Orla's eyes were expressive enough that he grinned, and let her go. With a sigh, she reached up on her toes and brushed a kiss against his cheek.
"Don't break her heart," she whispered softly, as he turned for the stairs.
"I don't intend to."
"Don't let her break your heart then."
A flinch went through him. "No fear of that, Orla-luv"
"No?" Her words haunted him as he started down the stairs. "If you weren't worried about it, then you'd have had her twice over already."
He paused halfway down the staircase and looked up at her. "She's not the sort of woman you tumble."
"She's the marrying sort?"
He nodded.
Orla's eyes turned big and soft with sorrow. "Oh. Maybe you should tell her then. Let her make her own decisions?"
Not a chance. Kincaid turned his back on her before she could see what was on his face. Thank Christ Orla understood why he couldn't ever touch Ava, even if Ian did not.
Five
"YOU'RE QUIET," AVA murmured as she examined the body.
The riot had disbursed by the time they left Kincaid's uncle's house, leaving the streets oddly bare, though its echoes remained. Rubbish lay strewn in the gutters, glass was smashed in several shop fronts, and a smoky pall hung over everything. There'd been a full dozen Nighthawks holding the scene for her-three times as many as usual for something like this-and they'd been tense as she and Kincaid arrived.
"Got anything?" Kincaid clearly didn't want to discuss the odd scene at his uncle's house, and the way he'd barreled them out of there with barely a goodbye to his cousin.
And then, of course, there was that half-muffled argument she'd tried desperately not to listen to, humming under her breath as voices rose.
"I'm not certain." Ava looked down at the deceased blue blood on the examiner's gurney. She'd been lucky Dr. Gibson, the Nighthawk who managed the mortuary at the guild, had been rostered on when this came in.
"Apart from his name...." Kincaid glanced at the notes the Nighthawks had given them. "Mr. David Thomas. Unfortunate cause of a riot. I wonder if they'll put that on his headstone?"
"Mr. Thomas had nothing to do with the riot," she protested, stroking a gloved finger gently over the deceased man's face. Black veins traced their way through his skin, making him look half-mottled and violent. That was unusual, and clearly where the "disease" had gotten its name. "There was obviously malcontent in this borough with blue bloods, and when he died-revealing his true nature-it set off his neighbors."
They'd heard it all as they entered through the throng of neighbors: such a nice man; never knew he was one of them; a craver living right here on the doorstep; where was he getting his blood from, I demand to know....
Unusual that nobody had ever suspected him. Mr. Thomas's pale skin and preference for night should have given it away, though perhaps-with the response his death and subsequent coming out had achieved-there'd been good reason to keep his true nature under wraps.
It had been a long time since she'd felt uncomfortable with what she was. Or more to the point, uncomfortably aware other people thought her ilk monsters. London had been at peace for three years, damn it.
Ava sighed, and slid her magnifying goggles up on top of her head. "I've taken samples of Mr. Thomas's blood and the froth at his mouth to make sure there's no sign of chemical interference." Not that poison had much of an effect on a blue blood, despite the fact hemlock paralyzed them for several minutes until the virus burned through it. "But something tells me I won't find anything. Gibson would have tested the other victims' blood work. He wouldn't miss something like poison. This fellow appears to have suffered some sort of apoplectic fit, and bitten half his tongue off. The veins disturb me, however, and I think this needs further investigation." What had made them stand out like that? They looked black, and his irises were violently dark, as though the darker side of the craving virus had roused in him before he died.
Blue bloods had darker blood than humans-an almost bluish-red which gave them their name-but that didn't account for the blackness.
There was limited sign of livor mortis too, as though barely any blood had pooled in the corpse's back and legs.
Internal bleeding?
The only time she'd seen something similar was when Malloryn found Zero's body slumped in the cells last month, with no sign of a break-in. Malloryn had intended to question Zero about the whereabouts of her fellow dhampir, and just precisely what they were up to, but she'd been dead.