Green-Eyed Envy (4 page)

I nodded grimly. “Are definitely related to Vic Number Three.”

“And I know—knew—the latest vic.” Not a question, so I didn’t give an answer. Adonis pulled Harper closer and leaned down to brush his lips against her head. The tenderness of the gesture had me revising my opinion of him ever-so-slightly upward. “Well then, let’s get this over with. At least I can spare his family having to see him before they can clean him up.”

Gods, was I ever glad of
that
. And if we had any chance in hell of sparing them the knowledge that his tongue had been ripped out, I would move mountains to make that happen.

“Come on. Sahana’s waiting for us.”

 

 

ARCANE MEDICAL EXAMINER SAHANA PATEL hummed a subvocal tune that only other arcanes—or spooks—could hear. The corpse on the examining table vibrated in time to her seven-note melody, which rose and fell and rose again. Intermittent flashes of black energy danced in the air around her, looking like visible bursts of static electricity. Her song reached a discordant crescendo and the dark energy exploded, raining down in crackling sparks, each spark echoing one of the seven notes in concert. The sound should have been ugly and harsh, but in reality, it took my breath away.

Sahana sagged as the answer she so painstakingly coaxed from the corpse via arts both magical and mundane came to her. I stepped forward quickly, dragging my eyes away from the fading Raga-song and catching Sahana before she could fall. She didn’t register surprise, although I knew she’d been too caught up in her work to notice me enter the autopsy room. The high from working her unique form of magic still held her in its grip.

I broke the silence between us, knowing from personal experience it would help ground her in the here and now. “COD?”

She let out a soft sigh. “Magical poisoning. His blood is tainted with it. The toxicology reports showed that clearly, but not what kind. Too rare.”

“But your song?”

Her dark red lips curved and wide-set onyx eyes glittered. “Coaxed the poison’s magical makeup from the blood. Now, comparing it against our databases to match the signatures will be child’s play.”

I shook my head with a bemused expression. “Magical autopsies and rare arcane poisons. Just what every parent wants their child to play with.”

She let out a bark of laughter, the harsh sound at odds with the typical melody of her voice. “And the very sort of toys that a Bhairavi Raga cuts her teeth on from the cradle.”

Poor Sahana. She possessed the rarest—and deadliest—form of Raga magic. The power to harness musical notes to read the signs of death left behind when otherwise immortal arcanes died. While most of us lived to a very ripe old age in the centuries, if not millennia, some of us met untimely ends at the hands of others. Murder most foul. The flip side to the more benign abilities that had made her New York’s most valuable arcane medical examiner before she transferred here was that she could, if she so chose, coax a healthy body into hastening itself to an early grave.

Which was the reason that Bhairavi Ragas were relentlessly drilled in the mechanics behind and ethics of their gifts from an exceedingly young age. Most of them tended to become introverted, distancing themselves from just about all others and becoming virtual hermits. Others, like Sahana, honed their inner strengths and macabre senses of humor to harness their gifts to the benefit of arcanekind. She wasn’t the first of her kind to serve as an arcane medical examiner for a mortal municipality, but in my opinion she was hands down the best.

“So, not to rush you along or anything, but we’re ready in the waiting room to ID Jove Doe 21-5.”

She nodded and re-covered the corpse marked
Jove Doe No. 21-3, Aegir
. The designation meant the poor sap who’d been poisoned to death was the third unidentified arcane male corpse of the twenty-first week of the year.

I rejoined Harper and the boys in the waiting room. The Cat stood in front of the window that separated the waiting room from the viewing room, fingers clenched and breathing more ragged than usual. Penn hovered a few feet away. He looked like he wanted to get closer but had been rebuffed. I wouldn’t be feeling all that lovey-dovey if I were in her shoes, either.

Scott nodded as I crossed the room to stand next to Harper. She didn’t say anything, just let out a sigh, eyes glued dead ahead.

Unfortunately, pun intended.

