Miles walked into the kitchen, now wearing jeans and a collared shirt. He adjusted his hearing aid, then smiled sweetly at Derrick.
“Is that coffee for me?”
Derrick looked uncertain for a moment. Then he handed Miles the cup, and everyone groaned.
“Unfair!” Mia pounded the table. “No special treatment for significant others.”
This is a romance,
Miles signed,
not a democracy.
Derrick turned back to the coffee machine. “I think I can stretch the rest of this into two more cups. Maybe three.”
“There’s no time,” I said. “Just fill up a travel mug, and we’ll pass it around until we get to the Timmy’s drive-through.”
“Ugh. Haven’t you heard of mononucleosis?”
“Have you heard of hysterical blindness caused by caffeine deprivation? Because that’s what I’m about to experience, and I doubt you want me driving the new SUV into the opposing lane of traffic.”
“Fine. But I’m not sharing saliva with everyone here.”
He was about to say something else when his pager started buzzing. I heard my pager buzzing in the next room as well.
“Selena’s getting cranky.” I turned to Mia. “Did Patrick remember to put gas in the car?”
“How should I know? It’s not like you ever let me drive it.”
“I lent you the car last week.”
“Yeah, so that I could go to an SAT workshop. You lend it to him every other day so that he can drive his vampire buddies around.”
“Fine.” I stood up. “We’ll make a schedule. Something official-looking with Excel. Derrick, make a note of it.”
“When did I become your PA?”
“You and Miles are the only ones who know how to use the computer for anything other than playing FarmVille. And Miles is a guest, so any scheduling duties naturally fall to you.”
“That doesn’t seem natural at all,” he muttered.
“Well, you know us. Always pushing the definition.”
“What are you talking about?” Mia smiled. “We’re practically a nuclear family. The only difference is that we have powers.”
“And some of us can read minds,” Derrick said.
“Quick. What am I thinking right now?” Mia leaned forward. “It’s not about you, and it’s not something dirty. I promise.”
His eyes narrowed for a moment. Then he shook his head.
“God. Why do I always fall for that?”
She laughed. “’Cause you’re a sucker.”
2
The first thing I noticed when I walked into the
conference room was the snow globe sitting on the table. At least, it looked like a snow globe. Linus and Cindée were sitting next to each other, while Selena sat at the head of the table, surrounded by paperwork. She barely registered our presence.
“Sit. We don’t have a lot of time.”
I took a seat next to Cindée. “Is the world ending?”
“Neither of us know anything,” she replied. “We’re only here because we’re getting paid time and a half.”
Last year, Cindée had managed to live through the appearance of the manticore. She’d also been kidnapped, tied up, and subjected to the bad humor of a psychotic vampire (thankfully, Sabine Delacroix was now officially out of my life forever). I was kind of amazed at how quickly she’d returned to work. Maybe she needed the money.
I looked at Linus. “What’s with the snow globe?”
“It’s not a snow globe. It’s a sophisticated piece of equipment.”
“It looks like you bought it in Gastown.”
“I didn’t. It was designed in the lab.”
“What does it do?”
He looked at Selena. “Do you want me to explain it now?”
“No. I have to debrief them first.”
His expression was slightly disappointed. “Okay. I’ll wait.”
Derrick and Miles sat next to me. Lucian remained standing. Maybe he was feeling a bit of an outsider vibe, which made sense. Or maybe he wanted to keep his distance for the sake of appearances.
Selena finally looked up from the stack of papers. “We’re all here. Now we can get down to business.”
Derrick raised his hand. “I have one question.”
“Okay.”
“Can we order breakfast?”
“No.”
“I have another question, then.”
Selena closed her eyes. “Yes?”
“Is it true that the morning shift gets catered breakfast? Because that hardly seems fair, especially since they aren’t on call.”
“I’ll make a note of your grievance. How’s that?”
“I can live with it.”
“Fine. Any more questions?”
Lucian raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to know what I’m doing here.”
