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“Thanks.” Harris’s smile was genuine but sad. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
Cassie got into her car and waited for Harris to pull out. She followed the detective onto the street and toward the city morgue.
What a thrilling Friday night, she thought.
Sixteen
The city morgue was an unimposing brick building that belied the darkness passing through its walls. Sometimes bodies were stored there while the workers awaited identification or autopsies.
Cassie hated morgues. For someone with her gift, the place could best be described as an awkward social mixer. With the undead. She had been several times, and it never got easier. Spirits often liked to hang around their bodies. Cassie could be inundated with ghosts and psychic vibes. When her gift was stronger, she could sift through them and focus on the ones who would help her solve a case.
Now, she wasn’t sure what would happen when she stepped into that building.
Harris got out of her car first and Cassie followed.
“You okay?” Harris asked. “You look pale. Well, paler than usual.”
“I’m fine.” Cassie rolled her eyes at Harris. “This place makes me nervous. Not sure what I’m going to see inside.”
“Well, I can guarantee you’re about to see a dead body,” Harris said. “If that helps.”
“Not in the slightest,” Cassie responded, but followed Harris inside anyway.
The detective introduced herself to the employee at the front desk and was buzzed through the heavy steel doors where they were met by Dr. Seth Underwood. He was a large, bald man with dark, beady eyes and a huge mustache that made him look like a walrus. His outward demeanor was all business, but sidle up next to him at the bar at the Wormhole on Bull Street, and he’d keep you in stitches half the night.
“Dr. Underwood,” Harris held out her hand for him to shake. “It’s good to see you again. This is—”
“Cassie Quinn,” Underwood ignored Harris’s hand and stared Cassie down for a beat too long. For a moment, Cassie wondered if she was about to receive a lecture. Underwood’s face erupted into a huge smile and he bent over to hug her. “How have you been?”
“Better.” Cassie allowed the big man to squeeze most of the air out of her lungs. “How about you? Your hip still bothering you?”
Underwood waved her off. “Eh, I’ll be fine. More important things to do, like get back on my Harley.”
“You two know each other,” Harris’s hand still hanging in the air. “Wait, of course you do.”
“We go way back,” Cassie said. “Dr. Underwood let me bribe him with my chocolate chip cookies on more than one occasion.”
Underwood shifted from foot to foot. “When she says bribe—”
Cassie patted him on the arm. “I’m sure Detective Harris is a lot more interested in what you have to say about Elizabeth’s body than your sugar intake.”
“Right.” The breath Underwood blew out in relief ruffled his mustache. “This way.”
Harris turned and quirked an eye at Cassie. “I have not seen that man smile in the two years I’ve known him.”
“I make really good chocolate chip cookies,” Cassie said. “He’s a nice guy once you work out his quirks.”
“Guess you gotta be a little weird to work here,” Harris said.
Cassie gestured for Harris to go first and the two women followed in Underwood’s wake as they made their way down a hall and a set of stairs. It was colder downstairs, and Cassie knew it wasn’t because of the cooling units for storing bodies. The memory of an electric hum filled her fingers and toes, and she could almost feel what it was like to have her powers at full capacity. She hadn’t yet decided if she liked or wanted that feeling.
“We don’t have much time,” Underwood said, “so I have to make this quick.”
“Works for me,” Cassie said. She was already chilled to the bone.
The room was larger than she remembered. She could feel the spirits crowding her. But what caught her attention was the table in the center of the room. It was covered in a sheet and there was a light shining straight down on it, illuminating the body underneath in a way that felt unnatural.
Cassie always felt like, at any moment, a body would sit up and look at her. Seeing ghosts was less terrifying than the idea that someone hadn’t been dead all that time. Or they were dead, and they’d come back to life.
