The body looked even worse close-up, and the smell clogged my nostrils, coated my throat so I could practically taste her death.
The circle of officers and personnel was a chaotic shuffle dance, and I found myself narrowly dodging elbows at every turn. By the time I reached Claudia's side, there were at least six cops already kneeling around her, examining the furrows torn into her pale skin. Most of one breast had been torn away and my chest ached in sympathetic pain. More chunks were missing at the calves, thighs, and upper arms and that was only what I could see from my angle, squatting like a sick voyeur beneath the elbow of a tall, spare deputy. I was sure there was more that I couldn't make out.
Lash was eerily silent, and I peered up at her for a frustrated second, trying to read her expression. She betrayed nothing, just gazed at me with a benign smile on her face. She didn't think I could crack this case by myself. Well, we'd see about that.
Being inside the cluster of cops felt like being pelted with sharp rocks. Emotions buffeted me from all sides. Most of them were keeping a white-knuckled grip on the mask of dispassionate observer, holding onto it as if their lives depended on it. Beneath the facade, emotions roiled, spilling into the air like ambient heat. Numb disbelief. Anger. Fear. Nausea. I really hated the nausea. I could feel a retch trapped somewhere around my uvula. If this assault of feeling didn't let up soon, I was going to spew all over the crime scene.
"Need I remind you that you have other obligations, my host?" Lasciel asked, tapping her foot for emphasis.
As if she was in some sort of hurry. She had all of eternity. I had most of a week to finish the route and the afternoon and evening to complete the trips to Springfield and Peoria. Claudia had no more time because someone had killed her.
"Shove it, Lash. I'm going to get a clue, at least. When I know what I'm dealing with, I can send an anonymous tip to the authorities."
My mind flitted immediately to Harry, the only authority that I trusted to get things done. Regular cops had failed to wow me of late, given how easily I'd been able to evade them. I could sneak into his office building and leave a tip in his mailbox. It shouldn't be too hard to find his address. He was the only wizard listed in the yellow pages, after all. I just needed to get enough to pique his interest and let him do the rest.
"This is not wise, Molly," Lasciel insisted. "Finish your route and eke out your tedious new living."
A small smile ghosted across my lips. Earlier this morning, Lash had been egging me to take up her coin to end my humdrum existence. The fact she was insisting I return to it now could only mean one thing. Whatever did this to Claudia must be dangerous. Dangerous enough that she didn't want me to face it.
"Molly-" she began warningly.
"If I shouldn't be facing it, these cops shouldn't be either. This is something I should take to Harry," I insisted.
Lasciel wisely shut her mouth and didn't argue with me further. Not because she couldn't stop me. I was fairly sure that if she wanted me to stop this here and now she'd find a way. But because, like my mother, she realized that pushing was only going to make me dig my heels in harder. She'd pick me up if and when I fell flat on my face.
I shuffled sideways in a crab walk as a police detective sat down on his haunches where I'd just been. He was close enough that the resinous scent of his aftershave battled with the reek of blood and ground-up flesh. His partner was a cute brunette, her hair cut in a glossy bob that was leagues nicer than what had been done to what remained of Claudia's hair. She hovered just over his shoulder and shot him a quizzical look.
"Looks a lot like the Jane Doe they found in Wicker Park a few months back, wouldn't you say, Dobbs?"
"And like the one they found in the East Side," Detective Dobbs said so quietly that only his partner was meant to hear.
The pair exchanged a significant glance, and the woman's anxiety buzzed like a swarm of ants over my skin before she managed to rein it in.
"If this is the same perp, we may be looking at a serial case," she muttered.
"I just don't see what's cutting these girls up, Jules," he said, keeping his voice low so the nearby reporters wouldn't eavesdrop.
I could see a small crowd of them gathering through a gap in the forest of legs I waded through. The reporters were trying to press past the line of police to get a closer look. They were like vultures, just waiting to descend and exploit the poor girl's death. Good on Dobbs for keeping their conjecture quiet. Nothing was quite as sensational as a serial killer on the loose.
Dobbs continued, blissfully ignorant of my internal musings on the situation. "The M.E. said these marks weren't made by tools. He says it's more akin to a bear attack. But how the hell did a bear get into Wicker Park to attack them? No evidence they were killed in a wooded area and dumped either."
He shook his head slowly and hissed a low, fervent oath. "Is this a case for S.I.?"
Jules' thin lips curled in disgust. "You know the brass won't shoot it their way until the case goes cold, right? Serial cases equal big accolades if they can be solved. You think they really want Murphy and her team to steal the credit? No. S.I. won't get this case until someone wants to take the heat off their own ass for not solving it. Plus, Rudolph fucking hates Dresden."
Dobbs barked a humorless laugh. "He's obsessed. Needs to admit that he wants to suck the guy's dick and get on with his life."
My ears perked up at the sound of Harry's name. So I was right. This was a case Harry Dresden should be involved in.
Jules and Dobbs continued their hushed conversation, but I tuned the rest out. They seemed unhappy about the way things were, but they weren't going to be raising hell to change it anytime soon. Internal politics trumped justice in Chicago PD, it seemed. So it was up to Lash and I to bring this case to Harry's attention.
Lash made a grumbled sound of dissent behind me. I rolled my eyes.
Okay, fine. It was just up to me. But the freeloading fallen angel could jump in at any time she wished if it looked like I might get killed.
"An inevitability at this point, my host," she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You're quite trying, you know that?"
An involuntary grin tugged at my lips. "So I've heard."
