A Local Habitation

“Toby . . .”


“Yeah?” I lifted Colin’s hand, frowning at the ease with which his elbow bent. He was cold enough that rigor mortis should have set in already, but his joints were still pliant. That wasn’t right. There’s a point at which rigor mortis fades, replaced by limpness, but he wasn’t suffering from that, either; his body had normal muscle resistance. He just wasn’t in it.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know yet. Hush a minute, and let me work.” The punctures on Colin’s wrists were nasty, but not enough to be the cause of death. The skin around them was only slightly bruised; the trauma of whatever killed him wasn’t enough to rupture many of the blood vessels. There’s a lot of blood in the average body, but most of Colin’s was still inside where it belonged.

The third puncture was nestled below the curve of his jaw on the left side of his head, surrounded by a ring of jellied blood. There were no other visible injuries. There was something else wrong with the body, but my eyes seemed to slide off it when I tried to look more closely.

I frowned. “Quentin, look at the body. What’s wrong with it?”

“You mean besides being dead?” he asked, with an odd half-stutter in his voice.

“I know it’s hard. It was hard for me the first time, too. But I need you to look closely, and tell me what you see.”

The first time—ha. My first time was one of Devin’s kids, back when I still worked there. He overdosed in the bathroom an hour before his shift in the front was supposed to start, and he wasn’t even cold when we found him. I helped three older boys carry him behind the bar and leave him for the night-haunts, and I was sick three times before morning. Devin still made me stand my watch, because duty was duty. I’ve never been that cruel a taskmaster . . . but Devin was my teacher, and I learned a lot from him. One of his most important lessons was that the hard things are best done quickly: face what you’re afraid of and get it over with, if you can. It hurts less in the long run.

Quentin swallowed and looked down, scanning the body. He frowned, confusion breaking through his disgust. “Is there something wrong with his hands?”

I looked down. Colin’s hands were webbed, like a Selkie’s should be, curled at his—

Oh, no. Oh, root and branch, no. Stiffening, I said, “Yes, Quentin. I think there is.”

The fae don’t leave bodies. That’s a lot of how we’ve stayed hidden all these years. When we die, the night-haunts carry us away, leaving behind illusion-forged mannequins to fool human eyes. The signs of Colin’s heritage should have been gone, replaced with apparent humanity by the night-haunts. They should have been gone . . . but they weren’t. His fingers and toes were webbed, and his eyes were brown from edge to edge. Except for the punctures at his wrists and throat, he could have been playing some sort of tasteless joke.

But he wasn’t joking; he was dead, and something was very wrong. The night-haunts never leave a body long enough for the blood to chill. So why hadn’t they come for Colin? Why was he still here?

“Toby?”

“It’s okay.” I patted him on the shoulder with a suddenly clumsy hand, aware of how cold the comfort must seem. “I think this may be why Sylvester sent us here.”

“I don’t think he knew . . .”

“I know.” I pulled my hand away. “Go see when Jan’s getting here.” I didn’t want him to see what I was going to do next. I may not like lying to the young, but even I have my limits.

Quentin nodded and stood, trying to hide his relief as he turned toward Elliot. “Sir? Where is your lady?”