Chapter 1
Two Weeks Ago
“Earth to Wren!” Simone snaps. Her back-length blonde hair swooshes before splitting as her hand shoots through it to wave in my face.
I blink a few times, glancing upwards before looking back at my phone and seeing a picture of a brown-skinned little girl with overly curly hair standing in front of a huge three-story, cedar-colored brick building. My puffy reddish-brown ponytails look ridiculous, but my toothless grin makes the photo cute in its way.
I laugh to myself, remembering this photo was taken at the orphanage right when I lost my two front teeth. I close my phone, twisting my body to the side to slide it into my tailored gray slacks. I sigh and turn to find Simone’s dark eyes staring at me. She looks away and pulls the steering wheel before letting it slide through her fingertips as the shiny white coroner van we’re in straightens. Up ahead, cool blue, hot red and crystal white lights flicker into the brightening purple and silky red sky like a homing beacon, beckoning us closer to the crime scene that was called in less than an hour ago.
Simone’s fingers tap and dance across the steering wheel before she lifts one pale hand to gracefully push her hair behind her left ear. The lights are getting closer and closer, easily seen through the gaps between the human houses that all look the same, a standard ranch that seems to come in blue, gray, or white.
“This looks like a prison.” Simone leans forward, squinting as she glances at each house before shivering. Her nose wiggles left and right as her chest expands. “It smells like one, too.”
Everything about this area smells new: the houses, the paint and even the grass, but I’m sure her nose is better than mine since she’s a shifter.
“One of the prettiest prisons I’ve ever seen.” The houses are cute, with white picket fences and double driveways. Some even have dog houses. I inhale deeply, feeling my lungs expand as a whistle sounds from within me. “Damn, they must have paid a pretty penny to get a dog.”
The van slows as a black SUV pulls in front of us, causing Simone to huff and lean forward to stare at the back of the SUV. She scrunches up her face, her nostrils flaring before she turns to look at me.
Her eyes flick upright to the dash mirror before she shrugs, rolling her shoulders. “They could have cloned the dog. It’s slightly cheaper than buying one.”
Dogs, like most animals, went nearly extinct one hundred years ago when The Killings started, so cloning animals has become the norm for people who are more well-off than your average person. The engine roars as we follow the SUV down into a cul-de-sac before Simone stops, parking the van on the side of the street, slightly behind the SUV.
She pulls the keys out of the van prior to turning to me. “Heads or tails?”
I groan, tilting away from her to look out the window. “Tails.”
Simone nods, her blonde hair bops up and down before she moves side to side, digging in her pocket. “Shit. I don’t have one.”
My hands fly to the center of my chest, pulling at the bright orange badge that sits there. I tug it off, careful of my big, curly, coily afro, before tossing it in the air. It twirls, spinning once before it lands on my thick thighs.
“Tails. I win,” I sing, happy for the first time today.
“Shit. I hate pulling the table.” She frowns, a pout on her lips.
With a pep in my step, I open the door and slide out of my seat. I yank open the passenger’s side back door, bending to grab my black forensic kit that’s locked into place with straps on the inside of the van. I unlatch it, swinging it over my shoulder by the straps as Simone pulls her kit over her shoulder across from me. I grab my badge, throwing it over my neck and letting it fall between my ample breasts before I survey the area.
My eyes fling across the street to the police car turned away from me. The lights on it flash brightly. The vehicle is blocking off a house’s driveway with another compact sedan in it. I tilt my head, narrowing my eyes as they land on a man with dark brown hair inside the car. And right beside him is a regular fae cop in complete uniform.
Simone clears her throat loudly in the quiet morning to gain my attention. “Let’s go.” She nods to the blue ranch-style house ahead with gray wooden shutters. We shut the van doors at the same time, and as we walk to the front of the car, Simone nods at the SUV. “Looks like the boys are here.”
“Do you know who it is?” I ask because all the homicide detectives drive the same car.
Simone’s nostrils flare as she inhales before exhaling deeply. “No clue, but they smell like fucking sugar. Gotta be a fae.”
