Chapter One
Senseless death always enraged me, but none quite so much as this one.
‘Fuck!’ The expletive had slipped out before I could contain it. I looked down at the body of Ash Aspen and cursed again. His neck sat at a wrong angle, skin broken and bleeding and the spinal column exposed. The dryad’s green skin was already cooling amid the cold evening grass.
‘This is bad,’ Channing muttered.
I scraped my hands through my short hair. ‘Really fucking bad.’
Loki flitted around me, flying from tree to tree and back again in open agitation. His wings buzzed too fast, movements sharp and erratic.
I reached out to him. Okay, buddy?
Who knows where Rude Jingo is now? My bonded bird’s fear whipped through me.
Ash Aspen had been Jude Jingo’s latest host, yet with his body pulverised on Kate’s lawn … Jingo was now somewhere – someone – else. And what the hell had he been doing at Kate’s house? The thought made me shudder.
He knew Kate was on my team, knew I would be called to a body found at her property. He wanted me to know. He was bragging that he was in a new body.
A new body I couldn’t identify. Yet.
I’m going to find out, I promised grimly to my caladrius. Don’t you worry about that.
Just like that, Loki’s fear settled. You will, he said with total certainty. Pigdog is good at her job.
Thanks, I said, a shade drily.
With my avian friend calmer, I refocused on my crime scene. Ash Aspen had been beaten to death. A well-aimed blow had snapped his neck and ended his life abruptly.
Kate Potter, ME, came out with a field kit in hand and booties already on. Channing looked at her and winced, knowing what I was going to say. He continued documenting the body and its surroundings with deliberate precision.
I raised my hands towards the ME. ‘You can’t work the scene, Kate. I’ve contacted Crane.’
Kate folded her arms, which I knew from experience was awkward with the bulky field kit dangling from her fingers. ‘Percival is an arsehole.’
‘No arguments from me,’ I agreed. ‘But you still can’t work it. It’s literally on your doorstep. Your garden is part of the crime scene.’
‘I didn’t see anything! I’m not compromised.’
‘Do you know who this is?’ I asked, gesturing to the cooling corpse.
She shook her head, rustling her perfect ringlets. ‘No,’ she said, but her tone made me think she wasn’t sure of that.
I raised an eyebrow and she huffed. ‘All right, he looks familiar but I can’t place where I’ve seen him. I think it was recent, but for all I know it could be something as innocuous as him also liking the coffee at the Storyhouse.’
Dryads, being magical creatures, didn’t need to spend any time in the Common realm to recharge their magical batteries. As such it would be rare to see one at the Storyhouse, the hall of the portal between the realms, and she knew it.
‘No,’ I said, resigned, ‘it’s probably not that. Do you remember the murder at Louise Carnforth’s?’
‘The dead dryad? Yes.’ She eyed Ash Aspen’s body. ‘They’re not related though. At least, I don’t think so. That was a stabbing, right?’
‘Right, but this guy was there – as a witness – at the ball. You might well have seen him in the crowd as you worked the scene.’
‘Maybe that was it.’ She shrugged. ‘Either way, I’m not emotionally compromised. He’s not a friend or a colleague.’
‘No, he’s not, but he’s the dead guy on your lawn.’
‘But I see dead guys daily. The dead don’t often upset me anymore. Honestly, I’m fine to work the scene. I’d prefer to work the scene.’ She glanced back towards the house. ‘Poor Troy is a bit shocked. He’s not himself at all.’
‘Finding a body will do that to a civilian. I’ll need to talk to him in a bit.’
‘That’s fine. He’s in the house with my sister, Beth. She’s trying to keep the dogs under control, but they’re agitated as heck. I expect they feel our anxiety. Anyway, Beth and Troy already gave statements to Channing.’
‘I’ll want to speak to them all the same.’ I smiled. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting your Troy properly, even under the circumstances.’
‘He’s not my Troy,’ Kate said, but her smile was wistful. She wished he were.
‘Not yet.’ I nudged her. ‘Go inside. I’ll be in when I’m done.’ A thought occurred to me. ‘Oh, hey! There is one thing you can do. Can you quickly tell me about Aspen’s aura? I doubt Crane can do that.’
Kate snorted. ‘He cannot.’ She walked over to the body.
‘Do you need gloves?’ I called out before she inadvertently compromised the scene.
She crouched beside the body. ‘I don’t need contact, just proximity.’ She closed her eyes, and a beat later, she frowned. ‘Well … that’s weird.’
‘What is?’
‘The overriding feeling I’m getting from the body is relief.’
My stomach sank and I pressed my lips together. It wasn’t weird considering Ash Aspen had been subsumed by a doppelganger for months. Death, in the end, had been a release. Poor guy.
I pushed Kate into her house right about the time that Ed arrived, rock music blaring out of his windows. It cut off as he silenced the engine.
‘Hey, Stacy,’ he called to me as he slid out of his van.
‘Hey, Ed.’
‘What have we got?’
‘Dead dryad, punched to death. Not much evidence on scene that I’ve noticed. Channing’s doing all the initial photographs.’
‘Appreciate it.’
The autumn chill had hardened the ground, and though the death had taken place on the lawn at the end of Kate’s driveway, there were no visible footprints. Though it was difficult to say so conclusively in the meagre light.
Ed pulled out a floodlight, rectifying that particular issue. Even with light pouring over the area, I couldn’t see much more in the way of evidence.
‘The victim was armed,’ I confirmed. ‘Switchblade, but it was beside him in the grass. I tested it with the potion in my briefcase – no blood.’
He frowned. ‘It was close to him, and he didn’t use it to fight back? That doesn’t make sense.’
I kept my mouth shut because it made sense to me. My paltry knowledge of doppelgangers was that they needed their current host to die at the hands of the next. A particularly cruel twist of fate.
