Page 3 of Insidious Monsters
But it wasn’t his neck I was focused on. It was his face.
His blank, featureless face.
* * *
Devyn took our statements.The story would have sounded nuts if not for the evidence being zipped up into a body bag.
The Night Guild officers had seen Toby’s lack of face too.
“He has nose holes,” one of the other officers said. Female, with purple and blue hair, she’d been smacking gum since she got here. She pulled a glob from her mouth and wrapped it in a tissue before popping it into her pocket. “Not a breed I know but I’ll take samples at the lab, see if I can figure out who and what he is.”
“Thanks, Jinx,” Devyn said. “Keep me updated.” She sucked on her bottom lip, looking as if she wanted to say something. “You’re a necromystic, right?” she asked Nandi.
“Yeah, why? You think I did that to his face?” She looked at Devyn in horror.
I stepped up, ready to defend my buddy, but Devyn cut me off.
“No. Just getting all the information.”
“Bullshit,” Archie said. “You’re hiding something. I can smell it.”
“You should tell them,” Jinx said. “There’ll be a statement issued soon. This would have been the eighth.”
“Wait, what?” I looked from Jinx to Devyn. “There have been more attacks like this?”
“No attacks reported, but six psychics and a necromancer are missing,” Devyn said. “There was no evidence to suggest the cases were related, or that any foul play was involved. But with you being a necromystic, we need to consider other possibilities.”
“Guys with no faces who try and put necromystics into car trunks are not normal,” Jinx said with a wry smile.
“Did you see the ink on his wrist?” Nandi asked.
Jinx frowned. “There was none.”
“Yes, there is,” Nandi said. “I asked him about it. He said it was part of a family crest.”
Jinx waved a hand toward the guys loading the body into a van. “Open it up. I need to see his wrists.”
They obliged and we gathered around while Jinx snapped on gloves and gingerly lifted each of Toby’s hands.
They were clean.
“There, do you see it?” Nandi pointed.
“There’s nothing there,” Devyn said.
“Nothing we can see.” I pulled a notepad and pen from my jacket pocket and handed them to Nandi. “Draw it.”
She sketched out the symbol and held it out to us. An ankh with twin zigzags running through it.
“Ring any bells?” Devyn asked Jinx.
Jinx shook her head. “Milo might recognize it.” She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of the image. “I’m sending it to him now.”
“Who’s Milo?” Nandi asked.
“Our resident brain,” Jinx said. “He likes to read. A lot.”
“And he knows stuff,” Devyn added.
