How to be Death (33 page)

“Fine,” Erlik said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans and turning his anger down a couple of notches.

“Now what can I do for you?” Freezay said.

Erlik nervously shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet, all the energy he’d just tamped back down inside himself having nowhere else to go.

“I want to know what you’re doing to find Coy’s murderer.”

I wanted to know what we were doing to find Coy’s murderer, too, so I listened intently to Freezay’s answer.

“Can I ask you one question first?” Freezay asked, his tone light. “And then I promise to tell you what you want to know.”

Erlik considered the question, trying to figure out if this was just a dodge or an actual legitimate request.

“Go ahead.” He sighed, finally deciding he had nothing to lose by answering the detective’s question. “Ask your question and we’ll see.”

“I’d like to know exactly how long you were involved with Coy.”

Well, that came out of left field,
I thought.

Erlik bowed his head, the muscles in his neck straining.

“How did you guess?” he asked, looking up again, his lips trembling.

“No man rages like a bull over the death of a woman he doesn’t know.”

Erlik nodded, realizing he’d given himself away by his own aggressive behavior.

“What can you tell me about her? Something I wouldn’t be able to guess, but that a lover would know implicitly,” Freezay asked, patting the large man’s arm, a show of sympathy for the bereaved.

Erlik took a moment to collect his thoughts, probably sifting through all the things he knew about his ex and separating out what was fit to tell a detective from what was too intimate to divulge.

“She’s a Goddess. From the Aztec Pantheon,” he said. “Her given name is Coyolxauhqui and she’s estranged from her family, so I never met any of them.”

I noticed Erlik used the present tense when he spoke of Coy. Freezay seemed aware of this, too, and even though he was simmering with questions—I could see the anticipation in his eyes—he tempered his interrogation with kindness.

“You should know that she died quickly,” he said simply—though I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or just trying to spare Erlik’s feelings. “And that any mutilation to the body was done postmortem.”

Eyes welling with unshed tears, Erlik was unable to speak, merely nodding that he’d understood.

“Is there anything else we should know?” Freezay asked, more gently now.

It was strange to watch a muscle-y macho man cry. It felt like we were intruding on something we had no business seeing, but before I could suggest that Jarvis, Runt, and I give them
some privacy, Erlik had gotten control of himself again, swiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his yellow Oxford shirt.

“There’s someone here who could easily have done her in,” Erlik said, his brow ridged with tension. “He leaves a trail of devastation wherever he goes, a real womanizer who got his hooks into Coy and never let her go again. And when he’s done with them, his women have a strange way of
disappearing
.”

“And who might that be?” Freezay asked, curiosity alive on his face.

As if Erlik had prearranged it with fate, a cloud passed over the glaring sun, cloaking his face in shadow.

“Fabian Lazarev, of course.”

Freezay raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. Instead, he asked Erlik where he had gone after dinner.

“Didn’t you hear what I just said?” Erlik asked, less than thrilled with Freezay’s reaction.

“I heard you,” Freezay said. “And I will look into it.”

Erlik shook his head, miffed by Freezay’s apparent lack of interest in Lazarev, but he didn’t push it.

“I left the dining room with everyone else,” he said sullenly, “but I went outside, stood in one of those sculpture gardens, and had a cigarette. So if you’re fishing for an alibi, I don’t have one.”

Ah, the beauty of immortality,
I thought.
You could smoke all the cigarettes you liked and never get lung cancer.

Freezay seemed satisfied with Erlik’s answer.

“I think that’s all I need from you right now. But I might have to speak with you later in case I need anything confirmed,” Freezay said. “Be around.”

“And what about that bastard, Lazarev?” Erlik asked, not wanting to go until Freezay had assured him on that front.

“I promise he will be the next person I speak to,” Freezay said judiciously. “Now run along and stay out of trouble.”

Erlik did not like being condescended to. Brandishing a fist in Freezay’s face, he said: “Don’t push it, Detective.”

And then he pivoted on his heel and was gone, his thick, muscular legs moving him quickly out of our view.

“You think there’s anything to what Erlik said about Lazarev?” Jarvis asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Freezay said. “Ask.”

“Hey, what about the bodies?” I asked.

“What about them?” Freezay said, eager to get back up to the main house and talk to Fabian Lazarev.

“We can’t just leave them where they are. It’s disrespectful.”

“The Harvesters will pick their souls up at midnight, Calliope,” Jarvis said, trying to reassure me. “We can magically deal with the bodies afterward. Until then there’s no point in moving them just to move them.”

I started to protest, but I could see my argument wasn’t going to get support from anyone.

“I still feel bad—”

“Speaking of feeling bad,” Jarvis said, pushing up the sleeves of his dinner jacket, “I have to find Kali and let her know what Wodin said when I telephoned him. I was actually on my way to brief her when I discovered Constance’s body.”

“So we’re not gonna move the bodies and you’re just gonna leave?” I said, trying not to be a baby about him going. “Like right now?”

“You’ll be in Freezay’s capable hands—”

“Okay,” I said, feeling annoyed.

