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His expression was disdainful. “Detective Royce Dougherty. Who are you?”
It took a lot of effort not to use ‘detective’ when I gave him my name. “Hart,” I replied. “I used to work Richmond PD.”
“Used to,” Dougherty repeated. I already didn’t like him.
“There was an incident,” I replied. He could think whatever the fuck he wanted that meant. I wasn’t going to provide him with any further details.
Dougherty grunted.
Ward had noticed the new arrivals and rolled his way over.
“Edward Campion, meet Detective Royce Dougherty,” I supplied. I was here on behalf of Beyond the Veil, working for Ward and Doc, and I needed to be professional, even if Dougherty clearly didn’t want anything to do with me.
“Detective,” Ward’s tone was mild, and he held out a hand. Daugherty shook it, although there was a moment of hesitation before he did.
After the way he’d looked me over, I wasn’t really inclined to be charitable in how I interpreted that hesitation. Fucking asshole.
Ward began to explain the situation, how we’d encountered Rosemary at the museum, how we’d found what appeared to be the remains of a ritually sacrificed animal, how Rosemary had led us here, and where she wanted to go next. Where the body was, half-buried and half-submerged, wrapped in plastic and moldering while the people who killed her went on with their lives.
I watched as Dougherty went from complete dismissal to a hesitant skepticism. I’d seen it happen before.
I might be a steamroller in a supermodel’s body, but Ward was completely disarming. First of all, there was the fact that he was slight, with the sweet face of the nice young man who helps people across the street, big grey eyes, and charmingly tousled black curls. He also has no idea just how adorable he is.
Add to that the fact that he’s in a wheelchair, and people just assume he’s as innocent and meek as he looks.
Which is about as far from the truth as it was humanly possible to be.
First of all, Ward—despite being a stickler for professional politeness—has almost as much of a potty mouth as I do. Relatively speaking, anyway, since I’ve met very few people as prone to cursing as I am. Second, he’s not just an incredibly powerful medium—although he is that—he’s also a fucking warlock.
Warlocks, like witches, are rare. They’re born with magic in their blood, which means they can do things like manipulate the energy of the world and the people around them. Ward can even see it, painted, he says, like neon on people and objects with magical abilities.
It also means that Ward Campion, his sweet and innocent appearance notwithstanding, is quite possiblythemost terrifying person in the city of Richmond and possible the state of Virginia, if not the greater DC-Maryland-Virginia area. I wasn’t ready to go beyond that. Yet.
But he’s definitely an earnest, honest kind of terrifying, so people tend to believe him when he tells them things, no matter how completely fucked they sound. Like explaining how a dead woman had told him exactly where she was buried.
Three hours afterthat, we were on a shitty little motor boat, heading into the Grandview Nature preserve. Because it was a nature preserve, we weren’t supposed to have a motor boat, but the police get a pass when they’re hunting for dead bodies. We did have to goveryslowly, though, so we didn’t create a wake.
I don’t have a problem with boats. I like boats, in fact. Paddle boats, motor boats, sail boats, pontoon boats, even canoes and kayaks.
I did not like this boat. Mostly because I had to share it with four cops who clearly thought that we were on a wild goose chase, that Ward was either stupid or delusional, and that I was a subhuman freak. It was also filthy and smelled like fish guts.
Because of this boat, I had to text Taavi and tell him we had to reschedule, although if I were being completely honest, there was a terrified part of me that was glad I got to put it off for another day because this mess was definitely going to go later than my date. I did not know how very late it was actually going to go.
It was another hour before they dredged her up.
And then another two before we were able to get back to the marina.
And one more before they cleared us to go.
Ward fell asleep in the car.
* * *
I got home justafter dawn covered in swamp mud and scratches from the fucking raspberry bush that the murdering cult people had planted over their creepy little critter grave in the museum’s back yard, with my shoes still squishy from the salt marsh I’d waded out into to let Ward identify Rosemary Carlisle’s body by touch.
Ward had spent what little of the drive he was awake for trying to convince me that the bones were just animals, that the cult had been into animal sacrifice, and Rosemary was a fluke or a one-time deal. I’d agreed thatthatbone belonged to an animal of a yet-to-be-determined species, but Rosemary wasnotan animal, and her level of freaking out—even if I’d only gotten it by proxy—was not equivalent to animal bones and seashells.
And, assuming the dead woman wasn’t delusional or insane, shehadseen a murder. We just hadn’t found what she thought we should when we went digging around under the raspberries. The bone we’d found was animal. There wasn’t much we could do about that, although I had that itchy weird feeling I sometimes got when something wasn’t right… but I couldn’t tell if it was because Rosemary bothered me or because something was rotten in the state of Hampton. Other than Rosemary, anyway.