The door to the viewing room opened, and Sahana wheeled in a gurney covered with the customary white sheet. Footsteps heralded Penn drawing closer to Harper and Scott stepping up behind us while the gurney rolled across the other room. Sahana stopped just shy of the two-way window, expression suitably solemn, and folded the sheet back to reveal Jove Doe’s head. I gave her an approving nod. Harper definitely didn’t need to see the mess the corpse’s abdomen had become. Fortunately, we couldn’t see into his mouth, either. Sahana had managed to work it closed once more.

Recognition hit Harper like a punch to the stomach. She staggered a crooked step back, brushing up against Scott behind her and Penn to her right. Her lips trembled and tears welled in her eyes, though she brushed them away seconds later with an expression gone fierce.

“Oh, Bryant, I
will
find who did this to you and make him pay.”

Investigative instinct made me ask, “What makes you so sure it’s a
him
who did this?”

Her eyes glinted jade green under the room’s dim lighting, signaling she danced on the cusp between mortal form and Cat. “Trust me. Only a very strong male arcane would be able to take out three other Cats so easily and in such quick succession. And you know damned well statistics show that serial killers are nine times out of ten male. Even among arcanes.”

I nodded thoughtfully, then motioned for Sahana to re-cover Jove Doe—make that Bryant Wilkins—once more. Harper turned on me sharply. “I want in, Riss.”

My breath rushed out. “Ah, Harp, that’s probably not a very good idea, considering your relationship with the vic.”

Penn’s nose flared at that statement. His head whipped toward the sheet-covered corpse, and jealousy swept across his face.

Harper narrowed her eyes. “That didn’t stop Scott with Sean, or you with Vanessa, now did it?”

I winced because I didn’t really have a comeback for that one. Even knowing I had been the only Fury available to investigate my best friend’s disappearance—and the corpse magically disguised as hers that had washed up in Boston Harbor three years later—didn’t make me feel like I had a leg to stand on. Besides, Harper and I were more alike than either of us cared to admit. If I didn’t involve her in this investigation in some sort of official capacity, she’d just go behind my back and conduct her own.
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

“Okay, you’re in. But only as far as
I
say, and only if you follow my orders explicitly. I won’t have you compromising my investigation because of your feelings for one of the victims.”

Penn gritted his teeth. “Christabel, I don’t like this, not one whit. And who was this—this
Cat
to you that you feel so honor-bound to involve yourself in something that’s not your affair?”

Harper whirled on Penn, looking angry with him for the first time, despite all the asinine comments he’d made since I’d met him. Admittedly not that long ago, but he’d gotten quite a few zingers off in a short time.

“Just what do you mean by
this Cat
, hmm? That Cats don’t deserve avenging or protecting? That I’m the only Cat worth your time? Or are you just playing with me, is that it? Everything you said about the feuding between our species being outdated was just smooth-talking your way into my bed?”

Penn’s mouth dropped open. He looked like nobody had ever talked to him like that before. I was willing to bet that wasn’t too far from the truth. “Christabel, no, you know that’s not what I . . . ” Passion colored his cheeks red and his eyes a dark shade of yellow that bordered on orange. He reached out and grasped Harper’s arms with both hands. “I love you, Bel. I asked you to marry me last night, and I meant it. You’re the first woman—of
any
species—I’ve proposed to. And the last, no matter what answer you give.”

Oooh, I was really jonesing for popcorn again . . .

Scott, on the other hand, didn’t appear nearly as entertained. His fingers dug into his palms so tightly that his normally dark skin went two shades paler. For an instant, jealousy writ itself large on my
own
face, but I shoved the green-eyed monster mercilessly away. Scott wasn’t pissed off at Harper because he was jealous. He was pissed off she’d fallen into bed with one of his hated Banoub cousins. The very clan that had disowned his mother because she’d married—in their opinions—beneath her station.

Sure, I might have to remind myself of that a few more times to actually believe it, but hey—baby steps.

Tears shone in Harper’s eyes again, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if she was going to punch her lover for admitting something so personal in front of others or go all mushy-gooey on us. Thankfully, she did neither.

“The answer, you insanely jealous and infuriating man, is yes! Gods, yes. This proves just how short life can be—even for
us
—and I won’t waste another single second. I don’t care
what
our families say.”

