I offer no other explanation as I lead her to the morgue. The rebound book is, after all, for Quinn’s help in investigating Poppy. Her breath clouds in the frigid air as she surveys the stainless steel autopsy tables, the wall of cold lockers.
“Creepy.”
“Truth.” I chuckle at her vitriolic lour. “Well,that’sa face.”
“Ten minutes.” She taps her wrist. “Waste. Not.”
Finding my penlight, I fit on a pair of medical gloves and unlatch the locker I’ve been dreading reopening. “Venez ici.” She cocks a bemused brow, and I sigh. Her vampire books must not have taught her much French beyond the basics. “Come here.”
Poppy obeys as I pull out the slab, studying the sheet concealing the corpse beneath. “Who is it?”
I toe a rolling stool toward her. “Sit.”
“I’m not a dog, fuck you very much.”
“S’il te plaît, Petit Diable.Sit your royal ass down.”
“What does that mean? ‘Petit Diable.’”
“Little Devil.”
A scoff. “Hilarious.”
“Merci.” I point my penlight at the stool. “Now.”
Poppy plops down, grumbling, “Yes, Master,” like a dejected Igor.
Angels save me.
I peel the cloth back, exposing the ashen flesh of a young woman with bright green hair. All emotion drains from Poppy’s face. Her throat bobs, hands wringing in her lap.
“Jett…” She examines the post-organ removal sutures criss-crossing up the cadaver’s chest. “What happened?”
I pull the sheet farther down, revealing the pentagram carved into the woman’s abdomen.
Poppy’s eyes are as dim as a sunless sea. “When?”
“Today—around noon.”
Those baby blues lift to me, a frostbitten fire burning within them. “Tell me everything you know.”
As I lean against my car now parked beside Poppy’s motorcycle outside Beelzebub’s and breathe in cherry smoke, Poppy inhales a sapphire cocktail from her vape and exhales pale blue mist up at the stars. It smells like her sweet, nostalgic scent of cotton candy.
“Bax is going to lose his shit,” she says, “when I tell him that not only is Jett dead, but she was found in a fucking dumpster. That girl was like a sister to him.”
“Your people are searching the city’s cams,” I remind her. The street chemist’s death, while grim, is a death that no one with a badge aside from Scull will care to investigate. “It shouldn’t take long for them to find the killer.”
“I know. I’m just tired of this guessing game.”
“You’re certain it’s not another rogue Volkov?”
“At this point, I’m not certain of anything.”
That’s it, no further explanation.
“Now who’s being cryptic?” I tease, earning her middle finger. “What’s happened since we last spoke?”
Poppy eyes me sidelong. “You don’t have to do this.”
