30. RIGHT THERE IN WHITE
RIGHT THERE IN WHITE
IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT RYE HAD TAKEN PRELIMINARY STOCK OF what they’d captured in the morgue. Embry was beginning to suspect that if he’d actually slept at all during their “rest time,” it was with his eyes wide open and the case on his mind.
“There are about thirty pictures here.” Because he was Rye, he didn’t pull punches; he just said it in the same matter-of-fact tone he’d use to confirm that they’d lost a tree limb in an ice storm, and he’d be taking care of it so Lazarus wouldn’t have to.
“Do you want me to page through or do you want to do it?”
Embry swallowed, straightened her spine enough to sit on her own, and unfolded her legs from her chest. Feet on the floor. “I can do it.” She gestured to the coffee table. “Put it there?”
Rye did. And they both leaned forward on the couch cushions, not even pretending to watch the movie anymore.
The change in position meant her knee knocked with Rye’s.
She didn’t move it away. One contact point would be okay—the utterly ridiculous racing of her heart had slowed with the seriousness of what she was about to see.
And if she was being honest with herself, that little wedge of contact might be something she’d need to get through this. Grounding, not distracting.
The first picture showed Oakley’s snow-white face.
Her makeup was smeared and blotchy, still clinging to her skin in patches so warm they almost looked like mottled bruising.
Gone was the cherry-red lipstick she’d shared with Embry and Ames, though her lips were still stained by the vibrant color, which only served to make the bluish tint around her mouth and nose worse in the unforgiving brightness of the morgue light.
The next handful of pictures were various angles of Oakley’s face, head, and neck.
No contusions, no scratches, not a single mark on her.
But there was definitely a blue tinge to her mouth.
Embry had taken enough advanced science courses in the STEM building to have an easy guess as to why.
“Did the medical examiner say if the poison cut off her oxygen supply?”
Rye nodded. “Yes, whatever it is asphyxiated her. I hadn’t thought at all about the way vampires breathe, but they do.
It isn’t just a reflex from their previous life, or a cover to make them look more human.
As far as everything I’ve read in this report, it’s clear vampires—or at least ones made like Oakley—have working organs. They just run on blood.”
“And that was enough to kill her? Cutting off her oxygen so her blood couldn’t flow?”
“In part,” Rye answered. “Wooden stakes, silver bullets, and, well, chopping off the head are the most common ways of killing them because a massive disruption of the circulatory system—which not only pumps their blood but is the only way they absorb nutrients—leads to a systemic shutdown. Debris from the wooden stake is as problematic as the actual wound to the heart, the chemical properties of silver poison the system almost immediately, and, well, you can guess what type of disruption beheading would cause.”
“But magical poison?” Embry asked. She genuinely didn’t know, other than that it would have to be powerful enough that only a witch could do it. She wasn’t that witch, though, and didn’t have the foggiest clue of how something like this would work.
“Regular poison typically wouldn’t work to kill a vampire because their systems are very sophisticated—they have to be to work for three hundred years.
A vampire’s circulatory system is smart and recognizes an intruder in the blood immediately.
Just like it would with tainted blood a vampire might ingest.” Rye tapped his phone.
“I thought the same thing you did when I saw her face and did some secure googling about vampiric anatomy while I was waiting for our Indian food. Anyway, the poison used here had to be magically altered in a way that’s specifically tailored to disrupt Oakley’s system. ”
Embry nodded, her mind paging to the thought she’d had when she realized how powerful it would need to be to disorient a vampire fighting for their “immortal” life.
“And it would have to work very quickly for there not to be a sign of a struggle. Maybe injected or inhaled, but the medical examiner didn’t find definitive proof of either. ”
Embry’s heart swelled in hope that it would’ve been painless or near to it.
She swiped to the next photo—one of her friend from the torso up, still in Embry’s blue tulle Into the Woods costume.
“Is it even poison, then? Or is that just an educated guess? Is that something a Table professional is even allowed to do? Guess?”
“I don’t know. It’s a fair question—one for the medical examiner. Though I’m not sure how exactly how we can interrogate her without complicating your case.”
Embry sighed and stared at her lifeless friend, swiping to the next picture. The girl’s black-hole eyes, staring up sightlessly. “What happened to you, Oakley?”
This one was cropped differently, showing her from above, from the top of her head—still crowned—to the ends of her bloodred fingernails, lying limp and prone.
She looked as if she’d just finished a particularly difficult yoga class and was settling in for a rewarding Savasana.
Well, if dress code for any yoga class included a fifty-pound gown, a much-coveted homecoming crown, and a corsage.
Honestly, given another life, Embry would love to go to that yoga class. Ames would totally be down and—
Wait.
Corsage.
A corsage. Oakley had one on her wrist. White, delicate, and—
It looked just like hers.
Embry picked up the phone so she could stab directly at the screen.
Pinched and widened her fingers to zoom in.
Brought it close to her face, sure that the exhaustion, confusion, and emotional devastation of those past few days had her hallucinating.
It’d be on par with the other weird things her body was doing, namely the way it reacted to the person next to her.
“Rye, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” she asked without looking up.
In answer, he placed an index finger on the phone and nudged it back from where it had been apparently hovering an inch from her nose. Now that it was a more shareable foot away from her face, he tilted his head to look. Rye’s brows snaked together. “The corsage?”
“Yes, the corsage!” she exclaimed in a whisper-shout that she hoped couldn’t be heard over whatever was happening in the movie. She’d completely lost track and didn’t care.
