And careened right into him. I would have fallen back on my ass, but he seized me by the arms, steadying me, then continued to grip my arms. His body was firm and warm against mine, and I nearly expected him to lower his head to kiss me. I even tipped my head back without thinking, then felt slightly foolish when I realized that he wasn’t looking down at me at all.
Instead, his gaze slowly traveled around my small kitchen, and it abruptly occurred to me that he was looking around like someone who had never seen anything like a modern kitchen before. And most likely he hasn’t. Demonic lords were rarely if ever summoned. It was the others—the twelve levels of demon, reyza, syraza, zhurn, mehnta, and so forth—who were usually summoned and who had the opportunity to come to this sphere. But even they had little chance to “see the world,” so to speak. I knew that when I summoned, it was a stark rarity for any demon to leave the summoning chamber. Far too much risk of discovery by the outside world. Tessa occasionally brought demons down from her attic summoning chamber, but just to her library. I’d brought the ilius out only because it was practically invisible. And, of course, the lords were almost never summoned by anyone who wanted to continue living. No wonder Kehlirik had been so elated at the opportunity to ride in the back of a U-Haul truck.
“Have you been to this sphere before?” I asked, almost hesitantly. “I mean, other than the time I called you. And, um, the time that the Symbol Man called you. I mean, have you ever been outside a summoning chamber?”
He continued to take in his surroundings. “Centuries ago. It was quite different, as I recall.”
I gave a breathless laugh. “I would imagine so.” I pulled very lightly against his grip on my arms and he released me, almost as if he was barely aware of me anymore. I stepped back as he moved to the back door and opened it. It briefly flashed through me that I shouldn’t allow him outside in case anyone came over, but then I remembered that not only did he not look like a demon, no one ever visited my house anyway. And I would hardly be embarrassed to be seen in public with him.
He walked down the stairs and out into my backyard. He stopped about ten paces from my house, then looked up at the moon. He inhaled—not deeply or dramatically, just the deep breath of someone who wanted to take in the scent of his surroundings. I slowly followed him, stopping at the bottom of the steps. After several minutes he turned back to me, face inscrutable. He walked to me and stopped, looking down at me.
“Three questions.”
I gulped softly and nodded, remembering the crumpled paper in my hand. I peered down at it, but the light was too dim for me to read it well. “I … uh, need to go back inside.”
He gestured toward the house. I returned inside and he followed behind me, closing the door as I looked down at my list. Shit, just three questions? I ran my fingers through my hair as I tried to figure out which ones were the most important.
I gripped my hair, then released it and looked at the demonic lord, experiencing a brief moment of disorientation as the reality struck me that Lord Rhyzkahl was in my kitchen.
“Okay. Is it possible that an ilius has been summoned here and is consuming human essences?”
“No,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. I waited a beat, then silently cursed myself for phrasing the question so poorly. “An ilius would never consume human essence,” he continued after several seconds, apparently realizing that being too much of an asshole about the questions was not the best way to impress me. “Not only is it forbidden—for too much of such would upset the balance of potency in this sphere—but they have no taste for humans.” A slight smile played on his face.
I bit back my desire to blurt out something stupid like Really? They don’t? He’d been magnanimous about giving me a more thorough answer to my first question, and I didn’t want to push my luck. Okay, so it wasn’t an ilius. What the hell else could it be, then? But I needed to consider how to word it so that I would get an answer that was useful to me.
I thought for a minute, then decided to skip to a different question. This one was vitally important to me, and I wanted to be certain that it got asked. I carefully phrased the query in my head. “How can I restore to my aunt the essence that was stripped from her during the ritual to summon you by the Symbol Man?” It wasn’t the smoothest sentence structure in the world, but it asked the question I wanted answered.
He acted as if he hadn’t heard me as he slowly walked around my kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets, looking inside the fridge, face completely expressionless. I was about to repeat my question when he spoke.
