“It’s just—it doesn’t make me a better investigator. It doesn’t help me find my sister.”
He shrugged. “It helped you convince that school’s security man to be more helpful back at the library.”
“Yeah, a lot of good that did us.” I rubbed my temples, and we fell into silence for several minutes. When things got nearly too uncomfortable for me to stand, the waitress stopped by our table with our drinks and food.
“Look,” I said, after she left. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be bitchy, and I know you were trying to be nice.”
His eyes widened slightly. “Sure. Don’t worry about it.”
We ate in silence. I scarfed down my asparagus and fish sticks at an alarming rate, and his burger disappeared quickly as well.
I briefly contemplated trying to convince Costa to check more warehouses with me, but the darkness seeping in the windows stopped me.
Costa pushed his plate away and took a long drink.
“You should go home and get some rest.”
I nodded, giving him a small smile. I agreed with him, I should go home and get some rest. But I wasn’t going to.
And considering the hard time I’d been giving him lately about honesty, it was best not to lie.
The station wasn’t silent or unmanned, but the paranormal division’s section was as close to empty as it ever got. Two detectives sat at their desks, their frowning faces turned toward their computers. A couple of uniforms filled out reports, looking like they’d rather be anywhere else.
I wasn’t any happier to be at the station at night. I should have been safely at home, sitting in front of the late-edition news while Elaine grumbled about her homework or gossiped with a new friend on the phone.
But that wasn’t happening, and the station offered more access to data systems than my laptop would allow from my house, so I was stuck.
I docked my laptop and waited for it to boot up, tapping my pink fingernails on the desk while it loaded. I pondered the coffee congealing in the corner coffeemaker but decided against it. Gross after-hours coffee was more likely to give me a stomachache than wake me up.
I logged into the Illinois State Police Criminal Records Database first. There were several entries for cases that involved fire, but none of the descriptions seemed to match what I was looking for. They’d involved accelerants, and none seemed to have been burned so quickly to such a degree.
The fact that Costa was a salamander threw me, but he’d told me straight out and that garnered him some trust. I didn’t consider him a suspect—well, not really. Oh, his job let him travel a lot, but unless his partner and boss were in on it, he’d hardly have time to set up a succubi smuggling ring in his spare time. Plus, he was an OWEA agent. Lieutenant Vasquez took no chances after Mac’s last major case. She’d thought her partner-in-crime was an OWEA agent, and while he turned out to be one, for a while there it looked like he wasn’t. Besides, Vasquez had checked his alibi. And Vasquez didn’t do anything halfway.
I shot a quick glance at the lieutenant’s office, but it was dark. Vasquez didn’t like questions like that coming up about his department, so rules had been instituted after that case. No working with other agencies without running it by him, and all personnel were checked prior to giving out any information.
Besides, salamanders were relatively common—not everywhere you looked, but I’d bet I could find a couple on the Freak Squad roster.
A uniform who looked vaguely familiar walked up to the desk. Clark, that was it. He’d asked me out once, not long after he graduated from the academy. An otherworlder, but I couldn’t remember what kind.
“Hey, Marisol,” he said. “Just wanted to say that I was sorry to hear about you sister.”
Tears pressed against my eyelids, and I squeezed them shut, giving Clark my back. “Thanks, Clark,” I said, voice rough.
“Let me know if I can help somehow.” He ignored my rudeness.
“Sure, thanks.”
Clark was a nice guy. Too young for me and despite his nice form, he didn’t do anything for me. But reaching out to me was kind. I shifted my focus from the young officer back to what I was doing. The federal database would take longer to load. I decided to start with the system pertaining to otherworlders only first. The data set was smaller. I couldn’t imagine how many hits of burned bodies I would get from the full records.
Time ticked away on the clock above the coffeemaker as I waited for the information to load. The fed’s database was always so damn slow. I tried to think through the case as I sat there, but it was difficult to focus. Instead I pulled out a legal pad and started to write down what I knew in short notes. Writing things out always made it easier for me to concentrate and make connections.
During the last two years, a lot of succubi had disappeared all over the country, from Anchorage to Phoenix and now Chicago. I thought about that, and then wrote, “Kidnapper must travel regularly” next to my notes.