“Don’t pout,” Jarvis said. “We’ll all be back together in the drawing room before you know it.”

Jarvis didn’t wait for me to protest, just took off before I even had a chance to state my case.

“Whatever,” I said under my breath.

“You think he’s just going so he can take a nap?” Runt asked, and I laughed, feeling my anger starting to dissipate.

“Why don’t
you
go to the drawing room and take a nap,” I suggested when I noticed the poor pup’s eyes drooping.

“I’m okay,” she said, yawning.

“Then how about fetching Fabian Lazarev from his room and meeting us in the drawing room,” Freezay said. “That’ll keep you on your feet.”

Runt looked more than happy to oblige.

“On it!” she said, perking up. She liked being needed and was probably excited about doing something other than just following me around.

“Shall we?” Freezay asked as we watched the hellhound pad off down the corridor.

“Only if you promise that the night will get better from here on out,” I said.

Freezay laughed, shaking his head.

“If you’re with me, then your night is already off to a better start,” he said—and then he gave me what I can only term a “saucy” wink, before taking my arm and leading me down the hall toward the drawing room.

Being with Edgar Freezay was nothing like being with Daniel; there was no crazy sexual electricity, and no feeling of being utterly connected to another human being—but that wasn’t to say it was all cold fish, either. There was definitely
something
sexy about the detective that drew me to him. He was intuitive, smart, and I liked the eccentric way he presented himself.

He was a hot “weird” dude.

But as much as I wanted to forget about Daniel and not give a damn who he was shacking up with, I just couldn’t seem to move on. Even when I had the perfect opportunity to scrub him from my mind—Edgar Freezay, for example—I just couldn’t do it. I was stuck waiting around for the man who I knew was my soul mate to realize his life just wasn’t as sweet without me in it.

“So I heard what you said to Jarvis and I want you to know that there’s nothing to feel bad about. You can’t do anything for them until All Saints’ Day starts,” Freezay said, scratching at the blond stubble on the bottom of his chin. “But at least you know their souls are going to continue on, that they’re going to be recycled through the system. Imagine dealing with death and having no proof that there even
is
an Afterlife. Before I got conscripted into the Psychical Bureau of Investigations, I was
a normal policeman, working cases without a clue that the supernatural world even existed—”

“Wait, you were a real policeman?” I said, pretty sure the Psychical Bureau of Investigations wasn’t known for bringing normal human beings into its ranks.

“My father, Wodin, is notorious for taking up with human women, never enlightening them to the fact that he’s a God—even after impregnating them,” Freezay said dryly. “So I had no clue about my heritage until I was contacted by Manfredo Orwell, the head of the PBI’s Crimes Against Humanity Division when I was twenty-six. I’m sure you, of all people, can imagine my surprise at finding out exactly who and what I was.”

And I thought I’d had it bad. I’d always known who I was and what my family was capable of … I’d just chosen to ignore it. Freezay, on the other hand, had lived in isolation from others of his kind, probably having all kinds of odd experiences that he couldn’t share with anyone because no one would believe them.

“You must have had an inkling about your true nature,” I said, but Freezay shook his head.

“I thought I was crazy. As a child, I’d see things I couldn’t explain, and then I’d share them with my mother, who was a no-nonsense second-grade teacher and had no idea the man she’d picked up in a Detroit bar one dark and stormy night was a God. It felt like I’d spent my childhood in a psychiatrist’s office—until I turned ten and realized people would leave me alone if I just kept my mouth shut.”

“Wow,” I murmured.

“Believe me, magic makes the job much more interesting,” he said. “And you don’t have to follow the rigid procedural stuff you’re forced to adhere to with traditional police work. You’d have never caught me touching a body without gloves when I worked a murder scene in the real world.”

“Jarvis said you retired. You seem pretty young to be a man of leisure,” I said.

Freezay laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

“A man of leisure I am, but not of my own volition. I didn’t retire. Let’s just say I was asked to leave the PBI and let it go at that.”

We reached the door to the drawing room and Freezay held it open so I could go inside first. It was just as we’d left it: fire dying in the grate, dirty breakfast dishes spread across the coffee table.

“Well, here we are, Ms. Death,” he said, closing the door behind him and smiling at me.

“Who do you think did it?” I asked, plopping down in an armchair and “resting” my eyes for a moment.

“I have no idea who did this,” he said, sitting down on the love seat across from me. “But I believe the book is at the epicenter of it all. Follow the book and you’ll find our killer. Find our killer and the book will present itself.”

“So, if Constance, aka Connie the Server, stole it, then what did she do with it? Why not give it to Uriah Drood like she’d planned?”

“You got me,” he said, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. “I haven’t got a clue why people
really
do the things they do. I mean, I can logically take the crime apart and see its psychological aspects, but when it comes to motivation, the details vary so greatly, all you can do is quantify them into the big three basics: money, love, and power—but that never gives you a free pass into their psyches.”

The rest of our conversation was put on hold by a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Freezay called.