Harper threw herself into Penn’s arms and proceeded to go hot and heavy. And by the looks of it, humid. Scott’s scowl reappeared. Uh-oh. Someone was about to blow a gasket.

I grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the room, giving the other two a chance to get the raging hormones out of their systems. He muttered under his breath with each step; his voice rose several decibels once the waiting room door shut behind us. Something about “stupid, gullible kittens getting in over their heads with lying, cheating, backstabbing purebred shitheads who wouldn’t know the meaning of love if it bit them in their miserable, snotty asses.”

On the plus side, at least he was stark, raving mad at someone else for a change.

“Why don’t you tell me how you
really
feel, Murphy?”

He did a double take when I used his surname, something I usually reserved for moments when he pissed me off. “I—she—can you believe what just happened?”

I couldn’t resist a moment of perversity. “The irony of Harper accepting a second marriage proposal right in front of her first fiancé’s still-fresh corpse?”

“What? No, the fact she’s betraying me with one of
them
. ”

My brow arched in a fairly good imitation of his freakish eyebrow raises. “
Betraying
you? Isn’t that just a little overdramatic? Considering it was
just
a one-night stand and all.” Okay, so I couldn’t resist throwing his own words back in his face. I’m a Fury, not a saint.

Thank
all
the gods and goddesses. Talk about nonexistent sex lives.

“She’s my
friend
, Riss, and friends just don’t—”

“Let other friends find love in unexpected places? Like, say, between a Warhound heiress and a mortal mercenary?” Boy, had the world turned completely upside down? Here
I
was reading the riot act to
him
for letting anger get the best of him. His lips tightened mutinously, and I could tell that he was too pissy to listen to reason anytime soon. Quick, time to distract him before he turned that pissiness on me.

“So, what do you think now that you’ve seen one of the vics in person?”

He allowed himself to be redirected, not nearly as excited about our role reversal as I was. “She’s right about one thing.” No need to ask which
she
he meant. “Had to be a wickedstrong arcane to take out three full-grown Cats that easy.”

One could have made a damned good argument that none of the Cats had died an
easy
death, but I got his point. “So, we’re most likely looking at a killer who’s another Cat, unlikely as that might seem, or one of the hybrid Sidhe clones, a Giant or half-Giant, maybe . . . ” My voice trailed off when he met my gaze unflinchingly. “Or a Hound.”

The nerves in his jaw worked but he just gave a terse nod.

“And knowing what we know about the counting coup and catnip thing, the two most likely pools of suspects are Cats and Hounds. Though the odds of a Cat doing that to another are pretty freaking low.” My eyes narrowed at the sudden flash of insight stabbing through me. I turned to stare at the door separating us from the unlikeliest of lovebirds still locking lips in the waiting room. “Do you think . . . ” He arched a brow. “How common is it for Cats and Hounds to marry?”

Interest colored his eyes a darker shade of amber. “Not very. I can count on both hands the times I’ve heard of mixed couples being able to actually get to the altar without one or both families doing something to crack their wedding bells.”

“So. Maybe we should find out for sure whether anyone else knew about Harper and Penn’s relationship, and whether the other vics have any ties to
Christabel
. It seems awfully convenient to me that Boston’s first arcane serial killer would just
happen
to pop up just as they start to go public about their relationship.”

His lips twitched at my saccharine use of her first name, but he refrained from commenting out loud. Never let it be said my Hound was stupid.

AN UNPLEASANT HALF HOUR LATER FOUND the four of us crammed into my upgraded but not-sospacious digs, courtesy of my promotion to head of the Boston MCU. The new office smelled superior to and had a better view than my old one, along with the brand-new desktop computer donated by my brother and sister-in-law, but had barely enough room for one chair behind the desk, two on the other side, a battered bookcase, and a tiny table with four more chairs hugging it that served as the conference center for the Magical Crimes Unit. Four other offices lined the hall, housing Trinity and the other two permanent members of the unit, along with the newbie detectives—like Cass—that came and went when they couldn’t adjust to life on the arcane side. Cass, I hoped, would actually stick. The biggest perk, as far as I was concerned, was our closer proximity to the magically protected holding cells, the interrogation rooms, and most important of all, the coffee machine on this floor.