No doubt Jingo had used the blade to threaten his new host – whoever they might be – and scared them into killing Ash, but the doppelganger never used the blade because he didn’t want to damage the new body he was about to inhabit.
Now Jingo was successfully in a new body, and I had no idea what face he was wearing. It was beyond frustrating.
I’d had Jingo in my sights for a few months, but despite my best efforts, I never got any of his cronies to roll on him. Though I wasn’t sure whether that was because he inspired a cult-like devotion in his crew or a bone-deep fear.
Ed started laying out some evidence markers. ‘Saw a weird competition yesterday,’ he said as he worked. ‘You’ll appreciate this.’
‘Yeah?’
‘So someone writes a bunch of objects on some paper, folds them up, puts them in a hat. Then one by one the competitors pull a slip of paper out of the hat, and whatever object is written on it is what they’re sexy slow dancing with.
’ He grinned. ‘The lady with a broom was my favourite. But the chap with the woolly gloves was very inventive.’
I chuckled. ‘Yeah? That sounds fun. What object would you pick?’
He thought for a second. ‘An ironing board. I could spin that baby around, do a dramatic dip. You?’
Without hesitation, a can of Dr Pepper popped into my mind. ‘I don’t know,’ I lied smoothly.
I shrugged nonchalantly, then looked back at the body. Some people danced with brooms. Others ended up dead on a lawn. Life was unfair.
I checked the time and turned to Channing, who’d finished photographing the scene to within an inch of its life.
‘Can you go door to door, see if anyone saw anything before it gets too late?’ It was 8pm.
The majority of people would be home, fed and firing up their TVs.
Maybe we’d catch a break and find ourselves a witness.
‘You got it.’ Channing moved off, all efficient squeaky uniform even after a long day on shift. We were due to clock off, but we’d caught this one in our eleventh hour, so we’d work it until the scene was closed.
I watched with mixed feelings as ME Percival Crane arrived. He drove a Porsche Boxster, no doubt his attempt at buying a personality.
Crane was a misogynistic arsehole who dressed like he was a Connection Inspector: black suit, white shirt, badass attitude. The thing with Crane was that he had nothing to back it up. He was a level one wizard, which meant he could probably stir a cup of tea with the IR and that was about it.
He parked kilometres away from any other car, lest his car be inadvertently dinged, and revved the Porsche engine ridiculously on purpose.
He had complained before about his precious car getting scratched a time or two, but I suspected none of those dings had been inadvertent. He was a man who inspired thoughts of criminal damage, even in me.
As Crane walked towards me, I braced myself for the incoming twattery and promised not to punch him, no matter how much of a wanker he was.
His shoes were polished, his smile was smug, and his cologne reached me before he did.
‘Hey, Wise,’ he started. ‘So a woman is on a plane, and it starts going down. She stands up and says, “If I’m going to die, I want to feel like a woman first!” So one of the men takes off his shirt, throws it at her and says, “Here, iron that.”‘
He burst into sniggers while I reminded myself that the disembowelment of a colleague was strictly frowned upon.
‘I’ve got a dead body,’ I said, ignoring his pathetic ‘joke’ entirely.
Across the last decade I’d learnt that engaging with misogynists was a waste of time and energy.
You could call them on their douchery all day and all night, and they’d call it feminist rage rather than correctly identifying it as simple human decency.
‘Yeah,’ Crane said. ‘I figured, you know, since you called me.’ The ‘duh’ in his tone was thick and rude. ‘What, Kate’s too busy washing her hair or something?’
‘Or something,’ I agreed flatly. He didn’t need to know why Kate was compromised. There was zero chance I was telling him where Kate lived. If she stayed inside her home, he’d never find out this was her residence. I certainly wouldn’t want Crane knowing my home address.
‘What can you tell me?’ I asked Crane.
‘Jeez, Wise, I literally just arrived on scene. Give me a damn second, won’t you?’
‘Stop cracking shit jokes and do your job then,’ I shot back and pointed to the body.
Crane walked over to it, ignoring Ed completely. Ed didn’t seem bothered by that – if anything he seemed quite happy to be ignored. I could relate. I wished Crane would ignore me. Another ‘joke‘ and I’d be too tempted to punch him.
‘Beaten to death,’ Crane announced a few minutes later. ‘Beaten by just a few truly powerful punches. We’re looking at an Other death here. No human could have punched hard enough to sever the spinal cord. I’d say you’re looking at a male perpetrator. No woman could do this.’
With effort, I pushed down the urge to point out that a female ogre, griffin or dragon would have precisely zero difficulty in doing just that.
‘Time of death?’ I asked tightly.
‘Recent, very recent. He can’t have been dead more than an hour, hour and a half tops.’
‘Blood spatter on the grass,’ Ed called over. ‘He was killed on site.’
Crane ignored him again. ‘Your victim caught a couple of extremely strong punches by an Other male, his spinal cord snapped, and that was the end of this particular dryad.’ His flippancy was infuriating and he topped it off by winking at me. ‘I’ve basically solved the case for you, Inspector.’
‘Aspen,’ I snapped. ‘The dryad’s name was Ash Aspen.’
Crane shrugged like the victim’s name didn’t matter a damn.
It mattered. It always mattered, but even more so in this case.
Jude Jingo had controlled Ash Aspen, but I didn’t know enough about doppelgangers to know whether Aspen himself had died at the point of subsummation or now. The relief Kate had felt suggested the latter, and that just sucked.
Regardless, the Connection didn’t have any record of anyone surviving a hostile takeover by a doppelganger. Once a doppelganger had your body, it was just a matter of time until you died.
Somewhere, someone was a walking ticking time bomb, and the prime suspects were in Kate’s house.