CHAPTER 1 #2
Once the required ingredients were diced, ground into powder, and measured into their appropriate amounts, I followed the instructions and carefully mixed everything together.
I followed each step exactly. There was too much at stake!
I would not fuck this up. But... what if I accidentally made the body spontaneously combust or something?
Nope, not manifesting failure.
With my preparations complete, I looked around wishing I had another table down here to put the body on so I wouldn’t have to work crouched on the cold, perpetually damp floor.
I could have asked Alice for one of the spare tables they had at the morgue, but screw hauling one of those heavy things down those steps or through the narrow cellar doors.
It wouldn’t have fit in my car anyway. One heavy body was enough for today, thank you very much.
I dragged said body out of the ice and onto the floor. As I slowly unzipped the bag, my nerves bubbled with excitement like a kid with an early Christmas present. I couldn’t help but sit there and simply admire him for several long seconds like a total creep.
He truly was a beautiful specimen. Even all ashen gray and, well... dead.
I had known immediately when I’d seen him on that table that my search had finally, gloriously, come to an end.
***
An hour earlier...
“I found one!” Alice’s excited voice cheered through the phone pressed to my ear.
“Found what?” I asked as I perused the baked goods section of the Eggsorcist Market. “A new brain? Sorry Ali Cat, that probably won’t help you much.”
I could practically see her scowling at me, feel her glare burning straight to my soul. If she’d been a witch, I would have long since been cursed.
“Do you want the body or not?” she asked, more than a touch of menace in her tone.
I full-on dropped the shopping basket in my hands with a dramatic gasp. My few meager groceries spilled across the polished supermarket floor.
“You found one?!” I exclaimed, earning a few shocked and concerned gazes from the shoppers around me. I ignored them all.
She replied slowly as if I was stupid, “That’s what I just said.”
I couldn’t contain my elation as excitement bubbled up in the form of a manic cackle. Alice knew exactly what I had been looking for. And handsome young men didn’t just happen to wind up dead around here.
“Look, everyone is heading out for the day,” she continued. “He’s scheduled to be cremated tomorrow morning, so it’s now or never Victor.”
I fell to my knees, scrabbling to pick up my scattered groceries and hastily toss them back into my hand basket.
“I’m on my way,” I announced, hastily shoving my glasses back up my nose. “Be there in fifteen.”
I promptly ended the call, abandoned the cookie isle, and rushed through the self-checkout. After loading my groceries – okay, chucking them into the backseat – I jumped in my car and drove straight there.
To the town morgue.
Once I’d arrived, I texted Alice letting her know that I had parked out back next to the employee entrance.
I was literally bouncing on my toes as I repeatedly hit the button on the intercom for her to buzz me in.
It was after five, so I knew the regular full-time employees had gone home already.
That meant I could be as annoyingly insistent as I wanted.
Even if more people were here, I couldn’t have been bothered to care.
I had been waiting for this for so long!
Excitement buzzed through me like I was a live wire.
“Satan’s thong, calm your tits Vic.” Alice’s fuzzy voice sounded through the little intercom speaker.
“These non-existent tits will not be calmed. Lemme in!”
She groaned as if this entire interaction pained her greatly. “I’m starting to regret telling you about this.”
The lock on the door clicked free, and I wasted no time in throwing it open and practically sprinting down the white halls.
I had been here a disturbing number of times before, so I knew the way to Alice’s office.
Once I was standing outside of the simple white door with the silver plaque displaying “Alison Monroe, MD, Medical Examiner,” I didn’t even bother knocking as I hurtled into the room.
“Where is he?” I demanded, gasping as if I’d just run a god-damn marathon.
I scanned the room and wilted when I saw no body as she had promised. I stood there clutching the door handle as I stared down my best friend.
She was sitting behind her desk, her violet hair pulled up into a messy bun and her thick-rimmed glasses resting on her pierced nose. She waved a fully tattooed hand in front of her,
“Please, do come in.”
My eyes narrowed. “Was this a trick?”
She barked a laugh and stood to pull off her pristine lab coat, casually draping it over the back of her desk chair.
“I’m mean but not cruel, Vic. Not like you witches.” She reached up and patted my cheek none too softly as she passed by me and strode out through the doorway. “Come on.”
