Page 2 of A Shade of Myself
Did the deceased like to cheer people up by springing it on them? Affect a pretentious pose and ridiculous accent? It was goofy and funny and so human, unlike the state of this corpse.
Clenching my fists, I gathered the shreds of my professionalism together. Here was a murdered Ohrist and my prime suspect had phoned it in as a material disposal case. Was Davide some psycho with no remorse looking to avoid a murder charge or was he in shock?
Either way, I had to get to the truth of the matter. I put on my scariest mom voice. “Care to tell me how this body got here?”
“Cool.” The snowboarder nodded, sounding relieved. “You see him too.”
Ohmigod. My mind went blank, but instinct kicked in and my magically animated shadow, Delilah, jumped up protectively.
Davide made no move in my direction, however. He stared at the corpse, his brows furrowed.
Everything took on a surreal cast and I dug my heels into the ground to center myself. This was so far out of my realm of experience. Was I supposed to secure the crime scene? Arrest him? Davide obviously wasn’t of sound mind. Was I in danger?
Pro: if he was high enough to forget going all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on someone, I could probably move faster than he could. Con: I was alone in a house with an Ohrist possessing unknown magic who was unsure if he was hallucinating dead bodies.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, backing up into a nice, dark corner where I could easily access the Kefitzat Haderech. “I should call the Lonestars.”
“Should you though?” Stubbing the joint out on a wall and stuffing the remainder of it in his bathrobe pocket, he crouched down by the human torso covered in an explosion of dark feathers and twisted the bird’s head toward me. “This dude was a turkey, dude.”
Who handled a corpse like that, like it was a joke? I bit down a shiver. All that weird shit aside, Davide had a point. The shifter’s red bobbly beard was a sad, wizened thing and the long tailfeathers protruding from his ass were ragged. If there were majestic turkey shifters out there, the deceased had not been one of them.
“Let’s restrain ourselves to one ‘dude’ per sentence.” I massaged my temples. If I phoned the magic cops, would Davide try to stop me? My phone didn’t work in the Kefitzat Haderech, so I couldn’t call from there, and I wasn’t sure if leaving the scene of the crime would come back to haunt me.
Or if Davide would let me out of here in one piece.
Focus, Miriam. Keeping one eye on the client, who’d sat down resting against the sliding door, I tried to glean what had transpired from the body parts.
If the victim’s right human arm under the ottoman was indicative of how scrawny he’d been, he couldn’t have physically taken on Davide, a renowned athlete. Then there was the discarded baseball cap with a pizza restaurant logo on it. If anything said “lured in and murdered,” that was it.
I poked the shifter’s beak and the spurs on both turkey legs—note to self to change the Thanksgiving menu—confirming they were sharp enough to cause the scratches on Davide’s hands, face, and one calf. “What happened?”
“Self-defense.”
I quirked an eyebrow and tried not to sound too snarky. “Really.”
Davide slung his thumbs into his robe pockets. “I know my crimes.”
“A minute ago you weren’t even sure this man was real, now you’re an expert in law and order?” It came out sounding mean, but I meant it. Something about this didn’t track. Davide wasn’t acting the way he had less than a minute ago. Something was off.
He smirked. “That was then, this is now.”
What was that supposed to mean? The shock had cleared away his high enough for him to think clearly?
“He showed up with pizza and went ballistic.” Davide pointed to a particularly ugly gash on his cheek. “That dude was not a nice person.”
“You have an Ohrist turkey leg on your floor in a pool of congealed blood. You’re not winning any Good Samaritan awards yourself.”
Davide laughed. “You’re funny. Wanna get a breakfast wrap after this?”
“God, no.” I wanted to wrap this up and get away from the killer showing absolutely no signs of remorse. I liked him better when he’d been high as a kite. Self-defense or not, he’d taken a man’s life. Getting a confession was important, right? “So, he attacked and then?”
I heard the coherent sentences coming out of my mouth as if from a distance because the scream in my head was pretty loud. How could he sit there so coldly?
“You what?” I prompted. “Killed and dismembered him?”
Please let it have been in that order. Wait. Was that leading the suspect? Entrapment? Did I even have rules I had to abide by other than telling the Lonestars?
“He had some kind of seizure and dropped dead,” Davide insisted. “That wasn’t on me.”
