Jean Ashford smelled about as good as you might expect for a bloated corpse that had been submerged in water for several days before washing ashore. The features were feminine, yet indistinct due to swelling and discoloration. Seams where flesh had split or been sliced by floating debris made the cause of death impossible to pin down at first glance. Hungry fish hadn’t helped things, either.
I hated morgues, the neatness of people shelved for later perusal, but most cops felt the same.
Reminding myself I wasn’t a cop anymore didn’t help, and neither did my partner’s cool detachment.
This was a human, and I was the only person in the room who cared what happened to those.
“What’s this?” A box of blue nitrile gloves sat on the counter beside me. I snapped one on and turned the victim’s hand palm-up on the table. “Looks like she put up a fight. There’s skin under her nails.”
Wu made no comment.
“This makes no sense. She was a floater.” I picked at her nailbeds. “This tissue should be as decomposed as the rest of her, but there’s fresh blood smearing her fingertips.” I repositioned her hand how I’d found it, a small courtesy that didn’t matter to her either way. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“You could fill this room with things I’m not telling you,” Wu mused. “Perhaps the entire building.”
“That’s so comforting. I can’t imagine why you didn’t have a partner until now.”
“I didn’t have one, because I didn’t want one.” His grin was slight, pointed. “I want you.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Conquest on a choke chain was what he wanted. He was settling for me. For now. To entertain the notion he meant anything else was ludicrous. “Her injuries are otherwise consistent with a drowning death. There are no peculiar markings or indications she was a host.”
“That’s what makes this interesting.”
I cocked an impatient eyebrow and waited for him to enlighten me. Even in the early days, Rixton hadn’t been this insufferable as a training officer.
God, I missed him.
“Touch her. Skin to skin.” Wu waited. “Go on.”
“I hope you brought some antibac with you.” I snapped off the glove and pressed a single bare finger to her shoulder. Her eyes opened, milky and vacant. Her mouth gaped open, her lips forming words, but no sound emerged. I yelped and jumped back three feet, flinging my hand like it was on fire instead of just cold. “What the hell, Wu?”
Slowly, her eyelids sank lower until her matted lashes rested on her cheeks.
“I was curious.” He touched her in the same spot. Nothing happened. “I wondered if the corpse would relay its message to any charun or only to you.”
I worked through what he wasn’t saying. “Is this proof Death has breached?”
“There are other charun who can control the dead,” he allowed. “That’s why it was important to get you here as soon as possible to test my theory.” He gestured toward her. “Try again. This time maintain contact.”
Skin crawling, I did as he directed. Nothing happened. “Well, that was anticlimactic.”
“This body isn’t fresh enough. The vocal cords are too degraded.” He glared at poor Jean with a snarled-up lip. “We’re done here.”
Fresh. Like produce. Ugh. A little sympathy for the dead wouldn’t kill him.
“Well?” I glared on my way to wash up in the basin near the exit. “Does this mean Death is here or not?”
“I’m not sure,” he said after a minute.
I said what he must be thinking. “War pulled this stunt with Famine. She made us think Famine was on the prowl, but we had no hard evidence she had breached until it was too late.”
“Has Santiago mentioned any disturbance in the breach site to you?”
Santiago had sunk a Doppler something or other in Cypress Swamp, where I first surfaced. The idea was he could track disturbances in the water and notify us of a possible breach, but he hadn’t said a word. Since he wasn’t the quiet type, that meant he had nothing to share.
“No.” I dried my hands. “I’ll ask when we get back to the hotel. He might want to check his equipment to be sure.” I kept my distance from the body on the tray. “Any other surprises?”
He dared me with a cocked eyebrow. “Where would the fun be in telling you?”
We walked out together, past a tech who had to lock his knees to prevent himself from falling at my feet. Again. I suppressed an instinctive cringe, grimaced when I tried to smile, and kept going.
“Worship makes you uneasy.” He sounded amused. “Others thrive on it.”
“I don’t need someone to pat my head or rub my belly every time I do something right. I prefer constructive criticism to brown-nosing.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Where to next?” We stepped out into the sun, and I filled my lungs with sweet, fresh air. “The river?”
