinctive, precise handwriting on it. My eyebrows rose as I took it: hot ketchup, spicy BBQ sauce, tomato paste, salsa. His usual.

“You need a new pair of cuffs, right?” he said nervously.

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly a lot more awake. “But if you can get ahold of some of those zip-strips the I.S. uses to keep ley line witches from invoking their magic, that'd be great.”

“I'll see what I can do,” he said, and I bobbed my head, satisfied.

Though Glenn's stiff neck said he was uncomfortable bartering law-enforcement tools for ketchup, I thought it funny that the stoic, straitlaced human was too embarrassed to walk into a store that sold tomatoes. Humanity avoided them like the plague, which was understandable, seeing as a tomato had carried the virus that killed a sizable portion of their population four decades ago and revealed the supernatural species previously hidden by the sheer numbers of humans. But he had been forced into eating pizza, real pizza, not the Alfredo crap that humans serve, and it had been all downhill from there.

I wasn't going to give him a hard time about it. We all had our fears. The fact that Glenn's was that he craved something every other human on the planet shunned was the least of my worries.
And if it got me some zip-strips that might someday save my life,
I thought as I settled back into the leather seats,
then it's a secret well kept.

The morgue was quiet and cool, a quick shift from July to September, and I was glad I had jeans on. My sandals popped against the dirty cement steps as I descended sideways, and the fluorescent light in the stairway only added to the bleak feeling. Jenks was on my shoulder for the warmth, and Glenn made a quick turn to the right when he reached the landing, following the big blue arrows painted on the walls past wide elevators and to the double doors cheerfully proclaiming
CINCINNATI MORGUE, AN EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY SERVICE SINCE
1966.

Between the underground dimness and Glenn's coffee still in my grip, I was feeling better, but most of my good mood was from the honest-to-God temp name tag Glenn had handed me when we started down the steps. It wasn't the bent, nasty, yellow laminated four-by-six card everyone else got but a real heavyweight plastic tag embossed with my name. Jenks had one, too, and he was obnoxiously proud of it even though I was the one wearing it, right under mine. It would get me into the morgue when nothing else would. Well, besides being dead.

I didn't do much for the FIB, but somehow I had become their darling, the poor little witch girl who fled the I.S. tyranny to make her own way. They were the ones who had given me my car in lieu of monetary compensation when the I.S. called foul after I helped the FIB solve a crime that I.S. hadn't been able to. It had since been ruled that because
I wasn't on the FIB's payroll, the FIB could hire me much as any corporation or individual could.
Na-na, na, na-a-a, na.

It was the small things that really made your day.

Glenn pushed open one of the double doors, standing aside so I could go in first. Flip-flops plopping, I scanned the large reception room, more rectangle than square, half of it empty floor, half upright file cabinets and an ugly steel desk that should have been thrown away in the seventies. A college-age kid wearing a lab coat was behind it, his feet on the paper-cluttered desk and a handheld game in his hands. A sheet-draped gurney holding a body waited for attention, but apparently some space aliens needed taking care of first.

The blond kid looked up at our entrance and, after giving me the once-over, set his game down and stood. It smelled in here: pine and dead tissue. Yuck.

“Yo, Iceman,” Glenn said, and Jenks grunted in surprise when the straitlaced FIB detective exchanged a complicated arm-, fist-, elbow-slapping…thing with the guy at the desk.

“Glenn,” the blond kid said, still giving me glances. “You've got about ten minutes.”

Glenn slipped him a fifty, and Jenks choked. “Thanks. I owe you.”

“You cool. Just make it fast.” He handed Glenn a key chained to a naked Bite-Me-Betty doll. No way would anyone be walking out with the morgue key.

I gave him an ambiguous smile and headed for another set of double doors.

“Miss!” the kid called, his adopted colorful accent dissolving into farm-boy Americana.

Jenks snickered. “Someone wants a date.”

Sandals scuffing, I turned to find Iceman following us. “Ms. Morgan,” the guy said, his eyes dropping to my twin name tags. “If you don't mind. Could you leave your coffee out here?” At my blank look, he added, “It might wake someone up early, and with the vamp orderly out getting lunch, it would…” He winced. “It might be bad.”

My lips parted in understanding. “Sure,” I said, handing it to him. “No problem.”

Immediately he relaxed. “Thanks.” He turned back to his desk, then hesitated. “Ah, you aren't Rachel Morgan, the runner, are you?”

From my shoulder Jenks sniggered. “My, aren't we the famous one.”

