Chapter 10

Ten

T he scents of decomposition and formalin hovered like a cloud over the room, caking Quinn's pores with rot. Formalin stung Quinn's nostrils, making the already pungent smell of rotting flesh more concentrated and invasive.

Quinn didn't mind the smell so much, but Giselle's normally bronze cheeks faded into a shade of dark olive green, and she kept making gagging noises from behind her book—which she wielded like a sword.

Jevon's complexion was ashen, and Constance seemed to be wholly undisturbed. Ever since she vowed to find the murderer, something inside her changed. It was like she flipped a switch and buried her devastation within her. That or the flask that she kept drinking out of did the trick. She was almost certainly drunk at this point, and it was entirely possible that Constance was drinking Mirror-Blessed wine. She sat on an exam table, swinging her feet to an invisible beat, and chewed on charmed macarons—the owner of La Pate Rouge made a deal with a Bargainer for the ability to bake without calories or cavities.

Autopsies never bothered Quinn. Growing up in the morgue and having her hands deep in a chest cavity was normal. But this one shook her. This one was personal, and the only way she managed to push through was to pretend that it was a nameless victim.

Otherwise, Quinn would completely fall apart.

A nameless victim . Quinn pinched her lips together and turned her eyes to the external examination. She tried her best not to look at the face. Slowly, she removed the clothing and examined the body.

But the whole while, her hands shook oh so slightly. Quinn could pretend everything was normal, but her body knew it wasn't.

On the nameless victim's left arm was the tattoo of a painting dripping with blood—the same one as Quinn's. Another secret. So many secrets. The victim also had a Mirror-Blessed tattoo on her thumb and the Fant?mes gang tattoo behind her ear.

"Where was she murdered?" Constance asked.

"My guess is she was killed somewhere and then dropped at the docks." Quinn's words were matter-of-fact. Scientific. Rational. She would only use ration for this autopsy. She would. She had to.

With a mirror-spelled thermometer, Quinn checked the body's temperature. 72.3 degrees. The precise temperature of the room. So, the body was fully equilibrated with its surroundings, which meant, "The victim died at least twelve hours ago."

"Like at the Viridian?" Constance asked.

"Yes, possibly," Quinn said tentatively. She didn't like guessing without proper evidence. "We know that the victim was at the Viridian the night of her murder. Her dress is caked in mud and blood . . . and a substance that seems to be glitter. Tucked into a piece of her red hair was a fragment of a purple feather and silver sequins typical on Viridian dancers' dresses. It's possible she was killed at the Viridian before being dumped in the Marina District. Additionally, there doesn't seem to be any water damage to the body. So, the killer either didn't want to dump her in the bay or was unsuccessful. However, the most significant evidence so far is the bloody fingerprint found on the victim's corset. But I'll have to check it later and see if it's hers."

"Which means the killer was in a rush?" Giselle poked her head out of her book, her eyes still laced with tears.

The sight caused Quinn's throat to bobble. It was a reminder of the truth. A reminder that she was about to cut open the body of one of her best friends.

Quinn placed her hands on the exam table for stability. Fuck, this is hard.

"Or that they were interrupted," Jevon added, his shoulder slightly curved and a dark expression lingering in his eyes.

"Yes." Quinn's voice wavered, but she swallowed down her emotion and continued. "There are many possibilities. Maybe we should go down to the docks and ask if anyone saw anything." Quinn examined the bruises covering the victim's body —nameless victim. You can do this. The bruises seemed to occur both pre-and-postmortem.

"Maybe we should do that when you're done?" Constance asked.

Giselle glanced at the corpse before placing a hand in front of her mouth and gagging again. "Yeah, that, or we might want to go talk to the leader of the Les Fant?mes gang. I could do that now." Clearly, she wanted an opportunity to leave the morgue. Giselle's father used to run the gang, so she probably knew who to talk to and how to get answers. But then again, she only lived there for the first ten years of her life before her mother forced her to leave and learn how to be a lady.

"No one should go anywhere in this investigation alone. It's not safe," Jevon said cautiously. Calm, practical, and observant. Three traits Quinn adored.

"I agree," Quinn said.

"Doing things alone is how people end up dead in this city," Constance said. "What do you think the time of death was?"

Quinn glanced down at the body. It was in a state of full rigor mortis, which took roughly fifteen hours. The state of the maggots found on the body also suggested around fifteen to eighteen hours of decompensation. "I'd say approximately between two and three am." It was not as precise as she would like, but it'd be more accurate after examining the stomach and intestine contents.

Which meant she needed to open the corpse.

Quinn pinched her eyes shut. Fuck, this hurt, and she was struggling so much to compartmentalize. So utterly unlike herself. Get yourself together. You need to do this for her. Do it for Jane.

Yes. I can do that.

With a scalpel, Quinn made the preliminary incision—the Y-shaped cut that ran from the shoulders to the sternum. For a female, the incision was a bit different. Instead of a straight Y, Quinn cut under and around the breasts and up to the shoulder joint.

Blood should've flowed from the incision and drained off the exam table, but the corpse had a complete absence of postmortem lividity and drainage. No blood left to remove. Quinn hypothesized that blood loss was the cause of death. The two slices across the victim's throat were given postmortem, but the puncture holes in the jugular occurred while the victim was alive.

The holes were five millimeters wide, and Quinn was unsure what object caused them. If she had to guess—which she frowned on doing, accuracy was currency in science—they belonged to either a letter opener or a set of pointed teeth. The implications of the latter were terrifying.

