Clearly, they expected Midas to strike me down for the offense. I did too. And yet, I kept breathing.
“I have exceptional control,” he rumbled, “but you’re testing it.”
Bishop stomped on my instep, and the jolt of pain yanked my attention to him and away from Midas.
“Fire ant.” Bishop made a production of searching for more on the sidewalk. “Little bastards.”
“Bastard is right,” I groused at him before redirecting my focus to Midas’s chest to avoid another standoff. “Mr. Kinase, I’m sorry for your loss. I respect your right to be present, but I have a job to do. I would appreciate it if you stepped aside and let me do it.”
Midas yielded no ground but let me ease around him. If he figured my willingness to do so proved his dominance, well, bless his heart.
Ditching him and Ford at the barricade, I continued on with Bishop. “That went well.”
“Yeah,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “It did.” He crouched over the body, what remained of it. “The pack isn’t required to cooperate with us. Not when the victim is one of theirs. They could throw their weight around and block us from investigating. Their alpha prefers to handle these matters internally.”
“There’s no guarantee the person who did this is gwyllgi. That puts the ball back in our court.”
Though I couldn’t afford to let assumptions cloud my judgment this early in the investigation. I had to get this right, or I lost points with the POA, who would not want to cut his trip short to play pack politics.
“That’s why I like you.” Bishop chuckled under his breath. “You’re so gosh darn optimistic.”
“Har har.” I flicked my fingers at the shadow nosing the corpse. “Make yourself useful.”
The vague outline of me snapped out a salute then made a production of diving in headfirst.
“Showoff,” I grumbled then caught Bishop staring. “What?”
“I’m never going to get used to that.”
“All potentates have wraiths.”
“That is not a wraith.” His gimlet eyes dared me to lie to him. “It’s so…Peter Pan. Do you remember the part in the cartoon where Wendy captures his shadow one night then sews it back on him the next?”
“No?”
“You never watched Peter Pan?” He clucked his tongue. “What kind of childhood did you have?”
A dull throb spread beneath my left eye, a distant memory of pain, and when I ran my tongue along my teeth, I almost tasted blood in my cheek. I would have spit to clear my mouth if it wouldn’t have contaminated the scene.
Some girls learned makeup to entice, some learned it to claim their spot in the girl hierarchy, but others learned it for more practical purposes. Makeup had never been armor for me, it had been camouflage. I learned how to apply concealer, how to set a proper foundation, so no one, not even my siblings, saw what happened to the family’s spare when the heir misbehaved.
Goddess forbid we got a speck of dirt on the precious family name.
Thinking about how thoroughly I raked that name through the mud before discarding it once and for all, I almost laughed, but freedom from that life had cost me everything.
Every-frakking-thing.
Most of them, I didn’t miss. Some things, two in particular, I missed a whole heck of a lot.
“A long one,” I rasped, drawing on the good times to erase the bad.
Motion caught my eye as darkness seeped from the body, giving no warning before it leapt into mine.
Cold plunged into my chest, wrapping my heart in an icy fist, squeezing a gasp out of me.
“Play nice, Ambrose,” I snarled under my breath. “Or I’ll put you in time-out.”
Warmth returned to my torso in a petulant creep, but the biting chill speared my skull in the next second, giving me an epic brain freeze.
At least, once I thawed out, I had the information I requested. Since he had more or less behaved, I tossed a piece of expensive chocolate into the darkness spilling from my soles across the concrete.
“You’re training your shadow to do tricks.” Bishop watched the confection vanish. “That can’t be healthy.”
“Nice streaks,” I said sourly. “Who does your hair?”
“Point taken,” he grumbled then gestured toward the body. “Walk me through it.”
“The victim is a black female, early twenties.” Squatting for a closer look, I started off easy, with the stats. “Five-nine or five-ten. Maybe one-sixty. Brown hair. Eye color is also brown.” Next came the hard part. “The cause of death is…” I searched my memory for the technical jargon the POA would have used but came up empty. A gaping hole started below the victim’s throat and ended at her hips. The soft parts had been devoured, the hard ones gnawed on. “She was eaten.”
Bishop didn’t dock me, just listened while I tried to keep the fumbling to a minimum.
“There are claw marks on the body as well as teeth marks.” Bruising where the creature pinned down the victim while it ate made clear which was which. “There are defensive wounds on the forearms and hands.” That stupid taco made its thoughts on the carnage evident, but I wasn’t going to hurl in front of an audience. “She was alive when the creature started feasting.”
The shadow I cast across her thighs turned its head, interested in something behind me.
“You keep saying the creature,” Midas rumbled, a dangerous edge to his voice. “Are you implying the killer was one of us?”
“I’m not implying anything.” I kept my back to him. “No gwyllgi did this.”
Ambrose, being a parasitic entity that consumed paranormal energies, had what you might call a refined palate. The flavor, according to him, wasn’t gwyllgi, wasn’t anything he could pinpoint, and I bowed to his superior taste buds.
Midas squatted next to me, our elbows almost brushing, close enough I smelled the cedar and amber soap he must use. “How can you tell?”
“It’s my job,” I said flatly, but Ambrose shook a warning finger, chastising me for taking all the credit. “What I can’t determine—yet—is the killer’s species.” There was no delicate way to ask, but I figured I might as well put him to work if he was going to hover. “Can you identify its scent?”
“No,” Midas said after a pause that made it plain he was deciding if the question insulted him.
I conducted the rest of my examination in silence, as much to keep my thoughts contained as to give the illusion I knew what the heck I was doing without the POA there to dictate my every move.
“I’m done here.” I stood, ready to bluff my way through the pack reps, when Midas rose beside me. “Mr. Kinase, I will keep you and your alpha apprised of any further developments.”
“No need.”
“Are you…?” I squared my shoulders, cleared my throat. “Are you taking the case from me?”
“I thought about it,” he admitted, and I had to swallow a plea to let me have this one chance. “I have a lot of respect for Linus, and he chose you as his potential successor. That means, if you ace your apprenticeship and trials, you and I will be crossing paths for the foreseeable future.”