Page 45 of The Turning of the Tables

I nodded, pulling an evidence baggie out of my bunny suit.

Tierney efficiently ran his hands over the faun’s jean shorts, paused, then fished a wallet out of one pocket. It was damp with blood. Tierney opened it, red smearing on the blue of his gloves.

“Odell Jones,” he read. “Thirty-one years old.”

“Cash still on him?” I heard Maza’s low voice behind me. He sounded tired. “Cards?”

“It looks like it,” Tierney answered. “Cash and cards.” He flipped through the wallet. “A Subway card. Starbucks card.”

The weirdest stuff gets you at crime scenes, sometimes. But the fact that this faun, Odell Jones, ate at Subway, drankStarbucks, that hit me harder than the fact that he was only a year older than me and had probably died from massive internal hemorrhaging.

I silently held out the evidence bag, and Tierney dropped the wallet inside, the bloody exterior leaving smears down the plastic. I swallowed, grateful that my mask made it hard for anyone else to see my facial expression, and went about labeling the bag. It would go with the rest into the crate that would be labeled O. Jones with today’s date and Maza’s name.

An entire life, whittled down to sheaves of paper detailing things like time and cause of death, a tox screen, gruesome evidence photos, and bloodstained clothes and shoes. And a bloody wallet with a Subway card and a Starbucks card.

I wondered what his favorite drink was. If he liked tea or coffee or something with so much sugar and syrup that it couldn’t really be called coffee anymore.

I’d never know. And that made me sad. Not because I thought I would like this guy, but because any life lost is a waste. A thousand cups of coffee never drunk. Meals never shared. Friendships never made and promises never broken.

All of the little things that made up life, just… gone.

And why?

Because of a grudge or revenge? Or just because he happened to have hooves instead of feet?

I layon the floor of Noah’s living room, staring up at the ceiling and trying to muster the energy to sit up so I could take another swig from my bottle of beer.

“Why was this one so bad?” my twin asked, nudging my foot with his.

“I don’t know!” I half-wailed, half-whined. It didn’t make particular sense why Odell Jones’s death was this much more upsetting to me than any of the others I dealt with on a daily-to-weekly basis. Sure, it was clearly a case of asuspicious death, to borrow the term used by the police when they went to the media, rather than natural causes, but so were a lot of the cases I saw.

Domestic violence turned deadly.

Gang warfare.

Jealous rage.

Robbery.

Drunken bar fights.

And yet, this hit-and-run was doing a number on me emotionally in a way that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. No, I still didn’t know whether or not this particular hit-and-run had an ulterior motive besides anti-Nid hate. I was still hoping that was the case, though. Because maybe then I’d be able to push past it.

“Do you have any faun friends I don’t know about?” Noah asked. I’d given him the basics, which was allowed, since it was all over the news already, anyway.

“I don’t haveanyfriends you don’t know about,” I retorted. “Faun or otherwise.” Except sort-of Elliot. Noah knew Elliot existed, of course. I’d mentioned him while he was still here in Richmond, although I hadn’t gone into the specifics about the benefits side of our acquaintances-with-benefits arrangement. I also wasn’t quite sure if Elliot qualified as afriend. It felt like he did—or should have, anyway. But I didn’t know if he would agree with that classification.

“Do you have a fear of being run over?” Noah asked.

“Not really, no,” I answered honestly.

“Sethy,somethingis bothering you about it.” He wasn’t wrong.

“No shit,” I retorted. “Now tell mewhat, and then I can do something about it.”

Noah sighed. He’d taken one look at my face when I’d shuffled my way back into the house and called Lulu to cancel their plans.

I honestly didn’t think I felt even remotely bad enough to warrantthat, but Noah was insistent. So we ordered Chinese food and gorged ourselves on fried veggie egg rolls and sweet and sour chicken and shrimp fried rice and beer, and Noah tried to get me to tell him why a hit-and-run was getting to me. Which I would have, except I didn’tknow.