“It is a series of rituals—each similar to a summoning, but you would be calling to her essence. Gather aspects of her—blood, hair, as well as items dear to her heart.” He went on to describe the ward structure as he walked toward the front of the house. I trailed in his wake, scrawling notes furiously on the back of the piece of paper. Then he paused and looked back at me. “But it is not a fast process. It may take some time, and you will need to take care with each step.”
I caught myself before asking, How much time? That could have counted as question number three. Instead, I nodded. “Thank you.”
He continued on through my house, stopping when he reached my living room. “I have seen this only through the touch I had in your dreams. It is quite fascinating to see and sense it in the flesh.” He brushed fingers across my desk and the computer, then moved to the fireplace, gazing at the photos on the mantel. There were only two pictures. One was of my aunt and me, which had been taken during Mardi Gras several years ago. We were both dressed in purple jumpsuits—the purple people from the “Purple People Eaters” song.
The other was a picture of my parents, taken just a year or so before my mother got sick. In the picture, they were sitting next to each other on a low oak tree branch at City Park in New Orleans, with my mother leaning against my dad, his arms around her. Her hands were clasped around one knee and her head was tipped back against him, her blond hair teased by a breeze.
This was one memory that was fixed forever in my essence. I’d taken that photo when I was six years old, having begged and whined and pleaded to be allowed to use my dad’s 35 mm. I’d used up nearly the whole roll of film, and this had been the best picture of the small handful that came out.
Rhyzkahl’s gaze lingered on the photo for long enough that I had an unnerving desire to snatch it away from him. For some reason I didn’t like the thought of him looking at it, whether through my dreams or in reality. “Do you still have a link to my dreams?” I demanded.
This time true delight lit his eyes. “You miss my presence in your bed?”
I glared at him, refusing to rise to his bait. It was beside the fact that there was a measure of truth in his words.
He came to me, sliding a hand through my hair. He cupped the back of my neck, then pulled me close and kissed me again—a powerful kiss, and one that showed just how much he was in control. Then he released me, leaving me to stagger to regain my balance, skin aflame with heat.
“The dream link I had to you was destroyed when you died in my realm,” he said, inclining his head to me as I struggled to control the mad thrum of my pulse. “And that was your third question. A pity. Now you will need to summon me again to seek answers to more questions.”
Then, before I could respond or react, he stepped back and was gone in a flash of white light.
Chapter 10
I WASN’T SURE I’D EVER GET TO SLEEP, AS ANNOYED AS I was at both Rhyzkahl and myself. But three glasses of wine helped chill me out, and that, combined with my overall exhaustion level, allowed me to sleep until nearly seven a.m., which was good since I knew it was going to be a long day. Although it was a Sunday, Dr. Lanza was performing the autopsies on Brian and Carol Roth this morning, and once that was finished I needed to pay a visit to Tessa.
“Three questions,” I grumbled. I glared at myself in the mirror and tugged a brush through my hair. “You couldn’t handle three simple questions.” I’d even been lu
cky enough to have questions already written out, and I’d still screwed it up. And now it would be another month before I could summon him again.
He was sneakier than I’d expected. That, or I was stupider.
I scowled as I put on mascara. “Stupider. Definitely stupider.”
THE DOOR TO the morgue was propped open with a chunk of concrete when I arrived. Doc wasn’t at his desk in the outer office, so I stepped in and peered into the cutting room, wrinkling my nose at the odor. It wasn’t a dead body smell. This morgue never smelled like that. The morgue tech, Carl, was obsessive-compulsive about cleaning, and the stench of bleach and other cleaning products was nearly overwhelming.
The door to the cooler on the opposite side of the room swung open and Carl exited, pushing a stretcher with a black body bag on it into the room. Carl was Doc’s right-hand man in the morgue and often helped out with body collections—or “body-snatching,” as it was gruesomely termed. I’d never seen him ruffled, even at the grossest or strangest of death scenes. He did his work with a silent efficiency that would have been dour if dour wasn’t too much of an emotion for him to display.
