“At least she was finally found.” I grimaced and swiped at the sweat that snaked down my forehead. “Maybe now we can figure out what the hell happened. I guess there’s no such thing as surveillance cameras around here?”

He shook his head. “Not that work. I already checked.”

I gave his arm a companionable squeeze. “I appreciate the effort.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I just wish the whole situation wasn’t so fucked up.”

I merely nodded in response, suddenly very glad that no one knew the other horrific detail about Brian’s death. It was hard enough on everyone to lose a member of the force, especially under these circumstances, and it wouldn’t help to know that, on top of all that, his essence had been eaten.

A shiver walked down my back, and I turned to step into the gloomy hotel room, steeling myself against the knowledge that this body might be like the others, with nothing but tattered remains of essence fluttering in an ethereal wind.

Jill was inside, taking measurements. She looked up and gave me a small nod of greeting as I entered. “Hell of a way to spend a day, huh?” she said with a shake of her head. “Anyway, I’m finished here. She’s all yours.” She gestured to the floor on the other side of the bed.

I stepped around and was rewarded by the sight of a woman’s body, nude except for a red silk scarf that hung loosely around her throat like an accessory. She lay on her side as if sleeping, eyes half closed with the flat, dull look of death in them. Her hair, auburn and artfully highlighted, snaked across her face, plastered in spots with dried sweat and saliva. She was young—late twenties perhaps—and she had the kind of slender figure I could never hope to attain, no matter how much I exercised. The portion of her body nearest the floor was mottled in red, and a naïve observer might first believe that she was heavily bruised, but I’d seen lividity—or livor mortis—on enough corpses to know that the redness was due to the settling of the blood in the body once the heart ceased pumping.

I crouched by the body, placing my feet cautiously even though the scene had already been photographed and processed. I was still learning the ropes when it came to homicide investigations, but I’d been a cop long enough to know that you had to watch where you stepped on a scene.

I couldn’t tell how long she’d been dead—that determination would have to come from the coroner’s office—but even my limited experience told me that she obviously hadn’t died in the last few hours. But that was a minor concern for me right at the moment.

I was far more focused on her essence, or what might remain of it. I shifted into othersight, nearly swaying in relief when I saw nothing more than a faint shimmering glow. Yes, this was what it was supposed to look like. No tattered threads, no torn edges. Just a soft residue from an essence that departed its shell the normal and natural way instead of being ripped free. This residual glow would linger for a day or two more, then naturally dissipate.

I pulled myself out of othersight and let my gaze travel over her, taking in the whole scene. There were articles of clothing scattered on the floor, but I didn’t see any suitcases or bags.

I glanced back at Jill. “She had a purse?”

“It’s on the table.”

I glanced over. It was a small clutch-size thing—not one of those career-woman monstrosities that could have held a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries. It didn’t look as if she’d planned an extended stay. Or even an overnight one. “Any trace evidence? Fingerprints?”

Jill grimaced. “Sure. Tons. Which is the problem.”

I echoed her grimace. “A few hundred people have been through here, and it all becomes one noisy mess.”

“You nailed it, chick. I’ll do my best, but I think you’re gonna get your best evidence off the body.”

I nodded in understanding, and she stepped away to write dates and times on her evidence bags. I looked again at the strewn garments. I murmured under my breath, “We just liked to play.…” That’s what Brian’s suicide note had said. Damn.

“You find something, Kara?”

I looked up to see that Crawford had come in behind me. “It’s more what I’m not finding, unfortunately.”

He crouched beside me. “What do you mean?” His gaze swept over the body, taking in the details. I could see his eyes flick quickly from the clothing to the rumpled bed to the scarf, tallying it up, no doubt coming to the same conclusion that I’d come to.

“I’m not finding signs of struggle, defensive wounds, anything like that,” I said.

An expression of regret passed over his face. “Keep going.”

I sighed. “I think that our first theory was right, Sarge—this is sex play gone bad.” I gave a nod toward the silk scarf. “It wasn’t a robbery, because she’s still wearing her earrings and her wedding ring.” I pointed to the diamond studs in her earlobes and then to the fair-size diamond cluster on her left hand. “I can’t see anyone leaving those behind. I’m willing to bet she and Brian were engaging in some autoerotic asphyxia play, and it went a touch too far. I think he was slowly choking her and releasing, giving her that hypoxia rush—” I broke off with a curse. “What a fucking waste. Brian should have known better than to play with dangerous shit like that.”

“Yeah,” he said, voice quiet and hoarse. “I would never have figured him for something like this. Guess you never know people.”

I took a deep breath and made myself continue. “I think he was playing this game with her, and then one time when he let it go she didn’t start breathing again. He tried CPR—there’s even bruising in the middle of her chest—and when she still didn’t come back, I guess he panicked and bailed out.” I shook my head. “I dunno. It doesn’t make sense. He’s not the sort to panic. I can’t believe he wouldn’t have called 911 and at least tried to get help.”

“This whole situation is fucked from top to bottom,” Crawford said, and when I looked at him sharply, he winced and shook his head. “No pun intended there. I swear.” But even unintended, the horrific pun had broken some of the dark mood, which was a relief to both of us.

He inclined his head at me, a thin smile playing on his face. “How do you know about asphyxia play?”

“Back when I was a property detective, I worked a fraud case at the adult video shop downtown. It was a pretty complicated case, and I ended up learning more than I ever wanted to know simply by being around the place so much.”

Crawford nodded, eyes dancing. “I remember that.” He stood and walked to the door, and I followed suit. “What’s your plan now?”

I made a face at the wall of heat that enveloped us as we stepped outside. “Wait for Doc to do the autopsies. Anything else will depend on what he says.”