The grin evaporated quickly when I turned my attention back to Claudia. What I was about to do next, I'd only read about in one of the magical theory books Anna kept in her apartment. Reading emotions and impressions left on an object was delicate work, but fairly common. Lots of mysticism was complete bullshit, but there were enough low-level practitioners, lower even than the ladies of the Ordo, with enough sensitivity to do very crude object reading. They could tell you what your grandmother felt while she wore that watch on the boat to Ellis Island. But the gift was hardly ever good enough to get anything useful. The rest was cold-reading and conjecture, which was where the con came in.
But what I was going to try was a completely different ballgame. It was possible that I could get a read on what had been going through Claudia's head when the end came for her. Thoughts. Emotions. Pictures, if I was lucky.
"If you are unlucky," Lash countered dryly, in response to my rising optimism. "This will not be pleasant if you succeed, my host. I urge you to leave this girl to human justice."
"Not a chance."
Claudia would only be a priority if she advanced someone's career. And though I hadn't liked her, I still felt like someone should be trying to look out for her posthumously.
It was hard to do the necessary prep work for the spell in this bustling area. Even when I paced away from the newly arrived crime scene techs, the sounds of conversation and the noise of the city were a low drone in my ears, hard to shut out. I had to be centered and focused only on my magic if this was going to have a chance of working.
With a sigh, Lash crouched down beside me and placed her hands gently over my ears. At once, all sound ceased. I could barely hear even my own pulse in my ears. It felt like I'd donned a set of noise-canceling headphones.
"What are you doing?" I asked her.
"Helping you focus," she replied as if I was a complete moron who was missing the very obvious. "If you are insistent on pursuing this recklessness, I won't allow you to hurt yourself by approaching this task unprepared."
"Aw shucks, Lash, it sounds like you care."
It probably should have freaked me out that she had enough control over my brain to manipulate my senses like that. It made me wonder just what else she'd been manipulating. She could be purposely keeping things from my perception, goading me like a rat through a maze with only the stimuli she wanted me to feel.
Lash breathed out sharply in frustration. "If you maintain this paranoia, you will project your own impressions onto her body, and this entire diversion will have been for naught. You do want to aid her, yes?"
I hated it when she had a point. It was very easy to corrupt a reading by going in unprepared.
"Right," I grumbled like a petulant kid. "Let's do this."
I couldn't say just how long I sat there. It was hard to judge time, and I didn't want to divert my attention from my meditative state to ask Lash.
I knew it had to have been some time, though, because the scene had radically changed since I'd seen it last.
Jules, Dobbs, and most of the other policemen had either cleared out or were busy keeping the press off of the crime scene techs' collective backs. The forensic team was doing its job, cataloging every aspect of the scene. I tried to tread carefully as I approached the body again. On the off chance, this was the work of a purely human sociopath, I didn't want to ruin Claudia's chances in court by contaminating evidence.
I navigated the maze of evidence markers and then side-stepped a vaguely familiar-looking tech who was photographing a loose hank of the badly dyed hair that had fallen away from the body.
I knelt, knees splayed on either side of her head. The damage to her face was hard to look at.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," I whispered to the dead girl, feeling silly. It wasn't as if she could hear me. But disturbing the dead wasn't something I was exactly comfortable with either. "But I need to find out who did this."
I placed my fingers against her face, soft cork-silk hair tickling my fingers on the left side. My fingers sank into the ruined right side with the sensation of sliding my hand through barely thawed hamburger.
Lash must have stopped me from hurling right then and there. Because there was no way I was going to keep my lunch after that without divine...or infernal intervention.
"Focus," Lash reprimanded me.
So, I focused and opened her eyes as carefully as possible. The second my eyes met her fixed stare, everything else faded to the background. I was subsumed by sound, sensation, and color. None of the fussing magical theologians had ever actually stopped to explain what a reading actually felt like. No one had warned me that I'd be getting a first-person view.
I was Claudia. And something was trying to kill me.
Cold flayed the inside of my lungs and scraped along my throat. It shouldn't be this cold. Why, why, why was it so damn cold? It hurt. It was almost as bad as the burning fatigue that was threatening to buckle my legs. But I couldn't stop. If I stopped, it would catch me again, and this time I wouldn't escape. It was so close already. I could hear it's shriek not far behind. The sound was like a hotline right to the part of the hindbrain that controlled primal, unstoppable fear.
Grit and glass shredded my feet to ribbons. Every slap of my feet on the pavement felt like getting stabbed, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop. It was behind me. It was-
Suddenly I was airborne, my world flipping on its axis as up became down. I slammed into the pavement with a crunch of bone. I was grateful that my body was too shocked to feel pain at that point. The last blurry impression I got is of a pair of luminous vermillion eyes and a row of sharp teeth before everything went black.
I shot upright with a breathless shriek. The pain was fading, leaching away as my brain reasserted its own reality. What had happened was real, but it hadn't happened to me. Still, the ghostly imprint of that hurt remained. And that was also when I realized that there were more than Lash's phantom eyes on me now. My veil must have slipped.
My head had been resting in the lap of one of the techs. Now I realized why I recognized him. It was Mr. Huber. I'd gotten used to thinking of him as Marcone's forger, and I'd forgotten his day job was as a crime scene photographer. He stared down at me pale eyes wide with concern. There were also three other cops standing by, who were definitely not regarding me as kindly.
"Well, shit," I muttered. This was a pickle.
Lasciel smiled indulgently down at me.
"I suppose this is a bad time to say 'I told you so?'"
A.N: Sorry for that long hiatus guys. I ended up having a baby, moving house, and getting new work, so it was a lot to contend with. I will hopefully be steamrolling through this fic now that I'm settled. I've got it all outlined and ready to go. Thanks so much for reading. :)