Solitary Read Free

between them had become even harsher further to his return to work. Although Shim usually did his best to keep a polite attitude toward his colleague, as hard as it was for anyone who didn't have the patience of a god, when he had returned to the precinct and had been informed of the news, he hadn't been able to persist in that behavior.
    Celen had spent the previous week boasting about how he had dispatched the undead responsible of a massacre at the precinct – killing the coroner, doctor Crew, first, followed by twelve officers, before anyone could stop him. The truth was quite different. The elf had only had the remarkable timing of hitting the creature with a spell in the very moment it had ceased living by its own accord – if his could be called life anyway – due to the death of his creator. Actually there was no way for him, or even for Shim, to be aware of this detail. It hadn't been the statement in itself indeed – after all it could even have been made in good faith – to upset the dwarf. Quite simply, he couldn't really understand how Celen could rejoice for having killed the undead when he knew all too well that there would have been no need to kill him if the corpse had been moved – as per his explicit request – to the morgue of his department. No undead could have come to life in there.
    As long as the rumors about the braggart attitude of the elf had only reached him trough other people, Shim had done his best to just ignore them, as difficult as it was.
    When, however, he had accidentally seen him telling the great story of how he had defeated the killer monster single-handedly, he'd been no longer able to resist and he had spat on his face what he thought of all that, recalling the thirteen dead people that should have been on the elf's conscience.
    That could have ended there, if the elf hadn't replied that he had had nothing to do with the missing transfer, and that probably Crew was to blame for delaying it. Then Shim, who had no need to know how things had gone to be absolutely sure of that, had climbed on top of a desk and knocked him out with a straight punch of which a boxing champion would have been proud, soliciting the applauses of the beholders.
    From then on, or better from the moment he had come back to his senses, the elf had no longer spoken to him, leaving him to wonder why – considering the result – he hadn't punched him much earlier.

    Celen went on his path, steadily intentioned not to have that meeting ruin his day.
    Apparently he didn't think that having to survey the scene of a homicide was enough in itself to ruin a day. After all, that was his job.
    A short time later he was on the roof of the building, where some officers had been waiting for him, ready to leave on board of their carpets. The elf sat on one of the vehicles and said they could leave.
    It didn’t take them long to reach an elegant villa in the suburbs, in the eastern part of the city. The whole area had already been enclosed by the patrol who had answered the first call, so to prevent any stranger to walk in.
    The carpets landed directly within the perimeter. Celen left his vehicle and moved swiftly toward the corpse, lying face down on the entry alleyway, not far from the gate facing the street. The body was that of a woman, slender and fair-skinned. Her long blond hair covered it like some kind of transparent shroud. The clothes she wore where much too thin for the season, and on her left foot she had a simple, heelless sandal. The one she used to have on her right was nearby, probably slipped away while she was falling.
    An unnaturally pale bloodstain spread around her head like a halo, flooding the cracks between the stones paving the alleyway. The elf examined it with live interest.
    Right then, one of the two officers who had already started to inspect the scene approached him with a small purse in his hands, probably belonging to the victim. He fished out of it a small rectangle of some rigid