Page 98 of The Turning of the Tables

She stopped. She didn’t go away, but at least she stopped. “Is the pain worse now?” she asked, then.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, staying right where she was. It wasn’t helping, but at least she wasn’t compounding things.

I just nodded again, my hands in fists in what probably looked to her like pain—and it was, just not quite in the way she thought. I could feel my nails—no, not nails,claws—digging into my palms, and the sudden shift in the scent of blood from stale to very fresh told me that I’d cut into them.

Shit.

I sucked in a deep breath, struggling for control. Fighting my own instincts, my own fear, and every piece of me that told me I wasn’t strong enough, tough enough, disciplined enough to pull this off.

Another deep breath. Then another.

The tingling faded. I swallowed the saliva that had built up in my mouth, unfisting my hands and wincing a little at the holes in my palms.

I was okay.

Well, no, not really. But I wasn’t going to eat anybody at this crime scene, anyway.

I quickly pulled out a pair of gloves, putting them on to hide the claw-marks in my palms, then pulled on a surgical mask that I didn’t really need. It was SOP, but it wasn’t like I could catch Arcana again.

“Okay, I’m good,” I said to Quincy, who put on a mask and gloves of her own.

“Let’s do this,” she announced, and I gestured for her to lead the way.

The victim had been given a wide perimeter, and there was a K-9 unit with the handler dressed in a full hazmat suit. He gave me a nod as Quincy and I walked past.

“It’s all clear of explosives,” he said, and I gave an involuntary twitch.

“Mays,” Detective Maginot greeted me, his low voice rich and smooth at he stood from beside the victim, brushing big dark hands over a pair of crimson slacks. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.” I tried to sound appreciative. I think I at least managed not to sound miserable.

“Anything you can tell me?” he asked me, his dark eyes shrewd.

I took a tentative sniff through my mask, but it was muting everything. I glanced around, and suddenly became keenly aware that every eye was on me. And that most of them had been present at the scene that had made me like this.

I pulled off the mask, then offered a weak smile to the dozen or so eyes watching me.

I drew a tentative breath through my nose, eyes closed, trying to sort through the riot of scents that assaulted my nose.

Blood, old. Tobacco smoke, fairly fresh. Men’s spicy cologne, strong enough that it was probably Maginot’s. The smell of disinfectant wipes. The weird plastic-y smell of latex gloves. The distinctive scent of an old refrigerator that hadn’t been cleaned in a while—slightly rotten apples and stale meat.

I opened my eyes. “The body was stored in a refrigerator,” I said. “A food refrigerator.”

“Ugh. Gross,” somebody—Schitikova—said from behind me.

“What else?” Maginot asked.

I suppressed a flash of annoyance at being used like a performing monkey, even though Maginot’s tone made it clear that he was asking rather than demanding.

Something antiseptic.The problem with that was that Quincy and I came with plenty of antiseptics.

“There’s something else,” I said, “but I can’t tell if it came with us or the ME, or if it was already on him.” The ‘him’—our victim—was a white male who looked to be in his sixties or early seventies. His skin was a shade of bluish-purple that was quite alarming.

Maginot looked thoughtful. “Could you eliminate things if we let you smell them?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “No idea. But I’ll try.”