Page 7 of Demon's Bluff
“Okay,” Ivy echoed, a familiar tightness to her voice. She was testy, probably because Constance hadn’t cooperated and she’d gotten to the party late, putting me in a danger that existed only in her mind. I hadn’t been in any danger.
“Ah, you do know I could have dropped her at any time,” I said, trying to work this out. “I was only waiting to give Constance a chance to handle it.”
“That’s not it.” She squinted over her phone at me. I made a questioning face, and her brow scrunched. “Trent is good for you. You know that, right?”
My lips parted in surprise. “Ah…”
Ivy yanked Brice’s corpse up straight again. “What I mean is, you think before you act now, and you’re not trusting to chance as much. Steady.” She slumped where she stood. “Your life expectancy is longer with him than with me, and I hate it.”
“Ivy,” I whispered, and she shrugged as I touched her shoulder, my eyes glistening. She and I had a past, and I knew we had a future. It wasn’t the one that Ivy had wanted. Planned on. Plotted for.
“I’m not complaining,” she said as she ran the back of her hand under her nose. “Just pointing it out so you don’t screw it up. I don’t have to like it,” she finished softly. “Vampires bring out the worst parts of you, and elves bring out the best.”
“And demons?” I said as the doors opened and a cool chill eddied in around our ankles. I picked up the six-pack and followed her into the low-ceilinged, tile-floored hallway. “Because demons are so steady.”
Ivy shot me an amused look over her shoulder. “Al would sooner set himself on fire than hurt you,” she said as she walked, and a feeling of guilt flickered. “Don’t mind me. I’m happy. Happy for you, happy for me.”
I had to move fast to keep up with her, following the big blue arrows on the wall to one of Cincy’s oldest morgues, buried at the base of a city building.
Unfortunately Al wasn’t the only demon in existence, and my bootsscuffed the dirty tile as I wondered if Ivy’s mood might be stemming from the fact that the last time we’d been to the morgue together had been to identify Kisten. We had gotten here too late. Someone at the I.S. had pushed his cremation up by two days to eliminate any possible evidence of wrongdoing. It was very much like what we were doing here. The I.S. worked hard to keep the city’s master vampire happy. That I was now doing the same bothered me.
“Gurney,” I said when we turned a corner, and Ivy unceremoniously dropped the wrapped body onto it and pushed the wheel-rattling cart through the next set of double doors.
“Hey, Jack!” I heard her exclaim faintly as I lingered in the hall, eyebrows rising at the sign over the door.Cincinnati Morgue, an equal opportunity service since1966.
Nineteen sixty-six. That was the year the Turn began, when all but the elves came out of the paranormal closet to save what was left of humanity and prevent society from complete collapse. Roughly forty years later, humanity was still a minority, tough justice seeing as the plague was probably their fault, as it had been traced to a bioweapon that had gotten loose and spontaneously fixed itself into the genome of a genetically modified tomato. The now-extinct, fuzzy black tomato that could handle drought and cold temps had been distributed across the globe. It was going to save the world. Instead, it destroyed it.
“Tamwood, no,” a masculine voice said, and I pushed through the double doors. “Not tonight.”
It wasn’t Iceman behind the desk, but Jack, and I set the six-pack on an empty gurney just inside the door as Ivy wheeled Brice’s corpse deeper into the large rectangular room. File cabinets lined one wall. An ancient, ugly desk that should have been thrown away in the seventies sat across from them. This was the admittance room. The morgue itself was beyond a second pair of swinging doors. There were no necropsies or autopsies performed here. It was strictly storage, either for one of Cincy’s mortuaries or, in the case of living vamps crossing into their undead stage, for self-repair. Intervention was not allowed. If the vampire virus couldn’t mendtheir body in three days, they would starve and die their second death—from a lack not of blood but of aura.
It wasn’t common knowledge outside of vampiric circles that it wasn’t actually blood that the undead needed but the aura the blood carried. The soft energy given off by the soul bathed the body, convincing the mind that a soul was present and that they were alive. Lose that, and the mind shuts down to bring the mind, body, and soul back in line. It was the vampire virus that tricked the mind into believing that borrowed auras were from its own soul, and if an undead wasn’t able to take in blood for any reason, as soon as the residual aura was gone, the mind realized the body was dead, and it followed suit.
“Where’s Iceman?” I asked, and Jack’s gaze shot to me.
“Night off.” Clearly nervous, Jack stood up from his thick textbooks and tugged his scrubs straight. “Ivy, I can’t.”
Ivy locked the gurney’s wheels. “Come on, Jack,” she wheedled. “I brought you dinner. It’s you or the river. I’m only thinking of the river otters. You like river otters, right?”
The young man’s gaze lingered on my developing bruises and the obvious floor burn. “I saw the news. That’s Brice Witherspoon. She’s got to be at least forty years dead. There will be questions. You can’t tell me no one saw you bring her down here.”
I set the pizza beside the Topo Chicos on the empty gurney and lifted the lid. Ivy had her foot on the desk, pretending to tie her boot to show off her physique. The guy was a student, though, and I knew where his true desire lay. Smirking, I took a sliver of pizza, eyes closing as I angled it into my mouth.
The “mmmm” that escaped me was one hundred percent real. Tart and tangy. Piscary might be twice dead, but his legacy lived on in his pizza, and I practically groaned as the cheese lifted and pulled.Pizza has vegetables on it.
I wasn’t sure why Jack was being so reticent despite it being as irregular as all hell. The I.S., or Inderland Security, was who policed the paranormals. They didn’t likeme, but Constance technically ownedthem, whichwas why Ivy had brought Brice’s body here instead of the no-questions-asked safe-haven box at Spring Grove Cemetery.
“Of course people saw me bring her down,” Ivy said, a flicker of annoyance crossing her face when she realized he was watching me instead of her. Mood closed, she took her boot off the desk. “You don’t thinkIdid this, do you? It was Constance. Brice made a play. Lost. End of story.”
Jack waved a hand at the hall, pointing. “Then take her to the I.S. morgue.”
Ivy smiled to show her teeth. “This is faster,” she said. “Well, ifyoudon’t want it…”
That was my cue, and I lifted the box with one hand and brought it to the desk, dropping it with a heavy thump, sending the aroma of cheese and tomato billowing into the air. “Mmmm,” Ivy groaned as she angled a slice in, hunched and giggling when the cheese pulled and snapped.
I didn’t like this blatantly manipulative side of Ivy. It was weird.And working,I decided as Jack gazed longingly at the pizza.
“Ah, I don’t have any space left for self-repair,” he said, and Ivy beamed, the joyful expression looking wrong on her.