CHAPTER SIX
A soul. This body had a soul. Quite excellent.
Hero took a knee beside the twisted wreckage of a once living, breathing child.
She ignored the blood, the flattened skull leaking brain matter, the white bone sticking through a tear of red flesh, and focused on the agitated energy of the violently departed spirit, wild and terrified even in death, when terror should have faded into the background.
But no, this spirit practically radiated fear, as if death hadn’t released her from whatever had driven her over the edge of the clock tower. A very unusual circumstance.
This whole case is unusual circumstances.
She’d come to Clementine Prep to visit Sister Catarine’s apartment when her investigation had been interrupted by this new tragedy, a suicide by all appearances.
More than one witness had seen the girl jump.
No one else had been in the tower, or at least no one anyone could see .
There was no reason to think the girl had been murdered but for the unusually agitated shade.
She’d been in Catarine’s apartment when it had happened.
Since she’d been unable to Commune with her dead shade, Hero had been forced to learn about her through more prosaic methods.
The simple apartment sat in a cloister attached to the school within whose sheltered walls all the nuns who served as teachers at Clem lived, joined by the other avowed sisters of the Shield, a battle order against Pandemonium – at least in theory.
Hero found the designation laughable. They battled nothing beyond humans cursed with demon blood, and those they mostly shunned or abused.
Entering the convent was like stepping back in time; her knees ached with the memory of hours spent kneeling on hard stone or, worse, on tiny grains of rice scattered across those stones.
The very least of her punishments, albeit the most tedious.
Nevertheless, she needed to know Catarine Cisco, and the best way was to put herself in the woman’s shoes.
With the permission of the abbess – a certain Mother Francesca, who was also the headmistress – Hero was allowed access to the cloisters, accompanied by a watchdog, an elder nun with a sour face, silver prayer beads clutched in one hand and a vial of blessed elixir in the other.
Ready to smite the half-demon inspector should she make a wrong move, no doubt.
Hero chose to ignore her as she investigated.
Sister Catarine’s residence was a simple flat with two tiny bedrooms and a common area, shared by her and another nun – a novice, actually.
The roommate had been interviewed by Havenside PKs and taken off the suspect list, though Hero had resolved to speak with her and decide for herself.
The cramped living room contained little furniture beyond a lumpy couch and two mismatched chairs in opposite corners.
There was a small ceramic stove right inside the door providing heat and a convenient place to boil water for tea.
The Book of the Goddess sat in a place of prominence beneath the one window facing the outside world.
The gilded tome was on a wooden stand with a kneeler below it for prayer and contemplation, and had been opened – a velvet ribbon laid between the pages – to the Book of Chains, specifically the verses detailing the most forbidden of demonic summonings.
Plenty of thou shalt not s and eternal damnation s.
A book of warnings, but also an instruction manual in the wrong hands. Interesting.
The bookshelf against one wall was of interest to her, too.
You could tell a lot about a person by what sorts of books they read, books beyond the requisite.
Hero scanned the titles, finding interesting works on philosophy and art among the expected religious manuscripts and devotionals.
A few novels were tucked among the rest, slim and unobtrusive.
Happy tales of finding love, and an adventure story or two.
They were Catarine’s, all marked with a “CC” on their inside covers.
The roommate didn’t seem to have a single book in the collection besides the religious ones her order required her to have.
Not a few of the volumes belonging to CC concerned people like herself, those cursed with demon ancestry. It seemed Catarine had a very strong interest in studying Hero’s kind. Most of the books championed their humanity despite the dark nature of their heritage. Interesting indeed.
“She was very nearly a radical,” Hero commented as she ran her fingers over the spines.
The old nun made a sound. Not a particularly nice sound, either.
The couch and chairs were old and well used, even threadbare, but lace doilies decorated the arms and backs to hide the flaws, all handmade.
No newfangled machine-produced accents for these two ladies.
