Sins of the Demon by Diana Rowland
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every time I start a book I tell myself I’m going to create a file to keep track of all the people who help me during the book with research or support. And I forget to do so Every. Single. Time. So, once again, I’m doing the mad scramble at the end of the process where I desperately try to remember everyone who held my hand. Eep!
Many thanks go to:
My awesome husband for being my biggest fan.
My beautiful daughter for snuggling me when I needed snuggles.
Dr. Mike DeFatta for continuing to answer my bizarre questions.
Cpl. Judy Kovacevich for refreshing my memory regarding crime scene procedures.
Daniel Abraham for the advice, encouragement, and support.
Carrie Vaughn for helping me work my way through the mid-series hump.
Ty Franck for being irreverent.
Walter Jon Williams for inviting me to the mountain.
Roman White for letting me bounce numerous ridiculous ideas off him.
Nicole Peeler for being the best critique partner EVER.
Nina Lourie for being who she is.
Matt Bialer for being a wonderful agent and friend.
Lindsay Ribar for EVERYTHING.
Betsy Wollheim for even more EVERYTHING.
Chapter 1
Someone had recently taken a leak in the alley behind the Beaulac Police Department. Splash marks were still visible against the bricks, and the beam from my flashlight reflected off the rivulets that led to a broader puddle in the center of the alley. Some other sort of noxious liquid dripped from the corner of a dumpster in viscous plops to mingle with the piss, and the dregs in a broken beer bottle added one more pungent ingredient to the resulting aroma.
I carefully picked my way around the various pools of who-knew-what as I made my way out of the alley. Along the ground behind me ran a faint track of arcane sigils, appearing in my othersight as silvery-blue shimmers, and completely invisible in normal vision. In front of me, Eilahn patiently traced more patterns along the back end of the building, using nothing but the movement of her fingers and her will.
This side was easy. The Beaulac Police Department and its parking lots took up most of a block in downtown Beaulac. We’d started with the back-alley end and the south side that held the detective’s parking lot and the entrance to the Investigations Division. Those were unoccupied at this time of night. The main entrance with its broad glass doors faced the street, which would only be tricky if anyone driving by happened to see us and wonder what we were doing. But the north end of the building—the one that held the entrance to the Patrol Division—would be the most difficult, since officers came and went through there at all hours.
For decades, the station had been a brick and chrome example of seventies’ era architecture, but thankfully it had been renovated in the past year to remove the majority of the chrome and restyle the structure to better fit the “elegant southern town” feel that the rest of the buildings along the street were striving for. Across from the station was the city administration building, built well over a hundred years ago and looking more like a plantation building than a government facility, complete with massive columns and a broad balcony. The rest of the street was taken up with smaller city offices and about half a dozen small shops and restaurants. The city had done its best to make the downtown area picturesque by replacing the big sodium vapor streetlights with smaller ones that were meant to look like Victorian gas lamps. Wrought-iron benches had been painstakingly bolted down along the sidewalk, and large planters interspersed between them. But right now, any elegance was overshadowed by the cheap and tacky Christmas decorations that the city workers put up a few days prior. Maybe next year they’d have enough in the budget to buy decorations that didn’t look quite so sickly.
Probably only if they cut salaries, I thought sourly. As long as they didn’t cut mine, I could put up with a Santa Claus who looked vaguely leprous.