Page 79 of Mortdale

“That’s not—” He looked at me and screamed. Dropping on his ass to the ground, he started undoing his boots with shaky hands. Sixty seconds later, the old man was sprawled on the ground naked from the ankles down and with all his toenails intact. Missing only a sliver of his sanity.

“Never said it was yours,” my wife said sweetly, dropping the toe on the necropsy table.

A little humiliated, frustrated, and with some newfound respect, he got to his feet and nodded at her. “I will bring the results to you myself.” He quickly bowed his head in my direction before heading to the washroom behind the glass partition. “If you’ll pardon me.”

“Do you think he’ll report me for witchcraft?” she asked.

“Not if he wants to keep all his toes.”

Her cheeks took the slightest rosy tint. “I wasn’t going to do that. I don’t even know how to go about doing that. I never paid attention to those classes.”

“No, but I will. His fingernails, too.” I pushed some hair from her face. I could see she was tired. Maybe I’d let her push herself more than she should too soon after her fainting episode. “What are you thinking?”

She shook her head with a sigh. “I need to see someone who wasn’t—” She thought about it for a moment. “Turned? Someone who didn’t catch it from being bitten. The smell was stronger around the bite wound where the vampire venom was injected. The alchemical nodes were more swollen on the surface, around that bite mark, too.”

“You think it’s a sign of something.”

“You said there was no common denominator between all the infected so far. It might be a long shot, but this is all I have for now.” Her fingers drummed against her thigh as she looked around and leaned in close to whisper to me, “They were terrified.”

My eyes dropped from her pale lashes framing eyes dark as night, to the pale freckles dusting her slender nose, tracing over her slightly more defined upper lip. “Who was?”

“The spirits in that room.” She winced. “Petrified at having been trapped in that tiny room with that vampire’s body in there. There’s no soul in the corpse. I dread to know where it is lingering and who it is haunting. And they are dreading his return to the body. They always come back unless their corpse is properly disposed of. Rules of the dead: never leave your body uninhabited for long periods of time. Who knows what or who will get in it.”

She leaned in again. “Do you think you could keep Alfred away so I could try to talk to them?”

Pretty sure I could tell Alfred to set himself on fire and he’d do it, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“I’m the distraction now?”

She shoved me towards the doors. “Show him some ankle or wrist or something. Dazzle him, pretty boy.”

My brows rose up when she dragged me back. “Wait, wait. Can I have your lighter? They feel safe when they have light.”

“Please, Logan.”

Rolling her eyes, she stuck her hand in my pants pocket and grabbed my lighter.

After a few very short minutes of tasking Alfred in search of all the records for the cadavers he’d inspected, she went back into the room, drawing the curtains shut and flicking the lighter on.

Her smile was gentle, safe, and welcoming as she spoke into the void. And I wondered if her gift had ever given her grief. What a burden it must be; to be the only one who can understand something no one else does. She handled everything with such grace and made it so easy to forget the tribulations of it all. But better than anyone, I knew comfortability wasn’t a skill easily achieved or an endowment that came with the gift she bore; it was a consequence—she was simply desensitised to it by means I doubted to have been easy.

A few minutes later, she blew on the lighter and came around the glass wall. “Are there tunnels under the Basilica?”

The Basilica? “How do you know?”

She gave me a pointed look. “Most spirits return to where they think they will find spiritual salvation. Many return to their faith. Maybe I can corner them there and ask them how they’ve felt before the Madness, of any symptoms or irregularities, anything that happened to them that might be out of the ordinary.” She shook her head, gathering herself. “There’s something else,” she said, itching the tip of her nose. “When we came out of the Basilica after the mass, I could smell the sweet scent of putrescine, but Arthur couldn’t. The shrubs were all dead—practically rotting—but the acolytes were still watering them. I think something is really happening there, Logan. It might sound insane, but it could be worth a look.”

“It doesn’t sound insane.” And no, it wasn’t a long shot. This was the only real lead we’d even had in all the years since this had started. However, there was a problem. “I can’t storm into the Basilica without the king’s permission. The Basilica is run by the exarch, separate from the king. If I mention anything about this to the exarch or the parliament, they will send the entire of Mortdale into chaos.” This would be Ulric’s fall. Faith was all the people of Mortdale had, and I’d be robbing them of it. Not to mention I’d be accusing the exarch, who wasn’t particularly fond of Ulric—famously a non-religious king who’d divided the Basilica and the crown the furthest any king or queen had ever managed before. “It will have to be on the next Tuesday mass.”

“I know you don’t want me to have it, but…how about my Cleansing Ceremony? If you create a big enough distraction, I could have a look down the tunnels. I could make a concoction of herbs that can burn down the tunnels to expel the presence of anything dark.”

She winced. “Or maybe not the last part. Henry still mutters a prayer under his breath when he sees me. Art’s getting used to me though.”

Why did it bother me so terribly every time she said his name?

“His name is Arthur.”

“If you say so,” she threw over her shoulder, grabbing her parasol and poking my chest with the end of it. “You’ll not punch him again. You’re doing his ugly face no favours.”