A stack of crocheted blankets lay nestled in a basket beside the couch, and one was draped across a fat, overstuffed chair in the corner.
A book lay face down on the arm of the chair as if someone had been interrupted in the middle of reading, never to return.
Catarine’s book, Catarine’s chair. Hero could almost picture her curled up beneath her blanket, engrossed in… what? She checked the title on the book’s spine: Love Poems of the Second Age . Dear Goddess. A radical and a romantic.
A few personal items graced the room. Small portraits of family members hung on the walls.
An ivory cameo left on a table. Celestial pendants and silver prayer beads.
A horsehair brush and a pewter comb. Hero touched them all then moved to Catarine’s bedroom – a very typical cell for a cloistered nun, spare and plain, furnished with just a narrow cot against the plastered wall, a nightstand and a washbasin.
No mirrors, of course. She stepped carefully across the floorboards, testing each one.
There. A little give in the wood, creaking beneath the pointed toe of her lace-up boot. She knelt and ran her finger down a slightly larger seam than all the others. Taking a slim knife from her belt, she thrust it into the gap and prized the board free.
“There you are,” she murmured as her eyes feasted on a treasure trove within the hidey hole.
Letters, an entire stack of them, tied with a velvet ribbon.
The same sort of ribbon that marked the page in the Book of the Goddess.
She removed the correspondence and tucked it into the evidence bag she’d brought from the station.
She would read through the letters back at the stationhouse. She might even let Keen have a look–
A shriek of horror sliced through her skull. Pure terror made her breath come fast and her heart race. The world went white. A sensation gripped her. She was falling.
No! No, no, no –
Hero staggered, released abruptly from the vision.
Someone very near had died suddenly, violently.
She spun on her heel and rushed back into the common area.
The old nun jerked at her sudden appearance and raised the bottle of elixir as if to throw it, but then the sound of screaming filtered into the room and her escort’s eyes went wide.
Hero strode past her to the door, not caring if the old bag kept up, and broke into a run once she was outside.
By the time Hero had reached the quad and the dead girl, the nuns in charge had pushed back the crowd of onlookers – students, mostly, distraught, many weeping, already traumatized by the loss of their beloved teacher, and now this.
Sad, but a distraction Hero didn’t need.
She found a short nun, hovering over the dead girl like a fucking buzzard.
Goddess be damned, she fucking hated nuns.
“Clear the quad,” she said, a bit too sharply. She’d whipped off her glasses as soon as she’d reached the body, and the world had too-sharp edges. Fire nipping at the periphery. Hell reaching for her. “I need to concentrate. This spirit is a twirling ninny.”
The nun stiffened. “Mother Francesca,” she said loftily, clearly offended by Hero’s lack of respect.
“Right. Sorry. You all look the same to me.” She shrugged dismissively, giving the nun her back.
“You of all people should know a revered mother when you see one, Sister Viridian.”
Hero bristled and showed her fangs. “Inspector. Inspector Viridian.”
The revered mother sniffed, but she bustled away, her hands clasped beneath her scapular and her back stiff. A few gestures and a few sharp words had the other teachers herding the children back to their studies. No day off for a dead friend, apparently.
Whatever. Hero settled into a cross-legged position on the graveled courtyard directly beneath the clock tower.
That sensation of falling. So obvious what had happened.
A patch of blood lay at her knee, and she was careful not to touch it.
She didn’t need the lingering echoes still attached to the body’s humors.
She needed the departed, the body’s released soul.
So she opened her flame-red eyes wide and entered Hell.
Demonhunter Keen followed his new partner to Clementine Prep after the coroner had finished with the body.
Eager to be of use, and eager to see what his partner would think, he’d gone to find her rather than wait for her return.
It was always best to be proactive, on the ball.
The autopsy had been thorough – so thorough, in fact, he’d nearly lost the rest of his breakfast. Watching the doctor carve up the girl with clinical precision had somehow been worse than witnessing brutal murder.