“I know that look,” he said as he towel-dried his hair.
“You feel like you’ve got a dozen pieces of the puzzle but not only do they not seem to fit together, they don’t even seem to reflect parts of the same picture.”
“Yeah, that sums it up.” I set my mug down on the counter.
My mind kept circling back to what Death had said, or real y, what he’d not said. I was sure he meant the constructs when he mentioned where else I’d seen souls, but he’d made me go through al that bit about the end of life first. Or, put another way, the cause of death. I grabbed my purse off the counter. “I’m going to head to the morgue a little early. I want to test a theory.”
Falin returned the towel to the bathroom. “Okay, I’l be ready in five.”
I stopped halfway to the door. “I don’t think you should go with me.” After al , John hadn’t had the greatest reaction to my showing up with Falin at the crime scene.
“What if the constructs attack again?”
“If they get inside Central Precinct, past the wards, the guards, al the cops, and down to the morgue, I’m pretty sure I’m screwed. Even if you were there, I think it’s a safe bet we’d al die.”
Falin dropped me off at Central Precinct. I wasn’t thriled about his driving around in my car, but he hadn’t replaced his after it was totaled a month ago, and he needed wheels to work the case. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to drive after I raised the shade—if Rianna and I managed to do it—so it made sense for him to take the car.
After I passed through security and signed in with the attendant in her fishbowl office, I clipped on my visitor badge and headed down to the morgue in the subterranean levels of Central Precinct. Halogen bulbs lit the unadorned levels of Central Precinct. Halogen bulbs lit the unadorned corridors, making the underground hal s bright, if not cheery. I hadn’t asked which medical examiners were working this afternoon. Considering that Tamara had been at the crime scene most of the night, I assumed it wouldn’t be her, so I was surprised when I ran into her outside the coroner’s office.
“I was already on the schedule,” she said, covering a yawn with the back of her hand. “So what’s happening? It best not be another emergency because I get off at seven and I swear if I don’t make it home to my bed and sleep through the entire night there wil be hel to pay.”
“No emergency this time. Remember when we were at lunch the other day and you mentioned that you had several bodies in the freezer that you couldn’t find a cause of death for? Did you ever find one?”
She blew air through her teeth and pushed open the door to the autopsy room with al its stainless-steel gurneys and scary-looking medical equipment. “No, and now I have more of them. Why? You think you know?”
I had a theory.
“This is them,” Tamara said, roling a second gurney to the center of the morgue.
I nodded. Tamara and I had discussed it and she’d picked the two most inexplicable deaths for me to question.
She hadn’t given me any specifics about the victims, but even ful y shielded I could feel that the bodies belonged to a male and a female. Young, too—my age or a little younger. I couldn’t tel more than that through my shields, but the grave essence in them clawed at the edge of my mind.
“I’m at my wits’ end,” she said, watching as I dragged the tube of waxy chalk I used to draw indoor circles on the linoleum morgue floor. “In the last two weeks, I’ve had over a dozen suspicious deaths of undetermined cause cross my table. These two came in together. They’re young, in my table. These two came in together. They’re young, in good health, with no signs of foul play or disease. And yet they’re dead.” She shook her head, as if the movement could clear away the mystery. “I feel like the universe suddenly changed the rules and no one told me.”
I knew exactly how she felt.
Standing, I recapped my chalk and walked to the center of the circle I’d drawn. Then I turned to her. “Ready?”
At her nod, I tapped into the magic stored in my ring. I spindled out the smal est amount of energy and funneled it into my circle, which shot up around me, glowing slightly blue to my senses.
With the barrier separating me from the outside world, I unclasped my charm bracelet and dropped my mental shields. A frigid wind whipped around me, through me, and my grave-sight blazed into existence, making the world wither and decay. The grave essence in the corpses on the gurneys reached for me, raking at my body and mind with icy claws. I opened myself and let the chil in, let it fil me.