“The river,” he agreed. “We need to determine if the corpse was raised there or elsewhere.”
We drove downtown to a park that promised Mississippi River views, walked the curving sidewalk until we hit a scenic overlook, then climbed down to the water. The police department had left a small flag stuck in the ground to mark where the corpse had been found. We picked our way there until it became obvious there was no point in being careful. The scene had been trampled, any evidence destroyed.
“Three teenagers found her,” Wu explained before I could bitch about how we knew to do things right in Canton. “The scene was trampled prior to the arrival of the authorities.”
Oh. Well then. My apologies to the uniforms of Vicksburg. “What’s in the report?”
“One of the boys, a Jay Lambert, saw a woman struggling against the current and dove in to save her. He hauled her onto the shore to impress his would-be girlfriend, and that’s when the screaming started.”
“I bet.” Poor kids. I can only imagine the boy’s horror at what he’d rescued. “Anyone question them?”
“The local police.” Wu’s tone implied that interacting with humans was a waste of everyone’s time. “The corpse scratched him during the altercation. The girlfriend was concerned about him turning into a zombie. The police, thanks to one of our agents, didn’t take samples of what is clearly the boy’s skin and blood beneath the victim’s nails. They told him he was scratched by a tree limb.”
Tree limbs are prickly boogers, but not many twigs wrestle with their saviors. “He bought that?”
Wu stared down his nose at me. “He wasn’t given a choice.”
Good luck with that. Teens weren’t as gullible as most people thought. And they recorded everything. “I assume you’ve secured his phone and those of his friends.”
“We’re missing one.” His lips flattened. “The best friend claims he dropped his in the river helping Lambert to shore, but cell phone records show activity after the fact.” His annoyance was plain. “We’ll secure it soon enough. He won’t be able to resist accessing the footage for long.”
Social media conditioning made that a promise. The kid would strike while the iron was hot to snag his fifteen seconds of fame. The scratches brought up another question. “Is contagion a concern?”
“Despite the human fascination with their own demise, there are no transmutable zombie viruses.”
“So the kid will be okay?”
“We had our doctors examine him.”
Putting my faith in their doctors—in any doctors—was hard, but these were the same white coats handling Dad’s care. I had to believe that meant they were the best. Otherwise, I might be tempted to let Conquest slip her leash the next time I visited him.
“All right.” We walked the riverbank, searching for clues. “Tell me about the other cases.”
“There have been two. One in Louisiana and one in Tennessee.”
I thought about that. “Both places the Mississippi River travels.”
“Yes.” He gazed across the water. “No attempt was made to conceal their identities. The bodies belong to local missing persons.”
“Any other connections? Gender? Race? Charun affiliations?”
“None we have determined. The discovery of Jean Ashford might help with that.”
“You don’t sound convinced.” We reached an incline that required more climbing than I was dressed to do without ruining my fancy new suit. “What’s your theory? You must have one.”
“Death might be trying to contact you. Why reanimate a corpse if not to deliver a message?” His expression tightened. “The membrane between worlds is worn thin over the seal, but she’s no Conquest. She can’t slip in and then leave. She would have to communicate via a surrogate.”
Who needed passé stationery when you could just murder one of the locals? “She has people on this terrene who would help?”
“Each member of the cadre has her loyal followers, as you’ve seen. Charun loyal to Otillian rule, if not to the individual embodiments.”
“How would they figure out the timing, though? Her contact would have to know when Famine breached to be certain when it was Death’s turn.” Only an intermediary who had contacts within a coterie or the NSB could monitor the situation that closely. “Do you think she could have asked War to bring an emissary through with her?”
Allowances had been made for Famine, so why not Death too?
“It’s possible,” he conceded. “Most coteries won’t leave their master. Most of Death’s coterie can’t leave her.”
“Something tells me I’m not going to like this.” I braced myself. “Why not?”
“Unlike War, Death doesn’t birth her coterie. She raises them. Her spiritual energy animates them.”
“They have to be in close range, or they drop like the puppets they are. Gotcha.” I kicked a rock into the water. “Either Death is closer than we think, or her proxy is that powerful.”
