Vampires and their intra-species mind-reading tricks.
Never play Pictionary with them.
She handed me the light. I blocked out the rain, the cold, the wind. I blocked out the sound of the ocean, the rumble of the ambulance engine and generator running the lights.
I opened my senses—eyes, ears, nose, touch—to the dead man in front of me, trying to understand his story. Trying to understand how his life had ended.
Shirt wasn’t torn; still had on the boots he always wore on the deck. No rope burns on his palms, no deep gouges to indicate he got caught in a winch line, dragged. The scratches and nicks Page mentioned really were just that.
I didn’t move his hair to inspect the wound, since I didn’t have gloves in this borrowed jacket, but I took the time to pass the flashlight slowly over every inch of his body, trusting that if there was a detail the Rossis had missed, I’d see it.
Nothing.
If I had to file my final report right now, I’d say he hit his head, fell overboard, and drowned.
“Can you smell alcohol on him?”
Page leaned in, holding her satiny white hair out of the way. Sniffed.
“I don’t think so. But other things are in the way of knowing. His heritage is bright.” Her eyes flashed blue with light again.
By heritage, she meant god power.
Yeah, that was the wild card in this. God power leaving a body could do all sorts of things to mess up the evidence and cause of death.
I’d need to handle that—handle my part in dealing with the god power that no longer had a mortal vessel to inhabit.
“Take him in,” I said. “Let me know what labs say as soon as we know. I want a full autopsy.”
“Will do, chief. If there’s anything I can do. To help with…you”—she nodded—“say the word.”
This was the first time I would have to bridge a god power. And since uncontrolled, unclaimed god power was more than happy to kill mortals and creatures alike—even the undead, like vampires—it was as much her unlife resting in my very inexperienced hands as it was the life of the mortals in the town.
“I got this.”
She patted my shoulder. “If you need the Rossis, we’re here for you.”
“You might want to check with Old Rossi before you go promising a pact between me and your entire clan.”
“He likes you.”
“That’s not what he said last month when I told him jogging nude wasn’t allowed in the neighborhood.
“I didn’t say he always likes you.”
“How does he do that, by the way? All of you? The skin-in-sunlight thing?”
It was a well-kept secret even my dad hadn’t gotten out of the local vamps. Sunlight didn’t seem to give them much trouble.
“Ask Old Rossi.”
Myra ducked under the orange fence webbing.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Head wound. Page suspects drowning.”
“We’ll want to run full labs,” she said.
