Page 90 of A Subtle Scar
“Agent Chandler. You’re asking about the new body?”
“Yes, in part. Anything that makes her stand out from the rest of the series? Or anything odd?”
“Well, I cannot speak to the significance of the designs. Cause of death was heart failure from the medical point of view, but likely caused by magic, given the state of her. All like the others. What may interest you are the tapeworms we found in her intestine.”
I nodded. “Right. Off the grid. They’ve all been living off the grid, which is why we don’t have them in the databases. Anything else?”
“I’m not done with her yet, and you will get my full report once I am. But nothing remarkable, for the moment.”
“Thanks. Email me a copy,” I said, and hung up.
I turned to Charon and Hermes, who were looking at me expectantly. Hermes was licking his lips, looking for all the world like he wanted to lick me.
Maybe later, I thought, and for once, I allowed myself to imagine it. Later. After the case. Being with them, for no other reason than that I wanted.
“Hermes, I need you to take me to the field. Where the victim was found.”
“Why there?” Charon asked. He looked less like he would jump my bones right here and now if I so much as hinted he had the green light to do it.
“I’m not sure, but I need to go there. Just do it, okay?”
Charon tilted his head. “Okay. But stay close to us. I don’t like this. I don’t like the woman who you just wanted to protect attacking you. And by off the gird, what do you mean, exactly?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “One of them has tapeworms. No dental work, as far as the ME can tell, and we cannot ID them. Now our survivor thinks we are all infected with something. It sounds like a doomsday cult that’s been living in complete seclusion, until now, only I don’t know why.”
In front of my mind’s eye, the scene from my dream was playing, me, running into the wheat field and the wheat growing, growing; growing until it blocked out the light and making me feel like I was in a cave rather than a field.
Hermes sighed, the sound pulling me back. “Ronny is right. Stay close. People like that might try tossing you on a pyre, and we don’t want that.”
He grabbed Charon’s and my hand, and I felt his teleportation magic, the whoosh and ebb of it, and then, we were in the field, right where the police tape still marked the spot. I glanced to a spot on the right where a black nitrile glove lay forgotten, just like in my dream, the material dusty with dirt.
I knew—no. I imagined I had been here before. The ears of corn, the sound they made in the wind. The smell of it, the ripe dry wheat, the air here, away from the beach and the city. It was exactly what I had seen in the dream in which Victor had teased me, had asked me to chase him while asking me why I kept chasing him, and while I knew I’d seen this in the crime scene photos, I’d not seen things from this angle. The nitrile glove, that had not been in the photos.
Two officers got out of their car, which was parked at the edge of the field, when we came in, so I pulled out my badge and headed out to meet them.
“What, no doughnuts today?” the female cop, Pugh according to her badge, asked Hermes, who naturally was right behind me.
“Thanks for the date,” her taller partner told him.
“Right. I’m sorry, this one is a little urgent,” I told them, and the cops backed away.
“Why is it so urgent?” Charon asked in that calm way he had.
I shook my head and walked back to the scene. “I don’t know. Hermes. The spell. The one that you say connects all the sites. Show me.”
“I wonder if that is the best way to proceed,” Charon said.
“I just want to see it,” I said. “It’ll be fine. Just point me toward it, and I’ll feel it out.”
Hermes shrugged. “What could happen?”
Charon put his hands on his hips. “I don’t know what could happen. I just have a feeling. But proceed. We’ll weather it together.”
Hermes held out his hand, then ducked under the tape, and I followed, his fingers closing around mine.
“I’ll highlight it. You already know what my magic feels like, so you just look for that,” Hermes said.
“All right,” I said and pulled my magic toward me.
