“No problem.”
“The room is remarkably clean,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “No fibers, no small particles. Nothing. They wiped it down, meaning they knew we’d find it.”
“It’s unusual for serial killers to move like that,” Nina said, and Glenn shrugged.
“The stain in the corner is coolant from the machine they moved. Jenks told you about the ductwork?”
I nodded. “Cleaned out. He told me the computers were wiped, too. It might be nice to know what programs were on them. And the ones that were stolen.”
“Already have a call in to the university,” Glenn said.
Ivy had finished with the lab guys, and Glenn shifted to make room for her before he could possibly have heard her coming. Nina made a small noise as she noted it. “There was a lot of fear here,” Ivy said as she scuffed to a stop. “I’m not registered to do a court-rated moulage, but you can tell what’s coming from the cabin and what isn’t, and there’s a lot to be accounted for.”
Nina closed her eyes and breathed deep. “I taste it, too,” she said, and I shivered when her eyes opened, black as sin. “Perhaps that was why they chose to be here. Someone passing in the hall wouldn’t be as likely to notice. My God, it smells good.”
Camping here because of the cabin’s moulage was a good theory, but I was betting the computers they took were the real reason.
Ivy’s attention flicked to Nina, worry pinching her brow as the dead vampire struggled to bring Nina back under control. As I watched, Ivy suddenly frowned and turned away, as if refusing to acknowledge the incident. Ivy had a tremendous—and usually hidden—need to nurture, and I knew the risk that the master was putting Nina through was bothering her.
“So,” I said as I slid from the counter in an effort to put more space between me and Nina, quietly vamping out. It was a longer drop than I had counted on, and my ankles, stiff from the cold, hurt. “You ready to let me move around, Glenn? I’ve been waiting hours.”
Jenks laughed, and the tension eased even more. “Face it, Rache,” he said, slipping gold dust as he warmed up. “You and crime scenes don’t mix. You should have seen the mess she made of one last year.”
“Which one was that?” Ivy dropped back a few steps to make room for me, worry for Nina showing in her slow movements. “Getting her fingerprints on the sticky silk at Kisten’s boat, or touching things at the house with the banshees?”
“Hey! I’m being good,” I said, not as upset about the ribbing as I thought I’d be. Must have been the cocoa—or that the laughter at my expense was giving Nina’s master something to hook his control on to and calm her down. “I’m sitting here waiting my turn until everyone else gets what they want. And if you remember, I found the information that turned the entire case around. Both times.” My mood became suddenly melancholic as I remembered Kisten. Sorry, Kisten, I thought, my gaze down on my damp, dirty shoes. Damn memory charms. No wonder Newt was nuts.Recognizing my mood and knowing its source, Glenn tapped his clipboard against his palm. “We’re almost done, yes.”
“Then you want to know what the amulet pinged on?” I said as I pulled it from underneath my shirt. “I do.”
Jenks’s wings hummed in anticipation as he moved to my shoulder where he could watch better, but Glenn looked betrayed. “You mean—”
Nina put a hand on my other shoulder, and I stiffened. “There’s more, yes,” she said, her voice low, rich, and rolling with her master’s accent. Jenks had taken off when I shuddered, and I slipped out from under Nina’s grip.
“No touching,” I said, glaring at her. “Okay? Them’s the rules.”
Ivy, too, wasn’t happy, and Jenks was nearly beside himself, sifting a bright red dust as he hovered with his hands on his hips. Nina ignored them both, hands behind her back. “Rachel, you’ve developed your timing to the point of exquisite delayed gratification,” she said. “Use your amulet. I’m dying to know what drew us here.”
“You mean it wasn’t the ambient residual evidence?” Glenn said, and I filed that away for future use. Ambient residual evidence. Nice.
“No.” I frowned as I pointed at the patch of new concrete behind him. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that.”
“That what?” Jenks asked as I went to stand over it, watching the amulet more than my feet clinging damply to my garden shoes.
“That this,” I said flatly, pointing at the new cement.
Glenn came over and looked down. “That what?”
“This,” I said more stridently. “The floor. Where they poured the new concrete?”