“I’m about to explain that.” She exhaled. “All right. Thirty minutes ago, we received a piece of intel from a reliable source. A body was recovered on Jericho Beach in the Kitsilano neighborhood. The VPD found the body, and after the coroner’s examination it was transferred to the city morgue.”
“If the VPD found the body,” I asked, “what does it have to do with us? This sounds like a normate investigation.”
“That’s where things get complicated. The police department thinks that they’ve recovered a human body, but we have reason to believe that they’re actually holding the body of a demon.”
“What killed it?”
“We don’t know. In fact, we don’t even know for sure that it’s dead.” She looked at Lucian. “That’s part of the reason that we’ve enlisted you. We’re hoping that your expertise in necroid materia will be useful in determining whether the body is deceased or not. With some bodies, it’s difficult to tell.”
“I’ll try,” Lucian said. “Right now, though, I’d be more worried about someone else coming to recover the body.”
“That’s our concern at the moment,” Selena replied. “We need to get the body somewhere secure, before it’s intercepted. That’s why I’ve assembled the four of you together tonight. We need you to break into the morgue.”
“Wait a minute.” I steepled my fingers. “You want us to infiltrate a government building and steal a body? What are we supposed to leave behind? A bag of sand?”
“No. It’s safer and easier for us to delete all trace of the body. We’ve already isolated all of the officers and technicians involved in the body’s recovery. It’s a small group, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to manage them.”
“And by ‘manage,’ you mean erase their memories?”
Selena gave me a long look. “You’ve been spending too much time with vampires. The CORE isn’t in the habit of inflicting brain damage on innocent people. We’re simply going to modify their paperwork to make it appear as if the body was never there. The police officers have enough on their minds, and they won’t be overly concerned with one more DB recovered on the beach. The coroner’s office relies on computer records, and those can be altered. Instead of thinking that the body’s vanished, everyone will just assume that it’s been transferred to a government facility for advanced toxicology testing.”
“I think we might be underestimating the competency of the VPD,” Derrick said. “And it’s not as if the coroner’s office is being run by mindless drones. Sure, they’re normates, but they aren’t blind. If one file gets left behind by accident, we could have a paranormal incident on our hands.”
“We can worry about that later. Right now, our priority is moving the body to a secure location. Once we have the decedent here, we’ll be able to deal with the coroner’s office remotely. It’s the safest way. The less contact, the better.”
“Do we know anything about the demon’s ancestry?”
“No.”
“Of course. Any idea where it’s from?”
“Not yet.”
Miles raised his hand.
“You can just speak up, Officer Sedgwick.”
“Sorry. I wasn’t sure if you were finished.” Miles drummed his fingers on the table. Selena still made him nervous. “I was just thinking that if the deceased was a world-walker, that is, capable of interplanar travel, then there’ll be an impression of sorts on its body. Your instruments couldn’t detect it, but I might be able to.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re here. That, and as an early-warning system.”
His eyes widened. “You mean in case something comes after the body?”
“Right. You’ll be the first to notice any spatial anomalies.”
He managed to look uncomfortable. “That may be. But by the time I notice it, another demon could be ripping my throat out. I’m not sure I like this assignment.”
“You’ll have plenty of backup. We’ll be monitoring you from every angle, and Agrado can also provide you with some defensive firepower.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lucian said. “I might be able to distract a predator like that for a few minutes, tops. But necromancy can only do so much.”
“You will have some technological assistance.” Selena gestured to the globe. “Linus, do you want to explain further?”
“Do I ever.” He smiled. “Okay, this is pretty cool. It’s a temporal switch, but we call it a time bomb.”
I could see what looked like strands of white light floating within the murkiness of the glass. The thing definitely had an aura, but there was a subtlety in its composition that my senses couldn’t quite penetrate.
“Are we supposed to break it open?”