Fae are known to be sweet-scented, many smelling like candy. It’s why vampires go crazy for them. My suit jacket flaps in the wind as I start at the house. I’m about a foot or so away from the crystal barrier surrounding the house when I notice Simone isn’t with me. I turn, watching as she stares hard at the car in the driveway.
“What’s up?” I nod toward the car.
“There’s a fae in there.” She looks away, wiggling her nose before lifting her chin toward the police car parked on the street. “I think there’s also a human there.”
“Does it matter what either of them are if you’re here to do a job?” a monotone voice fills our ears as a man slides out of the black SUV.
He’s tall with a lanky body and dyed, slicked-back, shiny blonde hair. He scrunches his too-small nose as his eyes land on me. His sparkling leprechaun green suit looks awful at seven in the morning. For a moment, his appearance changes, and he looks gorgeous. I close my eyes, reaching over to pinch myself on the arm hard enough to make me cringe. This fucker is using a glamour on me to change his appearance so I shake my head and my vision clears.
Simone places her hands on her hips before sighing and walking to me. She takes a step forward before an invisible force smacks her chest, pushing her back slightly. Simone inhales sharply as the crystal barrier homicide detectives use to protect crime scenes crackles and glows a shimmering white before disappearing.
“I forgot my badge.” She turns, returning to the van to grab her bright orange badge that signals she’s part of the forensic team and can enter crime scenes.
“Hello, Detective. I’m Wren Williams, and that’s Simone Gavins. We’re the forensic pathologists taking this case.” I extend my right hand out to him to shake.
He stares at me, his eyes flickering over my flesh, stopping at my oversized button-up shirt before landing on my hand. As Simone slams the van door, he purses his lips as if I’m not up to his standards. She comes back, giving him a wide berth as I suck my teeth, drop my hand and turn away from him. I step forward, moving with purpose as the barrier parts, crackling with energy and sending tingles down my spine.
Simone and detective douche follow right behind me. Walking past the police car, I get a better view of the human in the back. He’s muscular and cute but not my type. My eyes flick over to the fae cop leaning against the sedan in the driveway. When we pulled up, I couldn’t see him due to the angle, but he was standing there, anger radiating off him. The cop lifts his chin at detective douche before marching over to us, his eyes ping-ponging back and forth to the sedan with disgust.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch some movement. My eyes whip over and land on the sedan when a figure fully emerges. A short-haired woman sits up, twisting to watch us out the window. Her silky obsidian skin shimmers in the morning sun. I squint, my eyes running over her face because I know I’ve seen her before.
“Who is that?” I motion toward the car.
Simone twists around to get a better view before turning wide-eyed back to glance at me. “Oh shit, that’s Jameson Mondu. She released that article about that fae prince about seven months ago.” Simone stands up on her tiptoes, bag swinging wide as she bounces with energy while looking at the police car where the man sits. “Oooh, oooh! That’s gotta be the human boyfriend. He’s much cuter in person.” She sighs happily.
My lips twitch on my face, seconds away from pulling into a smile, until the detective talking to the cop glares at us, his eyes filling with open annoyance. “Don’t you have a scene to look over? Do your job so I can arrest these two for committing murder.”
I frown, tilting my head and taking in the situation. “We will collect as much evidence as possible since that’s our job, but unless she stands on top of the car screaming ‘I did it,’ you can’t make those assumptions.”
His nostrils flare as the cop in uniform takes a step towards us, his hand landing on his gun filled with silver bullets. “You don’t understand. She ruined our kingdom in more ways than one.”
Confusion rides me, but I push on and follow Simone, trekking through the soft grass and stepping over a flower bed until we get to the open front door. I turn around, spotting detective douche at the car where Jameson sits. I shake my head and step onto the front porch as Simone steps inside. She slides on a pair of white booties over her sneakers. I follow her, sitting my kit inside the house and leaning on one foot to slide on the booties before repeating the process. I reach back inside my kit and pull out an oversized hair net. I need two to put all my hair away. After a small fight, I’ve got my hair net placed, and I’m ready to continue. Simone nods at the uniform cop standing in the long, wooden, floored hallway.
He tilts his head, motioning for us to continue down the hall. “Crime scene is further down, in the master bedroom’s bathroom. Another cop is standing outside the bedroom door, watching the scene.”
