Chapter One
“What do we got, Aggie?”
The detective pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped at the sweat beaded on the top of his bald head. Some people might have assumed his reaction was nerves, but I knew it had to be hot in the house he’d just walked out of. Detective Joe Agrusa had been on the job for nearly twenty-five years, and only Mrs. Agrusa could make him nervous enough to sweat.
“What we got is a body. A weird one,” he said.
“No shit? Here I was thinking you called me out because you’re so damned fond of me.”
He grinned, revealing a set of crooked but stain-free teeth. “You wish, freak hunter.”
Aggie was human, shorter than me but at least twice my weight. I was usually the shortest woman in the room, which made the detective pretty damned short for a man. I looked down at him and snorted. “Fill me in.”
He raised an eyebrow at my tone.
I kept my face straight, just barely. “Don’t make me scream it out of you.”
“Shit, Mac. All the years my wife’s been nagging me and you think I’m not immune to a banshee? A half-assed one at that?”
The laugh bubbled out of my chest, and I choked it down. Only Aggie, of all the normals I worked with, would joke about my half-banshee status so easily. He realized what most cops didn’t—that it didn’t make me a whole helluva lot more dangerous than them. Oh, I could stun with a scream. Kill even, if given a lot of time or a weakened person. But I wasn’t much more dangerous than a perp with a gun. Most of the normal cops just saw a freak. The thought smothered my lingering urge to laugh.
“Don’t got any info for you, Mac. Not a crazed lycanthrope or goblin or anything like that. This one’s downright creepy. You’re gonna have to see for yourself.”
I stifled a sigh. Aggie wasn’t on the “freak squad,” the affectionate term the normal cops gave the paranormal unit, but he’d been around long enough to know when to hand off a case to us. The fact that he was at a loss on this one didn’t bode well. There wasn’t much the old cop hadn’t seen.
I glanced at a red Camry parked across the street. “Looks like Amanda beat me here.”
“Yeah, she’s inside already. Better get your ass movin’.”
I muttered an expletive and trudged up to the front door. It stood ajar, held open with a cinderblock. A couple of uniforms stood in a corner chatting. One pointed down the hall when he saw me, but otherwise the rest ignored me. Some cops did their best to pretend the freak squad didn’t exist, figuring the paranormal unit cops freaks by association.
Then again, most of us were freaks—and not by association.
A dark-haired Amazon stood over the bed, blocking the body from view. Amanda Franklin took three things very seriously: her job, her witchcraft, and her bodybuilding. All of which made her a great partner. We shared our hair color and penchant to exercise, but that’s where our resemblance ended. My hair was wavy and generally pulled back out of my face, and Amanda towered over my five foot three inch frame.
The crime scene was in a standard master bedroom, nicely decorated if you didn’t mind all surfaces covered in some sort of flora or fauna, both actual plants and plants printed on every available fabric in the room. Everything looked to be in its place and nothing indicated a struggle. Only a slight scent of something off touched the air. Not dead long, then.
I sidestepped to avoid a young guy carrying an evidence bag in one hand and a hard, metal specimen collection case in the other. A woman, mid-to-late twenties, lay spread-eagle on the bed, hands above her head, naked and wide-eyed. Her wrists were covered in purple and brown bruises, and her long, red hair fanned the pillow under her head. Other than the bruising, there were no obvious injuries.
“Vampire?” I asked. The bite marks from a vampire could be hidden, from a casual examiner anyway. The bite might be between her legs, behind a knee, on the back of her neck, or otherwise concealed under her body.
Amanda shook her head and tapped the file folder in her hand against her palm. “Medical Examiner just left.” She pointed at the woman’s legs. “Bruising on her thighs, mostly hidden by how she’s lying, and on the wrists. No other marks visible. We’ll know for sure when they get her back to the morgue, but I looked after the ME left and didn’t see anything.”
I frowned. If Amanda didn’t find anything, there wasn’t anything to find. “Are you thinking rape?”
“Well, it looks like she had sex before she died. Rape’s a strong possibility considering the bruising. But the dead part—no clear explanation on that.”
“Could be natural. Maybe a stroke or something. Her guy—if he was still here when it happened—took off because he was scared.”
Amanda handed me the folder. “I’d agree with you, if this was the first one.”
I flipped open the file. A woman’s photo had been paper-clipped in front of the police report. She was brown-haired with glasses, and rather plain-looking by her picture, at least compared to the striking redhead on the bed.
“Why didn’t we hear about this?”
“Normals called it death by natural causes. They didn’t have any reason not to. Just like this, no marks, no blood. Less bruising on that one too, so they didn’t see a reason to call us in. ME says both show signs of sex shortly before death.”
“Hmm.” I flipped through the first few pages of the file and skimmed. Claire Simons, twenty-six years old, single, no kids. Found dead of apparent natural causes, nude with minor bruising on her legs. No mention of bruising on her wrists.