‘I’ll want to speak to them all the same.’ I smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting your Troy properly, even under the circumstances.’
‘He’s notmyTroy,’ Kate said, but her smile was wistful. She wished he were.
‘Not yet.’ I nudged her. ‘Go inside. I’ll be in when I’m done.’ A thought occurred to me. ‘Oh, hey! There is onething you can do. Can you quickly tell me about Aspen’s aura? I doubt Crane can do that.’
Kate snorted. ‘He cannot.’ She walked over to the body.
‘Do you need gloves?’ I called out before she inadvertently compromised the scene.
She crouched beside the body. ‘I don’t need contact, just proximity.’ She closed her eyes, and a beat later, she frowned. ‘Well … that’s weird.’
‘What is?’
‘The overriding feeling I’m getting from the body is relief.’
My stomach sank and I pressed my lips together. It wasn’t weird considering Ash Aspen had been subsumed by a doppelganger for months. Death, in the end, had been a release. Poor guy.
I pushed Kate into her house right about the time that Ed arrived, rock music blaring out of his windows. It cut off as he silenced the engine.
‘Hey, Stacy,’ he called to me as he slid out of his van.
‘Hey, Ed.’
‘What have we got?’
‘Dead dryad, punched to death. Not much evidence on scene that I’ve noticed. Channing’s doing all the initial photographs.’
‘Appreciate it.’
The autumn chill had hardened the ground, and though the death had taken place on the lawn at the end of Kate’s driveway, there were no visible footprints. Though it was difficult to say so conclusively in the meagre light.
Ed pulled out a floodlight, rectifying that particular issue. Even with light pouring over the area, I couldn’t see much more in the way of evidence.
‘The victim was armed,’ I confirmed. ‘Switchblade, but it was beside him in the grass. I tested it with the potion in my briefcase – no blood.’
He frowned. ‘It was close to him, and he didn’t use it to fight back? That doesn’t make sense.’
I kept my mouth shut because it made sense to me. My paltry knowledge of doppelgangers was that they needed their current host to die at the hands of the next. A particularly cruel twist of fate.
No doubt Jingo had used the blade to threaten his new host – whoever they might be – and scared them into killing Ash, but the doppelganger never used the blade because he didn’t want to damage the new body he was about to inhabit.
Now Jingo was successfully in a new body, and I had no idea what face he was wearing. It was beyond frustrating.
I’d had Jingo in my sights for a few months, but despite my best efforts, I never got any of his cronies to roll onhim. Though I wasn’t sure whether that was because he inspired a cult-like devotion in his crew or a bone-deep fear.
Ed started laying out some evidence markers. ‘Saw a weird competition yesterday,’ he said as he worked. ‘You’ll appreciate this.’
‘Yeah?’
‘So someone writes a bunch of objects on some paper, folds them up, puts them in a hat. Then one by one the competitors pull a slip of paper out of the hat, and whatever object is written on it is what they’re sexy slow dancing with.’ He grinned. ‘The lady with a broom was my favourite. But the chap with the woolly gloves was very inventive.’
I chuckled. ‘Yeah? That sounds fun. What object would you pick?’
He thought for a second. ‘An ironing board. I could spin that baby around, do a dramatic dip. You?’
Without hesitation, a can of Dr Pepper popped into my mind. ‘I don’t know,’ I lied smoothly.
I shrugged nonchalantly, then looked back at the body. Some people danced with brooms. Others ended up dead on a lawn. Life was unfair.
