Chapter 15
Fifteen
Jesper stepped out of the laundry closet, nonchalantly tucking in his shirt. It was a few seconds before the maid emerged, too. Michaels couldn’t help but notice the heated glow of her face. That and the grin of a Cheshire Cat.
“Still playing with mortals?” Michaels said when she was out of earshot.
Jesper handed him her master key. “You really should try it.” He licked his lips with a forked tongue. Jesper wore the appearance of a human like a badly fitting suit. The tongue was today’s mismatch.
Michaels shook his head. “You know the rules.”
Jesper grimaced in a parody of sadness and squeezed his shoulder. “Poor little Angel. Never gets to taste the forbidden fruit.”
Michaels shrugged him off and tried the key. The lock opened with a click.
Room 422 was a mess. Someone had tossed the furniture and bed sheets around as if they had been caught in a storm. Michaels could see he’d been right to follow up the ripples in the quintessence, before the authorities caught on. He peered into the bathroom and saw the pale, naked body of a fat man sprawled in the bath like a beached whale.
“The reaver,” sneered Samuel, shedding his glamour like a dog shaking his fur. “I can smell him.”
Michaels growled his ascent and knelt to pass his hand over the corpse’s chest. Lines of energy spread out from his fingertips and sank beneath the pallid skin. The flesh bumped and rippled as Michaels felt around.
Jesper cringed away. “Do you have to?” He turned on his heel and stalked back into the bedroom to clatter about. “You know that makes my stomach turn.”
There wasn’t much Michaels could do about that. He closed his eyes to focus. He’d need to if he was going to find any glimmer of a soul. The body was cold and long dead.
There were echoes, ghost-like shadows of who he’d been. Rich, terrible and cruel, he’d prospered from other’s misery. In Michaels’ opinion, his death wasn’t much of a loss to humanity, but there’d been no supernatural influence to his depravity that he could see. He got to his feet and whispered a blessing.
“No demon?” called Jesper from the other room. He was holding the bedclothes up to his muzzle and sniffing them when Michaels emerged.
Michaels shook his head. “And I’m the revolting one.”
Jesper grinned. “He had company, though. There were two women here, judging by the tang.” He wrinkled his nose in appreciation.
Michaels gave him a hard stare. “How long ago?”
“Four, maybe five hours ago.”
“He’s cold enough to have been dead for three.”
“The reaver took him?”
“Yes.” Michaels dragged his palms down on his coat. “But there was no dybbuk. The reaver’s off target and we need to find out why. And we need to make the body disappear.”
Jesper nodded, and his mouth twisted into a wicked grin. “I’ll get The Brothers Grimm.”
Michaels didn’t like dealing with the Dark Fae. He shuddered at what they might do to the body, but they couldn’t risk the human authorities examining it. The removal would be meticulous and efficient. He was just glad he wouldn’t be there to witness it.