“Yes. But only at the right moment.” Linus put his hand protectively over the globe. “There’s a controlled singularity inside the glass, protected by a mesh of enlaced materia. If you break it, the singularity will expand to roughly a three-foot radius, which is just big enough to capture a single entity.”
“Just throw it at whatever’s coming toward you,” Selena said. “It’ll create a kind of temporal dead zone for about ten, maybe fifteen seconds. Anything caught within the blast radius will be slowed to a fraction of its normal speed. With a human, that would mean a dead stop. With a pureblood”—she shrugged—“you might slow it down to a crawl if you’re lucky. It’ll still be moving, but you should have enough time to grab the body and get away.”
I exhaled. “This all sounds very sketchy.”
Cindée opened up a small evidence bag, which I hadn’t noticed before, and withdrew a metallic object. It looked like one of the miniature hand clappers with cymbals that belly dancers used. She handed me the clapper. It had bizarre symbols etched into its surface, and the rod connecting the two cymbals was slightly warm to the touch. I slid my thumb over it, and I could feel an invisible power source.
“We found this a few months ago on a Vailoid demon,” she said, “and he probably stole it from someone. We call it a howler. Basically, if you click the two cymbals together, it emits a sonic pulse that only higher-tier demons—and some animals—can detect.”
“Are we trying to give it a headache?”
“No. The pulse works as a kind of neural dampener. It should disrupt the demon’s psychic defenses long enough for you to launch an attack.”
“That’s where Siegel comes in,” Selena said.
Derrick stared at her. “Excuse me? You want me to get inside the mind of an unknown demon? Why don’t I just get inside a giant food processor? It could be a brain-eater, or worse.”
“The howler should distract it long enough for you to make a quick pass through its thoughts,” Selena clarified. “We’re hoping you can pick up something useful. The name of the decedent, or where it came from. Anything, really.”
“Great. I’ll try to write it all down while I’m being eviscerated from the inside. Do you have any idea how strong the thoughts of a demon like that are? It could make me gouge my own eyes out.”
“We’ll try not to let that happen, hon.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “In the meantime, how are we getting into the morgue? Unless you’ve perfected a portable veil system, I don’t see how we’re supposed to move around undetected.”
“Actually, it won’t be as difficult as it sounds.” Selena stood. “All we need are some uniforms and name tags. The rest will depend on your acting skills.”
“Oh, God.” I put my head on the table. “Please let me go back to bed.”
“That’s perfect,” Selena said. “Now just channel that dramatic energy into your performance, and you’ll be fine.”
Vancouver had several morgues, all attached to
urban hospitals, which were equipped with refrigeration units. When people died of natural causes within the hospital, they were transferred temporarily to the morgue before being moved either to a mortuary or a crematorium. There was also, however, a larger and more sophisticated autopsy facility attached to the Office of the Chief Coroner, which was in Burnaby, the city’s most sprawling suburb. That was where we were heading. The coroner’s office dealt with active criminal investigations and was frequented by the VPD, which meant that we had to get in quickly and quietly.
The office was on the bottom floor of a tall glass and steel building, and the entrance was flanked by security. Selena had furnished Miles and me with badges that identified us as autopsy technicians, while Derrick and Lucian were dressed as police officers. What amazed me was how easily Cindée had managed to replicate uniforms for us, all the way down to the shield and regulation Glock sidearm. They even had paperwork, which included detailed rotation schedules and personal history, compiled from both the RCMP and VPD databases.
We approached the entrance. One of the security guards walked over to us, and I couldn’t help but notice that he was built like an ox.
Lucian showed the guard his badge. “I’m Officer Pérez, and this is Officer Sheldon. We’re supposed to meet with the CC.”
The guard looked us over. “I’ve never seen the two of you before.”
“They were just transferred from the CCO in Toronto. They’ve got their recommendation letters from the chief coroner, if you want to see them.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. You know where you’re going?”
“Straight down this hallway to the service elevator on the right,” Lucian said. “The autopsy suite is below the basement level, and we’ve got keys for the elevator.”