Fangs could mean the wound was inflicted by long-extinct vampires.

Was it possible?

They were the most powerful creatures in the world at one point. What if they hadn't vanished seven hundred years ago? What if one survived?

Survived to create more.

Survived to feed on and murder people .

Gooseflesh crawled down her arms. It was a horrifying thought.

Cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders, she tried to release the tension in her back before focusing on her task. But it was so fucking hard. Made even harder by the fact that her eyes suddenly learned how to produce tears, which she was forced to hold back, and the entire process of doing so stung and was utter agony.

Focus.

Quinn pinched her lips together and cracked open the ribcage, and gagging sounds were heard from over Quinn's shoulder. Jevon and Giselle.

With her arms wrist-deep in the chest cavity, Quinn's sliced at connective tissue. She needed to remove the organs to examine them. With her scalpel, she sliced along the spinal cord, the bladder, and then the rectum. This separated the remaining organs so that she could take them out all at once before placing them on a table.

Without having a diener—assistant—Quinn needed to close the corpse herself quickly. The stitches were rushed and far less precise than she would've wanted, but she didn't have the time—a fact that scratched at the back of her perfectionistic brain.

"Do you know how many ways a vampire can kill a person?" Giselle asked, her nose still deep in her book.

"Why are you so random?" Constance let out a belabored sigh and picked at her nails.

Giselle shrugged, not looking up from her book. "Just so we are clear, I am still heartbroken, and I have no idea what to do, so I am trying to deal with my grief through facts. So please indulge me."

"You're so weird," Constance said.

"And clearly, you're heartless."

Quinn cleared her throat, trying to break up an argument that was about to start. "There are hundreds of ways to kill a human. So I would gather it is a couple more than that," Quinn said as she examined the stomach.

"Hmmm, good point," Giselle said. "Well, this book says there are 472."

"How would the book even know that?" Constance scoffed. "That is such a specific number."

While meticulously cutting into the stomach, the door slammed open. Quinn jolted, trying to keep the tip of the scalpel away from the fragile intestines. She didn't need the contents of the bowel bursting into her face.

Quinn's heart pounded in her ears, and sweat gathered under her corset. No one was supposed to enter the lab, and she definitely shouldn't have her friends here. Her uncle would have her head for something like that, and he would be extraordinarily angry, knowing that the four of them were very much going to investigate this murder.

Glancing up through her lashes, Quinn saw . . . a villain. And possibly a murderer.

Emrys Avalon.

The gate and cadence of his footsteps were long, proud strides. The kind of walk that screamed, I own this room and everything in it , including you .

Her stomach turned to delicate glass—glass that could shatter at any moment. He was the last person in the world she wanted to see. Not after last night. Not after she'd begged him to kiss her, and he refused, instead taunting her with passion. He was just as much responsible for Jane's death as she was. He forced Quinn to lose her deal.

Not to mention, he'd threatened Jane last night. Fuck, he threatened Jane last night, and now he was in her lab. He only came to destroy evidence or mess with her investigations. She would not let him do that to Jane.

"Are you here to cover up your murder?" Quinn spat.

If Emrys was the killer, he had all the access he would ever need to destroy evidence. The palace was the law in New Swansea City. When Emrys had destroyed her autopsy records and obscured the evidence, she'd reported him. Her uncle simply shrugged and said, He owns this building. But worse, all the other physicians blamed her and removed her lab privileges for three months. If she hadn't reported him, she wouldn't have been punished for his crimes.

Because only the victim got in trouble when powerful men were at play, and Emrys was the power in New Swansea. If he had killed Jane, there was nearly no recourse to punish him.

"Get out." Her words were nearly a growl. "I won't let you tamper with my evidence. Not on this case."

"Hello, little Ginger." Emrys flashed a smirk and a dimple. "I am not sure what you are accusing me of. But trust me, if I murdered someone, I wouldn't need to cover it up."

"Of course, you wouldn't; you'd probably parade the dead body down the streets."

"Perhaps in another decade, that might have been my recourse, but I promise you, Quinnevere Ashelle, if I murdered you, no one would ever discover your corpse."

Quinn froze, and she stifled a full-body tremble. "Probably because you would devour me whole."

The side of his mouth ticked up. "Oh, most definitely." His eyes locked onto hers, and she glanced away quickly, unable to hold the contact. "But I might do that just for a good time. Isn't that what you wanted last night?" Her eyes flashed back to his, horrified.

"I hate you." Quinn's fingers quaked, and she had to very slowly remove them from the victim's bowels so that she wouldn't rupture them.

"We can have fun with hatred, Ginger." He slowly slid his hands into his pockets and turned his attention to everyone else. "Are we having a party in the morgue?"

Quinn's friends collectively stiffened. They knew they weren't supposed to be in the lab.

"Are you jealous you weren't invited?" Giselle asked .

At the same time, Constance said, "We were just leaving. Quinn was kind enough to demonstrate an autopsy for us, but now we must get going."

Constance's entire demeanor changed. She jumped up like she couldn't get out of the room quickly enough, and she glared at Jevon, sending him a message to get out quickly .

"Yes." Jevon cleared his throat. "We were just leaving."

"Right." Giselle closed her book. "We learned so much. Thank you for teaching us."

And with that, her three best friends left her to be devoured by the big, bad—murderous—wolf. Traitors, Quinn thought as she watched her friends scurry away. Now, Quinn would have to defend the lab from his tampering alone.