It had taken ten minutes and three separate officers inspecting their paperwork before someone fetched the lead detective on the case. Inspector Easton turned out to be a tall, stately man with a handlebar mustache that Felipe was certain he had seen on the front page of the newspaper standing behind the police commissioner and other city officials after major arrests. Easton was old enough to look experienced without appearing old, and he had the controlled but vaguely intimidating bearing of the men Felipe often sparred with back when he had attended Colonel Monstery’s boxing academy. He would bet Easton had attended West Point or came from a well-off family, which was why he had become part of the public-facing police. While there were far too many officers milling about giving them a pointed once over, at least the man in charge appeared to be the sort Felipe might reason with. If he dealt with dignitaries and the mayor’s office, then he knew about the Paranormal Society.
“Ah, Head Inspector Williams’s men. We’ve been awaiting your arrival.” Easton checked their paperwork against their badges. “Inspector Galvan and Dr. Barlow? Come this way. No one has touched the body or entered the library since I arrived.”
Across the tether, Felipe felt Oliver’s pulse kick as they entered the mansion. Felipe couldn’t be sure if it was the opulence of the house, the amount of furniture and art packed into the foyer, or the legion of milling police giving Oliver pause, and while he couldn’t hold his hand or even pat his shoulder without dozens of eyes judging, he could at least reduce one worry. Without taking his eyes off Inspector Easton for fear of losing him in the crowded house, Felipe reached back and pulled the end of the stretcher under his arm. Oliver whispered his thanks and trailed behind him. As Easton paused to talk to another officer, Felipe tried to listen to the voices beneath the din of policemen. While the parlor doors were closed, Felipe could hear the lilt of several women’s voices and what sounded like a handful of children talking within. There was no sobbing or tremulous comforting. If anything, they sounded put-out to be relegated to one room in their home. A harried maid pushed through the throng with a platter of food, casting the police a loathsome look. Sitting on a wooden bench on the far side of the foyer, a younger woman in black, probably a chambermaid, spoke softly to an officer. Her eyes were wide as she worked a handkerchief between her hands and shook her head in response to an unheard question. Unless the mother of the children in the parlor was a particularly good actress, Felipe would bet the deceased was not a family member. The tenor of the house was far too calm despite the crowd of reporters and swarm of police. It was odd.
“Can you tell us what you know thus far, inspector?” Felipe asked as Easton motioned for them to follow him down a wood-paneled hall.
“One of the maids entered the library at approximately seven-thirty this morning in order to gather and wash the chair and table linens while the master of the house is away on business. She found the deceased in the library and fainted. Another maid found her several minutes later and sent for the police along with apparently every reporter in the city,” the detective replied with a twitch of his mustache. “The first policemen on the scene cordoned everything off until I could arrive, and as soon as I saw the body, I sent a telegram to Head Inspector Williams.”
“What about the deceased made you call us?” Oliver asked quietly.
At the library door, Inspector Easton opened his mouth to speak but hesitated. “I’ll let you see for yourself. While we were awaiting your arrival, my men spoke to the Livingston family and took statements from everyone in the household. No one knows the deceased or how he entered the house. Everyone’s movements are accounted for from ten in the evening onward, though I don’t think he was murdered… at least not in the traditional sense, though I may not be the best judge in this situation.”
“Is the family—?” Felipe let the wordmagicalhang unspoken, but Easton shook his head.
“They have no knowledge of that world as far as I can tell. Some of the servants do but not in any meaningful way. I’m sure you can confirm that with your people. If you don’t mind, we would like to take the lead on the initial interviews with the Livingstons and their staff since they are unaware of the role your people play. Any follow-ups we will happily leave in your hands.” Reaching for the door, Easton added, “My half-sister is one of yours, and while she has told me some disturbing stories, this is by far the strangest thingIhave seen in some time.”
Oliver and Felipe exchanged a glance. “Thank you, Inspector Easton. We’ll take it from here. If you could forward the transcripts of the family and servants’ statements and a list of everyone in the household to the society as soon as possible, that would be very helpful.”
“Send someone around to the Mulberry Street office after five, and I’ll have them ready for you. If you need anything, Sergeant McNabb will be stationed right outside the door.” Easton took a step back as if to leave but added, “There is one more thing before I let you get to work. As you know, the Livingstons are a very prominent family, and understandably, they would like to keep the details of this incident quiet, especially since their eldest daughter is engaged to be married to a young man from a good family. If anything about the case gives his family pause, Mr. and Mrs. Livingston will turn their ire toward the police and the society.”
A wry smile crossed Felipe’s lips. No matter how cooperative, the police always had to go and ruin any good will he dredged up for them. “Considering the family and at least half your men don’t know our kind exists, I don’t think we are the ones with a discretion problem, inspector.”
