throat; there were no other injuries. I glanced back at Quentin. He was standing a few feet behind me, wide-eyed and pale as he stared at the body. I couldn’t blame him. The first time you see real death is hard.
“Out of my way,” I said, stepping between Peter and Elliot. There are times when I have a lot of patience, but there are things that don’t get better, or easier, when you let them wait.
“Toby . . .” Alex began.
“Now,” I snapped. “And stay here. I need to talk to you.” They moved without any further protest. Elliot, at least, looked somewhat relieved. I’m half-Daoine Sidhe; that means people assume I know how to deal with the dead. After all, of all Titania’s children, only the Daoine Sidhe can “talk” to the dead, using their blood to access their memories—often including the memory of how they died. We’re like the fae equivalent of CSI. Some races got shapeshifting or talking to flowers, and we? We got borrowed memories and the taste of blood, and people washing their hands after we touch them. Not exactly what I’d call a fair trade.
I’m half-Daoine Sidhe; I’m also half- human. That does a lot to damage my credibility, but being the daughter of the greatest blood-worker alive in Faerie makes up for my mortal heritage. Lucky me. I’ve been trying to live up to my mother for my entire life. Because a crazy, lying idiot is the perfect role model.
The Daoine Sidhe didn’t sign up for the position of “most likely to handle your corpses,” but we didn’t have to. Most fae don’t have much exposure to death, and they’re grateful when someone—anyone—is willing to play intermediary. Death doesn’t really bother me anymore; somewhere along the line, it just became a part of who I am. Coffee and corpses, that’s my life. Sometimes I hate being me.
I dropped to my knees next to the body. “Quentin, come over here.”
“Do I have to?”
I paused, almost reconsidering. Sylvester asked me to let him follow me around for a while; he didn’t ask me to start teaching him the gruesome realities of blood magic. Then again, I don’t believe in hiding the truth from our children. It always backfires.
“Yes, you do,” I said.
Anger and fear warred for ownership of his expression before he sighed, moving to join me. The habit of obedience was stronger than his desire to rebel. Faerie trains her courtiers well.
“Good,” I said, and turned my attention to Colin. Maybe it’s a sign of how many bodies I’ve seen over the past year, but I felt no disgust: only pity and regret. I sighed. “Oh, you poor bastard.”
I was aware of the men behind us, but they didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was the body and what it had to tell me.
Colin’s coloring was normal under the lines of his henna tattoos, showing no signs of lividity, and his eyes were still moist, almost alive in their blank regard. He’d died recently. He looked startled but not frightened, like whatever happened was a surprise without being unpleasant. At least until it killed him.
“Toby . . .”
“Yeah?” I lifted Colin’s hand, frowning at the ease with which his elbow bent. He was cold enough that rigor mortis should have set in already, but his joints were still pliant. That wasn’t right. There’s a point at which rigor mortis fades, replaced by limpness, but he wasn’t suffering from that, either; his body had normal muscle resistance. He just wasn’t in it.
“What
“I don’t know yet. Hush a minute, and let me work.” The punctures on Colin’s wrists were nasty, but not enough to be the cause of death. The skin around them was only slightly bruised; the trauma of whatever killed him wasn’t enough to rupture many of the blood vessels. There’s a lot of blood in the average body, but most of Colin’s was still inside where it belonged.
The third puncture was nestled below the curve of his jaw on the left side of his head, surrounded by a ring of jellied blood. There were no other visible injuries. There was something else wrong with the body, but my eyes seemed to slide off it when I tried to look more closely.
I frowned. “Quentin, look at the body. What’s wrong with it?”
“You mean besides being dead?” he asked, with an odd half-stutter in his voice.
“I know it’s hard. It was hard for me the first time, too. But I need you to look closely, and tell me what you see.”
The first time—ha. My first time was one of Devin’s kids, back when I still worked there. He overdosed in the bathroom an hour before his shift in the front was supposed to start, and he wasn’t even cold when we found him. I helped three older boys carry him behind the bar and leave him for the night- haunts, and I was sick three times before morning. Devin still made me stand my watch, because duty was duty. I’ve never been that cruel a taskmaster . . . but Devin was my teacher, and I learned a lot from him. One of his most important lessons was that the hard things are best done quickly: face what you’re afraid of and get it over with, if you can. It hurts less in the long run.
Quentin swallowed and looked down, scanning the body. He frowned, confusion breaking through his disgust. “Is there something wrong with his hands?”
I looked down. Colin’s hands were webbed, like a Selkie’s should be, curled at his—
Oh, no. Oh, root and branch, no. Stiffening, I said, “Yes, Quentin. I think there is.”
The fae don’t leave bodies. That’s a lot of how we’ve stayed hidden all these years. When we die, the night- haunts carry us away, leaving behind illusion-forged mannequins to fool human eyes. The signs of Colin’s heritage should have been gone, replaced with apparent humanity by the night- haunts. They should have been gone . . . but they weren’t. His fingers and toes were webbed, and his eyes were brown from edge to edge. Except for the punctures at his wrists and throat, he could have been playing some sort of tasteless joke.
But he wasn’t joking; he was dead, and something was very wrong. The night-haunts never leave a body long enough for the blood to chill. So why hadn’t they come for Colin? Why was he still here?
“Toby?”
“It’s okay.” I patted him on the shoulder with a suddenly clumsy hand, aware of how cold the comfort must seem. “I think this may be why Sylvester sent us here.”
“I don’t think he knew . . .”
“I know.” I pulled my hand away. “Go see when Jan’s getting here.” I didn’t want him to see what I was going to do next. I may not like lying to the young, but even I have my limits.
Quentin nodded and stood, trying to hide his relief as he turned toward Elliot. “Sir? Where is your lady?”
“April went to get her,” Elliot said, voice low and numb.
“How long?” I asked, without looking around as I dragged my forefinger across the wound on Colin’s left wrist. Sometimes being Daoine Sidhe is the most disgusting thing I can imagine. Those of us with skill at blood magic can taste a person’s entire past in the weight of their blood. It makes us excellent counselors and better detectives; it also means we spend a lot of money on mouthwash. After a while, the taste of blood never really goes away.
The blood clung to my finger. I stared at it. The last time I rode the blood, I wound up so bound to a murdered pureblood that I almost followed her into death. A little paranoia was natural. Careful not to glance behind me—I didn’t want to know if Quentin was watching—I slid the finger into my mouth and waited.
Nothing happened. The blood was sour and curdled, and there was nothing in it that spoke of life or death or anything else. I leaned forward, Quentin and the others forgotten. The existence of a fae corpse was jarring and unnatural, but not being able to ride the blood was just plain wrong. Nothing I’d ever heard of could empty blood of its vitality like that. This time I used the first three fingers of my right hand, dipping them into the blood at his throat and sucking them clean. Nothing. Colin’s memories, his self, the things that should have been waiting for me, those were gone.
There was no possible way for this to be good.
I looked up to find Quentin staring at me, expression somewhere between horror and fascination. I met his gaze without blinking, deliberately licking a wayward drop of blood from my lower lip. He was going to have to deal with some of the less attractive aspects of being Daoine Sidhe one of these days. After all, he was one, too.
Peter blanched when I licked the blood away, but Alex just watched, seeming fascinated by the gesture. I flushed, fighting the urge to duck my head, and looked to Quentin. “Have you had any training in blood magic?” I asked.
“A . . . little,” he admitted. “I’ve never . . . not with someone that had . . .”
“There’s a first time for everything. Come down here.” He shook his head before he could stop himself. I
