Page 25 of Hell Bent

“Have a look. Crime scene’s come and gone.”

Alex wasn’t really sure she wanted to. She’d seen way too many corpses since she’d joined Lethe, and this was the second in three days.

She walked around the body, giving it a wide berth, trying to avoid that cold absence. “Jesus,” she gasped when she reached the other side. The woman’s eyes were wide and staring, their pupils a milky gray. “What did that? Poison?”

“We don’t know yet. Could be nothing. An aneurysm, a stroke.”

“That’s not what happens when you have a stroke.”

“No,” Turner admitted. “I’ve never seen it.”

Alex leaned in, wary. “There’s…”

“No smell yet. We’re estimating time of death sometime between 8 and 10 p.m. tonight, but we’ll know more after the autopsy.”

Alex tried not to show her relief. Some part of her had wondered if Dawes was right and their ritual had been the cause of this. She knew stray magic could do real damage. But this woman had died hours later.

The professor had her hand on a book. “The Bible?” Alex asked, surprised.

“It’s possible she was in pain and seeking comfort,” said Turner. Reluctantly he added, “It’s also possible this was staged.”

“Seriously?”

“Look closer.”

Marjorie Stephen’s hand was gripped around the book, and one of her fingers was tucked between the pages, as if she had been trying to keep her place when she lay down to die.

“Where did she stop reading?”

Turner pushed up the pages with a gloved hand. Alex forced herself to lean in.

“Judges?”

“You know your Bible?” Turner asked.

“Do you?”

“Well enough.”

“Is that part of police training?”

“That’s six years of Sunday school when I could have been playing baseball.”

“Were you any good?”

“Nope. But I’m not any good at scripture either.”

“So what am I missing?”

“I don’t know. Judges is boring as hell. Lists of names, not much else.”

“And you pulled security footage or whatever?”

“We did. Plenty of people in the building at that time, but we’ll have to sort through the lobby tapes to see if anyone wasn’t supposed to be here.” He tapped the desk calendar with his gloved finger. On the Saturday of Marjorie Stephen’s death, she—or someone—had written, Hide the outcasts. “Ring any bells?”

Alex hesitated, then shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t think so.”

“It’s also from the Bible.”