Glenn’s brow furrowed. “Uh, the floor looks fine to me,” the FIB detective said.
“No friggin’ way!” I exclaimed as the last of the FIB crew left. “You can’t see the patch of new concrete? It’s right there!”
Ivy and Nina came over and looked down, but I could tell they couldn’t see it, even when Jenks walked right over the seam, spilling a faint hint of dust. “There’s a patch of new concrete!” I said, pointing down. “Right there! It’s about three by four. You can’t see it?”
Glenn crouched and ran a hand over the floor. “I can’t even feel it.”
“No fairy-assed way!” Jenks strutted over the floor, looking for but not seeing what I was. Scared, I backed up. Nina was waiting for me when my head came up, and I froze at the anger in her expression.
“Maybe Ms. Morgan can see it because she poured it?” the vampire suggested.
Ivy’s hands clenched, and Jenks rose up, his fingers on his garden sword. “You take that back!” he shouted. “Rachel can see it because it’s a curse, and she’s in the demon collective,” he exclaimed, and I winced. I had a feeling I could see it because I wasn’t in the collective, not because I had been.
“Will you take it easy!” I exclaimed, and Jenks zipped back to me, leaving a slowly falling cloud of silver dust. “I’ve never been down here, Nina, and you know it. You smell me down here? Huh? Do you?”
“No,” she said, clearly reserving judgment.
Disgusted, I turned my back on her, not wanting to know what was under the floor but knowing we’d have to find out. I didn’t like the fact that I was the only one who could see it.
Jenks hovered close, then landed on my shoulder. “How come we can’t see it, Rache?”
Taking a breath, I brought my head up. “I don’t know,” I lied, figuring it was a demon curse that required the collective to work. Curses stored and doled out from the collective didn’t recognize me because of my complete lack of connection to the lines, a basic, living connection to the source of all energy that even the undead and humans had. I was special, and I hated it, even if it was a good thing in this instance.
“Maybe we should open it.” I looked up, reading worry in Ivy, doubt in Glenn, and mistrust in Nina. “I’m telling you, something is buried under the floor.”
Glenn put one hand on his hip and stared down at the floor. “Where are the outlines?”
My pulse hammered. I went back to my bag on the counter and dug in it until I found my magnetic chalk under my splat gun. Breath held, I carefully crouched over the floor, moving awkwardly so Jenks wouldn’t lose his balance and have to fly from my shoulder as I ran a line next to the seam.
Nina bent over the lines when I stood, a young, manicured hand feeling the line as the old presence in her analyzed what it might mean. “I still don’t see it.” Stretching, she snagged a metal rod from a pile. There were others inside the glass box propping up the pen, and she tapped it experimentally on the floor, her back hunched, making her look old. I retreated to stand beside Ivy as Nina continued tapping, her expression shifting when the tone changed as she worked her way off the new floor and onto the old.
Nina looked up, her eyes fixing on mine with such ferocity I could almost see the undead vampire in them. “There is something under here,” she said, and I shivered.
“Yeah, we know, dirt nap,” Jenks said. “Rachel already told us.”
“Chill, Jenks,” I said, and he clattered his wings, cold when they brushed my neck.
“Can we get a saw here?” Glenn shouted, but everyone was gone.
“Back up,” Nina said as she took a firmer stance, feet spread wide. “It’s hollow. I’ll open it up.”
I was getting a really bad feeling. Whatever was under the floor was close to but not quite identical to the man in the park. Ivy yanked me out of the way, and I stumbled. My eyes were fixed on the new concrete, hidden by a curse tied to the collective. Someone had made a deal with a demon. Or, even worse, they had succeeded in duplicating demon blood and twisted the curse on their own. Watching Nina lift the bar over her head, I wasn’t sure which one scared me the most.
Nina sent the butt of the support bar crashing into the floor with a grunt. The cement cracked at the blow, and Jenks left me in excitement. Again the vampire swung. This time, the pole went right through, the resounding crack of cement seeming to shake me to my bones. Nina stumbled to catch her balance, and Glenn reached out to stop her fall before she could tread on the broken slab.