Unperfect Souls Read Free Page B

of recent controversies. Their usual lack of interest in the Weird had become intense interest—the negative kind. With the mayor and governor pointing their fingers at the Guild, the Guild looked for someone to take the blame and pointed several rungs down the ladder at the Weird. The Dead weren’t even on the ladder.
    An officer stepped closer to Murdock. “They’ve cleared the main intake. No head. They can isolate this channel, but they need to get the rest back online.”
    Murdock nodded. “Tell them okay. And call Janey Likesmith over at the morgue and tell her that Connor Grey says we’ve got a dead Dead guy. She’ll need to work fast. Make sure you say dead twice like that.”
    Janey was a Dokkheim elf and the only fey person who worked for the Office of the City Medical Examiner. She didn’t have much support down at the OCME, but these days she was the last hope for fey murder victims the Guild abandoned. She was sharp and intuitive. I doubted we’d get very far on the body, but if there was anything to know, she’d find it.
    Murdock raised an eyebrow. “I hear there’s plenty in the budget to control crime in the Weird at the moment. You want in on this?”
    I stared down at the body. If another Dead guy did the deed, I didn’t know if I cared all that much. The Dead had their own rules that the living didn’t understand. But if the killer wasn’t Dead, that meant a nut job was running around the Weird, and we already had too many of those. “Yeah, I’m in.”
    A long screech went up as machinery restarted. The air shifted, its foul odor changing to a new foul odor as water rushed through pipes. Conveyor belts rumbled to life with a metallic rattling, and a heavy static tickled along my skin as essence filters resumed their work. Two men in headworks hazmat suits approached the trough, body shields hardened and augmented as they lifted the glass to retrieve the body.
    A shimmer of essence scraped across my mind, signaling that someone fey was about to use a mental communication called a sending.
    He’s not the first.
    My gaze swept the catwalks. The solitaries who had been watching had returned to work. No one made eye contact with me, and I had no idea which direction the sending had come from. Solitaries didn’t trust many people, authority figures least of all. I may not be a member of the Guild anymore, but people knew I used to be one of its best druid investigators.
    Whoever did the sending didn’t trust me either.

2
     
     
     
     
    The wind slapped me in the face as I stepped out to B Street. I backed out of the way as two men from the OCME hustled a gurney through the door. Squinting against the sudden light of the noonday sun, I inhaled fresh cold air. Only a few police cars remained, the interest level dropping once the word went out that the dead guy was nobody interesting.
    Hey, handsome. This time the sending was smooth and familiar and brought a smile to my face. I recognized the sender’s body signature bound up in the message. Up the street, a black car idled at the curb, its exhaust coiling vapor into the air.
    I slid into the passenger seat. “Hey, gorgeous.”
    Despite the intense heat in the car, Tibbet wore her favorite red hat and gloves with a fur- lined tawny suede coat that almost matched her skin. She knew what looked good on her. She leaned across the seat and kissed me, her lips soft and lingering. She smiled when she pulled away. “I find you in the oddest places these days.”
    Amused, I settled against the headrest. “Me, too. How’ve you been?”
    She pulled onto the street. Her smile faltered, but she kept it. “It’s been rough. I had a bad week in October, but bounced back.”
    She didn’t need to say more. Tibs and I went way back. The Guildmaster’s house, where she lived and worked, had been attacked in October, and Tibs had held off the intruders alone. She had to shed her docile brownie nature to do it and went full-blown boggart in the process.