CHAPTER TWO
The eldest daughter, sixteen-year-old Claudia Coffee, broke quickly once Hero confronted her.
Her own little sister had recognized the boy she’d sent to kill them, a ne’er-do-well of dubious upbringing but with fine black hair and a charming smile – the boy Claudia loved with all her heart yet was forbidden to even see, let alone marry.
Though he’d been dressed in stiff new clothes, his face hidden by a mask and his telltale hair tucked under a knit cap, the little girl had known him by his blue eyes – cold and crystal, peering at her with pure malice from a face blackened with coal powder.
He’d done a good job with his killing. He’d left no clues – no fingerprints, no shoeprints, no hair or blood scattered at the scene, and the knife was gone before the peacekeepers apprehended him.
The new clothes, too. Every trace of evidence had been removed.
The boy who’d survived the attack might have been a witness, had he lived, but Hero learned after dealing with the guilty daughter that he hadn’t survived after all, succumbing to his wounds and shock – a shame, but not really important.
She’d found the killer through the dead, not via witnesses.
There were no thanks after she was done with the daughter.
The weeping confession, the claims she was “forced into it” by her beloved – Hero cared nothing about any of that.
As far as she was concerned, her part was done.
She didn’t need to know the why, only the who.
Let the barristers sort it out. For her, it was back to the station.
“Another case solved. Very good, Inspector. Yet again, you’ve earned your keep.”
Her keep. Hero kept her face carefully composed.
Captain Culpepper hadn’t just called her into his office to congratulate her.
He was reminding her that she owed him. He was the one who’d given her this job, this chance.
What other jailbird left prison to land a cushy job with the Inspectorate Division of the peacekeepers of the Realm?
Most paroled prisoners were lucky to scrape by begging on the streets.
Many returned to their lives of crime or left the area completely to start anew elsewhere.
Hero did not have that option. It was hard to hide eyes made of fire, and she had grown tired of being hunted.
“My pleasure, Captain,” she said, tapping the brim of her dainty top hat with her cane and giving him a fangless grin. “It wasn’t a difficult case.”
“Right. No evidence, dead witnesses. A grieving daughter of upstanding character.” He returned her grin, an edge to his.
Culpepper didn’t like it when she was modest. He considered her abilities a skill like any other, one she’d cultivated through hard work and practice.
A skill he had recognized before anyone else.
He’d been the one who’d brought her into the fold in the first place.
He never liked to think he might have made a mistake giving a remorseless arsonist a second chance.
But it wasn’t really that great a risk; they both knew the truth of why she had started that fire.
Deep down, he loved her for it. Constrained by his position, by the law, by life, he would never have been free to do the same.
A half-demon pariah, on the other hand… What did she have to lose?
“It wouldn’t have been the first time someone of means managed to get away with murder,” he said, reaching for a scroll from the pile atop his worn desk.
Cases upon cases, all needing inspectors.
Only a select few would be tempting enough to unleash Hero.
The one in his hands was brand new, the parchment blazing clean but the seal broken – which meant he’d read it – and it was important enough for her attention.
Culpepper held it almost reverently, peering at the crest embedded in the bits of broken wax. Hero couldn’t quite make it out.
“You got another for me?” she asked politely, her ears pricking with the possibility of something grand, something challenging.
Her skills were impressive, and she liked using them.
Opening the Gate to the Underworld gave her a high she never stopped chasing.
The flames filled her with power, made her feel alive – ironic in the halls of the dead, maybe.
Even more, Speaking with the dead was titillating, their lives and souls laid bare to Hero.
Rooting out their secrets, witnessing their last moments on earth, tracking them through the fiery corridors of that chaotic place, skirting the Spheres – especially Pandemonium, where her kin slavered to possess their wayward daughter – affirmed her very existence. She was meant for this.
“I might,” Culpepper admitted. His craggy forehead deepened into canyons, sending his bushy brows dipping toward his nose.
She didn’t understand his reluctance; the captain enjoyed a good case as much as she did, the more gruesome the better.
“It sounds like they desperately need a death speaker. They have suspicions, maybe a few suspects, but not much else.”
Hero dropped into a rolling chair across the desk from him and spun in a circle using her cane as thrust. “Tell me.” She faced him, then rolled again. By the time she turned back around, he had the scroll open.
“A young woman went missing for six days,” he began, peering at the document, scanning its contents.
“They found her in the woods in pristine condition, as in no insect activity or animal predation or other signs of decomp. Nude. Ligature marks on her neck, possibly. No defensive wounds. Some signs of trauma, but no fluids left behind.”
Hero hissed low. She knew what he meant by trauma . “So, rape, strangulation, then a body dump.” She shrugged, tapping her cane rhythmically against the floorboards. “This sort of case isn’t difficult. She’ll most likely have known her attacker.”
“Her tongue was removed.”
A twist. Lovely. “So, rape, strangulation, and a message. Makes it even easier. I’ll be in and out in a day. Where am I going?”
“Don’t be so quick, Hero. There’s more you need to know.”
“So tell me. I haven’t got all day.”
He grunted, amused. “Where else do you have to go?”
Another spin, this one to hide her annoyance.
Just when she thought they were friends, he reminded her she was property.
No, she had nowhere to go but to her little dormer room two streets over.
Maybe to the tavern for a drink or two. Either way, she couldn’t go far.
She was at their beck and call, waiting to be summoned.
Her chains might be invisible now, but they were there, nonetheless.
Better than prison, by a far pace.
