“Where are you?” he demanded. I gave him the address. “Where’s the body?”
“In the hallway.”
Miles made a pained noise. “You broke in?”
“No.” The truth was so freeing. As were lies of omission.
“Uh-huh. Why must you always ruin my day?” Miles said.
I methodically searched the kitchen for any evidence tying Tatiana or her brother to Chariot. “Think of it as broadening your horizons.”
“Get out of there and call it in.”
“Give me an hour.”
“It’s a crime scene,” Miles growled. “You’ll contaminate it.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to? Gloves on, hair covered, shoes off, no touching the body. No grasping any handles or knobs directly so as not to smudge any prints.” The kitchen yielded nothing more than kitchenware. Even the ancient address book tossed in the junk drawer was blank. I shoved the drawer shut. “You might have Chariot informants on the Nefesh force and if they get their hands on anything of note before we do, I guarantee it won’t make it to the evidence locker.”
“If Chariot did this, they would have swept the place already.”
“I don’t know, they didn’t seem too keen on lingering.” I shivered.
“You saw the murderer?” Miles sounded like he wanted to reach through the phone and strangle me. “Did they see you?”
“No.” I was confident about that fact, though it had been way too close for comfort. “I couldn’t identify them, either. The plates on the car were muddy and the person wore a baseball cap, which I only glimpsed from behind.”
“Levi is going to freak the fuck out.”
“Then be creative with your report so that he doesn’t,” I snapped. Like this was my fault. Chariot was bent on acquiring immortality; they weren’t playing by a rule book, and they definitely weren’t playing it safe. Neither could I.
“If it weren’t for the known Chariot connection to Tatiana’s brother, who was killed a couple nights ago, I wouldn’t have come in the first place.” I searched the freezer in a last-ditch hope that the kitchen would yield something useful, but it, too, was a bust. “My Jezebel duties take precedence. I accepted the Mantle and I don’t get to run away because it’s scary. I’m checking the place out.” I hung up on him, ignoring the persistent buzzing in my back pocket for the next ten minutes.
Tatiana was an interesting woman. She didn’t own a TV, but she did have a CD tower full of classical music. While she had Weaver magic, she also enjoyed the good old-fashioned kind of weaving, as evidenced by the large loom with the unfinished tapestry that dominated the living room. Her house brimmed with artistic expression and no sign of religious conviction, so what had drawn her to Chariot? Had she been promised immortality or did it come down to cold, hard cash?
And why wasn’t there a damn ward?
Her unprotected laptop on the coffee table failed to yield much beyond the bookkeeping records for her ward business and emails from clients.
Unlocking a phone with a dead woman’s thumb wasn’t my finest hour, but I kept my promise to Miles and managed to do it without touching the body. I airdropped her contacts list to my phone to go through later, so that was something. The texts were mostly social plans with friends. I left her phone where I found it.
Miles must have run every red light because he got here in a scant forty minutes. He and Arkady Choi, my friend, fighting mentor, and new neighbor, piled out of a pickup truck.
I met them at the back door.
Arkady not only worked for the House on hush-hush jobs, but he was part of the Nefesh Mixed Martial Arts League and was a thrill junkie. Their high-speed race here should have elated him, but his face was grim.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Go fast, go hard, pedal to the metal. Would it have killed him to stop for a coffee?” Arkady’s dark eyes flashed. “Make conversation?”
“It was a drive to get from point A to point B.” Miles, a six-foot-four mountain of a man with muscles that begat muscles, slipped off his black shoes and left them next to mine on the doormat. “You knew that getting into the car.”
“I guess my understanding of a ride is different than yours,” Arkady said.
“That bad, huh?” I said, dying to call Priya about how these two had totally slept together.
They turned to me with identical expressions of surprise, like they’d forgotten I was there.
Arkady flung an arm theatrically across his forehead. “My life flashed before my eyes.”
“Scale of one to ten, how well did you live your best self?” I said.
“Pickle, please,” he said, slipping off his shoes. “It was an eleven. ”
“Did you find anything?” Miles said.
“Not yet,” I said. “There’s still the bathroom, two bedrooms, and what I presume is an office, though it’s locked.”
The three of us exchanged smirks—as if that would be a problem.
Miles pulled out latex gloves and paper hats befitting a food services worker for himself and Arkady. It was kind of overkill for Miles, given his blond hair was buzz cut, but his attention to detail served him well as Head of Security.
Arkady shuddered as he slipped the paper hat over his black, chin-length hair.
“It doesn’t have cooties,” I said.
“It’s a fashion blight.” He brightened. “At least it won’t detract from my stellar good looks.” He wasn’t wrong. Dude had cheekbones for days, pouty lips, and overall supermodel hotness.
I clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. Think positively.”
We entered the kitchen and I led them to the victim, motioning to the body with a flourish. “Meet Tatiana Petrov.”
“How can you be certain that’s her?” Arkady circled the body. “We can’t see her face. If she even still has a face.”
I pointed to a thick white streak in her dark hair. “She’s registered in the House Pacifica database and there’s a photo. Her brother has a purple birthmark under his eye. That streak of white is her birthmark.”
“I’ve met her before,” Miles said softly. “She was