We walk past him, forensic bags in hand, to the bedroom. The house is decently sized, looking like it has a few bedrooms and at least two bathrooms judging by the one we walked by. Just as the first cop said, another uniformed cop is standing in front of the door to the bedroom. He nods, dropping his arms from his chest as he moves away from the closed door. He puts his hand on the door before something in me snaps.
“Please, please tell me you guys haven’t been touching the door,” I say, irritation lining my voice.
He looks sheepish, his eyes looking everywhere but at us, before Simone groans. “Sorry, we weren’t thinking,” he says.
“Clearly.” Simone shakes her head prior to digging a pair of gloves out of her kit. She slides on one glove and tilts her head to the side aggressively in a ‘get the fuck out of my way jester’, causing the cop to stumble backward.
If it’s one thing I despise, it’s people who fuck up my crime scenes. I move past him as he pushes himself against the wall opposite the door. Once I’m inside the room, Simone turns to face him with a bright smile on her lips before slamming the door shut right in his face. I smirk as I pull a small plastic piece of tarp out of my bag and lay it on the floor. I set my forensic kit on top, and Simone does the same.
She slides off the glove she used for the door, tucking them into the side pocket of her bag. I bend at the knee, open my kit completely, and yank out a few evidence bags, cotton swabs, and other items. I turn to survey the room: a nice plush bed with a silky red comforter, a dark cloth reading chair and two nightstands. The door to the bathroom is cracked open. I take a small step toward it just as Simone makes a gagging sound.
“What’s up?” I ask her, turning around to see her shiver.
“Someone threw up. Damn you, shifter nose.” She lightly slaps her cheeks as her nose twitches on her face. “Ugh, I can practically taste it. There goes my love of pretzels.”
I laugh as my hands find a set of cotton gloves and a set of surgical gloves. I tilt my head and decide on the surgical gloves, sliding them over my hands with a pop as Simone does the same.
“Let’s do this.” I grab a black camera out of my bag.
We walk over to the semi-closed door of the bathroom, and with a steady hand, I reach forward to push it open slowly. My eyes fling all over the bathroom, from top to bottom, landing on an ashen, very dead man lying on a piece of tarp. A few feet away from him is a pile of light brown and yellow vomit, judging by the smell. Click, click, click. I snap pictures of everything I see, noticing there isn’t blood in the bathroom except on the tarp.
“Well, hello there, Earth Prince Ryan Oleander.” Simone bends at the edge of the doorway.
I step forward, and a piece of my slacks touches Simone as I walk into the bathroom. I walk until my feet meet the dead body’s open chest. I snap more photos of his upper, lower and mid-body.
“That’s one hell of a way to die,” I say, pulling the camera away from my face and narrowing my eyes on the way the meat of his chest has been separated. “Do you want to write it down and pass me stuff or switch?”
Simone stands up, leaving a few moments later and returning with another tarp. She lays it down, placing a body bag on top, along with a collection kit, cotton swabs and a notepad, before holding her hand out for my camera. “I’ll write it down. You do your thing and show me how well I taught you.”
Simone has been a forensic pathologist for as long as I’ve been working for The Hartland’s Crime Scene Investigation Team. When I first started, I simply worked at the morgue, but after being there for the last four years, starting as an intern and then as a morgue technician, I got promoted to forensic pathologist. This happened just a few months ago.
I backstep, passing over the camera before crouching down and leaning forward. “You poor bastard.” I eye his mangled torso, finding a long diagonal line crossing his body on the left side, from his clavicle to his navel.
The blood on the tarp isn’t as much as what I would expect from someone murdered. There is barely a dusting of blood on it. Bodies, even bodies of supernatural creatures, carry at least one-point-five gallons of blood. More so if you are a vampire, but this man is a fae. I squint, bending and lowering my hands to press lightly on his stomach below his navel. From above, it looks off-putting and almost hollow. My hands cave in the pale flesh, drooping in that area, causing me to nearly stumble back in shock. I glance wide-eyed at Simone, who is staring intently at the body.
“Wren, did you feel anything when you pressed there because it looks like you collapsed an area on his skin?”
