We were in the cutting room of the St. Long Parish Morgue. On the metal table before us was the naked body of Barry Landrieu. The scent of formalin and Pine-Sol mingled, and my stomach gave off an unfamiliar twinge of queasiness. I’d only been wearing the cuff for a few hours, and I was already feeling the effects. As long as I don’t puke during the autopsy I’ll be all right, I tried to reassure myself. I would never live it down if I lost my breakfast.
“You don’t normally come to autopsies of natural deaths,” Carl said as he readied instruments on a side table. Scalpels, scissors, syringes, a bone saw. And one that always made me wince—long-handled pruning shears, used to cut through the ribs so that the pathologist could better examine the internal organs.
“Two deaths with nosebleeds in the same day?” I said. “I tend to be suspicious of coincidences.” Out of habit I tried to shift into othersight to give the body a once-over and silently cursed as it proved impossible with the stupid cuff on.
He gave a mild nod. “It does seem odd,” he agreed. “And you sometimes have more reason than most to dislike what appears to be coincidence to others.”
I was silent for several heartbeats. “I knew them both. Barry here was the one who gave me heroin.” Carl knew about that incident already. “And the other one, Evelyn Stark, was the drunk driver who killed my dad.”
“Ah,” he said, and in that one syllable was a paragraph’s worth of meaning.
“Plus, Eilahn and I encountered a graa early yesterday morning,” I added. Carl knew a great deal about the arcane and demons, but I didn’t know if that was because of his relationship with my aunt or if he had prior knowledge. I knew that wards didn’t seem to have any effect on him, and he’d once been attacked by an assailant with the ability to suck out a person’s essence, yet he’d been completely unaffected. But despite not knowing a damn thing about him, I trusted him.
But should I? I was suddenly suspicious of any sort of blind trust. Yet, Tessa cared deeply for him and clearly, she trusted him. And I’d never seen the barest whisper or hint that Carl had anything but fond adoration for my aunt in return. Maybe there were times when blind trust was necessary. I sure as hell needed to be better about trusting people.
His hazel brown eyes flicked to me. “Should I assume it was not a pleasant encounter?”
“You could say that,” I replied with a dry laugh, “though Eilahn’s convinced it wasn’t trying to kill me.” I lifted my shoulders in a shrug. “Obviously, I need even more weird shit in my life.”
A smile touched the corners of his mouth. “And yet you weather it well.”
“I’d hate to see what my life would be like if I weathered it badly!”
“And you don’t think your aunt summoned this demon?”
That hadn’t even occurred to me. Why the hell hadn’t it? She was a strong summoner. She was the one who had trained me. “I’m pretty confident that she wouldn’t send a demon to attack me,” I told him. Still, I should have asked her. What if the attack had been some sort of misunderstanding? “Did she summon it?”
His eyes held mine briefly before he looked back down at the instruments. “No.”
Carl was a hard man to read, but I could have sworn I’d seen relief, or something awfully close to it, in that brief look. I let out a breath and resisted the urge to ask him why the hell he’d implied that she had. Carl usually had good stuff to say, but he didn’t always come right out and say it—usually preferring for me to come around to it on my own. “I don’t know if it had anything to do with the deaths of these two people,” I said, “but it sure as hell got my attention.”
“Interesting,” he murmured, then turned back to the body and began a meticulous search for scars, tattoos, or injuries. “If the graa wasn’t there in connection with the two victims, why would it be there? Do you think your aunt can give you advice or counsel about that?” He didn’t look up at me, but I still felt pinned down by his attention. I resisted the urge to squirm.
“I don’t want to worry her,” I finally said. “She’s been through a lot of shit lately…most of it my fault.”
“It is the role of parents—and guardians—to worry about their loved ones,” he pointed out.
My throat felt tight. Was I keeping things from my aunt to protect her or to protect me from her ire? My relationship with her had been a tempestuous one for most of our time together. She was acerbic, and odd, and generally didn’t care what people thought of her. And while I could appreciate that mentality more now that I was older, back when I was young it was yet another hurdle to overcome. It was bad enough that both my parents had died, but now I had to live with my crazy aunt who did weird shit and didn’t seem to care that the other kids at school laughed at her—and me. Tessa hadn’t cared about fads—in fact she tended to hold anything that was fashionable in complete disdain, and had subtly, and not-so-subtly, pushed me to be “unique” and to “forge my own path.”
But as a thirteen-year-old, I wasn’t ready to be unique. What I’d needed was to fit in, to be a little invisible until I could find my comfort zone. That was impossible with Tessa. Was it any wonder that I’d rebelled and found a different way to hide and feel comfortable? Or at least, what felt like comfort.
Carl remained silent, but it didn’t feel judgmental. It simply seemed as if he was waiting for me to digest his comment on my own, and he’d be there to pick up the conversation when I did. I felt an odd surge of gratitude toward him. I had a few friends who knew that I summoned demons, but somehow talking it out with Carl was different, and it felt oddly freeing to be able to discuss bizarre shit like this.
“She’s different,” I said at last.
“That she is,” Carl agreed.
I shook my head. “No, I mean…since she woke up.” My aunt’s essence had been stripped from her body by a serial killer, and it had taken me several weeks to find a way to call her back to herself.
His eyes met mine. “I know.”
“I don’t think she wants to summon anymore.”
“I think you’re right.”
I tilted my head. “Do you know why? I mean…has she said anything?”
“Not to me.”
Our conversation was cut off by the entrance of Dr. Lanza. A slender man about my height with distinct Italian coloring and features, he had an easygoing manner that had done much to put me at ease when I was still learning the ropes of investigating homicides. And now I’m an old hand at this whole find-the-murderer thing, I thought with mild amusement.
Dr. Lanza shot me a warm smile as he pulled protective clothing over his jeans and New Orleans Hornets T-shirt. “You must have some dark suspicions, Kara,” he said, his smile teasing.
“C’mon, Doc, I always have dark suspicions,” I replied with an easy grin, automatically slipping away from the confiding and open mood of the conversation with Carl and into the tone that I maintained with everyone else—the ones who had no clue that there was more to our world than what was apparent to the usual five senses. I was used to it. Humor, and lots of caution about what I said and asked. But I was damn grateful that there were people with whom I could discuss the more bizarre details.