Blood Heir (Aurelia Ryder, #1)(44)

“Those are claw marks,” Stella said. She held her hand up, sizing them up. “Big boy.”

“It had trouble fitting through,” I murmured.

We stared at the window. There were no claw marks on the wall. No tracks on the lawn on the other side of the path either. It didn’t run up and climb the building. It had to have flown. A manticore checked some of the boxes: winged, large, carnivorous, fangs. You could probably train one to attack on command. But they were smaller, and they hunted in packs at dusk, swooping down onto the running prey. They rarely attacked humans. Their preferred targets were deer and herds of feral cattle.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Stella said.

“Yes?”

“Why did you decide to live in that deathtrap?”

Really? “Here we are at a murder scene, examining the claw marks of the perpetrator, three stories up and in poor lighting, and your mind is laser-focused on the mystery of my house. Truly, Knight Davis, no detail escapes your notice.”

“I like to know things. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I like to know things too, like what did you do to get shipped off to Atlanta?”

Stella raised her chin. “I punched a superior.”

Somehow it didn’t surprise me. “How superior?”

Stella pondered the question. “In terms of rank or morality?”

“Hey!” the cop called from the entrance. “You can go up.”

We went up the marble staircase to the third floor where a hallway stretched, interrupted by doors on both sides. Brighter fey lanterns, fastened to the walls, bathed the corridor in sharper light. At least I could see where I was putting my feet.

One of the doors on the left, almost at the end of the hallway, stood wide open. Two people waited by it, a middle-aged white woman in a PAD uniform and a black man in his mid-thirties in a suit and tie. Two others, wearing white coveralls with PAD Biohazard Unit stenciled in red on the back, crouched on the floor by a portable M-scanner.

Biohazard’s official name was the Center for Magical Containment and Disease Prevention, but it was confusing, while “Biohazard” was clear and familiar. Whenever someone reported a freaky life-threatening magic incident, Biohazard would race there, secure the remains, process the scene, and sterilize the site. They were the city’s magical CSI and the first line of defense between it and magical hazmat.

The detective waved us over. He had one of those weary faces that told me he was used to being woken up in the middle of the night to examine the bloody end of someone’s life. For the survivors, the murder of a loved one was the worst thing that ever happened to them. For him, it was early Tuesday morning. Veteran mercenaries and soldiers sometimes looked like that after decades of fighting, except he was barely in his thirties.

He gave us a quick look. “Badges.”

Stella and I held them out.

“What’s the Order’s interest in this case?”

“We believe it’s connected to an ongoing investigation,” I said.

“Which one?”

Telling him about Pastor Haywood would catapult this into high-profile territory. Two things could happen. First, they could hand this murder off to us, the way they gave us Pastor Haywood. Second, far more likely, the PAD would want to hold on to this murder and request any findings from us, because the two cases were connected. That would allow them to benefit from my investigation, while keeping an eye on the Order. There would be a lot of red tape, meetings, and, in the worst-case scenario, a joint task force, which I needed like a hole in the head.

“I’m not at liberty to say. Our findings are not conclusive at this time.”

The detective’s look communicated that he wasn’t born yesterday, that he knew I was dodging, and that he wasn’t impressed.

“I’ll allow you into my crime scene as a courtesy. Don’t cross the chalk line. Don’t touch anything. You have five minutes.”

“Before we go in and the countdown starts,” Stella said, “who found the body?”

“The cleaning crew,” the detective answered. “They work nights because of the heat. The custodian was taking out the trash around ten thirty, noticed the broken window, and came to check. He knocked, Professor Walton didn’t answer, he unlocked the office, and here we are.”

“Any witnesses?” Stella asked.

“No. Graduation was on May 11th, and the summer session doesn’t start until June 1st. The campus is deserted.”

“Thank you.” I stepped into the room. Stella came in right behind me.

The office was a rectangle, and if it were drawn on paper, the door would be in the right bottom corner, by the wall lined with bookcases brimming with volumes and binders. Next to them, a man in his early twenties waited with a bored expression. Bronze-skinned, with big brown eyes and short black hair, he wore the white Biohazard coveralls. A patch with stylized flames marked his left sleeve. A firebug, a pyromage, in case the body rose, grew fangs the size of steak knives, and expressed a desire to eat human faces.

The broken window was in the wall opposite the door, about mid-way, its frame scarred by deep claw gashes and stained with smudges of blood. Something had really dug into the wood, trying to squeeze inside, and then left the same way it came in, smearing the blood of its victim in its wake. Shards of glass from the window littered the floor and the imitation Moroccan rug. In the center of the rug, Alycia Walton’s corpse lay in a crumpled heap, staining the beige carpet fibers a gory burgundy.