Page 68 of A Subtle Scar
“That’s what I said, but stop with all your anecdotes. What I found is a kind of working I’ve seen before. When I used to bed a court witch, Johannes, also in Prague, incidentally.”
I swallowed the bite of doughnut in my mouth. Hermes’s words overrode the jealousy that was rearing its head again at the mention of Hermes sleeping with someone, no matter that the other man was long dead. “You mean, Johannes Kepler, court magician to Rudolph II?” I asked.
Hermes nodded. “Yes! Do humans still talk about him?”
“They did, in my History of Magic course. They didn’t mention he was seduced by you,” I said.
Charon sidled closer to me again. “That reminds me. Chandler has requested we seduce him properly.”
“Oh, did you, Agent Chandler?” Florence said, looking up from the phone she’d been looking at after she’d researched the moon. “You know, I think you three are hotter than the autoclave.”
“Thank you,” Hermes said, and Charon also seemed to bask in the perceived praise.
I sighed and finished the last piece of chocolate-covered goodness. “I have another corpse out there to get back to, so can we all focus for a moment. If there really is a spell—”
“Baby, there is. I checked all the places the bodies were found,” Hermes said and held the open box out to me again. The pink ones did look good, but I shook my head. Sugar rush was a thing.
“I’ll back Hermes on that, darling,” Charon said. He was very close again, speaking close to my ear. The weirdest thing was it didn’t bother me. Normally, people in close proximity to me like this did, but not Charon.
“Okay, fine. Let’s assume there is a spell, what is it for? And how does knowing it exists stop more bodies dropping?”
Hermes had this look of deep concentration again as if he wasn’t sure how I’d gotten from his revelation to these questions.
“Darling, in the files, it said there were symbols. And there were a few photographs, but maybe we should all have a look at the poor girls again,” Charon said.
Florence put her phone aside. “They are all still here. But if you look at them, it won’t break anything in the universe, and it won’t make any of you fight with an angel, will it?”
“No,” Charon said.
“Definitely not,” Hermes said. “But it does make me wonder what Lucy and his demigod necromancer have been up to.”
“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Florence pushed herself past Charon, whose hand had ended up on my hip, which made it easy for him to draw me against his body. Which he had very much done, or rather, he’d closed the distance. Same difference. “Dr. Kurtz,” Florence said to the pathologist. She and Deacon had probably observed. My being manhandled by a black-haired beauty and his broad-shouldered buddy. “Agent Chandler and the two hottie godies want to see all the victims in this series.”
Kurtz didn’t look thrilled. I got that. They’d have to move all the bodies for us, and that was hard work.
Kurtz beckoned to Florence. “Let’s get them out, then. And you.” She pointed at Hermes. “No food shall pass that threshold.”
“Aah,” Hermes said and put his box on Florence’s desk. I’d never seen a man this unhappy to be parted from a box full of doughnuts.
While we all waited—medical staff had to oversee any raising of a deceased person in their custody—Deacon crossed his arms and looked at me and the immortals flanking me with…I wouldn’t go so far as to say disgust, but he was unhappy about it. What made him that unhappy was a blend of prejudice and hurt feelings due to being rejected by Lionel, neither of which he had processed. At least that was my best guess at his feelings.
The thing was, once I did break it off with these two, I’d appreciate Deacon’s willingness to show them the door, but right now, they were helpful. I told myself that was one reason, and a second was not wanting to hurt their feelings in the morgue, of all places. I ignored that thinking of them as helpful in solving the case made me feel about as bad as I would if I ate that entire box of white flour, oil, and sugar Hermes had grown so attached to.
I hoped that Deacon would find a way to get past his prejudice, maybe by meeting a nice immortal who cared about him as much as Lucifer cared about Lionel. I had a sense that much of Deacon’s bitterness came from the fact that he’d never really had that, anyone caring that hard. Maybe I could tell because I hadn’t either.
I didn’t wallow in self-pity as a rule, and before I could even contemplate breaking that rule, Kurtz beckoned us over to the first corpse, the one who had been tossed out of a moving van when I’d come to Brunswick this Monday.
The immortals walked with me, their steps easily synching with mine. It was disturbing. And uncomfortable. And I felt ridiculously safe between them, which was irrational because I knew damn well how to take care of myself.
“Anything jump out at you?” I asked when we were all standing around the slab.
“Her name was Margo, yes?” Charon asked as he left my side to get a closer look at the corpse.
“That’s what she told me,” Deacon said. “Margo Cooper.”
“Ronny, are you feeling that?” Hermes asked. He was leaning forward, his eyes half closed, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Yes, but barely. If you hadn’t said, I might not have noticed.”
