A Local Habitation

“We don’t know what happened. All the records were wiped.”


“So you have no idea when this woman actually died, and a four-day window for the event.” Jan nodded. I groaned. “Lovely. Terrie works nights, right? When does she get in?”

“She works from nine at night until six in the morning, usually. She’d taken the weekend off for a convention—she stopped in Monday morning to turn on the lights and make sure the place was still standing.”

“So Terrie wasn’t expected?”

“No.”

“And what time did she find the body?”

“4:52 AM.” The exactness of the answer startled me. I blinked at her, and she shrugged. “She paged us—Elliot and I—as soon as she realized Barbara was cold.”

“How did she page you? Alex said the phones here don’t work normally.”

“Most of us have modified cell phones. There are also pay phones in the cafeteria and near the third-floor bathrooms, and most offices have landlines. Any of those can dial outside the knowe, if you press nine first.”

“All right. When did you get here?”

“About five-fifteen. I don’t know exactly. All the gate time stamps after Friday afternoon have been wiped.”

I frowned. “I see. You say you got here around five-fifteen. Where do you live?”

“Here, mostly—we have some offices that we’ve converted into bedrooms—but I maintain an apartment for storage and so I can get my mail. We’re not zoned for residence.” She shrugged. “It’s about three miles away. I came straight over.”

“Had you recently lost any employees who might have been angry enough to try for revenge? Anyone you might have fired or otherwise pissed off?”

“No one. We haven’t had any personnel changes in the last three years, except for the recent departures, and those came after the killings began, not before.”

“I see. Quentin, come here.” He stepped over to join me, looking less than pleased. I knelt, patting his shoulder in what I hoped was a reassuring fashion, and studied the wound in Barbara’s neck. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but that’s never stopped me before.

“Look at this,” I said, turning her arm over to show the underside.

“What about it?” he asked, uneasily.

“The color’s wrong.” I indicated the skin between Barbara’s elbow and shoulder. “Blood seeks the lowest point in the body after death; it should be pooling here. But it’s not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” I lowered her arm, my frown deepening. “This is all new ground, Quentin. I always knew fae bodies wouldn’t decay, but I assumed at least a few systems would break down. Jan? Have there been any changes in the bodies since they were found?”

“No.” She scrubbed at her face with one hand, knocking her glasses askew. “At first, we thought they weren’t really dead, just sleeping. We were waiting for them to wake up.”

“But they didn’t,” said Quentin.

“No. They didn’t. We moved Barbara down here after a week, to keep her cool. We didn’t know how long . . .”

“How long it would take her to start to rot?”

She sighed. “Yeah. But she never did.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“What?”