Chapter
One
Sometimes my workday starts with a corpse and then goes downhill from there.
I could have just shut the door to Room 401 and skedaddled once the all-too-familiar odors of sulfur and decomposition hit my nose and sent a shiver down my spine, but I’d already accepted a retainer to find out what happened here. Plus that shiver wasn’t fear—it was excitement. Three dull magic-tracing jobs in a row had left me feeling antsy. A body and a demon seemed like just the ticket to liven things up.
Besides, in my almost six years of being a mage private investigator I’d never really made a habit of making the safer, smarter choice, so why start tonight?
I took one last breath of fresh air, slipped into Room 401, and closed the door behind me.
The first step in figuring out what happened to the man who’d checked into the Phoenix Inn under the likely pseudonym John Adams was a search of his suite with the help of my trusty ghost sidekick. Malcolm had stayed invisible until we got inside the room in case we crossed paths with anyone sensitive to the presence of ghosts.
He materialized to my right, hands on his hips as he looked around the suite. “I’ve always wondered about this place. It’s actually pretty nice for a shady hotel.”
“How is this place shady?” I asked. “You know what these rooms go for per night?”
“Yeah, but they let people check in using obvious fake names if they pay cash,” he pointed out. “And their whole thing is anonymity. Soundproof rooms. Private entrances to every suite so the guests can come and go without anyone really seeing them. Zero security cameras. That’s the definition of shady. Doesn’t matter what it costs.”
He had a point. The hotel promoted itself as a safe, anonymous haven that catered exclusively to nonhumans who preferred to slip through the shadows unnoticed. So much for the safety aspect though if word got out that someone had died in one of its rooms, which was why the hotel’s owner had called me to find out who’d died in this room, who’d killed them, and where the room’s registered guest had gone. But the anonymity part meant I had just aboutnadato go on so far except whatever I might find in the Room 401.
“You’re going to earn your money on this one, Alice Worth,” I muttered as I adjusted my latex gloves. A smart mage private investigator never left magic trace or fingerprints behind. To Malcolm, I said, “I should up my rate if there’s a demon involved.”
“Well, we know John Adams isn’t the demon, since the hotel doesn’t let them stay here,” Malcolm said. “Maybe a demon’s just been in the room recently.”
“I’m not sure that’s better. It could mean someone else is on John’s trail.”
“If a demonwasafter him, ‘John’—” he put air quotes around the name “—is probably in the past tense. He might be the dead body.”
“In any case, the meter’s running. Time to earn that retainer.”
Room 401 had a living room, kitchenette, spacious bedroom, and surprisingly lavish bathroom. The latter turned out to be the source of both the decomp and sulfur smells. When I opened the door, the stench nearly knocked me over. I dug a disposable mask out of my bag and put it on, but that did little more than take the edge off. We went into the bathroom. I shut the door to try to keep the odor at least moderately contained.
The tile, once white, was mostly dark red. Sprays of blood and gore covered every surface, even the ceiling. My blood magic tingled on my skin like I’d stuck my finger in a power outlet.
“Welp, there’s your demon, or what’s left of him.” Malcolm floated to the oversized tub, where the shredded remains lay face down. “Jeez. I haven’t seen anything this bad since you turned that one guy into chunky salsa. I’m queasy and I don’t even have a digestive system anymore.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You doing okay?”
“I’m not going to barf, if that’s what you’re asking.” I pinched my mask tighter on my nose and bent to get a closer look at the demon’s wounds. “This is not magic. Teeth and claws did this.”
“So John Adams might be a shifter.” Malcolm floated back and forth. “Is our theory that somehow this demon got into the room and John offed him and then hauled ass out of here?”
“It’s a strong possibility. Let’s see what else we can find out.” Gingerly, I bent over the tub, careful not to let my clothes or cross-body bag brush against any of the blood.
“How long do you think he’s been dead?” Malcolm asked. “He smells like he’s been here a week, but it can’t have been more than a few days at most, right?”
“Demons decompose really quickly. He’s not down to just goo, for which I am very, very grateful, so I’m guessing twelve to eighteen hours.”
When alive and in one piece, the male demon had probably stood about six and a half feet tall, with shoulder-length jet-black hair now matted with blood and bits of brain and bone. He had an extremely muscular build, but no wings or horns. So a mid-level demon of some variety. That wasn’t surprising; low-level demons rarely operated alone. Demon generals, princes, and lords stayed in the demon realm except on very rare occasions. Unlike low- and mid-level demons, who could more easily disguise themselves, it was damn near impossible to hide their identity and walk among humans when they ranged between eight and twenty feet tall, with spiraling horns and a ten- to twenty-foot wingspan.
I didn’t get far in my search of the body before I made a very troubling discovery. “Malcolm, look what he’s wearing.”
Malcolm drifted close and whistled. “Whoa. There’s fine silver chainmail on the inside of his leathers. What the hell is that about?”
“I’ve seen this before.” I pulled the leathers aside to show Malcolm one of the few intact patches of the demon’s red leathery flesh. Gold runes, branded into the skin, covered the corpse from almost head to toe. “He’s a demon lord’s soldier. Maybe an assassin.”
“Anassassin?” He flitted in the way ghosts did when they were unsettled or angry. “Well, that is not good.”
“No, it is not. But what I findveryinteresting is the teeth and claws of whatever did this went right through the silver chainmail. Even for a shifter that would have been almost impossible. At the very least the silver would have done real damage. There should be shifter blood and burned flesh in here, but I don’t see or sense any.”