Page 58 of The Mech Who Loved Me
Ava wrinkled her nose up, but Charlie beat her to it. "Smells like someone shitthemselves."
"Someone died," she said, suddenly certain. "And the body voideditself."
"I can't smell a bloody thing," Kincaidmuttered.
"Be grateful you're human," she replied, running a finger along the counter and then rubbing forefinger and thumb together. Just as she suspected. "Can we shine a small light over here? The counter's been cleaned since thisafternoon."
Which meant someone was trying to hidesomething.
And if someone had died, then someone had cleaned up afterwards. She'd been to enough crime scenes toknowthat.
Charlie shook something, and a luminescent green glow filled the room. A phosphorescent glimmer ball. He held it over thecounter.
"This place was messy today," she said. "Winthrop had books and maps shoved everywhere, and there was dust upon the counter, and baskets of herbsbeneathit."
All of them still there. Her senses started tingling. Poor Major Winthrop. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of herstomach.
"Do you think it was Winthrop who died?" Charlieasked.
"Want to check upstairs?" Kincaid suggested. "I'm fairly certain he kept rooms upthere."
Charlie gave her the glimmer ball and thenvanished.
"What are you thinking?" Kincaid murmured, leaning on the counter. She could feel his eyesuponher.
"Don't you think it's odd we came looking for a rare mushroom, and several hours later, someone kills the major?" A horrible thought struck her. "What if both events are connected? What if we lured akillerhere?"
"I haven't seen anyonetrackingus."
"Doesn't mean they're not there. I think this is our murder weapon. I think this caterpillar mushroom can kill a blue blood, and it's the reason behind David Thomas's death, and all the others. I also think—" She swallowed a little. "—it's the same thing someone injected into Zero." She turned, and stared in the direction of the guild. "I want to look at David Thomas's bodyagain."
* * *
An hourafter Ava pulled David Thomas's cold body out of storage at the guild, she found theinjectionsite.
"It was in his hair," she said, pulling off her gloves and throwing them in the rubbish bin as Dr. Gibson slid the gurney containing Mr. Thomas back inside the chiller. Kincaid was waiting outside, quite content to leave this part of the investigation to her. If she wasn't mistaken he'd looked a little green around the gills when she suggested he could sit in on the secondexamination.
"I didn't even notice it." Gibson lookeddistressed.
"We weren't sure what was wrong with him," she pointed out. "When we were doing the initial autopsy we thought Mr. Thomas had been stricken by some disease, so we were looking for signs of that. Instead he was murdered—injected with a mysterious substance that kills bluebloods."
She'd neglected to mention the fact she suspected what had killed him. Caterpillar mushroom. Or Yartsa gunbu. A rare substance that came all the way from Tibet, which meant someone must have paid substantial money for it. Someone who knew the effect it had upon bluebloods.
Anddhampir.
What precisely did it do? Did it rupture veins? And turn a blue blood's bluish blood even darker? It must also affect the craving virus, and its ability to heal a blue blood almost instantly. What a horrifyingthought.
Gathering her reticule, she bid Gibson goodbye, and found Kincaid in the guild's foyer peering behind a curtain. "Hmm, did I hear a littlemouse?"
What on earth was he doing? Ava paused and watched him from the shadows, hearing a smallgiggle.
"There it is again," he said, as though he couldn't see a pair of little shoes hiding behind thecurtain.
Then a little girl darted out from behind the drapes, her coppery curls gleaming in the light as she ran across thefoyer.
"Why, it's a big mouse," he said, as one of Garrett's twin daughters turned and rushed back theotherway.
"I'm not a mouse!" she cried, her whole face crinkling upinglee.
