Page 43 of The Turning of the Tables

Val is B+, though.

B is more common among Arc-human transformations.

And in recovered victims.

And they make up more of the population.

What aboutshifters?

Not sure. Arcanids of all kinds are still mostly B, but more O than A.

Why is that?

Nobody knows.

So B is more likely to get it, but O is more likely to transform if we do.

Looks like.

Is this something they’re checking now?

Doubtful.

The study just came out last month.

They should use that.

That’s probably the idea.

Lab test is done—chat again later?

Sure.

I heldon to thatSure. I hadn’t really thought through my impulse to ask about future conversations, but he’d agreed to it—and quickly, too. I told myself it probably didn’t mean anything. That he was just being polite. But he hadn’t hesitated, and that made me feel oddly warm inside. Because it meant that he at least liked talking to me, even if it couldn’t possibly mean anything more than that.

Putting my phone to the side, I went over to the MultiSTAT machine to finalize the results from the toxicology analysis.

As I settled in to check out the blood panel, I yawned—not because I was bored by my job, but because I hadn’tbeen sleeping super well. I kept thinking about Elliot—alternating between being turned on by my memories and feeling like a complete fool for not being able to let go of those same memories. I also didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Elliot Crane lived in Wisconsin—if we’d been closer, I would have wanted a real relationship with him, and that would have been logistically much more feasible… but I got the impression that Elliot still wouldn’t have been interested.

I didn’t think he’d be disinterested physically. Obviously he’d been interested in my body. But I didn’t think that he would actually be open to a relationship. I couldn’t tell you why—he hadn’t said anything explicitly, exactly. Rule Two and Rule Three were in effect because, he’d said, we lived a thousand miles apart. But if we didn’t… He didn’t seem to have any interest in moving here, and I certainly wasn’t about to drop everything and move there, so the point was moot.

I pulled up the tox screen results for our most recent victim—Miles Volkov, according to his DNA—and frowned. His Arcana infection didn’t show up in the MultiSTAT—that was something that was rapid-tested for at the ME’s office because a body with an active infection was high-level hazmat, and they would postpone the autopsy for a few days if that was the case. But whatdidshow up in the tox screen were positive markers for Benzodiazepines and chloral hydrate. Both drugs were sedatives—one designed to combat anxiety, the other known more colloquially as a date rape drug. The levels they were at suggested that the victim probably hadn’t given them to himself—unless he’d been deliberately trying to overdose.

I couldn’t help but hypothesize that Volkov must havebeen drugged, taken to Belle, and then brained with a rock and left, either dying or already dead, beside the path on the hill.

I sighed, then began typing up the report, glad that I wasn’t actually the one responsible for stopping this killer. Because I knew as well as any detective that our killer—who had left us two victims now—was going to kill again. Which meant that every new victim was someone who could have survived if we’d found the killer faster.

I did not envy the detectives that kind of pressure.

I finished writing up the tox screen report, then sent it off to Detective Maza.

A few minutes later, my phone buzzed, and I grabbed it off the desk. “Good afternoon, detective,” I answered cheerfully, assuming he had a question about the report.

“Hardly,” came Maza’s dour response. “I need you. Hit-and-run, 4th and Broad in the alley by the chophouse.”

“How do you have a hit-and-runinan alley?” I asked.

“No clue,” came the response. “But that’s what Caro said.”