Felipe suppressed a flinch as Oliver’s hand settled on his back. His partner’s soft grey eyes searched his features as he gently held his arms to steady him. “Felipe, are you all right? Do you need to sit down?”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I’ve seen enough men get that look at the autopsy table to know what it means.”
“I’m fine, love. I promise,” Felipe replied, flashing Oliver a tight smile. “I was contemplating how he died. That’s all.”
“If you’re sure.”
Oliver looked like he didn’t believe him, but he hesitantly stepped out of the way. Swallowing against the knot in his throat, Felipe held up the Kodak and pushed back his morbid thoughts enough to focus on finding the best lighting to detail the crime scene. As he took a series of photographs detailing the dead man’s position at the desk, Felipe’s mind wandered to the photographs they would eventually add to their file. Film could never fully capture the horrors of a crime scene. It would always flatten the blood and offal. Bullet holes became no more than black marks on walls. People were reduced to disembodied pieces on paper, their final moments rendered in black and white. Photographs allowed a distance he could no longer maintain. For years, he had been able to see things no one should ever see without batting an eye. He had been complimented on it since he arrived, and he had his family to thank for beating the nausea and tears out of him early. They had forced him to bear witness to the destructive power of knives and magic when others would have shielded their children.Galvan men do not get sick. They do not cower at the sight of blood.Felipe’s eyes fluttered shut and he swallowed hard at the fleeting image of some horror his mind didn’t want to remember. As a self-healer and the Patrón’s chosen heir, he had seen more blood than anyone else, his and other people’s. The numbing balm of duty had kept him going for years, even after he left California. What had begun as duty to his family became his duty to the people the Paranormal Society served, the people who needed protecting.
But little by little, year by year, he found it harder not to feel. Other investigators didn’t comment if a smell caught their partner off-guard or a brutal scene gave them pause. Not sayinganything was an unspoken compact between them as long as everyone pulled themselves together and kept going, not that he had ever needed their compassion. Since he died though… Felipe took a close up of the purge painting the dead man’s features. Since he died, the cracks that were already starting to show had grown into fissures. The unflappable façade of Inspector Galvan had been enough to keep most people from looking too closely, but he had always made certain to keep his distance all the same. Oliver had called him a demigod once. A near immortal hero who could walk through a hail of bullets or the most brutal crime scenes without flinching didn’t warrant a closer look as long as he kept up his end of the bargain. Felipe’s hands shook as he took a picture of the black-soaked book.
But Inspector Galvan had died a mortal’s death alone, and the Felipe who was left wasn’t sure how long he could keep going. When he stepped away and set the camera down on its case, he found Oliver watching him. Even if they didn’t have the tether running between their hearts, he was certain Oliver would have noticed him falter when no one else did. It was all at once relieving and mortifying to be seen so clearly and to still be loved in spite of it. Oliver’s grey gaze ran between him and the dead man until his brows raised in something akin to understanding. What commonality he saw between them, Felipe wasn’t sure he wanted to know. A wash of familiar warmth lapped against his heart in time with the tether tightening as Oliver came to stand at his side. Pressing his nails into his palm hard enough to bruise, Felipe rode out the pain until it sharpened into focus. Heneededto be Inspector Galvan right now.
“Would you like me to take notes for you?” Felipe asked, forcing his voice steady.
“If you’re willing, I would appreciate it. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage it without getting it covered in,” Oliver wrinkled his nose, “ichor.”
“I wouldn’t touch that if you can help it. It could be poisonous.”
“Trust me, I don’t plan to.” Oliver donned a pair of rubber surgical gloves and handed Felipe the notebook he had tucked into his gladstone. “Ready?”
At Felipe’s nod, Oliver squatted next to the dead man and inspected his features.
“The deceased is an unknown man. Our John Doe is approximately fifty to sixty years old with a slim but sedentary build, pale skin, light brown hair mixed with grey, eye color…” Oliver pulled one of the man’s eyelids higher and grimaced at the dark stain over his irises and sclera.
“Indeterminant?” Felipe supplied.
“Thank you.” Oliver tried to angle the dead man’s head to no avail. “He is in rigor mortis. His face and upper body are tense, so he’s been dead for several hours. My guess is he died after midnight but before dawn. We’ll know more once he’s back at the lab.”