He saw me and gave me a barely visible nod. “Morning.”
“Morning, Carl. Helluva way to spend a Sunday.”
“Busy week. The fridge is full.” The way he said it made it sound like he’d just gone grocery shopping.
“Where’s Doc?”
“Traffic. On his way.” He pushed the stretcher up against the metal table that was locked into place at the sink. “Gonna cut the Roths today,” he continued as he smoothly unzipped the bag. “The councilman will probably be tomorrow.”
I felt almost overwhelmed by what was the equivalent of a verbal barrage from the normally silent and seemingly emotionless morgue tech. I also couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment that Doc wouldn’t be doing all three while I was here, though I knew that I was being selfishly unrealistic, especially since it was a Sunday. But I really wanted to find some connection between Brian Roth and Davis Sharp, anything that could point me to an answer as to why both had no essence left. Doc had a shitload of experience, having worked in Las Vegas and Houston before taking the job with St. Long Parish, and I had a lot of faith in his opinion.
Oh, well. Nothing to do but be patient. “You, uh, need any help?” I asked Carl.
He lifted his head to look at me as if he’d never really seen me before. I couldn’t decide if his direct gaze was creepy or not.
The faintest whisper of what might have been a smile shimmered on his face, then he nodded toward a side table. “Gloves and smocks there.”
I turned to the table, forcing myself not to grimace. I’d offered to help more out of courtesy than a desire to handle bodies, but I couldn’t back out now. I found a smock and pulled the blue plastic over my head, tying it at the waist the way I’d seen Doc and Carl do it, then snagged gloves out of the box marked Small and tugged them on.
Carl had folded the flap of the bag back, revealing the body of Carol Roth. The scarf was still wound around her throat, damp and limp from the moisture of being in the cooler, the dark-red fabric stark against the waxy pallor of her skin. Now that the blood had settled and lividity was fixed, I could see faint ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. A little bondage play before the asphyxia, or was there more to it? And, to my relief, I could still feel the faintest hum of essence about her. I knew it wouldn’t be there for much longer. I surreptitiously touched her arm with a gloved finger, confirming for myself that she felt “normal.”
“Stupid way to die,” Carl murmured.
He kept surprising me with the conversation. Or maybe I’d formed an opinion of him as emotionless and dour because I’d never really had a chance to talk to him. “I agree,” I replied. I couldn’t see how the risk of death could be worth the erotic thrill.
He moved to the other side of the metal table, then reached across and grabbed the body by the arm and knee, giving a sharp tug to slide her into position. “She was an easy one,” he said, straightening her limbs on the table.
I frowned, Jill’s comment about Brian and Carol having marital problems suddenly coming back to me. “You mean she slept around?”
He paused, his hands stilling on her legs, and looked up at me. “Actually, I was referring to her weight and how simple it was to get her onto the table. It’s not as pretty when it’s someone weighing four hundred pounds.”
“Ah. Right. Sorry.”
He kept looking at me, hands still motionless on the woman’s thighs. “But it’s funny you should say that.”
“What, that she slept around?”
He made a small motion with his head that I was fairly certain was a nod. “She had a reputation.”
Now, that added a new dimension. “Was she cheating on Brian?”
“I don’t know that. She’d been married before, to a lawyer in Mandeville. Supposedly he caught her with one of the other lawyers who worked in his firm. Divorced her.”
So maybe it hadn’t been Brian after all. A frisson of relief surged through me at the thought. I knew that I was basing a lot of hope on what was—at the moment—merely gossip about Carol, but I also knew there’d be plenty of other people in the department who’d feel the same way if Brian’s name could be cleared.
I tilted my head, regarding Carl in an entirely new light. “How do you know all this?”
The faint smile flickered on his face again. “Most people don’t like the work I do, so they dismiss me from their minds as soon as possible. They forget I’m there, and I hear things.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You must have dirt on everyone.”