But I beamed, facing the kid fully as Glenn fidgeted. He could wait. I wasn't often recognized—and it was even more rare that I didn't have to run away when I was. “Yes, I am,” I said, enthusiastically shaking his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

Iceman's hands were warm, and his eyes gave away his delight. “Ace,” he said, jiggling on his feet. “Wait here. I've got something for you.”

Glenn's grip on the Bite-Me-Betty doll tightened until he realized where his fingers were, and he shifted his grip to the tiny key. Iceman had gone back to his desk and was rummaging in a drawer. “It's here,” he said. “Give me a sec.” Jenks started humming the tune to
Jeopardy!,
finishing when the kid slammed the drawer triumphantly. “Got it.” He jogged back to us, and I felt my face lose its expression when I saw what he was extending proudly to me.
A toe tag?

Jenks left my shoulder, shocking Iceman out of a year's growth when he landed on my wrist so he could see it. I don't think he'd even known that Jenks was here. “Holy crap, Rachel!” Jenks exclaimed. “It's got your name on it! In ink, even.” He lifted into the air, laughing. “Isn't that sweet?” he mocked, but the guy was too flustered to notice.

A toe tag?
I held it loosely in my hand, bemused. “Uh, thanks,” I managed.

Glenn made a derisive noise from deep in his chest. I was starting to feel like the butt of a joke when Iceman grinned and said, “I was working the night that boat exploded last Christmas? I made it up for you, but you never came in. I kept it as a souvenir.” His clean-cut face suddenly went nervous. “I…uh, thought you might want it.”

Relaxing in understanding, I tucked it in my bag. “Yes, thank you,” I said, then touched his shoulder so he'd know it was okay. “Thank you very much.”

“Can we go in now?” Glenn grumbled, and Iceman gave me an embarrassed smile before returning to his desk, steps fast to make his open lab coat furl. Sighing, the FIB detective pushed open one of the double doors for me.

Actually, I was really glad to have the toe tag. It had been made with the intent for use and therefore was imbued with a strong connection that a ley line charm could use to target me. Better I have it than someone else. I'd get rid of it safely when I had the time.

Past the door was another, to make an airlock of sorts. The smell of dead things grew, and Jenks landed on my shoulder, standing right by my ear and the dab of perfume I'd put on earlier. “Spend a lot of time down here?” I asked Glenn as we entered the morgue proper.

“Fair amount.” He wasn't looking at me, more interested in the numbers and index cards slid into the holders fastened to the people-size drawer doors. I was getting the creeps. I'd never been to the city morgue before, and I dubiously eyed the arrangement of comfortable chairs around a coffee table at the far end that looked like a reception area at a doctor's office.

The room was long, having four rows of drawers on either side of the wide middle space. It was storage and self-repair only, no autopsies, necropsies, or assisted tissue repair. Humans on one side, Inderlanders on the other, though Ivy had told me they all had pull tabs inside in case of accidental misfiling.

I followed Glenn to midway down the Inderland side, watching him double-check the card against a slip of paper before unlocking the door and yanking it open. “Came in Monday,” he said over the sound of sliding metal as the tray slid out. “Iceman didn't like the attention given to her, so he gave me a call.”

Monday. As in yesterday? “The full moon isn't until next week,” I said, avoiding the sheet-draped body. “Isn't that early for a Were suicide?”

I met his deep brown eyes, reading a sad understanding. “That's what I thought, too.”

Not knowing what I would see, I looked down as Glenn folded the sheet back.

“Holy crap!” Jenks exclaimed. “Mr. Ray's secretary?”

A sour expression fixed on me. When had being a secretary become a high-risk position? No way had Vanessa committed suicide. She wasn't an alpha, but she was pretty damn close.

Glenn's surprise turned to understanding. “That's right,” his low voice rumbled. “You stole that fish from Mr. Ray's office.”

Irritation flickered through me. “I
thought
I was
rescuing
it. And it wasn't
his
fish. David said Mr. Ray stole it first.”

Eyebrows bunched, Glenn seemed to think it made no difference. “She came in as a wolf,” he was saying, his manner professional as his
eyes lit on only the bruised and torn parts of her naked body. A small but gorgeous koi tattoo swam in orange and black across a high patch of her upper chest, a permanent sign of her inclusion into the Ray pack. “Standard procedure is to turn them back after the first look. It's easier to find the cause of death on a person than on a wolf.”

The smell of dead things in a pine forest was getting to me. It didn't help that I was running on empty. The coffee wasn't setting well anymore. And I'd known the SOP, having briefly dated a guy who made the charms to force a shift back to human. He was a geek, but he had lots of money—it wasn't an easy job, and no one wanted it.