“We might understand better if we heard the message.”
A knot formed in my gut. “Are you really telling me a corpse is going to open its mouth and speak to me?”
Wrinkles gathered across Wu’s forehead. “Weren’t you listening to me earlier?”
“I thought you were being metaphorical.”
Relay its message through clues on its person or—hell, I don’t know. Not sit up and talk.
“Your touch animated the corpse. Why key it to you if not to tell you something?”
“I’m really wishing I was an only child right now.”
“With any luck,” Wu said, “you soon will be.”
We returned to the hotel after our excursion to regroup. Up in our suite, Wu passed me the case files on the other victims, which he’d had couriered over while we were off corpse-whispering, and I settled in on the plush sectional to read.
Wu had secured us a suite with four bedrooms, a generous living space, and a fully functional kitchen. It was luxurious by anyone’s standards and ridiculous compared to mine. But Portia and Maggie lit up like twin Christmas trees when they spotted the jacuzzi tub in their room, and I didn’t have the heart to grumble about the excess.
Miller plopped down next to me sometime later, and I took a break to let my eyes rest.
“Where is everyone?” I lifted my phone to check for messages but found none. “I haven’t seen any of you guys since breakfast.”
“Cole is meeting a local contact, and Thom is working a case.” He pulled my feet onto his lap to give himself more room. “Santiago is out with Portia and Maggie.”
“You left them alone with him?” I wrinkled my nose. “He’s such a party pooper. Why didn’t you go?”
Miller glanced away, his fingers tracing the design embossed on my boots. “Portia invited Santiago.”
The two were good friends, so that made sense. What didn’t track was why Miller let it get to him when their closeness had never bothered him before. “What did Maggie say?”
“She said it was fine.”
“But you wanted to go,” I guessed. With her.
He didn’t answer since living at the bunkhouse had brought us—and our secrets—closer.
“Maggie was engaged,” I said gently. “She loved Justin very much. She’s not thinking romantic thoughts about Santiago—” or anyone else, “—if that’s what worries you.”
“I don’t want her in that way,” he rushed out on a single breath. “Not exactly.” He looked devastated. “She’s human.”
“Explain not exactly to me.” I set aside the file to give him my full attention. “You’re allowed to want, Miller.”
“I don’t want Portia.” A flush stained his cheeks. “I never have.”
I took a stab in the dark. “The combination of Portia and Maggie is doing something for you. She’s just enough charun to hit your radar, and just enough Maggie to make it different.”
“Yes,” he exhaled on a gust of relief.
Since we were confiding in each other, I told him, “Wu explained the mating urge is all instinct for charun, that biology determines whether a pair stays together or switches partners.” I held my breath. “He claims charun don’t love the way humans do.”
“He’s right,” Miller agreed, cracking my heart. “Charun are more primal than humans. We don’t process emotion in the same range they do. Love is . . . complex. I don’t fully understand its scope.” He hesitated. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have an equivalent.”
Behind my ribs, my heart gave a painful lurch. “Is it more or less?”
“More,” he said without hesitation. “We are longer-lived, and we enter into bonds mindful that we’re choosing life partners for the mortal equivalent of eternity. There is no greater honor than to bond with a mate, and there is no breaking one after it’s set. Even if you fall out of . . . love . . . it remains.”
A sick feeling twisted my gut. “Are Cole and I . . . ?”
“Ask him.” Miller softened his voice. “When you’re ready to understand, ask him.”
I rubbed the skin above my breastbone. “What if I don’t want to know?”
“You do.” He brushed his knuckle down my cheek. “Or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Damn logic.” I forced a laugh.
“Luce.” He hesitated before saying, “He was never this way with her.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I blinked them away. “Thanks.”
“You deserve to know that he sees you for who you are and not what you once were.”
I reached over and squeezed his hand, marveling at the comfort in that small touch. “I know all of Maggie’s favorite movies. I might be persuaded to provide a list if you help me out with a problem.”
Miller ducked his head, pink creeping up his throat before he cleared it. “How can I be of assistance?”