I dutifully followed her petite form, too anxious to argue and too exhilarated to think clearly.
As we made it to the fridge room – that was actually what they called it – I took in the long space lined by uniform rows of square, steel doors.
Each floor-to-ceiling column held three little doors with handles I knew could be pulled open, each holding a table with its designated body.
“I had to wait our policy’s mandatory seventy-two hours before telling you. Didn’t want to get your hopes up,” Alice began. “And run a background check, just in case. But if anyone asks, you can claim to be his cousin or something.”
“You’ve been sitting on this life-changing news for three days?” I asked, appalled.
“Well, it would obviously be a very bad thing if you reanimated this guy and, oh, I don’t know, his spouse turned up and saw him. Or what if he was a wanted criminal? Do you want the BPD knocking on your door believing you’re hiding some fugitive and arrest you?”
I scratched my chin. “You make a valid point.”
“Of course I do.”
We stopped in front of one of the middle rows of doors and I watched with bated breath as Alice grabbed the handle and pulled open the waist-high square door. After the table slid out with a long creak, my eyes landed on the silhouette of a body shrouded in ghostly white.
When she pulled back the top half of the sheet, I gasped for the second time that day and slapped my hand to my chest like some overwrought Victorian lady.
“He’s... He’s perfect.”
He was tall, had to be at least six and a half feet, and built with solid muscle.
He had to have lifted weights or something when he’d been alive because...
damn. He had thick, neat brows and dark raven hair that was longer on the top and buzzed short on the sides.
An industrial pierced through his left ear while several hoops decorated his right.
He even had one eyebrow and his bottom lip pierced.
Fuck that was hot. His nose was straight and slightly wide with a smattering of freckles, and his jaw was finely sculpted.
I never thought I would find myself describing a jaw as “sculpted.”
And... Oh my god, was that a chin dimple? I leaned forward and grinned; he had the most subtle indent there, right in the center. It was damn adorable. Everything else about him, however, was far from cute. He was masculine and rugged.
My eyes continued their thorough examination tracking the many bruises and minor cuts along his upper arms and torso before making it to his chest. I swallowed hard as I stared at his nipple piercings.
Fuck. Yes.
“Vic, meet Camden Hawkins. Age twenty-seven. Born February twenty-ninth of ninety-six. Leap year baby and a Pisces,” Alice told me. “Did you know a Pisces is your literal perfect match as a Scorpio?”
I barely heard Alice’s ramblings as I took in his countless tattoos decorating the ashen skin of his chest, arms, and even up the side of his neck.
The artwork was interrupted by the Y-shaped incision running across his chest and down his sternum from the autopsy.
It was stitched neatly back together, and I knew without asking that it had been Alice’s handiwork.
He had some wicked road rash sporadically painting his torso, and several deep purple and red bruises.
What in the world had happened to this guy?
I gripped the edge of the sheet and tugged it further down, too tempted to see what other assets this beautiful beast had been blessed with, but stopped when I noticed the left arm. Well, the lack thereof.
I cleared my throat, “Except, he’s missing a few...”
“Limbs? Yeah. Bottom half of his left leg too,” Alice casually replied. “Bad motorcycle accident. His original limbs were recovered but unsalvageable. Other than that, he’s pretty much your request to the letter. No one has claimed him, and he also doesn’t fit any missing person’s descriptions.
“He does have a bit of a record, but he’s not wanted for murder, rape, assault, or animal abuse, so he’s clean in my book.”
I nodded, “He likely won’t remember his past once I bring him back anyway, though.”
I wasn’t entirely sure how true that statement was, but I was leaving with this body one way or another.
My eyes landed on a pucker-shaped mark on the front of his right shoulder. I almost didn’t notice it seeing as it was covered by his tattoos.
“Is that...”
“A gunshot scar?” Alice finished for me. “Yeah.”
“Damn.” What kind of record did this guy have? I didn’t let that deter me, though.
“As for the arm and leg, I picked some replacements off of another body scheduled for cremation tomorrow,” she told me. “Figured they would work for you. They’re pretty similar in size and skin tone to this guy.”
“You really know the way to a man’s heart.” I batted my eyelashes at her.
She snorted, “Mandy would claim otherwise.”