The kidnappers were selling the succubi to the highest bidders, no doubt accumulating a lot of cash. Would they travel in style? Probably. I made a note. What else?
I tapped the pen on the counter and then wrote, “Connected to vampires?” Chances were that the local Magister, Luc Chevalier, had been telling the truth. That he had no idea who rented the space from him previously.
But it was possible he’d lied.
The information screen from the database popped up on the computer. Twelve otherworlder-related listings that matched my search parameters of occurring within the last two years and no use of accelerant. Seven of the listings were victims of house fires. That didn’t mean they weren’t related, but it was less likely. That left me five to check. Not bad.
The primary suspect in the first case was a woman’s husband. An amateur witch, he had a very high amount of power in only one element—fire. He would fit, but he was in jail, waiting to be tried for his wife’s murder. The case was active, since it wouldn’t be closed until the trial was officially completed.
The next six cases were unsolved; all involved the same M.O. as Astrid’s. They were all either otherworlders or killed by an otherworlder—though most, like Astrid’s vic, could not be identified beyond that. Only two of the victims had actually been identified. One because enough material was left for a DNA analysis. A psychometrist had identified the other.
I clicked further into the psychometrist case first. It was probably just a coincidence. I had no real reason to think that it might be Costa’s partner, but I still allowed myself a deep breath when the psychometrist was identified as a man. He worked for the Phoenix Police Department.
The victim proved to be an otherworlder. She’d been killed only three months ago, and had been gone for nearly a month before her ashes turned up. The remains hadn’t been found in an alley like Astrid’s victim, instead they’d been discovered in a vacant lot. A vacant lot right next to a suburban police department not far from Phoenix. The woman was identified as Lorna Thompson, and she’d been a siren.
The other body that showed as ID’d was found in Anchorage. There had been just enough DNA left to identify her as Mary Joyce. A twenty-two-year-old siren.
I held my breath at that. Both women were sirens.
Not succubi. Could there still be a connection? The cities matched. The date ranges weren’t exact, but they were close.
Maybe…just, maybe.
I printed out a few summary pages of information on all seven cases that weren’t tied to house fires and then typed in another search, this time for missing succubi women. The ticker slowly filled and I finally broke down and poured myself a cup of the old coffee. It had cooled, so after thirty seconds in the microwave, the gloop was ready to go. The thick liquid slid down my throat, seeming to coat my flesh as it passed.
By the time I got back to my computer, I wasn’t any perkier, but it felt like a rock had settled into my stomach.
The search was complete, and I sat down to go through the twenty-two results.
Disheveled was a word that I never thought I’d have the opportunity to use for Valerio Costa. But disheveled was exactly how he looked when I knocked on his hotel room door at one o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t shaved before he went to bed and rough darkness formed a shadow on his face. His ruffled hair stood up in odd places, and he peered at me from behind hooded eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked as he swung the door open.
I swallowed and tried to keep my eyes on his face. But I failed, and my gaze slid down his bare chest and boxer briefs to the long legs below, and then back up. I licked my lips. Why had I come here again?
“I think that I’ve found something,” I said, not bothering to hide my interest in his physique. The man had a nice body under his clothes.
Costa raised an eyebrow at my frank look but didn’t comment. Instead, he dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. “Okay, what is it?”
“So the succubi have been kidnapped and changed.
Have you given any thought to how long he had to...
experiment to get that change right? What did he do with the ones he wasn’t able to successfully change?”
Costa shrugged. “I don’t know. I always assumed that he held whoever the first one was long enough to get it right. Poor girl, whoever she was.”
“Could be,” I said. “But maybe not.” I waved the file folders I’d filled with my copies of the burn victims and missing succubi case summaries at him. “Maybe, like with any type of experiment—scientific or magical—they had several trial and errors first.”
“Maybe. But we didn’t find any bodies.”
“Exactly.” I strode past him into the room and tossed my purse and folder onto his bed, and then opened the folder, handing him pages as I spoke. “Three years ago, a twenty-one-year-old succubus disappears in Seattle. She’s never found. But two months after her disappearance a pile of ash is discovered near a Dumpster where homeless people like to hang out. No one would have suspected anything about it, but the ash wasn’t burned well enough and some bones remained.”