Except one thing flared out in her memory as out of place. In the kick space in front of the cooler sat a small granite plate. To the casual eye, it appeared innocuous, a forgotten piece of discarded stone on the floor and swept out of view. Laura saw it for what it was: a listening ward. Someone was keeping tabs on who entered the room. If that was the case, she didn’t want anyone to know she was looking at the body.
She retraced her steps and texted Sinclair to meet her. As she lingered near the elevators, she used her PDA to catch up on public-relations emails until Sinclair arrived. He made a show of looking up and down the hallway. “Not the dinner spot I was hoping for.”
“I need your help with something,” she said.
He feigned surprise. “My help? Me? If this is about changing a lightbulb because I’m taller than you, I’ll be very disappointed.”
She led him down the hallway. “Not a lightbulb, but I’ll keep that in mind. Follow me.”
“Anywhere,” he said.
Her fear that he was able to mask his truthfulness through some ability she didn’t know warred with her desire to believe him. The desire was winning out over the fear more and more lately. She was starting to think that wasn’t a bad thing. She stopped shy of the door to the examining room. Can you pull out your medallion for me? she sent.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
Although it wasn’t the time for jokes, she realized that it was the perfect time for Sinclair. His joking was a mask, she decided, a way of glossing over the seriousness of a situation. She, of all people, knew about masks. She glowered playfully and held her fingers to his lips. There’s a listening ward in the room, she sent.
Sinclair threaded his medallion from beneath his shirt. The metal held an odd coolness, unwarmed by his skin. Essence burned both hot and cold depending on how it was used. Laura didn’t understand the spell that suppressed Sinclair’s fey essence, but she had been able to enhance it before. She pushed essence into the medallion. Her skin prickled as the spell expanded to cover her, too.
Sinclair smirked. “You made it bigger.”
Ignoring the comment, she released the medallion. “I need you to stand near the listening ward to dampen it.”
She opened a door in the wall of coolers and rolled out a long metal shelf. Sean Carr lay on the shelf, a thin white sheet covering him to the waist. Cress’s stasis spell surrounded him, already weakening. Laura estimated it would be gone within a day and with it any trace of essence-related evidence.
The spell prevented his wings from curling inward. They lay flat to either side, a tattered hole in the left one near the shoulder. A cratered burn mark on his chest splayed out like a bloody star against his pale skin. Laura lifted her gaze to see Sinclair’s reaction. He leaned against a counter on the opposite side of the table, posture relaxed, arms folded against his chest.
She lifted the shroud, the stark white overhead lamps accentuating Carr’s pale skin. Carr might have been a failed assassin, but Laura still respected the dead. Playful banter with Sinclair could wait. She pulled on latex gloves and handed Sinclair a pair. “Can you hold up a wing for me?”
The thin appendage draped over his fingers as Sinclair lifted the soft folds. Laura scanned the drab mauve surface, searching for anomalies. Fairy wings were resilient to incidental injuries, but essence could damage them.
“What are you looking for?” Sinclair asked.
“Cress wanted me to get body-signature imprints before they faded.”
The dead man’s body signature shone as Inverni a day after his death. Not a surprise for a member of a powerful group, even if he was from a subclan. She gestured for Sinclair to move closer. “Do you sense anything here?”
“Just the guy’s shape. There are layers of other essence on him, but they mean nothing to me.”
She moved her hand along Carr’s body, sensing residual essence. “They’re multiple body signatures, likely contaminants from the way he was brought in.”
“Sounds like poor procedure to me,” said Sinclair.
Laura sensed her own essence on the body. “Agreed. This wing burn is mine. I’m getting a nice strong tag on the kill shot. That will help identify the killer once we have someone in custody.”
As Sinclair released the wing and adjusted it along the rolling slab, Laura started to push the body into the locker but paused. This close to the body, her sensing ability picked up nuances in Carr’s body signature. The strength of the field didn’t surprise her. As an Inverni, that was a given. She leaned closer. Still nothing. “There’s nothing there.”
Laura lifted Carr’s hands and scanned them. “There’s gunshot residue from firing at Draigen, but there’s no residual essence concentration in his hands. Essence-fire pools on the skin surface before it discharges. It leaves a ghost image behind, like gunshot residue. There’s no afterimage in these hands.”
“So?” asked Sinclair.
“He didn’t fire essence at whoever killed him, Jono.”
Sinclair met her gaze. “Which means he was either surrendering or wasn’t expecting to be fired on because he knew the fey who shot him.”
Laura pulled the shroud back over Carr and pushed the slab back into the locker. “Either way, Jono, it means he was murdered.”
CHAPTER 29
THE SMALL RESTAURANT in Alexandria was not far from Laura’s condo. The menu was good enough for repeat visits, but the place had remained under the radar and hadn’t been spoiled by popularity yet. Laura had not once recognized someone from in town when she had been there.
She toyed with the straw in her drink. Sinclair picked up the saltshaker and tapped a few grains into his pilsner glass. She chuckled. “I haven’t seen someone do that in a long, long time.”
Sinclair sipped his beer. “It’s an old habit from my grandfather. He said beer used to be better, and the salt made the swill we drink these days taste better.”
She gave him a lazy smile. “So why order swill?”
Sinclair shrugged. “It’s not. Old habit, like I said. I only do it because it reminds me of him.”
“Were you close?” she asked.
“Are you asking me what else a fire giant might have told me?” he said.
She sighed. “Why is it every time I ask a question, you assume I have ulterior motives, but every time you ask one, you get annoyed if I don’t answer?”
He grinned. “Because we don’t trust each other.”
She picked up false tones in his voice and immediately felt ashamed that she was using a fey ability he didn’t know about. She tamped it down, shutting off her truth sensitivity.
“What did you just do?” he asked.
She startled. “Are you scanning me?”
He blushed. He actually blushed. “No. It was a latent thing. Your essence shape sort of . . . dimmed.”
“I’m trying to relax,” she said.
He held his glass up. “Good. To relaxation.”
She hesitated, then tapped her glass against his. “With everything going on, it feels wrong, though.”
He leaned forward. “Laura, something is always ‘going on,’ isn’t it? There’s nothing you can do right now. Your friends are fine for the night. You need to learn to enjoy yourself, I think.”
She shifted defensively in her chair. “I just got back from a vacation.”
He draped an arm over the back of his chair. “Let me guess: You sat on the beach and read. Got up early, maybe went for a run. Went to bed early. Had room service more than once.”
She smiled into her drink. “Did you follow me?”
“Did you laugh?”
She cocked her head. “Excuse me?”
“You were gone for two weeks. How many times did you laugh?” he asked.