Page 59 of The Turning of the Tables

I’d gotten completely shitfaced as it was. And humiliated myself by drunk texting the man I had a crush on who had no interest in me and lived half a country away and then falling asleep in the middle of a moment that could have been meaningful. That maybe could have changed his mind about Rule Two.

I felt like absolute shit. About Elliot. About being hung over. And, most of all, about the case that I was going to have to go in and run DNA, tox screens, and particulate analysis for. Because now I was going to have to spend a lotof time thinking about everything that had been done to those poor kids. In painstaking genetic detail.

I stopped to get iced coffee, both because it was a warm spring day and because the copious amounts of almond milk and sugar would help to settle my stomach by absorbing the acid of both the coffee and my anxiety.

It didn’t really help. The caffeine did, but my stomach was not really improved. Not worse, either, which I suppose I was going to take as a win, because I really needed to grab onto absolutely anything positive.

“Morning, Seth!” one of the other techs called as I walked into the building. Sam Lodovic. She was in a bunny suit, hood off, front half-way unzipped.

I raised my coffee in her direction, and a small furrow marked the light brown skin of her forehead.

“What’s—oh, did you work that homicide last night? The… kids?”

Apparently my attempt to not groan, grunt, growl, or vomit by not speaking only served to indicate to other people that I was in a terrible mood. Which… Okay, I get it. Because I usually go out of my way to be cheerful, since it’s sometimes really hard to find the positive side of things in this job. Today I was not doing a very good job of that, although I felt pretty justified in being a bit of a Debbie Downer.

I sighed. “Yeah,” I admitted.

“Ouch,” was Sam’s response. “That sucks.”

I nodded. “What did you just get done with?” The only time you saw us in bunny suits was when we got back from a scene or from one of the large evidence lockers—the places where they keep cars and heavy equipment that doesn’t fit in a normal locker. You still had to do evidence collection onvehicles, so we’d go to evidence impound and do the workups there in full gear.

“Vehicular from two days ago,” she replied. “The poor guy died this morning, so the case got pushed up the food chain.” Vehicular homicides—unlike hit-and-runs—mean having to go over broken windscreens, grills, and other car parts, which explained the dark streaks—grease, probably—on Sam’s white suit. An accident where the victim survived generally got investigated more slowly, but if the victim died, that elevated the whole case to homicide and meant that we had to go over the car much more thoroughly.

“Sucks,” was what I said.

“Not as bad as yours,” she replied.

I didn’t disagree. “I’d better get back to it,” I said, toasting her again with my coffee and trying very hard not to limp as I headed back to the lab cluster I normally shared with Quincy. Right now, it was just me—probably for the best, given my current mental state, but it really just reminded me that she wasn’t there because some asshole had given her Arcana. Deliberately.

Okay, notherdeliberately, but they clearly wanted to spread it deliberately.

That was the case I wanted to work—I wanted to run more evidence, to movethatcase forward. Not that I didn’t think these poor kids didn’t deserve justice, because they absolutely did, probably even more so than many of the cases that came through my lab. But I didn’t know them. I knew Quincy. It waspersonal.

Which was probably exactly why I probably shouldn’t be working that case, but there wasn’t really any way for itnotto be personal for somebody, since we all knew each other. Everyone was a potential target for this asshole,because any of us could be called to the scene of an Arcana-positive homicide. I wanted to stop this guy before he hurt anyone else I knew.

And, if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to have to confront the gruesome reality of what had been done to those kids. I didn’t want to think about the fact that there were people in the world who did that kind of shit tokids. It was bad enough when adults did it to other adults. It was ten times worse when they did it to fuckingkids.

I stood in the main lab, staring at the half-size glass-front fridge that held the biological samples—blood, saliva, semen, and so on—that needed testing. I’d dropped off my stuff in my little office, but I had to pick up samples and claim time slots on the PurePrep and the MultiSTAT. And then I had particulates and insect parts to stare at in my own microscope, so I could hide away in my office and drink my coffee and try not to make it too obvious that I was losing my shit.

Ihatekid cases.

17

ELLIOT CRANE

Doing any better?

SETH MAYS

I am so sorry about that.

And a little.

The case is still ongoing.

So you can’t really be done with it.

Yeah.