Jenks was making a cold spot on my neck, and not seeing anything out of the ordinary—other than her being dead and her arm torn to the bone—I murmured, “What am I looking at?”

Nodding, Glenn went to a low drawer at the end of the room and, after checking the tag, pulled it open. “This is a Were suicide that came in last month,” he said. “You can see the differences. She would have been cremated by now, but we don't know who she is. Two additional Jane Wolfs came in on the same night, and they're giving them a little extra time.”

“They all came in together?” I asked, going over to look.

“No,” he said softly, gazing down at her in pity. “There's no connection other than the timing and that none of them can be found in the computer. No one's claimed them, and they don't match any missing-persons report—U.S.-wide.”

From my shoulder came Jenks's muffled voice saying, “She don't smell like a Were. She smells like perfume.”

I winced when Glenn unzipped the bag to show that the woman's entire side had been ravaged. “Self-inflicted,” he said. “They found tissue between her teeth. It's not uncommon, though they're usually a lot less brutal than this and simply open a vein and bleed out. A jogger found her in an alley in Cincinnati. He called the pound.” The faint wrinkles around Glenn's eyes deepened with anger. He didn't have to say that the jogger had been human.

Jenks was quiet, and I searched for cool detachment as I examined her. She was tall for a Were, but not overly so. Big up top, with shoulder-length hair that curled gently where it wasn't matted. Pretty. No tattoos that I could see. Mid-thirties? She took care of herself, given
the definition. I wondered what had been so bad that she thought the answer was to end it.

Seeing me satisfied, Glenn opened a third drawer. “This one was hit by a car,” he said as he unzipped the sturdy bag. “The officer recognized her as being a Were, and she made it to the hospital. They actually had her turned back to treat her, but she died.” Creases appeared in his brow as he looked at her damaged body. “Her heart gave out. Right on the table.”

I forced my gaze down, flinching at the bruises and skin split by the accident. IV tips were still in her, evidence of the efforts to save her life. Jane Wolf number two had brown hair as well, longer this time, but it curled the same way. She looked the same age and had the same narrow chin. Apart from a scrape on her cheekbone, her face was untouched, and she seemed professional and collected.

Running in front of a car wasn't uncommon, the Were equivalent of a human jumper. Most times they weren't successful, landing under a doctor's care, where they should have been in the first place.

I followed Glenn to a fourth drawer, finding out why Jenks was being so quiet when he gagged and flew to the trash can. “Train,” Glenn said simply, his voice soft with regret.

Coffee and lack of sleep were warring in me, but I'd seen a demon slaughter, and this was like dying in your sleep compared to that. I think I was earning points with Glenn as I looked her over, trying not to breathe in the scent of decay the chill of the room couldn't stop. It appeared as if Jane Wolf number three was as tall as the first woman and possessed the same athletic body build. Brown hair to her shoulders. I couldn't tell if she had been pretty or not.

Seeing me nod, Glenn zipped up the bag and shut the drawer, closing all of them on his way back to Vanessa. Not entirely sure why he had wanted me to see this, I trailed behind him.

Jenks's wings were silent as he returned, and I gave him a sympathetic smile. “Don't tell Ivy I lost it,” he asked, and I nodded. “They all smell the same,” he said, and I felt him hold on to my ear for balance as he stood as close as he could to my perfumed neck.

“Jeez, Jenks, they all
look
the same to me.” But I don't think he appreciated my attempt at humor.

Glenn's steps slowed to a halt, and we gazed at Mr. Ray's secretary.
“Those three women were suicides,” he said, “the first one dying by self-mutilation, as Mr. Ray's secretary appears to have died. I think she was murdered, then doctored up to mimic suicide.”

I glanced at him, wondering if he was looking for ghosts in the fog. Seeing my doubt, he ran a hand over his short, curly hair. “Look at this,” he said, leaning over Vanessa and picking up a limp hand. “See?” he said, his dark fingers circling her thin wrist in sharp contrast to her pale skin. “That looks like a bruise caused by restraints. Soft restraints, but restraints. They aren't on the woman who made it to the hospital, and I
know
they had to tie her down.”

Okay. Now I was interested. Maybe Vanessa had been into sex games and it went too far? Leaning forward, I agreed that the soft red ring could have resulted from a restraint, but it was her nails that caught my attention. They had been professionally manicured, but the tips were split and ragged. A woman considering suicide doesn't pay beaucoup bucks to get her nails done, then tear them up before she can end her life properly. “Where was she found?” I asked softly.