25. DOWN AT THE STATION （ACT 2）
INSTEAD OF FOOTSTEPS, EMbrY HEARD VOICES. ONE THAT SHE knew: Headmaster Martinelli.
“Is this it? Where she should be?”
In response came the metallic squeak of what sounded like the drawer Rye had just opened and closed. Double shit.
Embry squeezed her eyes closed and waited for an eruption at the discovery of Rye’s very alive body stuffed inside the refrigerated corpse cabinet. But it never came. Instead, there was a loud harrumph and a second squeak of rollers before the metallic clang of a shut drawer.
“I just can’t believe the Table would bungle this so poorly,” the headmaster was saying in a tone that, well, made it sound like yes, she could believe the Table would bungle something that poorly. “To lose a body during an active murder investigation. I mean, it’s unfathomable.”
There was a rustle of feathers along with the aggrieved sigh that accentuated her disappointment. Embry pictured Merlin sighing right along with his master from his perch.
The moment a retaliatory aggrieved sigh came from the second person in the room, Embry knew exactly whom she was with: Inspector Brown.
“Lyla,” he started with a forced familiarity that set Embry’s teeth on edge, “I can assure you we did not lose the body of Miss Riddle. It was reclaimed prematurely by her family.”
Embry stifled a gasp. The vampires stole her body?
As if Martinelli heard her thoughts, she replied to Brown in a goading, annoyed voice, “Who broke in and stole it, per your own admission, is that correct?”
“It is,” the inspector conceded, as bland as can be.
As if to take any sting out of her words and tone.
“However, if they’d just asked during our interview for expedited access to their daughter’s remains, we would’ve complied.
The medical examiner has completed the autopsy, and barring something unusual in the test results from the Table lab in Boston, we would’ve been able to release the body before the completion of our final report.
Unfortunately, they did not ask, and as we know, smaller, more secretive sects like vampires often do not adhere to societal norms, especially when upset. ”
Embry could nearly hear the frown cross the headmaster’s face. “Careful, Inspector, you’re skating mighty close to calling an entire group of magical people uncivilized.”
“I would never do such a thing.” Again, his delivery was so monotoned it gaslit Martinelli in such a way as to nearly make her sound hysterical instead of concerned.
Embry gave Rye a lot of shit, but this man was truly infuriating.
“We’re trying to track down the Riddle clan to discuss the matter, but it’s a complicated and delicate procedure. ”
“You have the family address from my files—how complicated and delicate could it be?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Headmaster.”
“What do you mean you’re not at liberty to say? This is a school matter—”
“It’s a matter of the Table involving people who are not your students,” Inspector Brown said with both zero inflection and zero menace.
The flatness of his delivery made the dismissal even worse—especially because he’d sliced off her sentence with a razor’s edge.
Metaphorical knife plunged deeply as he put Headmaster Martinelli in her place, the man tightly shut that avenue of conversation and pivoted to close out this visit altogether.
“Before I walk you out and get back to work on this case, is there anything else concerning you? It would be efficient if we covered everything here and now.”
His tone was cold enough that Merlin ruffled his feathers. This man clearly had a lengthy list of people he had sent packing without a single pleasantry and planned to add Martinelli to the scroll. But the headmaster had been in administration for a century and would not go lightly.
“Inspector Brown, considering we have a missing body and a missing student, and you seem blasé about both, I don’t believe my copious number of concerns could be covered in a single conversation at this point, and certainly not with you.”
Wait. Missing missing? Did they mean Alistair? He’d dropped out. Which was, like, a formal process, right? He’d just transfer to another Table institution, wouldn’t he?
Brown’s reaction gave her no clues, coming off as flat and inflectionless as a pancake. “Until the family files the missing person paperwork, any concurrent search would pull resources from our murder investigation.”
“I fail to see how you can dismiss his disappearance, given—”
“Lyla,” he said, her first name a grenade, “how about we discuss this in my office? We’ll be more comfortable in there.”