“What about it?”
Embry couldn’t help herself; she whacked his upper arm with her closest elbow. “What about it? She didn’t have one on when I saw her last!”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Embry insisted. “And if you don’t believe me, it’s right there on film. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t wearing one.”
“You mean the time you fought, it was videotaped, and then she turned up dead?”
“Why do you have to say it that way?”
“Because you say that’s the last time you saw her alive—something I believe, by the way—but the way other people see it is that it’s not the last time you saw her alive. The last time is right before you ‘killed her’—after that video was taken.”
“Ughhhhh.” Embry groaned in frustration.
“I know, Em. But it’s true.”
“Well, it’s also true she didn’t have it on when I last saw her.” Embry knew she sounded like an entitled brat, but she didn’t care. Rye had seen it all before. “Let’s look.”
She made to search for it on his phone, but instead Rye claimed it from her grasp and typed up a few things. “I downloaded it so I could study it. Not because I want to watch it any more than I have to,” he explained, and pulled up the video. “Ready?”
Embry nodded, and they watched it, again reclined on the couch cushions, their shoulders pressed together, their heads bowed over the screen. The scent of rosemary, soap, and curry filled her nostrils as she watched it play out in real time. Again.
The bad joke Embry made. The fight Oakley picked, pushing back. The spin and stomp of the vampire’s first steps. Embry paused the video.
Both Oakley’s arms were bare.
“No corsage! On either wrist.” Embry stabbed the screen. “Look, you can see mine, easy as can be in the torchlight. If she were wearing one, the white would glow like that.”
In answer, Rye hummed, but instead of actually saying anything, he exited out of the video and pulled up digital prints of the photos he’d taken with his real camera that night.
There were several of Oakley on the stage and again posing with Alistair.
No corsage in any of them. Embry considered going through those pictures more closely for any hints, but right at that moment all she could focus on was this big, glaring white hint that could not be denied.
Unfortunately, Rye’s features weren’t etched with the same excitement Embry knew was written all over hers.
“Why aren’t you thrilled about this?” Even as she asked the question, Embry wasn’t sure why she was excited about her find. Probably just because she was right, because if she really thought about it, what was she proving?
And then, when Rye opened his mouth, he said just as much. Quietly. Worried. “Because just like everything else, it makes you look guilty.”
The elation of being right fled. Embry wanted to chuck his phone across the room.
“So, is it mine?” she asked. “Planted by the murderer? Or is it another one? Made to specifically look like something I had that people could trace to me?”
“Or,” Rye countered, “was it a gift from her co-royalty, Balthazar?”
He’d offered one, or so Oakley had said. But Embry barely believed that herself because even now it seemed like an exaggeration to get her off-balance before Oakley told her about wanting to pursue Rye. Embry shook her head.
“We’ve been over this. Do not bring that sorcerer prejudice of yours into this room.”
“Why not?” Despite the playful tone, his eyes were dark and serious. “It’s fully justified in this case. He gave you the corsage. I saw it—several people saw it—and then you wore it around. You even have it on in the video Skye took of you. Oakley doesn’t have one on her wrist—until she’s dead.”
“That’s—”
“That’s what happened.” Rye reached for his phone. “Would you like to watch it again?”
“No!” Embry snapped, much louder and harsher than she’d intended. Her eyes rolled to the ceiling, her ears straining for signs of movement from Lazarus’s bedroom. After none came and a minute had passed, she said, quietly, “That won’t be necessary. We know there are two—”
“But we don’t know there are two,” Rye argued, much to Embry’s frustration. There he was. The thorn in her side. Always pushing. “Do you have the original with you?”
“I was given minutes to pack. I just grabbed the essentials. So it’s in my dorm room.”
Rye lifted a brow. “Is it?”
“I mean,” she continued, slowly, “I locked the room myself when I was escorted off campus by Martinelli. And I know Daddy has a flotilla of lawyers fighting a search warrant. He would’ve told me if that warrant had been executed.
Well, or if he didn’t, I’m sure I would’ve gotten a call from investigators.
But I didn’t. So I assume it’s still there. ”
Rye considered this, rubbing a hand over the blond stubble on his chin.
“I think that perhaps because you are clearly being framed, there is a high possibility that, like the costume, this corsage is yours. It’ll have your DNA on it.
They have the video of you wearing it. They have photographic evidence of Oakley wearing it after death. ”
Embry turned that over in her mind. “So you think the killer broke into my room after I was asleep, stole my corsage, and planted it on the body as one more finger pointing my way?”
“That’s exactly what I think.” Rye’s shoulders hunched as he shook his head. “I also think it was removed from her body along with her other effects during the autopsy, your fingerprints intact. Another arrow, pointing straight at you.”
Embry hadn’t slept well that night. Had she really lost consciousness deeply enough she wouldn’t have noticed a break-in—magical or otherwise? It would take some skill to bypass the wards and be lucky enough to find her conked out on a night she’d tossed and turned. But…
Thinking about how it could be done, Embry’s gaze skated up to the TV screen, where the Home Alone robbers were in full triage mode as they tried and failed to get past a motivated Kevin McCallister in a nonmagical, non-warded house.
Rye immediately guessed what she was thinking.
“Woodcross, your father made it very clear he doesn’t want me taking you out on another jaunt around town for evidence, and so if you’re thinking about breaking into the Ravenwood PD evidence locker tonight, I’d suggest putting a pin in it.”
Actually, that wasn’t what Embry was thinking at all.