I open my mouth before snapping it close as I think for a moment. “It’s empty.”
“Oh shit, well, this just got interesting,” Simone says as she writes that down, her eyes feeling with unmeasurable glee. “Do you need a flashlight?”
I can barely think for a moment as my mind races. “Yeah, and I’ll take the pictures this time, and you can do the scene.” I blink a few times to regain my focus prior to glancing at the deep cut on his chest. “I don’t want us to overlook anything since I’m sure he’s missing his intestines.”
For someone to have stolen his intestines, that means they dug into his body, lower than the cut they placed and pulled them out like undercooked spaghetti noodles. I shiver as my gut clenches in revolt, my eyes landing on the pile of vomit not too far off from the body. No wonder someone threw up in here. Simone steps into the bathroom with a flashlight in her mouth and one gloved hand holding my camera.
She passes me the camera before turning on the light just as I yank off my blood-covered gloves. Simone spends the next few moments giving various degrees of pressure to his lower stomach. I snap at each photo, ensuring I zoom in when his stomach dips. Simone’s right hand rises, prying between his open skin. His chest splits like a can of biscuits. I lower to my knees, and my eyes move over his organs, heart and lungs, finding that everything is present but tilting downward. Simone leans closer, running her gloved hands through his body before she moves his kidneys and liver out of the way. A low whistle comes out of her mouth as her eyes expand in astonishment. I pull the camera from my face, leaning in to see what she does. Or, in this case, what she doesn’t.
“Where the hell is his stomach organ?” I wonder, shock filling my voice.
“No clue,” she says as the bedroom door flies open.
I push away from the dead body to stand before going out to the bedroom. I take a step out the door and nearly crash into detective douche while the uniformed cop stands at the door eyeing me. Good, the uniformed cop knows better now, so I guess it’s time to teach the detective. I roll my eyes over the detective and try to swallow the irritation in my voice because he’s in my crime scene with no booties.
“Do you know,” I start icily, “how much shit you just got into our crime scene?”
The cop at the door raises a finger and points at detective douche. “I told him twice. I said, ‘Don’t walk in there.’”
He has the decency to glance at his feet as he’s a few steps inside the room. He opens his mouth, stammering. “But… I’m a homicide detective.”
“Fantastic, Detective?” Simone moves to the doorway of the bathroom and snaps her bloody gloved fingers as if she’s trying to remember his name.
He squirms when his eyes lock on her red hands. “Homicide Detective Maddox Kyle.” He raises his hand, pushing his fingers to his hair as my mouth opens.
“No,” I point at the hand on his head.
“No?” His eyes flash with confusion as he slides his hand out of his hair.
“If you get your hair in our crime scene, you could put this investigation behind by weeks. Everyone should wear gloves, hairnets and,” my eyes flash to his shoe-clad feet, “booties. It’s like you guys don’t want us to solve this.”
Detective Maddox looks around the room, his face sheepish, before he walks to the doorway, his hand still in his hair, and steps out. He turns to us as Simone exits the bathroom to step beside me. “Do you know who that man is?”
“Not particularly,” Simone says, lying through her teeth while shrugging.
“That man,” his voice hitches as his eyes mist over before he clears his throat. “That man is Prince Ryan Oleander of the Earth Fae Court. You will find any and all evidence and make sure it leads back to Jameson Mondu and her boyfriend.”
“Yeah, we’re not doing that.” Simone shakes her head and the plastic cap covering her blonde hair swooshes underneath. “We will gather evidence, autopsy the body and do our jobs the same way you do yours. If and only if the evidence points that way, then have at it. But…” Simone’s eyes flash back to Ryan’s mangled body. “I don’t think a human could have done this. And isn’t Jameson a Fire Fae? Why cut out his organs? Couldn’t she have burned him?”
Detective Maddox narrows his eyes as he looks between us, anger flaring in his features. “Do your job, and I’ll do mine. Know your place.” He turns, flapping his suit close as he stomps off.
The uniform cop cringes as he glances between us and the fae that stormed off before running down the hall to follow him.
I glance at Simone, who turns to stare at me, her eyes dancing with amusement. “Know your place!” We both say at the same time before we erupt into loud cackles.