He peered into my face. “You look fried. As soon as you’re finished here, you should go home and get some sleep.”

I snorted but couldn’t help but smile. “I intend to. You just make sure no one else decides to die today.”

Chapter 8

Unfortunately, my deep desire for a nap was foiled by the coroner’s office, though I had to grudgingly admit that it wasn’t their fault. A nasty—and fatal—traffic accident on one of the highways at the north end of the parish meant that we had to wait for them to collect those victims before coming to get Carol Roth.

I took refuge in my car as the heat rose—keeping the AC cranked up as I pecked out my initial reports on my laptop. But by two p.m. there was still no sign of the coroner’s office, and I was uncomfortably aware that I’d promised Kehlirik to check on him during the day. And one did not blithely break promises to the demonkind.

Then again, I never promised to check on him in person. I grinned at the realization, pulled out my cell phone, and hit the speed dial for my aunt’s house.

By the fourth ring I was coming to the reluctant conclusion that Kehlirik had either forgotten how to answer the phone or was too busy with the wards to break away. But on the fifth ring I heard it pick up with a rumble on the other end that could only be from a reyza.

“Kehlirik, this is Kara Gillian.”

“Greetings to you, summoner.” The powerful bass of his voice seemed to vibrate the phone against my ear.

“And to you. Is everything going all right? Do you need anything?”

“All is well,” he replied. “The wards on the summoning chamber are cleared. The library will take more time, but a mere faas cannot create a ward that can defeat me.” I could hear him snort in derision at the thought.

“I have the utmost faith in you, honored one,” I said, keeping my voice grave, though I wanted to laugh. “It’s probably going to be a few more hours before I can get back over there.”

“That is acceptable. I will use this device to contact you should I require anything else.” I could hear the eager edge to his voice, and I grinned. How long would it take for him to find a reason to use the phone again?

I hung up after assuring him that it was quite all right to call me if he needed anything, relieved that I’d taken care of that responsibility. I leaned my head back against the headrest and watched the shimmer of heat come off the pavement. Everyone else had taken refuge in their own cars, except for one officer who stood in the doorway of the hotel room. He’d cranked the AC in the room up to get some relief from the heat and had spent the last hour on his cell phone.

My thoughts drifted back to the sense of responsibility I had toward Kehlirik. I’d thought that it was just honor that drove me to check on him, but I realized there was more to it than that. I summoned these creatures from an alternate plane of existence, and I was the one responsible for their safety and well-being. Even though technically they couldn’t be killed here, since a mortal injury would merely send them back to their own sphere, I knew too well that it wasn’t comfortable or pleasant to go through that.

The relationship between summoner and demons was a strange and complex one, and I was still learning some of the nuances of it. When I’d first started my training as a summoner, I was mildly horrified at the entire idea—the fact that summoners basically yanked demons from their home world and brought them here to serve them. But as I learned more, I saw that it wasn’t as simple—or crude—as that at all. True, the demons did not care to be summoned, and their honor demanded that they put up a struggle and demand a sacrifice or offering in return. Yet, at the same time, they gained great status among their own kind by being summoned, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the demons benefited in other ways from sojourns in this sphere.

I finished up my reports, then gave the officer at the door a break for a while. It was too miserably hot to make one person suffer alone, so the few of us remaining there rotated the duty. It was early evening before the coroner’s black van pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, to our huge relief. The investigator and her assistant both looked frayed and were in little mood to engage in conversation. I couldn’t blame them—they’d been baking on the side of a highway while the fire department had surgically ripped vehicles apart to extract victims, both living and dead. I was also more than eager to finish up at this scene, so once we all made sure that there were no previously unseen injuries on Carol’s body, she was bagged, tagged, loaded into the van, and taken to the morgue.

I released the scene as soon as they were out of the parking lot and was in my own car less than a minute later. I was tired and cranky and wanted nothing more than to go home and crawl under the covers and hide from the world, but I had no choice. I had to go back to my aunt’s house and dismiss Kehlirik.

I turned the radio in the car to the country music station, singing along loudly to Carrie Underwood and fighting the fatigue that dragged at me. When I finally turned onto Tessa’s street, I felt as if I’d run a gauntlet of street signs and other drivers. The sun glowed ruddy orange across Lake Pearl as it began to dip below the horizon. I parked in Tessa’s driveway, pulling myself out of the car just as a shudder of arcane nausea rippled over me. I staggered, putting a hand on the hood of my car to get my bearings back, taking deep breaths until it passed. And here we go from solar back to lunar. Ugh.

Now I understood why summoners seldom maintained a summoning for more than a few hours, though at least this transition didn’t seem as intense as the one this morning. I took a settling breath as the feeling faded, then pushed off the car and headed up the porch, disabling the protections and aversion wards twining around the door as I entered.

The hallway was empty and the library door open, which I took as a positive sign. At least the reyza had made it that far.

But I still peered around the doorway with more than a bit of caution. I let my breath out at the sight of Kehlirik crouched in the center of the library, arms folded across his knees and wings tucked along his back. His skin had a vaguely greenish cast, and I thought I detected the barest tremor in his wings. Well, that answers the question of whether or not Kehlirik had felt it too.

I extended cautiously but couldn’t feel any of the nasty-ugly wards that had been there earlier. I looked to the demon with worry. “Are you all right? You were successful?”

He nodded once. “I was.” His nostrils flared. “I … have hunger. Forgive me, but it was more difficult than I had expected.”

“No need for apology, honored one. I can prepare food for you.” The reyza looked like shit. I’d never seen one so pale and still before. That must have been one doozy of a battle with the wards. “Um, can you eat our food?”