Page 51 of Devil Bound
I inhaled the coffee fumes to calm myself down as I prepared to tell her a white lie.
“I’m sorry.I had a headache last night, so I just crashed.I forgot to charge my phone, and by the time I realized… Well.I just realized.What happened?”
She was silent on the other end, then I heard her breathe a sigh of relief.
“So long as you’re okay.Just don’t do anything like this ever again, Hawkes, or I’ll be putting out an APB on you.Anyway, more murder is what happened, and it’s ugly.”She paused.“Sweet Grass Beach, you know where that is?”
“Sure.It’s where the waves are supposed to be great for surfing, right?”
“Right.Get over here now.Our victim was burned beyond recognition, and the crime scene technicians are still working.”
She hung up on me, a clear sign I was forgiven.
I took a swig of my coffee to steady my nerves.A burn victim meant there was going to be a smell, which meant breakfast was definitely a hard pass.I finished my coffee and eyed the juice I’d set on the counter next to the machine.
“Oh fucking hell.I don’tlikefucking cucumber, just for the record.”
I took the weird cucumber broth to the car with me.Healthy, organic juice prepared by an angel was going to have to suffice and keep my stomach steady in the face of any and all olfactory triggers.
Despite the cucumber, the juice was actually pretty good.I would have thanked Metatron, but I was never going to see her again.
I was also never going to see Lucifer again.To be honest, seeing as much of him as I had since the zombie incident had become a nuisance I didn’t need in my life as a professional necromancer working for the police.He was, at best, a distraction.At worst, he tried to dictate my fruit purchases, and I wasn’t going to allow that anymore.Forgetting him was all I was going to do.
I finished the juice as I got to the beach.The sight of reporters already assembled to broadcast theories about what had happened made me grind my teeth.Their vans were parked in the small lot farther back from the sandy dunes and tall grasses I assumed had given the place its name.An officer waved me through, and I parked next to a patrol car.
When I got out, a breeze chilled my skin and made me blink.The sky was a beautiful blue, lighter where the horizon met the water, the color deepening as I looked up.It reminded me too much of Lucifer’s sparkling eyes, so I turned away, shaking my head to dislodge the memories.No more thinking of the Devil.His sparkling eyes were in my past, just like the rest of him.
I got my windbreaker from the back of the car and headed toward the path that led down to the beach, fumbling to get the zipper closed all the way up to my chin.I couldn’t see the crime scene itself from here, and I doubted there were many cameras in the immediate vicinity.That would make it difficult to identify the culprit, and me doing my job right was all the more important.
The day was sunny, but that didn’t stop the wind coming in from the ocean blowing sand in my face.The combination of the sunlight warming my skin and the wind rushing past my ears made me think of Lucifer, standing behind me, holding me, tracing his hot tongue over my skin—
I shook my head.No, I wasn’t allowed those thoughts.I focused on the salty, briny smell of the ocean, a scent not at all like the Devil’s.A few steps down, something else tickled my nose, something vile that cut through all the other smells like a battle-ax through a windowpane: the stench of burned flesh.
As the path wound around a dune, the beach came into view.There on the pearly sand, wood had been piled up high enough to support a stake, and bound to that stake were the blackened remains of what had once been a person.From this distance, it could have been a charcoal drawing on a canvas; abstract, featureless, meant to be a person, but not quite finished.
Except it was the other way around.This had once been someone, and the fire had undone them.
My stomach turned, and I really was glad I’d only had the juice.The victim from the morgue earlier—the one we’d found before the mass grave at the salt marshes—was vivid in my mind’s eye, her arms broken as if she’d been tortured with the strappado.
I stopped, intent on calming my breathing.Instead of staring at the blackened body, I looked at Christine, who was down there, talking to someone on the phone.Detective Sexy Mitch was also there, and the wind was ruffling his hair, turning up his sexy vibes.
Fuck.I had completely forgotten about Mitch.He turned his head, and his brown eyes lit up when he saw me.He walked through the sand to meet me, staying out of the way of the crime scene people, who edged closer to the victim as they carefully collected all the evidence that would hopefully help us find the killer soon.
“Hey,” Mitch said when I stepped onto the warm sand in my Converse.
The sand would get in my shoes.It would get everywhere, just like Lucifer’s tongue—nope, no.I needed to get one of those rubber bands to put around my wrist so I could snap it whenever I thought about the Devil.
What I needed to think about was Mitch, how very sexy he was, how closely he was looking at me, and how much I needed to figure out whether there was any kind of policy against me dating him.Then, I needed to figure out how to go about dating him.I was totally ready to make out before figuring things out in order to override the trail Lucy’s tongue had taken—
Fucking hell.I looked up at Mitch.“Hi there, Mitch.Missed me?”I could be smooth if I wanted to be.Hopefully.
He flashed me a toothy smile.“I texted you last night, but Rice said you didn’t charge your phone.”
He’d texted me last night.Hmm.I’d missed those texts.Clearly, last night’s events had upset the carefully crafted equilibrium of my life.
“She probably said it less kindly, but yeah.I had a headache.Sorry.You were texting about…?”
“Whether you wanted to grab a bite to eat today.”He indicated the pyre.“After this.Oh, and we found the Frazer place.Rice wants me to drive you there later to do a walk-through, see if anything stands out to you.”
