Page 12 of The Turning of the Tables

Naturally the CSIs had betting pools for all of the murder cases we worked. We weren’t dumb enough to post them anywhere, or to play for money, but let’s just say that there was always a reason when someone brought in donuts for the rest of us.

Quincy, who hadn’t bought the donuts in at least six months, snorted. She was the only person who’d made it longer than me without having to buy the donuts—I was working on five months and one week, myself. I’d been seriously pissed when she was right about thebrotherhaving been the killer on the case that had made me responsible for the last round of staff donuts. I and nearly everyone else had placed our donut-dollars on the husband, because that’s what the odds said. But in that case—nope. The brother hadframed the husband, then killed his own sister and thought to defraud both the husband and his own niece and nephews out of the life insurance money.

Quincy snorted. “No sign of B and E,” she said. Breaking and entering. “Means she let him in.”

I nodded. “Selling boy scout cookies?” I suggested, knowing full well, of course, that boy scouts weren’t that big and didn’t sell cookies. Not the kind that went door-to-door, anyway. I’d been to a club once that had boy scouts selling cookies. While I’d been curious, I’d been warned away from the cookies if I wanted to pass the piss test at work anytime soon.

I’m not really into mind-altering substances, other than caffeine and alcohol and the occasional use of marijuana to cut the pain when it got too bad, so I’d appreciated the warning.

“Ha,” was Quincy’s response. “Adult boy scouts show up to your door selling cookies, you probably shouldn’t let them in, Mays.”

I shared her chuckle. “Noted,” I replied.

“My turn to buy the Bux on the way back to the office,” she said. “You in?”

“God, yes.” I grinned up at her, even though she couldn’t see my lips—she could see the crinkling around my eyes. “You’re an angel, Quincy.”

She snorted. “Hardly. More like a… troll bearing coffee and scones.”

“Troll?” I laughed. Quincy is definitely nothing like a troll, unlike, perhaps, yours truly. I’m a big guy—not particularly ugly or stupid, I don’t think (the stupid part, I know I’m not ugly, but if I were stupid, I don’t think I’d know it, so I’ll allow for the possibility)—but I’m definitely more troll-sized and -shaped than Quincy, who’s like five-five anddefinitely shaped like a human woman. Not my thing, but I’ve seen enough people check her out while she’s wearing a bunny-suit that it’s clear she’s pretty far away from ‘troll’ on the fantasy-creatures spectrum. “Coffee-and-scones pixie, maybe,” I countered.

“Fair enough,” she replied, good-naturedly. “Just as soon as we finish this. So I should get back to my mud.”

“And I have at least another two or three or four dozen of these things to go, so we’ll see who gets done first.”

The answer was Quincy.

I wokethe next morning to a text from Maza:Vic tested positive for active Arcana. We’re in lockdown for the next 24 hours.

“Fuck.” We would know forty-eight hours after exposure whether or not any of us had contracted it. Usually, homicide victims didn’t have the active virus—or, if they did, we would know in advance because they’d been reported sick by someone in their lives, theylookedsick, or because that was actually what had killed them, despite the violence they might also have suffered. I’d attended more than one scene that had started as a wellness check because the person had been missing for a few days—and they’d died of Arcana. Sometimes they were stuck mid-transformation. Those were the worst.

This one hadn’t had any of the usual flags that went with an active Arcana case. For one thing, she’d been beaten to death. Most positive Arcana cases we encountered diedfromthe virus. And in most of those cases, it was either immediately evident—because of evidence of sickness or transformation—or no longer active, the virus having died at havingbeen in a corpse for more than 48 hours. Point is, we usually had plenty of evidence that we were dealing with an Arcana case.

Not this time.

I was more cautious than most people about contracting Arcanavirus. I mask in every public situation, including when outside.Andat the crime scene in question. But the kind of masks we wore, while helpful, were imperfect, and we’d spent alotof time in the room with the body. Handling it. Helping the ME, Doc Tierney, load it into the bag and then the van. Taking swabs of blood and other bodily fluids. Testing those fluids in the lab, where most of us—including me—didn’t mask if we were alone in the room. Or with an Arcanid—like Hart.

Nids can’t contract or carry Arcana. They’re the only ones. Even Arc-humans can re-contract and carry it, although they’re unable to gain any new arcane abilities or undergo transformation. They can still die, though. I was more cautious than most because I’d witnessed Noah’s transformation. It had been horrible and painful and had changed his life forever.

It wasn’t that I loved my twin any less post-transformation—of course not. And I didn’t think Noah deserved any fewer rights or privileges than the rest of us. But that looked like ithurt. A lot. And the world wasn’t as kind and accepting as it should have been. It was harder for him to get a job, access health care, and move throughout the world. And now he had to register with the state of Virginia.

I didn’t want to get horribly sick, Idefinitelydidn’t want to die, and I also didn’t want to make my life any harder than it had to be.

Was it likely that everyone at that scene now had Arcana? Realistically, our risk was pretty low. But protocolwas that we had to quarantine for forty-eight hours from first contact, then test before we could go back to work. Arcanavirus is very, very contagious. Regardless of how you felt about catching it, if even one of us showed up to work carrying it, we could take out the whole department—and the idea of losing the crime lab, URPD’s Precinct One day shift,anda chunk of the ME’s office for two weeks minimum was unacceptable to the city government.

So every uniform cop, every tech, Maza, Doc Tierney… This one victim meant that all of us were off the job for the next twenty-four hours, at least. Which meant that if you were going to commit a murder in Richmond, today would have been the day to do it. Sure, there were still cops and coroners and lab techs, just… about a quarter fewer of them. More, if transmission got out of control.

So I guessed I got to sleep in.

Then I thought about Noah and the fact that he might not be alone in his room…

I dragged myself out of bed with a groan as my knee and back protested, grabbed my glasses off the thrifted nightstand, and then walk-limped over to the door to my room—what had been Noah’s art studio before he’d let me move in with him. I put a hand on the knob. “Noah?” I called.

Noah’s an artist—paint and sculpture, mostly, although he ranged pretty broadly within those media. He’d even done one of the massive murals that graced walls all over the city—it was gorgeous, a mermaid holding her hands up as though the bricks were a glass wall behind which she was being held—or through which she was watching this air-filled world with its people walking to and fro. There was a small smile on her lips, an expression of curiosity on features surrounding eyes that were solid black. She waseerie and beautiful and strange, a threat and a promise all at once.

I loved her.

She got mixed reviews from other people—although everyone agreed that she was technically exquisite, some people didn’t like the implied threat in her bottomless eyes, or maybe they just objected the curves of her breasts that were barely concealed by drifting strands of kelp.