Page 3 of A Shade of Myself
I put my hands on my hips. “Seriously? Because a seizure doesn’t equal slices of human, dude. What, did you chop him into pieces instead of calling 911?”
Davide grinned sheepishly, momentarily morphing his right forearm into a single long blade made of bone. “He’s a turkey. I’m a knife. I mean, circumstances just don’t align like that every day.”
Why had I answered my phone? Look at that, no need to pause for breath with a scream heard only in your head. It didn’t require a good set of lungs. A good set of frontal lobes, perhaps? Okay, I was losing it.
I clasped my hands in front of my chest, praying for patience. “Your text to Tatiana stated that you had sensitive material to dispose of. This isn’t sensitive material, it’s a shifter.” I applauded myself for staying on topic. And for muscling down the sour bile that surged up every time I looked at the deceased.
“Turkey shifters are crazy sensitive.” Davide tapped his head. “Not all there either. Good thing that magic doesn’t show up often, right?”
Yeah, a true blessing. I examined the body from different angles, because the pieces weren’t adding up to a coherent picture, until I figured out the issue. “Why aren’t you covered in blood? Does your magic cauterize it?”
“No…” Davide got a distant look, his brows drawing together. He peeked under his bathrobe, barely making it into another deformed chair before his legs gave out. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
The robe gaped open enough to reveal blood matted into his chest hair. I shuddered, sorry to have called it. Bears had less fur than this guy.
He held his hands up in front of his face like they didn’t belong to him. “I think I washed these.”
How stoned did a person have to be to forget this? Or had he gotten this wasted precisely for that reason? And more importantly, why had he gone from making jokes about the murder to being freaked out and spaced out once more?
For some reason, the more anxious Davide became, the steadier I felt, giving me a better shot at figuring all this out. Mom composure: staying calm in playgrounds, supermarkets, and murder scenes everywhere.
“You claim he went ballistic,” I said. “Out of nowhere?”
At Davide’s nod, I left Delilah guarding him while I crouched by the shifter’s torso. I didn’t glean anything from it, but when I turned over his human arm, my heart skipped a beat at the telltale red streaks on the skin that looked a lot like blood poisoning, but weren’t.
The turkey shifter had been dybbuk-possessed. And now he was dead.
That meant…
I looked at Davide, expelling a hard breath. Shit. No wonder his personality seemed to flip. When the turkey shifter, a possessed host, died, the dybbuk jumped into the closest magic body with lowered inhibitions.
Davide.
Enthralled hosts struggled with the dybbuk for control of their body for the first week. Based on Davide’s behavior, I’d bet he was attacked first, then once he became enthralled, he’d sliced and diced.
At some point tonight, the real Davide had gained the upper hand, which was when he texted Tatiana for help. He’d been his regular self when I’d first arrived, cycled to the dybbuk being in charge when he so callously discussed the crime, and was now back to himself.
Sighing, I scrubbed a hand over my face. Did that change things as far as calling in the magic police? I walked over to the snowboarder, probing his shadow until my skin itched at the sense of an abomination that needed to be destroyed. Well, I guess it was better that he was enthralled than straight up psychotic. “One moment. I have to confer with my boss.”
Davide shot me a panicked look.
“Everything’s going to be okay. Don’t worry.”
He nodded, toking up once more with trembling hands.
I dialed Tatiana, putting her on speaker when she answered. “Hey. I’m here with Davide.”
“Yo,” he said.
“Yo?” Tatiana sniffed primly. “Is there a problem with the disposal?”
“Potentially,” I said. “Given that the object to be disposed of is a dismembered turkey shifter.”
“What?” Tatiana snapped. “Davide!”
I smirked. She wouldn’t have let me walk into this blind had she known the true situation.
“Yeah?” His eyes dropped to his feet like a little kid who knew he was in a ton of trouble.
