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ANGEL

After a decade with the SED, I shouldn’t have felt like a rookie on his first day. But walking through those main doors again, waiting for Robin to call my arrival up to Sergeant Hanna, made my confidence waver.

The three-week “administrative leave” hadn’t helped. Neither had relocating from Xavier’s warded sanctuary into my own place next door—a necessary change, since Jude’s ghostly commutes to the between-realms library were fraying the demigod’s patience and his protective spells. Packing Jude’s life, my life, and uprooting Ivan had consumed my days, leaving me to collapse into bed each night, haunted and exhausted. We had yet to move his grandfather, though that was in the works. We were trying to work out the issue of no elevator and that we were on the second floor.

The one bright spot was Wade had insisted on moving, too. We’d bought a four-unit building from Xavier. Having my best friend next door was the only thing that felt remotely like stability, especially when my boyfriend was a ghost, my job teetered on a cliff, and I now had a surly teenager to look after.

Victor had considered moving too, but his tastes ran more toward Xavier’s high-end lofts than the simple, sturdy apartments Jude and I preferred. I wasn’t surprised when I found him waiting by the elevators at the SED, looking tired and resigned.

“We should head to the morgue first,” he said, after Hanna’s not-so-subtle reminder of my probation—keep the shadow-beast leashed and follow the damn rules.

“For what?” I asked. It wasn’t like Jude’s body had miraculously turned up down there. We were chasing cold leads on Erlik’s larder, and every night I prayed we’d find what was left of Jude before the shadow god drained the last resonance from his bones. The problem was Erlik’s shadow magic masked every trace of his location, leaving us blind. If the larder was in a set location on the other side of the Veil, we had yet to find it. Which made us all suspect it was some sort of pocket realm.

“Cassidy.”

“He’s here?”

“His body’s been on ice since he dropped dead into Bowman’s apartment from the ether,” Wade said, joining us in the elevator and hitting the button for the lower levels. “Full autopsy is done. Cause of death is listed as systemic organ failure.”

“A polite fiction,” Victor stated without inflection. “The internal tissue was essentially soup.”

I grimaced.

Wade’s gaze flickered around the elevator car, searching for the ghost who usually hovered at my shoulder. Not that he could see him. Jude was there, but not here. His presence coiled with a ghostly chill around the ring on my finger. A faint tug would pull him to my side, but in the mortal realm, our connection was staticky. Seeing and hearing him was like tuning into a channel drowning in interference, a far cry from the crisp clarity we had across the Veil.

“Bowman’s still down there, too. His family’s waiting on release until we finish our examination,” Wade added.

“And Cassidy’s?” I vaguely remembered Jude mentioning the cop was a trust fund kid.

“Out of state. Unresponsive,” Victor said.

Wade cut in, “The team’s digging. They could be a direct link to Erlik’s network.”

“A troubling prospect,” Victor sighed, the sound weary. “Their extended family includes considerable mortal influence. Senators. Corporate heads.”

Perfect. No one knew how to bury crime better than rich assholes with power.

The elevator doors sighed open onto the sublevel. The sharp bite of antiseptic hit first, a brittle mask over the undeniable, cloying sweetness of decay.

Bodies weren’t my forte. Clues were. That’s why Hanna had added Jude to our team in the first place. Would he see something from the other side that could push us in the right direction? He hadn’t when we’d first processed Bowman, but maybe things had changed?

Wade pushed through the morgue door and spoke quietly to the ME on duty. The doctor nodded, gestured toward a steel table at the far end, then joined us moments later, tablet in hand. Without ceremony, she unzipped the body bag.

Cassidy lay on the slab.

On the outside, the body appeared intact. A little pale. Somewhat sunken, partly from time, partly from lack of fluids. The greyish, waxy pallor was normal enough. But the black edges around the mouth, nose, and Y-incision—restitched to prepare for release—were strange for a body on ice. The smell that escaped was earthy and foul, like spoiled meat and wet, forgotten soil.

“As noted,” Dr. Ling began, her tone clinical, “the internal organs show near total liquefactive necrosis. Consistent with a postmortem interval of several weeks, most likely over a month.”

Over a month. That timeline was impossible. It would mean Cassidy had been dead before he attacked Jude in the parking lot. Before he’d been walking, talking, and kidnapping victims for Erlik’s cult.

“What could cause accelerated, selective decomposition like this?” I asked, gesturing to the stark contrast between the ravaged interior and the relatively preserved exterior. “Something that targets the organs but leaves the rest?”

“There are documented cases,” Dr. Ling began, “involving cross-Veil parasites and certain terrestrial insects that consume soft tissues from the inside out. Some are small, like the so-called zombie wasp—it implants larvae that hollow the host while preserving the exoskeleton. But nothing on this scale or speed.”

“Larvae?” Wade repeated, the color draining from his face. “Cross-Veil parasitic larvae?”