Chapter Four
Blank Pages
Tugging the door shut behind them, Felipe let out a heavy breath and flipped the lock. He didn’t need any nosy policeman wandering in unannounced while they worked. And he certainly didn’t need any arguments about magic, procedure, or jurisdiction, especially not with a house full of gun and baton-happy men. Easton was somewhat reasonable, the others less so, and he didn’t care to chance their tenuous alliance. At least the Livingston’s library looked unmolested by the legion of police outside the door. The library was two stories high and had shelves with a narrow catwalk running around the upper story. While it was nowhere as big as Turpin’s domain, or as cluttered with books, it had the air of a smoking room in a gentleman’s club. A marble hearth that was big enough to swallow a man sat at the center of the room along with several heavy leather couches. The only other major piece of furniture was the desk in the back, so any clues would probably be in fairly plain sight. Taking a step forward, Felipe nearly walked into Oliver and the length of the stretcher.
His partner stood clutching his gladstone in one hand and the end of the stretcher in the other with his eyes glued on the oculus above their heads. Felipe would have scarcely paid attention to it, apart from confirming the glass hadn’t been broken, but Oliver was riveted. His pale pink lips parted as aherd of grey clouds drifted over the glass, dappling them in soft, winter light, and all Felipe could think was how the sky matched Oliver’s eyes. Across the tether, his partner’s pulse calmed to a more placid pace. He rocked from the heel of his foot to his toes and back to ground himself, and a genuine smile broke across his lips for the first time in hours as a pigeon landed on the glass. It cocked its head at them before pecking the glass and toddling out of sight.
“Feeling better?” Felipe asked softly, giving Oliver’s shoulder a squeeze before gently pulling the board from his hand and setting it against the nearest shelf.
“Much. I needed that, though if the library or lab had one of those, I would never get any work done.” Giving himself a little shake, Oliver whispered, “I’m just glad they left us alone. I don’t think I can take all of them watching over my shoulder as I work, especially given what I can see of our dead man from here.”
Felipe nodded as he freed the Kodak from his case and eyed the light coming in through the oculus. The worst thing about his post-death night vision was that now he second-guessed how bright a room was to normal eyes or cameras. “Do you think it’s bright enough that I don’t need the flash pan?”
“I think it should be fine. Do you want to take pictures of the body first or do a sweep of the room?”
“The room. That way we can catch anything before we step on it.”
Felipe trailed his gaze and camera lens across the rug and bookcases, but the room was relatively undisturbed. As they crossed the thick carpet, he looked for any signs of a hastily erased summoning circle or bits of melted wax where candles had once been, but there was nothing. The books were all in place and none of the furniture appeared askew. The only obvious oddities were the pile of linens the maid had dropped on the floor near the fireplace and the dead man sitting at Mr.Livingston’s desk. Felipe squinted as they approached the dead man, unsure what he was looking at.
Beside him, Oliver went very still. “No wonder the maid fainted,” Oliver said barely above a whisper.
The dead man sitting at Mr. Livingston’s desk had turned a color Felipe didn’t think possible in humans, living or dead. While there were no obvious wounds, the man’s head had been thrown back in a twisted parody of ecstasy. Where his eyes should have been white, there was only a glossy, inky blackness. His nose, lips, and fingers had turned a purplish black as if he had frostbite, but what gave Felipe the most pause were the blackened blood vessels webbed beneath the whiteness of the man’s skin. Webs of black ran across his face, along his bare arms, and down his chest, forming a nexus around his heart. Black purge painted the man’s face, leaving streaks beneath his eyes and nose while a thick band ran down his chin and onto his chest like an inky waterfall. Whatever it was, it had soaked into the book sitting open in front of him and the blotter beneath it. Felipe had seen dead people in all shades of decomposition, but this was different. This was wrong.
“At least it makes sense why they called us in. There’s no non-magical explanation for this. Is he completely—?”
“Naked?” Oliver leaned over the desk to check. “Looks like it.”
“Christ almighty, why do the weirdest deaths always happen when people are naked?”
“My theory is that people do riskier things in the nude,” Oliver replied as he knelt down to dig through his bag. “They think they’re invulnerable when they are at their most vulnerable. That, and shifters often end up dying mid-transformation, which requires them to be unclothed. At least they have a good reason for it.”
Felipe nodded but couldn’t take his eyes off the dead man’s mottled flesh. He had seen plenty of violent deaths where the walls were painted in blood and the dead’s innards were on full display, but he found quiet, queer deaths far more unsettling. He understood violence. He had been raised in it, become intimately acquainted with it, and could rationalize how normal people turned to it. Despite living in a world of magic, he had none of his own that could be used on anyone besides himself, so it was disconcerting to acknowledge that other people could kill with a thought or that their magic could be used in as horrifyingly creative ways as poisons or knives.
Felipe’s attention snagged on the tributary of dark veins running up the man’s exposed neck. He should have been looking for how the man got inside or why he died sitting at Mr. Livingston’s desk, but all he could think about was what it must have felt like when he died. Had the magic flowed through his veins like fire in the end or had it turned sweet and sensual, numbing as it overtook him? Felipe had felt the insidious, cloying pull of parasitic magic less than two months ago in the Dysterwood, and while the nightmares had faded, he could never get the acidic burn of the necromantic worm or the sensation of being puppeteered out of his mind. Had the dead man felt the magic usurping his will? Had he arched his neck in a final attempt to escape its grasp when ecstasy crossed into pain, or had he—
