Rye nodded. “Yes, whatever it is asphyxiated her. I hadn’t thought at all about the way vampires breathe, but they do. It isn’t just a reflex from their previous life, or a cover to make them look more human. As far as everything I’ve read in this report, it’s clear vampires—or at least ones made like Oakley—have working organs. They just run on blood.”
“And that was enough to kill her? Cutting off her oxygen so her blood couldn’t flow?”
“In part,” Rye answered. “Wooden stakes, silver bullets, and, well, chopping off the head are the most common ways of killing them because a massive disruption of the circulatory system—which not only pumps their blood but is the only way they absorb nutrients—leads to a systemic shutdown. Debris from the wooden stake is as problematic as the actual wound to the heart, the chemical properties of silver poison the system almost immediately, and, well, you can guess what type of disruption beheading would cause.”
“But magical poison?” Embry asked. She genuinely didn’t know, other than that it would have to be powerful enough that only a witch could do it.Shewasn’t that witch, though, and didn’t have the foggiest clue of how something like this would work.
“Regular poison typically wouldn’t work to kill a vampire because their systems are very sophisticated—they have to be towork for three hundred years. A vampire’s circulatory system is smart and recognizes an intruder in the blood immediately. Just like it would with tainted blood a vampire might ingest.” Rye tapped his phone. “I thought the same thing you did when I saw her face and did some secure googling about vampiric anatomy while I was waiting for our Indian food. Anyway, the poison used here had to be magically altered in a way that’s specifically tailored to disrupt Oakley’s system.”
Embry nodded, her mind paging to the thought she’d had when she realized how powerful it would need to be to disorient a vampire fighting for their “immortal” life. “And it would have to work very quickly for there not to be a sign of a struggle. Maybe injected or inhaled, but the medical examiner didn’t find definitive proof of either.”
Embry’s heart swelled in hope that it would’ve been painless or near to it. She swiped to the next photo—one of her friend from the torso up, still in Embry’s blue tulleInto the Woodscostume. “Is it even poison, then? Or is that just an educated guess? Is that something a Table professional is even allowed to do? Guess?”
“I don’t know. It’s a fair question—one for the medical examiner. Though I’m not sure how exactly how we can interrogate her without complicating your case.”
Embry sighed and stared at her lifeless friend, swiping to the next picture. The girl’s black-hole eyes, staring up sightlessly. “What happened to you, Oakley?”
This one was cropped differently, showing her from above, from the top of her head—still crowned—to the ends of her bloodred fingernails, lying limp and prone. She looked as if she’d just finished a particularly difficult yoga class and was settling in for a rewarding Savasana. Well, if dress code for any yoga class included a fifty-pound gown, a much-coveted homecoming crown, and acorsage. Honestly, given another life, Embry would love to go to that yoga class. Ames would totally be down and—
Wait.
Corsage.
A corsage. Oakley had one on her wrist. White, delicate, and—
It looked just like hers.
Embry picked up the phone so she could stab directly at the screen. Pinched and widened her fingers to zoom in. Brought it close to her face, sure that the exhaustion, confusion, and emotional devastation of those past few days had her hallucinating. It’d be on par with the other weird things her body was doing, namely the way it reacted to the person next to her.
“Rye, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” she asked without looking up.
In answer, he placed an index finger on the phone and nudged it back from where it had been apparently hovering an inch from her nose. Now that it was a more shareable foot away from her face, he tilted his head to look. Rye’s brows snaked together. “The corsage?”
“Yes, the corsage!” she exclaimed in a whisper-shout that she hoped couldn’t be heard over whatever was happening in the movie. She’d completely lost track and didn’t care.
“What about it?”
Embry couldn’t help herself; she whacked his upper arm with her closest elbow. “What about it? She didn’t have one on when I saw her last!”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Embry insisted. “And if you don’t believe me, it’s right there on film. The last time I saw her, she wasn’t wearing one.”
“You mean the time you fought, it was videotaped, and then she turned up dead?”
“Why do you have to say it that way?”
“Because you say that’s the last time you saw her alive—something I believe, by the way—but the way other people see it is that it’s not the last time you saw her alive. The last time is right before you ‘killed her’—after that video was taken.”
“Ughhhhh.”Embry groaned in frustration.
“I know, Em. But it’s true.”
“Well,it’s also trueshe didn’t have it onwhen I last saw her.” Embry knew she sounded like an entitled brat, but she didn’t care. Rye had seen it all before. “Let’s look.”
She made to search for it on his phone, but instead Rye claimed it from her grasp and typed up a few things. “I downloaded it so I could study it. Not because I want to watch it any more than I have to,” he explained, and pulled up the video. “Ready?”
Embry nodded, and they watched it, again reclined on the couch cushions, their shoulders pressed together, their heads bowed over the screen. The scent of rosemary, soap, and curry filled her nostrils as she watched it play out in real time. Again.
