“Again, there was no reason that I can think of for Geril to kill me if he was acting on his own,” Niniane said. “We didn’t know each other. There was no direct line of inheritance between us, and his connection to the throne was too diffuse for him to make a play for the crown himself. I may not be all that connected with the ins and outs of current Dark Fae politics, but I know that much.”
“Right now, I have just one question,” said Aryal. “Are we looking for one entity—one person, conspiracy, or faction trying to kill you—or two?”
Since before 1842, the Cook County morgue in Illinois had conducted an official inquiry on every questionable death in the county, which included the city of Chicago. Shortly before the Great Chicago Fire had occurred in 1871, the morgue opened its Office of Magickal Inquiry to investigate every questionable death relating to matters of Power or the Elder Races. In 1976 when Cook County established its Office of the Medical Examiner, the Office of Magickal Inquiry was placed under the Medical Examiner’s purview. The outdated term “Magickal” was dropped and the office given the simpler name of Paranormal Affairs.
The intent behind the move had been to modernize this section of the morgue and rename it with a view to greater accuracy and political neutrality, but in this attempt the county officials failed miserably. Many of the Elder Races, including several humans with Power, were offended by the name. Paranormal was a term that indicated something was outside the realm of normal experience or scientific explanation. Opponents to the term argued that it was racism and bigotry of the highest order.
Or so Dr. Seremela Telemar informed Tiago and Rune in her History of the Morgue 101 as she led them to the Paranormal Affairs section. Telemar was a medusa of late middle age, as evidenced by the length of her head of snakes that dangled down to her shapely hips. Medusas guarded their young ferociously. Tiago had personally never seen one of their children, but he knew young adult medusas had slim, short snakes that covered their heads like curly undulating afros.
A medusa’s head snakes were semi-independent sentient creatures that shared a symbiotic relationship with their host, which included an exchange of sensory input and thought impressions. A medusa never had her back turned if one of her snakes was looking at you. For the most part the head snakes remained as peaceful as their medusa, but if a medusa felt frightened or threatened, they had a venomous bite that could paralyze most creatures and might, if the snakes were induced to multiple bites, cause death. When Telemar reached old age, which for her species would be between four hundred and fifty and five hundred years, her snakes would reach her feet or perhaps trail a little on the ground. For now, she bound them back gently in a loose headcloth like they were dreads.
The medical examiner’s skin was a pale, creamy green that was several shades lighter than her snakes, and it had a faint iridescent pattern that resembled snakeskin. Her blue-green eyes had vertical slits for pupils and a nictitating membrane that flicked into place as she looked over her shoulder at the sentinels who followed close on her heels.
“Like other morgues across the country, my department doesn’t usually see anything near the kind of traffic that the main morgue does,” she said. Several of her head snakes looked around her waist and over her shoulder at them, tasting the air curiously with their flickering tongues. “It is a significant event for us to get six bodies back-to-back. The main morgue conducts around fifty-two hundred autopsies annually, and usually I spend half my time working with them. We’re lucky if we see two hundred.”
“Lucky?” Rune quirked a sleek tawny eyebrow at her. The gryphon was working his male charm on the medusa. She was, like every other female Tiago had seen around Rune, falling for it hook, line and sinker.
“Well. Perhaps ‘lucky’ is not the right word, but you get what I mean.” She widened her eyes and smiled at Rune as she tucked a few of her snakes behind one shoulder. She pushed through a pair of swing doors and Rune and Tiago followed. “As you no doubt are probably aware, most Elder deaths are not even reported to a medical examiner’s office. Many of them happen in Other lands and/or they are processed and investigated by their own demesnes. The deaths that tend to come to me are human ones that involve a Power exchange or discharge of some kind. This has been a real kick in the pants in more than one way.”
“I can imagine,” Rune said. “Politically as well as medically.”
“Quite,” said the medusa.
When Rune and Tiago had arrived at the morgue, the medusa had given Tiago one startled look that took in the implied threat flowing like silver mercury through his massive physique, his dark glasses and the banked aggression stamped in the strong bones of his face. Then her nictitating membranes had snapped shut and she kept herself busy looking anywhere else but at him.