The smile was almost real now. “I know a lot of things about a lot of people.”
It made me wonder what he knew about me.
The outer door banged shut and we both looked up as Dr. Jonathan Lanza walked in. He dumped his keys and phone on the desk in the outer office and then continued in to the cutting room, grabbing gloves and smock without breaking stride.
“Morning, Kara, Carl,” Dr. Lanza said, yanking protective gear on as he moved to the table. He peered at one of Carol’s wrists, then shook his head as his gaze traveled over the rest of the body. “God knows I’ve seen stupider ways to die, but this sure isn’t a way I’d want to go.” He shook his head. “It’s definitely a homicide,” he continued, stressing the word, “but I’m inclined to agree with the sex-play-gone-bad scenario. The ligature marks are fairly light, and I’m not seeing any signs of struggle, though I’ll run a full tox screen to make sure she wasn’t drugged up first. Negligent homicide, perhaps? I’m not the one who decides how the charges go. I just tell you guys how she died.” Then he gave a small sigh. “Not that it matters if Brian did this.”
“I’m keeping an open mind as far as that goes,” I said.
Doc nodded, then his gaze shifted to me, taking in my attire. “I see Carl conned you into helping out. Keep this up and I might hire you away from the PD.”
I wrinkled my nose. “No thanks, Doc. This one’s fine, but if this had been a week-old decomp, you and Carl would be on your own.”
He laughed. “Oh, so that’s how it is?”
“Yup. That’s how it is.”
He grinned and picked up his clipboard, beginning his examination of the body.
Carl took a hypodermic syringe and held it out to me. “You said you wanted to help,” he said calmly. “Do you want to get the vitreous?”
“Ugh! No. Way.” I shuddered as Doc laughed, and even Carl cracked a smile. Getting the vitreous involved sticking a needle into the eyeball and drawing the fluid out. At the first autopsy I’d attended, Carl had made a point to show me how the needle could be seen through the pupil after it was inserted. I could handle a lot of things, but the needle in the eye always squicked me out.
Carl gave a soft sigh and shook his head as he swiftly and expertly slid the needle into the side of each eye to extract the clear fluid. “I have to do everything myself,”
he teased.
How had I ever thought this man to be dour and humorless?
He squirted the fluid into a tube, then dropped the syringe into a Sharps container. Meanwhile, Doc set his clipboard aside, and pulled a black case out from beneath a cabinet. He popped it open and pulled out three pairs of colored goggles and a device that looked like a complicated flashlight. I recognized it as an ALS, an alternate light source. “Kill the lights, please, Kara.”
I obligingly flicked the lights off, then put the yellow-tinted glasses on as Doc began to shine the ALS carefully over Carol’s body.
“Look at that,” Doc said, as the bruising on her neck stood out in stark contrast to the rest of her skin. “There may not have been much showing, but here you can see where the scarf dug in.” He scanned it over her torso and thighs next. “And there ya go.” Several bite marks stood out clearly. “Just a few love nips. Nothing too hard or too deep.”
I bent closer, frowning at the marks. “Wait,” I said, and pointed to a mark on her right breast. “Shine the light on this one.”
Doc complied. “See something?”
A flutter of excitement wound through my belly. “Would you say that the teeth that left those marks are in good shape? All of them there?”
He shrugged. “I’m no dentist, but it looks like there are impressions from all the front teeth, at least.”
I straightened. “Brian was missing a tooth in the front. Got it knocked out during a pickup basketball game last week and hadn’t had it fixed yet.”
Carl let out a low whistle. “And if Brian didn’t kill her, why would he kill himself?”
“Exactly. If he didn’t kill her, then I rather doubt he pulled the trigger.” The thought of a fellow officer being murdered was hideous, but it was a damn sight more bearable than the thought that he’d been a murderer. I peered again at the bites as Doc bent his head for a closer look. Unfortunately, the marks weren’t nice and clear, and I couldn’t tell for certain if there was a gap in the bruising or not.