Page 29 of The Darkest Night

Where are they going with this? They already know the answer to that question.

“Yes, it was.”

“Did you find anything—odd when you were examining Mr. Antonovich’s remains?” Calvarro said coolly.

Mae’s pulse spiked. She recalled the strange bullet and the enlarged pineal gland she’d found inside the dead man. What with everything that had happened, she’d completely forgotten about them.

She remembered what Hodge had told her yesterday about one of the NYPD’s lines of inquiry. Her brow furrowed.

“Wait. You guys don’t seriously think all of this happened because of Antonovich?!”

Dickson’s eyes gleamed with a shrewd light. “His body is still unaccounted for.”

Mae’s jaw jutted out. “Like I already told you, I decapitated him and left him in that autopsy lab.”

Dickson raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Hodge said the same thing. Do you make a habit of decapitating corpses, Miss Jin?”

Mae clenched her hands. “I do when it’s an undead one trying to kill me and my boss.”

Violet and Miles had told her the identity of the ochre-eyed creatures who had taken control of the bodies of the people inside the hospital that night. According to the witch and the sorcerer, they were demons.

The old Mae would never have believed them. The new Mae did.

The fact that she was so ready to accept the strange reality she was now living no longer surprised her. She wasn’t the woman she had been before that fateful night. And, however much she resented the change, she knew it was her fate. Her connection with Brimstone and the pendant had shown her that.

Calvarro cocked her head to the side. “You believe in the undead, Miss Jin?”

Mae met the FBI agent’s probing gaze. “I believe in the evidence of my own eyes, Agent Calvarro.”

Calvarro’s mouth shrank to a thin line. “You still haven’t answered my question, Miss Jin. Did you or did you not find anything strange during Antonovich’s autopsy?”

“No, I didn’t,” Mae lied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ve told you everything you wanted to know.”

She reached over and pressed the call button.

Her nurse Jen appeared. “You okay, Mae?”

“I’m tired. Please see the lieutenant and the special agent out.”

Dickson and Calvarro looked unhappy as Jen ushered them from the room.

“We still need to ask you more questions, Miss Jin,” Dickson protested.

“You know where I live.”

“Don’t leave the state,” Calvarro warned.

Mae managed not to roll her eyes. Jen wasn’t as subtle.

The ICU nurse came back a moment later. “You okay?”

Mae smiled wearily. “Yeah. How’s my paperwork coming along?”

“It’ll be done within the hour.” The nurse hesitated. “You sure you want to self-discharge? Dr. Mehta won’t be happy when he hears the news. He wanted you under observation for another couple of days.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” Mae grimaced. “Besides, I’m going stir crazy in here. It’ll do me good to get out.”

Ryu appeared behind Jen, Ye-Seul in tow. They’d insisted she come to the house for dinner before going to her apartment after they heard she was discharging herself.

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