“The young woman is a nun,” he said when she was facing him again.
Abruptly, she stopped spinning. Her body tensed. She didn’t like nuns, seeing as she’d been raised by them.
And she’d thought her mother had been cruel.
“She was a teacher,” he continued, staring at her intently, trying to read her face. Good luck with that. Her bright eyes were dimmed by her tinted, wire-rimmed glasses and she kept her pale skin smooth, expressionless.
“Where?” she prompted.
“At the Archbishop Clementine Preparatory School of Excellence.”
Her cane thumped heavily against the floor but otherwise she revealed nothing of her inner turmoil. “The one in Havenside,” she said flatly. “Or is there some other school with the same pompous designation?”
“No, that’s the one. I knew you’d have a problem with this. And not just because a Celestial nun of the Shield is involved.”
“And why would I have a problem? A case is a case, right?” Whether or not it involves my former order .
“It’ll be quick.” She twirled her cane, feeling her lips curve into a frown.
It was an entirely human reaction, and she hated it.
She had tried to blend in over the years, at home, at Blackstone Abbey – everywhere.
Forcing smiles, laughter, tears – reactions she thought would be normal, human.
At most, she’d merely made people uncomfortable.
Her attempts to subsume her demon half only made her strangeness more glaring.
In prison she had rolled into her heritage, her otherness, and the inmates had respected her true nature, its power, its strange beauty.
In a tangle of misfits, she’d found her place.
Now, she preferred to keep her humanity in check.
“They wouldn’t have called for a speaker if this was a simple case, Inspector.” He shook the scroll at her. “This letter indicates they suspect something foul at work, some deeper evil beyond a ravaging murderer. There are layers to this case. Secrets.”
Havenside was full of secrets. Full of family, too, which was why she wanted nothing to do with it.
She hadn’t been allowed to attend the most prestigious school in town.
She hadn’t been welcomed into the inner circles of the wealthy and privileged, despite her father being a barrister of some renown.
(Well, he hadn’t been her real father, had he?) She hadn’t got a debutante ball or invitations to yacht-club regattas.
People in Havenside had given her rude gestures to ward off the evil eye, and their spit when she passed them on the street.
“Who sent the letter?” she asked, and couldn’t help holding her breath as she waited for the answer. Her brother wouldn’t have sent it, she was sure, although once they had been close.
“Their chief peacekeeper, Roger Dewey. He’s a friend of mine.
We went to the Academy together.” He scanned down the scroll once more, his eyes skittering back and forth across the words.
“He’s sharp, ole Dewey. Sharp enough to know when he’s outmatched.
Havenside is a cushy job. Not much happens there, you know. Not like here.”
“So, maybe he’s seeing conspiracies and mysteries where none exist?” It would be an easy job, she told herself firmly. In and out. A little chat with a dead nun and she could be on her way. “Bored police get that way, I’ve heard.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said wryly. “Nevertheless, we can’t say no to them.
Havenside has gone through the proper channels, greased the right palms, so to say.
The body was found only a day ago, so Speaking to the shade should be easy.
And at the moment, since you resolved our last case so quickly and thoroughly, you are free to take on something new. ”
“Efficiency returns to bite me in the ass,” she muttered.
Her gaze wandered to the lone, greasy window behind Culpepper’s head which looked out on a blank brick wall.
They were on the ninth floor. From the roof it was quite the view, but from the captain’s office they might as well have been underground.
Still, she loved the city. The vibrancy of it.
The vastness and complexity. The filth. So much life in one place, so many souls and spirits.
It was almost like walking the halls of Hell.
Havenside, on the other hand, was a collection of lovely, gargantuan homes on tree-lined streets, a pretentious town square of frou-frou boutiques and upscale bistros and taverns, green swards and open parks, seaside piers and a harbor containing the toys of the rich.
Peaceful, quiet, wealthy. Cruel. She would be exposed in Havenside, no longer one of the crowd but a standout, a stranger.
Worse, a stranger daring to return to the place she’d once called home.
Culpepper let her stew in her thoughts for a long moment, but she knew that even he had his limits, and she was only one of many inspectors awaiting assignments. None of them had much choice, either. What made her special?
I am a speaker. That’s what.
“So,” he said – a demand, not a request.
She considered rebellion. What could he do?
Drop her in solitary? Clap her in leg irons?
Give her a lashing in the yard? No, despite her criminal past, despite her current enslavement to the Realm, she still had choices.
Refusing a case would get her suspended for a bit, maybe, sent to do a beat walk, or something odious like transcribing, but nothing worse than a slap on the wrist. She had choices.
Why expose herself to something as hateful as going home?
“What was her name?” she asked.
“Sister Catarine Cisco.”
A sister. A nun. She sighed. “How old?”
“Twenty-two.”
Another sigh.
“And who does this Dewey think killed her? And why?”
“He doesn’t know. That’s the issue.”
“What makes her so special?”
“Here.” He tossed the scroll across the desk. It slithered toward her, and Hero snatched it up reflexively. “Read the letter.”
Hero did as he asked, then read it again. Her ruby lips pursed. Now she knew why Culpepper wanted her to take the case. “Book me a train,” she said, then rolled the scroll up into a tight tube and tucked it beneath her cobalt scapular. She cast him an accusatory glare. “You buried the lede.”
“Did I?” His bushy brows rose in surprise, but she saw right through him and scoffed.
“This has the stink of demons about it, Chief. I’m not the best inspector for this job; I’m the only one.”