Embry held her breath. Yes, please go to his office. And truthfully it was cold in here. Actually, wouldn’t Rye be freezing? How long had he been in that refrigerated drawer? Wait—did he have enough air to breathe in there? Oh Goddess—
“Discuss it?” the headmaster asked, not even attempting to disguise her utter annoyance. “You mean, have you stonewall me when you know full well his disappearance could be related to Miss Riddle’s death and therefore should not be shoved to the side?”
“Your bird is shivering,” the inspector pointed out. “My office?”
Embry bit her lip, hard, willing with all her might that Martinelli would accept.
Yet another sigh escaped into the morgue, and Embry wasn’t sure which way this argument would be going… but then the headmaster’s light footsteps swept across the industrial tile. “Yes, fine.”
Exhaling in relief as silently as possible, Embry waited to hear both the shut of the closest door but also the pneumatic whine of the outer door before bursting out of the corner office.
Rye flung himself out of the drawer at the same time—or, well, he tried to. His exposed skin was a bluish white, from either the cold or a lack of oxygen or both, and his hands were visibly shaking as he pushed himself up into a seated position.
Embry diverted her path from the vent to help him out of the drawer, but he waved her off. “Get the vent cover. I’ve got it.”
She did. But he did not have it.
Just as Embry removed the cover and began levitating herself up into the vents, an injured hiss escaped into the silent room with the snap of the closed drawer. She whirled toward the sound to see Rye holding his wrist, blood dripping onto the drawer fronts and the tile.
Embry dove for Rye.
“It’s fine, just a sharp edge.”
It wasn’t fine. His palm was sliced clean down the middle and even as blood pooled in the well between his fingers and wrist, the droplets of crimson were everywhere.
She shooed him. “Go, I’ve got it.”
“Em—”
With a decisive unzipping of the belt bag she’d brought for exactly a cluster like this, she withdrew a vial of stain remover and shooed him further. “Go.”
The stain-be-gone made quick work of the blood, just as it had when Oakley had unfortunately sprayed her to-go cup on Embry at Atelier Aradia.
She cleaned the sharp edge of the drawer—noting Rye hadn’t climbed into the empty one labeled RIDDLE, O.
, but the one next to it—plus the whole front of the cabinet, and then hopscotched across the tile, working to get every last drop.
Just as she realized he’d somehow gotten some blood on the steel base of the examination table, the purr of the pneumatic doors whispered into the room.
Immediately, Rye’s good hand lowered from the ceiling, a silent beckoning.
Embry muttered her levitation spell at speed, aiming for and acquiring his hand.
Rye’s grip was icy yet comforting and gone too fast, because by the time her whole body was through and situated belly-first back into the duct, he was already magically lowering the vent cover.
The bright smell of fresh coffee entered the room before the pair of zombies. They were mid-conversation, and Embry used their own voices to cover the four little pings that sounded as the vent screws slid into place. Then she sealed the vent with the soundproofing spell.
“The ME says it’s another one. I just don’t know how that can be.”
Another what? Dead student? Vampire?
“If she says it is, it is,” the other said with a slurp. “Brown can’t get out there until he’s done with—Hey, does it smell like blood in here to you?”
Crap. Rye’s hand was still bleeding profusely.
He’d stuffed it into the sleeve of his Henley and lifted it as far above his heart as he could in the shallow metal tunnel, but that only contained the drip-drip-drip; it didn’t seal it.
He was hemorrhaging straight into the cotton, which was beginning to swell with moisture, the metallic stink of it growing.
Embry rifled through her bag, but her customary bestselling stink stopper wasn’t there. This was a problem she couldn’t fix.
“I mean, it always smells like blood in here to me” came the answer. As the zombie half yelled across the room, Embry dipped into her tiny bag and fished out a tube of salve. “Anyway, better finish the data entry before they arrive.”
Footsteps came from beneath them as Embry looked Rye straight in the eye and took his sleeve-covered hand in hers.
