The postmortem room has a permanent, lingering stench of decay, even though it’s thoroughly scrubbed and hosed on a daily basis. Danny Wong is at one of the tables, performing a necropsy on a griffin. They’re big creatures, so he’s using a chainsaw, but when he sees me, he switches it off and uses his forearm to push up his goggles.
“Hey, man,” I say, wrinkling my nose at the sour smell of blood and gore and putrefaction. “I have your money.”
Percy’s rush permit was eye-wateringly expensive, and Danny’snot the type to let that sort of money slide. I’d had to move some funds between my accounts before drawing out the magecredits in cash, which is safer, since cash is more difficult to trace. I don’t want my father’s accountants to get suspicious and start sniffing around my accounts; after spending a heinous amount on the tworesigniospells, I cannot risk any further scrutiny.
Danny tugs off his gloves, pulls his ear protectors down so they hang around his neck, then shoves the cash into the chest pocket of his coveralls. “Thanks, mate. How’d she take it?”
“I don’t know. I left it behind when I cleared out this morning. I didn’t get a chance to see her reaction.”
He stares at me open-mouthed for a second, then laughs. “Mate, you didn’t eventryto claim credit?” He shakes his head. “You aresowhipped.”
“I am not,” I snap, but my retort lacks a certain fervor. The excuses come, so well-rehearsed they roll smoothly off my tongue. “I just want her help to figure out the source of the surges. It is my father’s company, after all, that’s at risk. And she is the most brilliant mind in our year—”
“Whipped,” Danny says, grinning, lowering his goggles, and replacing his gloves.
Shoving my hands in my pockets, I lean back against one of the other steel-topped tables, hoping Danny doesn’t notice the way my face has heated. “Honestly, it’s a travesty she was even kicked out in the first place.” I’m trying to channel my mortification into something more productive, like anger. “Who the fuck would do that to her? To Percy?”
Danny doesn’t answer; he just fits his ear protectors back on and starts up the chainsaw. But the look on his face—I know that look. I’ve known Danny for too long to miss it.
He knows something.
I push away from the table and stalk closer. “Danny. Youknow, don’t you?”
Up close, the roar of the chainsaw is overpowering. As Danny resumes hacking up the griffin, I see that it’s covered in burn marks; another casualty of the surges, I suppose. I’m suddenly gripped by the urge to get back to the investigation. Hopefully, now that she’s acquired a permit for Percy, Gwendolynne will come back to Seamere, and I can convince her to start looking into it with me again.
“Sorry,” Danny shouts, the teeth of the chainsaw splintering through bone. “Can’t hear you.”
Annoyed, I reach out and physically grab one side of his ear protectors away from his ear.
“Do you know who told Pickering about Percy?” I shout over the sound of the motor. Danny bats my hand away and switches his equipment off.
He stares at me, his eyes narrowed, for several long moments. “Maybe,” he says, his demeanor guarded.
Yes. There it is.The tight chest. The rising heat. The controlled but rapidly expanding rage crowding out my thoughts. My next word is hissed. “Who?”
Danny drops the chainsaw onto the table with a deep, thudding clang and crosses his own arms across his chest. “Promise you won’t get mad,” he says, chin raised.
I rake my hand through my hair and give an irritated huff. “All right,” I reply after a pause.
He levels a look at me. “It was Isla.”
“Isla.” My ex. I spit the name out like it’s a curse.
“Now, Briggs, remember what you said about not doing anything stupid—”
“Fucking Isla! That devious little…” Now both my hands are buried in my hair. “Fuck.”
Danny looks on sympathetically as I literally fall to pieces. I sink down into a squat, staring at the floor—even though it’s spattered with literal gore—and take several deep, heaving breaths.
“She just…saw you getting close to Gwendolynne, that’s all, and wanted to get her out of the way.” Ah, Danny. Always the voice of reason. “You know Isla never got over you. And it’s worse that it’s Chan, after what happened in fifth year—”
“You don’t need to remind me,” I snap. What happened in fifth year was the final crack in Isla’s and my relationship. The reason we ultimately broke up. It’s also the reason why I no longer perform glamours (except, of course, in very specific circumstances).
But our relationship problems had already been there, prior. On the surface, Isla and I had been pristine, shiny. The perfect couple. But underneath, we were all wrong. The glamour I’d messed up had only served to expose the underlying rot.
Isla was never the right person for me. Nor I her. So who is she to come swanning in, getting between me and Gwendolynne, trying to fuck things up?
I don’t care that I promised Danny, with my whole chest, that I absolutely would not get mad. I am mad. I’m fucking furious.
