For A Few Demons More. Kim Harrison
Читать онлайн книгу.
it had gone over the Mackinac Bridge, though in truth it was hidden in David’s cat box.
Jenks cleared his throat, and when I glanced at him, he rubbed his thumb and fingers together in the universal indication of money. My eyes followed his to Glenn.
“Hey,” I said, shifting in my seat, “this pays, right?” Glenn smiled, and, irritated, I sharpened my voice. “It does pay, right?”
Chuckling, the F.I.B. detective glanced in the rearview mirror at Brett and nodded. “Why—” he started, and I interrupted.
“He wants into my pack, and David is balking,” I said. “What’s so important about this body that you need me to look at it? I’m a lousy detective. It’s not what I do.”
Glenn’s square face was heavy with concern as he looked back at me from the Were behind us. “She’s a Were. The I.S. says suicide, but I think it’s murder and they’re covering it up.”
I let the air pressure push my hand up and then down, enjoying the breeze in my shower-damp hair and the feel of my bracelet sliding against my skin. The I.S. is covering up a murder? Big surprise there. Jenks looked happy, silent now that we were working and the question of money had been raised, though not settled. “Standard consultant fee,” I said.
“Five hundred a day plus expenses,” Glenn said, and I laughed.
“Try double that, ketchup boy. I have insurance to pay.” And a church to sanctify, and a living room to repair.
Glenn’s attention on the road went distant. “For two hours of your time, that would be what? Two-fifty?”
Crap. He wanted to go hourly. I frowned, and Jenks’s wings slowed to nothing. That might pay for the paneling and the guys to put it in. Maybe.
“Okay,” I said, digging through my bag to find the calendar datebook that Ivy had given me last year. It wasn’t accurate anymore, but the pages were blank and I needed somewhere to keep track of my time. “But you can expect an itemized bill.”
Glenn grinned. “What?” I said, squinting from the come-and-go sun.
He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “You look so … organized,” he said, and when Jenks snickered, I flung my hand out and bopped Glenn on the shoulder with the back of my fist.
“Just for that, no more ketchup for you,” I muttered, slouching. His grip on the wheel tightened, and I knew I’d hit a sore spot.
“Aw, don’t worry, Glenn,” Jenks teased. “Christmas is coming. I’ll get you a jar of belly-buster jalapeño that will knock your socks off if Rachel won’t pimp tomatoes to you anymore.”
Glenn shot me a sideways look. “Um, actually, I’ve got a list,” he said, fumbling in an inner coat pocket to bring out a narrow strip of paper with his distinctive, precise handwriting on it. My eyebrows rose as I took it: hot ketchup, spicy BBQ sauce, tomato paste, salsa. His usual.
“You need a new pair of cuffs, right?” he said nervously.
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly a lot more awake. “But if you can get a hold of some of those zip-strips the I.S. uses to keep ley line witches from invoking their magic, that’d be great.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and I bobbed my head, satisfied.
Though Glenn’s stiff neck said he was uncomfortable bartering law-enforcement tools for ketchup, I thought it funny that the stoic, straitlaced human was too embarrassed to walk into a store that sold tomatoes. Humanity avoided them like the plague, which was understandable, seeing as a tomato had carried the virus that killed a sizable portion of their population four decades ago and revealed the supernatural species previously hidden by the sheer numbers of humans. But he had been forced into eating pizza, real pizza, not the Alfredo crap that humans serve, and it had been all downhill from there.
I wasn’t going to give him a hard time about it. We all had our fears. The fact that Glenn’s was that he craved something every other human on the planet shunned was the least of my worries. And if it got me some zip-strips that might someday save my life, I thought as I settled back into the leather seats, then it’s a secret well kept.
The morgue was quiet and cool, a quick shift from July to September, and I was glad I had jeans on. My sandals popped against the dirty cement steps as I descended sideways, and the fluorescent light in the stairway only added to the bleak feeling. Jenks was on my shoulder for the warmth, and Glenn made a quick turn to the right when he reached the landing, following the big blue arrows painted on the walls past wide elevators and to the double doors cheerfully proclaiming CINCINNATI MORGUE, AN EQUAL-OPPORTUNITY SERVICE SINCE 1966.
Between the underground dimness and Glenn’s coffee still in my grip, I was feeling better, but most of my good mood was from the honest-to-God temp name tag Glenn had handed me when we started down the steps. It wasn’t the bent, nasty, yellow laminated four-by-six card everyone else got but a real heavyweight plastic tag embossed with my name. Jenks had one, too, and he was obnoxiously proud of it even though I was the one wearing it, right under mine. It would get me into the morgue when nothing else would. Well, besides being dead.
I didn’t do much for the F.I.B., but somehow I had become their darling, the poor little witch girl who fled the
I.S. tyranny to make her own way. They were the ones who had given me my car in lieu of monetary compensation when the I.S. called foul after I helped the F.I.B. solve a crime that I.S. hadn’t been able to. It had since been ruled that because I wasn’t on the F.I.B.’ s payroll, the F.I.B. could hire me much as any corporation or individual could. Nana, na, na-a-a, na.
It was the small things that really made your day.
Glenn pushed open one of the double doors, standing aside so I could go in first. Flip-flops plopping, I scanned the large reception room, more rectangle than square, half of it empty floor, half upright file cabinets and an ugly steel desk that should have been thrown away in the seventies. A college-age kid wearing a lab coat was behind it, his feet on the paper-cluttered desk and a handheld game in his hands. A sheet-draped gurney holding a body waited for attention, but apparently some space aliens needed taking care of first.
The blond kid looked up at our entrance and, after giving me the once-over, set his game down and stood. It smelled in here: pine and dead tissue. Yuck.
“Yo, Iceman,” Glenn said, and Jenks grunted in surprise when the straitlaced F.I.B. detective exchanged a complicated arm-, fist-, elbow-slapping … thing with the guy at the desk.
“Glenn,” the blond kid said, still giving me glances, “you’ve got about ten minutes.”
Glenn slipped him a fifty, and Jenks choked. “Thanks. I owe you.”
“You cool. Just make it fast.” He handed Glenn a key chained to a naked Bite-Me-Betty doll. No way would anyone be walking out with the morgue key.
I gave him an ambiguous smile and headed for another set of double doors.
“Miss!” the kid called, his adopted colorful accent dissolving into farm-boy Americana.
Jenks snickered. “Someone wants a date.”
Sandals scuffing, I turned to find Iceman following us. “Ms. Morgan,” the guy said, his eyes dropping to my twin name tags. “If you don’t mind. Could you leave your coffee out here?” At my blank look, he added, “It might wake someone up early, and with the vamp orderly out getting lunch, it would …” He winced. “It might be bad.”
My lips parted in understanding. “Sure,” I said, handing it to him. “No problem.”
Immediately he relaxed. “Thanks.” He turned back to his desk, then hesitated. “Ah, you aren’t Rachel