“We’re going to have a hell of a time getting him out of that position,” Felipe replied without looking up as he jotted the last of that down.
“I don’t think rigor has quite set in everywhere yet. As long as we get him flat relatively soon, I think we can avoid the worst of it. John Doe was found upright at a desk and appears to have died reading a book.” Carefully pulling the chair away from the desk, Oliver tipped the dead man forward to get a better look at his back. “Lividity patterns match him dying upright, and he definitely diedaftermidnight since livor mortis hasn’t fully developed yet. Felipe, can you take a picture of it for me?”
Tucking the notebook into his pocket, Felipe returned to Oliver’s side with the camera. The man’s skin had gone stark white where it touched the furniture, leaving a negative of the desk chair that was broken up only by grey-purple blood vesselsbeneath his skin. Felipe snapped several photographs and hoped the lighting was strong enough to capture it.
“Well, that’s one convenient thing about people dying naked,” Felipe said as he returned to his place on the other side of the desk.
“He will get a full autopsy, but it’s always nice to start before we remove him from the scene. It helps put things into context.” Kneeling down, Oliver rotated the chair and inspected the rest of the man’s form. “John Doe died completely unclothed with no signs of violence on his body. Scratch that, no wounds on his body. His body is whole but discolored. His skin looks grey with visible blood vessels beneath the skin appearing black. Purple-black to be more precise. His extremities, especially his fingers, are discolored and have turned black, though it doesn’t appear to be from necrosis or frostbite. The face is covered in a black substance that appears to have oozed from his eyes, nose, and mouth along with a small amount trickling from the left ear.”
Oliver squinted and leaned closer to the man’s face only to lurch back with a stifled sneeze. Felipe winced as his partner sneezed three more times in rapid succession. Burying his face in his elbow, Oliver loudly sniffed and blinked back tears. With a groan of disgust, he waved the air away as if he could make the smell dissipate.
“God, that’s strong. There’s magic all over him, especially on his face. I could smell it before, but up close, it’s awful. Like someone doused him in the world’s worst cologne.”
Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, Felipe handed it to Oliver. As his partner blew his nose, Felipe tried to smell the magic lingering on the dead man’s skin. He leaned as close as he dared to the inky stains on the dead man’s face, but all he could make out was something bitter overlaid with the metallic tang of blood. His stomach roiled and twisted as he quickly stepped back. Swallowing a mouthful of saliva, Felipe got as faras he could from the corpse and focused on writing down what he had smelled. He was fairly certain what he could make out wasn’t magic. Oliver had a nose like a bloodhound or a werewolf for magic, which would have been more impressive if it didn’t manifest as a sneezing fit, but that usually meant he couldn’t smell what was physically present on the body beneath it. His stomach growled unpleasantly at the lingering smell of blood.
Forcing his mind onto the paper in his hand, Felipe asked, “Can you describe how the magic smells? For our notes.”
“It stinks.” Oliver sniffed and blinked hard. “Whatever it is, it is so strong it could sear your nose hairs off. It amazes me that you can’t smell it.”
“All I could smell is blood and something bitter.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the purge was mostly blood, considering what his blood vessels look like. I have to remember to take a sample before we pack him up. Either way, the magic on him doesn’t smell like blood or purge. It’s foul. It’s akin to burning rubber mixed with alcohol. There’s another scent under it, but I’m not sure what it is. It might be the bitterness you mentioned. God, I don’t want to, but let me try again.” Bracing himself, Oliver took another sniff, this time far from the purge on the dead man’s face. Oliver opened his mouth as if he might sneeze but forced it down with a grimace. “There’s definitely something bitter there too, almost medicinal. I hate to say it, but this doesn’t feel like a person’s magic.”
Felipe’s hand stilled. When he looked up from the page, he found Oliver’s dark brows knit in concern as he donned his gloves again. “You’re sure?”
“Unfortunately. Magic from individual people doesn’t linger like this. I can usually smell it in discrete areas where there’s an injury, but it isn’t this overwhelming, especially not this long after death. The fact that there’s so much of it and that it’s spreadacross his entire body makes me think it’s from something rather than someone.”
