Bloodfever Read Free

neighborhood and turned it into a death trap. The average human wouldn’t know they were in danger until they were knee-deep in dead.
    â€œI found your 1247 LaRuhe, Ms. Lane. It’s on the map published seven years ago. Oddly enough, it’s
not
on the one published last year. Grand Walk, one block down from this bookstore, isn’t on the new map, either. Neither is Connelly Street, a block beyond that. I know. I went down there before I came to see you.”
    Oh, God, he’d walked into the Dark Zone this morning? The day was barely bright enough to keep the Shades hunkered down wherever it was the nasty things hide! If the storm had blown in even one more dense, sky-obliterating cloud, the boldest of those life-suckers might have dared the day for a human Happy Meal. O’Duffy had just been waltzing cheek-to-cheek with Death, and didn’t even know it!
    The unsuspecting inspector waved a hand at the pile of maps. They looked well examined. One of them appeared to have been balled up in shock or perhaps angry disbelief, then re-smoothed. I was no stranger to those emotions. “In fact, Ms. Lane,” O’Duffy continued, “none of the streets I just mentioned are on
any
recently published map.”
    I gave him my best blank look. “What are you saying, Inspector? Has the city renamed the streets in this part of Dublin? Is that why they’re not on the new maps?”
    His face tightened and his gaze cut away. “Nobody renamed the streets,” he growled. “Unless they did it without notifying a single person in authority.” He looked back at me, hard. “I thought there might be something else you wanted to tell me, Ms. Lane. Something that might sound … a bit … unusual?”
    I saw it then, in his eyes. Something had happened to the inspector recently that had drastically changed his paradigm. I had no idea what had shaken the hard-boiled, overworked, fact-finding detective from his pragmatic view of the world but he, too, was now thinking outside his box.
    I needed him back inside his box—ASAP. Outside the box in this city was a dangerous place to be.
    I thought fast. I didn’t have much to work with. “Inspector,” I said, sweetening and softening my Georgia drawl, “putting on the southern,” as we call it back home, a sort of verbal honey-butter that masks the unpalatable taste of whatever we’re slathering it on, “I know you must think me a complete idiot, coming over here and questioning your investigative techniques when anyone can see you’re the expert in the field and I don’t have an ounce of training in detecting matters, and I appreciate how patient you’ve been with me, but I no longer have any concerns about your investigation into my sister’s death. I know now that you did everything you could to solve her case. I meant to stop by and speak with you before I left, but … well, the truth is I was feeling a bit embarrassed about our previous encounters. I went back to the alley the other day and took a good look around, without crying and letting my emotions get away from me, and I realized that my sister didn’t leave me any clues. It was grief and anger and a whole boatload of wishful thinking on my part. Whatever was scratched into that alley had been done years ago.”
    â€œWhatever was scratched into that alley?” O’Duffy repeated carefully, and I knew he was recalling how adamant I’d been only last week about
exactly
what was scratched into that alley.
    â€œReally, I could barely make it out at all. It might have been anything.”
    â€œIs that so, Ms. Lane?”
    â€œYes. And I meant to tell you it wasn’t her cosmetic bag, either. I got that mixed up, too. Mom said she gave Alina the silver one and it wasn’t quilted. Mom wanted us to be able to tell them apart. We were forever arguing over whose was what and what was