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“When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
- Oscar Wilde
Chapter One
Dead bodies are a dime a dozen until you realize they’re all priceless to someone.
Wind lashed rain-soaked tendrils of black hair into my eyes, momentarily blinding me, until I pulled up the hood of my jacket, giving myself enough of a reprieve to really drink in the scene laid out at my feet.
“Hate it when they’re kids,” Detective Sheldon Stowe mumbled around a big wad of gum. He’d confessed to me that he once preferred chewing tobacco, but the force had forbidden him to use it on the job. Now he crammed his mouth full of grape bubblegum instead, and spent much of his time snapping it mindlessly. Snap.
“So you’re cool with it when they’re over eighteen?” I hadn’t taken my eyes off the blue tarp on the rocks that covered a distinctive shape I had no desire to get a closer look at.
Soon I’d have no choice. Stowe hadn’t brought me here because of my charming personality.
“Some of them are harder’n others, s’all I’m saying.” Snap.
I wanted to ask him what made this one worse, but once the tarp got lifted, I’d figure that out for myself.
“Say, Miss Corentine?” Stowe bumped me with his elbow, and I turned my head so I could see him better from the confines of my hood.
“Hmm?”
“You think you can do somethin’ about this rain? This is killin’ my crime scene.”
“This is Seattle, Detective Stowe. When Seth’s at home, the rain has nothing to do with me. Now, if you wanted to pay a tithe…”
He snapped another purple bubble, and his brow creased, showing a deep trench next to each of his eyes. I gathered Stowe frowned a lot. Maybe it wasn’t always because of me.
“Seth thinks we should pay him for blue sky?”
“Respectfully, Detective, Seth doesn’t think about you at all.”
Seth, god of the storm and my de facto boss, wasn’t terribly interested in the goings-on of mere mortals. If they tithed him a decent amount, he might let me intervene, but it would probably cost more than the Seattle PD’s annual operating budget for me to shut down storms in the Pacific Northwest for one little murder.
This was Seth’s home base after all, the location of his North American temple. And when Seth was in residence, there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about the rain.
Frustrating?
Tell me about it.
But you’ll have to take a number.
Snap.
The rain pattered loudly against my hood. A few of the cops milling around were carrying umbrellas, but I didn’t bother with one anymore. Rain was such an integral part of my life, I spent more time wet than dry in any given week. And not in a fun way.
Drops of cold water were starting to pool in my rain boots, soaking my jeans and socks bit by bit. I sighed and imagined my apartment, where I’d left the fireplace going. If I could keep that image in the back of my mind, I might be able to get through this without saying anything really nasty to anyone.
“Was worth askin’ I guess,” Stowe said.
“Never hurts.”
“Eh, Kepler, you wanna take the sheet off? Let’s show Tallulah what we dragged her out here for.”
It wasn’t often the SPD needed my help. Sometimes they wanted to know if a lightning strike was an accident or an act of god. Insurance paid out for accidents, but righteous smitings weren’t covered. The rule of gods superseded that of mortals, and that went for policy payouts as well. The police, in cases like that, were often little more than bureaucrats, signing off on official paperwork. I was pretty sure this would be more of the same, but Stowe had sounded shaken up when he called me earlier this morning. Enough that I’d come down before even getting my coffee.
That was my first mistake.
Kepler, a middle-aged female officer with round, friendly cheeks, pulled up the blue tarp, holding it in place so whatever was underneath remained protected.
In that moment I knew two things with absolute certainty: this was no normal dead body, and Kepler was a mother. There was something about the tender way she looked down at the corpse, and kept it guarded against the elements that made me sure she had a child waiting at home for her.
“Aw, man.” I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the damp air or cold water in my boots. I wiped a droplet of rain from my nose and sniffed. The air was salty from the ocean and carried the distinctive smell of storm. But there was no lingering electric buzz, and I couldn’t feel any lightning in my blood. We were safe out here.
Which was more than I could say for the little girl lying still and white on the smooth beach rocks.
I took a few steps closer and crouched beside her body, trying to avoid dripping water on her, as if it might add to her discomfort.
She was nine or ten years old, with chestnut-colored curls that were matted and dirty from her time exposed to the elements. Her skin was so pale she looked more like a porcelain doll than a real girl. She was completely dressed, wearing jeans with flowers embroidered on them and a striped sweater under a light rain jacket. The pants had been well loved during her life, with a hole worn through one knee and ratty threads at the cuffs.
Her fingernails were painted blue, the polish chipped and nails ragged, like she might have chewed them a lot.
A bubble of nausea built in my throat.
“Why am I here?” I didn’t bother to glance up at Stowe.
The girl showed no signs of a lightning-strike death. She wasn’t covered in the Lichtenberg figures that marked my own skin every time I was struck. Nothing about this appeared like a death I needed to be involved in, so why was he making me look at this dead girl?
Stowe stood on the opposite side of the girl while Kepler did her best to keep the body dry. The detective crouched to mirror me, groaning as his knees creaked and popped. He turned the body and moved her wet hair out of the way so I could see what he was trying to show me.
On the back of her neck was a black mark, like a tattoo. It was in the shape of a storm cloud with three drops of rain coming from it. Instinctively my hand went to my own neck. I couldn’t see the mark on my skin, nor feel it, but I knew it was there all the same. It had been since the day I was born.
