Page 8 of Demon's Bluff
“She isn’t coming back,” Ivy assured him as she chewed, her eyes wide and blinking. “Tell you what. You sit here and enjoy what’s left of my dinner, and I will pop her in the furnace. All you have to do is sweep out the bin and put her in a box for her next of kin.”
I fought to keep my expression neutral. Ivy knew how to work the furnace? There were some things I didn’t want to know, and that was one of them.
Jack glanced at the pizza again. “Constance did this?”
Ivy nodded as she pulled a square of paper towel from the nearby roll.
“And I’m not going to see any paperwork, right?” he asked, and I shook my head. I.S. sanctioned or not, it was still illegal. And easy. I didn’t like easy.
Motions holding a heavy reluctance, Jack yanked open the top drawer of the metal desk, shuffling about until he found an old, overly thick key.“You know the code to open the door?” he said as he extended it, and Ivy dropped what was left of her slice into the box to take it.
“Jack, you are a gem!” she exclaimed, pulling him across the desk to give him a quick buss on his cheek. Key in hand, she flounced to the gurney. “Rachel, I could use a hand.”
“Sure.” I jammed the crust into my mouth and pulled a paper towel from the holder, quickly wiping my fingers clean before dropping it in the trash. Jack had gone several shades to red, which made me wonder if Jack had done it for the kiss, not the pizza—even if he was now focused on it like a terrier on a bone.
Arms swinging, I followed Ivy through the second set of doors. There were four rows of drawers on either side, humans on one, vamps on the other, and everyone else where they could find space. As Jack had said, every drawer seemed to have a name tag, but Ivy was headed for the wide metal door set past the small waiting area.
“Hey, um, Ivy? How many times have you done this?” I said as she rolled Brice’s body past the comfortable chairs arranged around the low table.
“Don’t worry. The kiln is easy to operate.” Ivy eased the gurney to a halt before what looked like a fire door, then tapped a door panel awake with one manicured finger. Without hesitation, Ivy typed a five-digit code into the keypad…and the lock disengaged with a metallic thump.
45202.My eyebrows rose. The building’s zip code? Not much of a password.
I waited as she pushed the door open, flicked on the lights, and wheeled Brice into another low-ceilinged room. “That’s not what I asked,” I said as I followed her, taking a moment to make sure the unusually thick door wasn’t going to shut on its own. The walls and floor seemed new, but the kiln itself was old, its corners softened under decades of black paint.
Ivy used the old, oversize key Jack had given her to open the waist-high, oven-like door to show a surprisingly modern-looking interior with smooth, tarnished walls and gleaming burners. A digital panel beside thedoor suggested it had been retrofitted sometime in the nineties. Below the large door was a smaller one to retrieve the ashes. Somewhere in between was probably a cremulator. It was hard to turn a body to ash unless the heat was hellacious, and this unit looked too old. Truth be told, the city morgue’s kiln wasn’t used that often, as there were far nicer crematoriums within the city limits. It was the city master’s furnace.And I am using it…
She still hadn’t answered me, and I took a quick breath at the thump of igniting gas and the whine of a fan. It was a stark reminder that she had once been Piscary’s scion—until she had started saying no and Kisten had stepped in. And then Kisten had said no and had been punished.
I wasn’t sure why I was even here as Ivy used the mitts hanging beside the door to pull out the tarnished rack as if preparing to bake some bread—and then angled the plastic-wrapped body onto it. Motions smooth, she pushed Brice in and locked the door using that oversize key. With a methodical quickness, she dropped to the second, smaller door, doing a quick check to make sure the ash from the last run was gone.
Finished, Ivy bowed her head. “You should have been smarter,” she said softly, clearly speaking to Brice. “Your ignorance is your fault. I should have known you were ignorant and stopped you. That is my fault.” Jaw tight, she hit the start button. Only then did the furnaces come on full with a muted lion’s roar.
It wasn’t a touching eulogy, but it was more than I would have expected.
Head down, Ivy pushed the empty gurney to the morgue. “Jack will make sure that her scion gets her ashes,” she said. There was no victory in her voice, only a depressing knowledge that she was probably going to die on the same sword she wielded.
“Ivy, I’m sorry,” I said as I walked beside her. This was why she had asked me to be here. To do this alone too often would break a person.
“For what?” Her voice was light, but I could hear the bound pain in it.
“That you have to do this to protect someone you don’t even love.”
“It protects you,” she said as she pushed the set of double doors open.
A little huff of chagrin escaped me, and then I stopped stock-still,almost running into Ivy as she jerked to a halt. Jack was gone, and a young woman, almost a girl, really, sat in his stead, boot heels propped on the desk as if she owned it.
“Elyse Embers. This is a surprise,” I said, and the tall, brown-skinned, straight-haired woman took a somehow…mocking bite of pizza. My guess put her heritage heavily slanted toward South America even though her accent was a hundred percent Midwest vanilla.
“Hey, hi.” She dropped the slice back into the box. “An extra-large with everything,” she said as she ripped a paper towel from the roll. “Is that the going price for cremation these days?”
“We brought a six-pack of Topo Chicos, too,” I smart-mouthed. It might not have been the cleverest comeback, but I got bitchy when surprised.
“Where’s Jack?” Ivy asked, the rim of brown around her pupils shrinking.
Elyse bobbed her head, acknowledging her. She would have looked like a collage freshman at a mixer if not for the money behind her lightweight black silk jacket, trendy jeans, and classy boots. The diamond pin in the shape of a Möbius strip on her lapel was her badge of office, and she wore it front and center as the coven of moral and ethical standards lead member. She was too young for the position. Again, not my fault.It is not.
“I sent him to find some real napkins,” she said as she wiped her fingers clean. “He thinks I’m working with you,” she added as she came out from behind the desk. “What a cutie.”