Page 54 of Devil Bound
Mitch’ssmilewasexpectant,and I realized I hadn’t answered.Hadn’t told him how much I’d like to grab a bite of food with him.
“Food later sounds great.”Was I smiling too much?I turned it down a notch, but that wasn’t easy, not when I was still trying to imagine Mitch sitting on my couch with his shoes off, waiting for me, beckoning me to cozy up to him.
Unbidden, the memory of Lucifer’s oddly inhuman growling sliced through my fantasy like a habanero through a mildly flavored chili, and I frowned.
“You okay?”Mitch asked.
Yes, kind and concerned was what I needed, not smug, oversized, and entirely too full of himself.Forget Lucy’s stupidly fluffy hair.Amnesia for the win.
“Oh, I’m fine.”Then, the wind turned, and I got a noseful of burned meat, foul in a way even animal meat left too long on a barbecue never got.I concentrated on breathing.In, out.Breathing, not heaving, that was the mantra I clung to.“This looks like a witch burning,” I told Mitch, because I couldn’t go closer to the corpse, not yet.My stomach needed another minute.
“That’s pretty much what we’re thinking.”Mitch turned to look at the scene, a faraway expression on his face.“It’s what used to happen to all witches.”
Before I could ask where he’d gotten that from, Christine stomped toward us through the sand.
“There you are.Lewis, don’t distract the necromancer before he gets the body to talk.”
“Right, sorry.”Mitch winked at me.He was really cute when he winked, and the wind turned again to fan his short blond hair against his forehead.
“Hawkes, your turn to make her tell us her name.We figure it’s a woman, at least.Do you need to get up there?”Christine asked.“I don’t want you up there, because that woodpile under the stake is unstable, or so I’m told.But if you have to…”
She shrugged as if a few broken bones were something she’d risk if it got the case solved.She was a good cop, but sometimes she got really, really focused, which was when work could get intense.
“That’s okay.I can do the raising from the ground.”I walked toward the pyre, my stomach in knots and on the verge of revolting, but so far holding in the angel juice.
“The insurance department will be happy about that,” Christine said as she followed me.
The piled wood still radiated heat, and the smell of burned and crisped flesh was impossible to ignore the closer I got.I looked at the arms.Metal wound around the wrists, smooth against the charred bone.I could only imagine what it would have been like for our victim, being bound and feeling the flames come for her.
Mitch stepped closer and followed my line of sight.“They think our perp used zip ties to hold the vic, but the metal wire was used to keep the body in place in case the zip ties disintegrated too badly.That way, she stayed upright.”
“I see.”I looked away from the bound wrists, preparing to do what I had to.
I got as close as I could.The face was not nearly as badly burned as I’d have thought.I remembered reading somewhere that executions like this could kill by suffocation, which would have been a kindness.It was odd to be standing here, that foul smell in my nose, hoping the poor person on the pyre had suffocated rather than burned.
I concentrated and drew on my power, channeling it into the corpse.It was easy, easier than with the head from the salt marsh, mostly because this victim was not long removed from the point of death, the body intact for the most part.The burn victim stirred, but the bindings still held her in place.
“Speak,” I commanded her.“Who are you?”
She moved, her head tilting up and her shoulders moving as if, even now, she wanted to get her hands free.
As it had been when she was alive, it was futile.
“You know me,” she said, voice raspy and broken.“You told me you didn’t mind that the coffee at the station sucked.”
Now that was wholly unexpected.The thing was, it didn’t narrow down the pool of possible victims, because the coffee there always sucked, and I wasn’t shy about telling people, even if I needed my five cups a day and couldn’t be too picky.It meant she was likely a cop, one of our own.
Christine and Mitch standing behind me sucked in a hissing breath and released a mildly descriptive curse, respectively.This was someone we all knew, someone close to us.If the two of them were anything like me, they were running through a list of names and faces, wondering who this was, hoping the corpse was lying.
Which I knew she couldn’t.The dead couldn’t lie to me or disobey me.Such was my power.
“Give me your name,” I said, my voice trembling.I knew it could be easy to forget about the self, especially if the death had been traumatic.I needed her to remember.
After a moment, charred lips parted.“Lily.I’m Lily.Like the flower.”
Dr.Lily.This was Dr.Lily.How often had she forced me into her office to talk about a case or my sex life?How often had she forced me to talk about my feelings, which were fine?She’d spent time with me, even if others needed her more, but she’d insisted on doing so anyway.
I remembered her holding her talisman pen and taking notes, her smile when she had encouraged me to talk even if I hadn’t needed it.She’d always been persistent, and now…
