Daemon’s Mark by Caitlin Kittredge (web ebook reader .TXT) 📕

I was going to tear Natchez a new windpipe if he was wrong about this. “It’s about your daughter, sir.”

“Lily? What? What’s happened to Lily?”

So that was her name. Not Lisa or Lila. Lily.

“Sir, I think it’s best if I speak to you and your wife in person.”

Dubois was numb now, and I could hear him panting into the phone. “We’ll be right there.”

I headed out to the waiting room, the public face of the morgue, where doors and curtains hid the procession of the dead from unsuspecting eyes. A familiar form was sitting in one of the butt-deadening institutional chairs, and I looked again, surprised, even though I shouldn’t be. He always knew how to be in the right place at the right time. “Will?”

“Hey, doll,” he said, sliding to his feet. “I figured you weren’t going to come home to me, so I came to you.”

“I was going to call,” I said. Will smiled.

“Yeah, but this is so much better.” He came over and planted a slow kiss, and I let myself relax into him, for just a second. I don’t like dead children. There’s something so unnatural about seeing a small body, still and lifeless, that makes you want to rush home and reclaim life any way you can.

“Bad one?” Will whispered into my neck.

“About as bad as they come,” I said. He stroked my cheek with the back of his knuckles and stepped away, holding me at arm’s length.

“Don’t let it eat at you. Think you’ll be home for breakfast?”

“I don’t know,” I said, truthfully. Will stroked the back of his fingers along my cheekbone.

“I’ll go to the market and get the stuff for omelets. I’m an optimist.”

The elevator from the lobby groaned its ancient way toward us, and my guts went cold. “That’s got to be my ID, Will.”

He nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” Dropping a quick peck on my cheek, he headed for the loading bay and the street exit.

I watched him go, avoiding thinking about the Duboises until they actually appeared. Will was a damn near perfect guy—considerate, funny, handsome, great in bed. I wasn’t used to perfect and it freaked me out a little bit. I kept expecting to find out that this was all an elaborate cosmic prank.

Or get bored. I tend to go for men who are so heavily broken they might as well be on the scrap heap. Will was a conscious effort to break the pattern. Even though he carried a curse in his veins the way I carried the were in my DNA—a curse worked on him by a vengeful witch almost four hundred years ago—aside from his pesky immortality, he might as well have hopped out of a cheesy romance movie.

“Excuse me.” The gravity in the voice was the same from the phone. I turned and faced the Duboises. They were less polished than the DMV photos, but only marginally. Petra was blonde, probably originally closer to my blue-black brunette if her coloring was any indication. Nathaniel was tall, boxy, brown hair swept back into a playboy wave.

Both of them scented of were. I knew it was coming, but it still sent a faint quiver of unease through me. I’m an Insoli, a packless were, and the Duboises most certainly ranked higher in the natural order than I did.

I tried not to let it bother me overmuch. I belonged here, doing my job. This was my territory. “Mr. Dubois, Mrs. Dubois,” I said. “Thank you for coming down.”

“Are you Lieutenant Wilder?” Petra asked. “What’s happened to Lily?”

“I am,” I said, reaching out my hand. She looked at it, her nostrils flaring, and didn’t offer her own. The pushpull for dominance had already started. Great. “There’s no easy way to say this,” I told the Duboises. “A person we believe to be your daughter was discovered earlier tonight in the water, in the Port of Nocturne.”

Nathaniel passed a hand over his face. “Discovered? What does that mean?”

“It means we have a body,” I said softly. “And we need you to take a look at it and identify your daughter.”

Petra fell against Nathaniel’s considerable chest with a sob. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no. It’s not Lily.”

“Sweetie,” he said, stroking her hair. “Sweetie, we have to look.”

“No. ” Petra shoved away from him and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Are you sure, Lieutenant?” Nathaniel said to me, a quiver just evident in his hands, his voice. He was trying to be strong, be the husband and the alpha male, but he’d shattered from the inside and his eyes were empty.

“We’re fairly sure, yes,” I said quietly.

“What does that gutterwolf know?” Petra spat. “The police make mistakes all the time!”

I ignored the slur for the moment and gestured to the viewing room. “If you’ll both come this way?” I hated body IDs with every fiber of my being. I hated being the one to spread the bad news, hated to be there in someone’s worst and most private moment of grief.

But it was my job, so I buzzed the viewing bay to make sure the morgue attendant was ready and then pulled the curtain back.

The girl was under a sterile sheet that covered the gaping wound in her chest. Her lank, light hair, like dead seaweed, spread around her on the steel table. Kronen had closed her eyes. He was a lot better at this sort of thing than I would ever be.

Petra Dubois let out a strangled sound, her knees buckling. Her husband caught one side and I caught the other.

“Mrs. Dubois?” I asked softly.

She looked up at me, fresh makeup streaked with tears, black runnels in her perfect mask. “That’s her. That’s my little girl.”

“Thank you,” I said, suddenly very tired. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” I should have been sound asleep right now, Will’s body curled around mine. I shouldn’t have been here, in the stuffy viewing room. I pulled the curtain and ushered the Duboises out.

“How did this happen?” Nathaniel asked me.