Page 6 of Shades of Silver City

Based on her Rising Star T-shirt, the bottle opener in her back pocket, and her comment about getting to work, I assume she's a bartender.

Finding her later shouldn't be difficult.

Death’s sweet scent fills my nose.

It’s cloying, nauseating.

It's not the usual stench that decaying bodies acquire after an extended period on the street. This scent is exclusively reserved for my nostrils. It’s a natural ability of mine, some may say.

It’s how I found the poor teenager here.

“What the hell?” Godric rounds the corner into the alley, his imposing frame dominating the space.

He carefully kneels beside the body, running a hand over his hair and shaking his head. “Not again, man. This ain’t the shit I signed up for.”

“It’s exactly what we signed up for,” I growl.

“This is the third one this week.”

“We need to get ahead of it.”

“Hard when we don’t know what the fuck’s going on around here.”

I grunt. “Called Zeke?”

“He’s on his way.”

“Scouts, too,” I say. “Glamoured the people who called it in.”

“Too fucking young,” Godric says, bowing his head and scrubbing at his face with a meaty paw.

“Any apparent trauma?” I ask, then turn away to poke through a couple of empty boxes nearby, looking for evidence. Unlike Godric, I’m not good at swallowing down my emotions.

Each lifeless body discovered in the streets signifies another person we let down. A testament to our negligence. Recently, the streets have transformed into a cemetery of untapped potential and muted voices.

Each of them is another Sofia—a death that arrived too soon and too cruelly.

"I don't see any.” Godric sighs while I rummage through a bag of trash, causing flies to scatter chaotically. “Arch…”

My jaw clenches at the pity in his tone.

“Don’t say it,” I warn.

“I know you don’t want to hear it, man, but it’s possible that the dust is—”

“Zeke hasn’t found a single trace of it in their systems.”

“But if—”

“Have you seen it around? Have any of the other Nightcrawlers?”

“No,” he admits.

“Speculation should not be mistaken for fact. It gets us nowhere.”

“Hey!” a stern voice shouts as the clamor of boots approaches. “Under direct order of the High Chancellor, Scouts forty-six and eighty-four command you to your feet. Hands up.”

“Fucking clowns,” Godric mutters.

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