He let her do it. She laid his forearm—still shaped very nicely, Goddess damn him—over the vent and brought his closed palm into the aegis of her metal duct, scooting herself backward to have more room to balance on her forearms over his bleeding hand.
“I knew it! Missed a spot.”
Embry and Rye both tilted their heads to peer around his outstretched arm and through the vent slats.
One zombie was crouched by the base of the table, coffee cup discarded.
If the zombie looked up, they’d be aimed straight at their point of entry.
“The night crew loses a body, and they can’t clean properly. I mean, it’s inexcusable.”
The second zombie came over to inspect the table leg. “Vampire blood is ripe—that’s a lot of aroma for such a small drop.”
“Like, how did they miss it? How did we miss it?” Then, “There’s got to be more, right?”
Embry’s thumping heart began to pound as the pair fanned out to inspect the space for blood. She dumped the rest of the magical stain remover on Rye’s sleeve, watching it sop up the blood like a sponge. Then oh-so-carefully she rolled back the sleeve, revealing the cut.
It was deep; the metal had taken to his frigid flesh like a meat cleaver to cold butter.
It had to hurt like hell. Yet when she looked up to flash her skin perfector salve at him for his consent, his face wasn’t contorted, it was curious.
Color had returned to his cheeks—his heart was probably racing as fast as hers—and the crease between his brows didn’t appear to be from pain but from interest. He nodded.
Embry gooped a thumb-sized measure of salve onto her fingers and gently rubbed it over his palm.
The formula sparked with magic, the warmth of it flooding between her skin and his.
Embry shifted her grip, cradling his hand in both of hers, applying the salve with deliberate strokes of both her thumbs.
It wasn’t the medical-grade stuff Van and Allegra had used, but hopefully it’d work.
When it was done, she looked up only to find Rye staring back, a wonder in the depths of his inspection that Embry wasn’t sure she’d seen before. Though the intensity of it was reminiscent of the way he’d studied her like art the night of the homecoming court.
As if she were something precious rather than familiar.
Embry couldn’t take the heat of it anymore, her heart rabbiting so hard against her breastbone, she was sure the zombies below could pick up on it. She dropped her gaze, but when she did, it settled on his palm. And before she knew what her own body intended—
Embry kissed Rye’s hand.
Suddenly aware of what she’d done, Embry wrenched herself away and stared at the spot. She couldn’t see evidence of it, the impression of her mouth in the shiny glaze of salve, but she felt it. It’d happened. That had happened. She’d done that.
Then Rye’s hand caught Embry under her chin and tipped her face up to his.
The intensity in his eyes hadn’t waned, but it had changed.
Thunderstruck now instead of pointed. The knot at his throat bobbed—he wanted to say something, but Embry had to cut this off at the pass.
Whatever words came with that look were not ones she was in any state to hear.
“I’m sorry, I’m tired and loopy, and I’m glad you’re okay and we’re okay. Sorry.”
Rye took the words like one of her elbows to the gut or donkey kicks to the calf. His full mouth thinned; he blinked himself out of that intense stare, breathed thinly through his nose.
“Perhaps,” he started, wetting his lips and slowly withdrawing his hand from Embry’s chin, “we need a few hours’ sleep before we analyze our findings. So we’re of sound mind… and not making hasty judgments.”
They hadn’t slept in, what? Thirty-six hours at least? Maybe more. And Embry was clearly not of sound mind in this very moment. Rye was kind to lump himself in with her as far as being tired enough to make rash, strange decisions.
From below came the sound of one zombie announcing to the other, “I don’t see any more blood splatter. Just bleach it.”
“The night shift should have to bleach it. Why do I have to bleach it?”
“Your funeral if the ME brings a body into a contaminated environment and you knew about it.”
“You knew about it—”
The slamming of an office door reverberated through the eerie silence of the morgue until it was bookended by the indignant stomping of the remaining zombie, and the muffled muttering and crashing of cleaning supplies.
Embry swallowed hard and finally nodded. “No hasty judgments.”