“Why the bleach?” Samuel asked. “Did someone really think there would be time to clean away evidence before the Others gave chase?”
“I don’t know,” Grimshaw replied. It was a good question because it indicated a serious lack of knowledge about the terra indigene and how they would respond to someone playing a trick—especially at The Jumble.
Doc Wallace, who was Sproing’s medical examiner as well as the junior partner in the village’s only medical practice, handed Grimshaw the gourd and removed the severed arm from the bag.
Grimshaw shook the gourd. Hearing the rattle, he tipped the gourd over one hand.
Pebbles that you could find in any creek bed. No helpful clue there.
Then the three men looked at the soggy mass of black feathers.
By rights, he should call the CIU team in Bristol to come up and examine the evidence. In the morning, he would call Captain Hargreaves, who was his old boss and the man who had assigned him to deal with the trouble in Sproing over the summer, but tonight he was going to be his own CIU team.
The feathers were sewn in patches onto some kind of netting shaped like a cape. His own skill began and ended with sewing buttons on a shirt and mending a small rip in a seam, but this struck him as shoddy workmanship rather than something ragged from wear. And some of the feathers, brown in color, definitely didn’t come from a crow—or a Crow.
As he lifted one side of the cape, he felt the round, hard something in the center of the mass. Slowly, methodically, the men uncovered what the feathers and netting had hidden.
Samuel Ames and Doc Wallace sucked in a breath. Grimshaw looked at the broken beak and the grotesque head that was caved in on one side and said, “Papier-mâché. It’s a mask.”
At the same time, Doc Wallace said, “Plague doctor.”
Samuel frowned. “What?”
“A few centuries ago, there was a devastating plague in the lands we know as Cel-Romano. The doctors who tried to treat the victims of the plague wore these masks that had a long beak, probably as an attempt to protect themselves from breathing in the disease. I’m guessing this is supposed to be a Crowgard skull and beak, but it reminds me of the plague doctor.” Doc gave them a faint smile. “It’s a popular Trickster Night costume among medical students, which is why I thought of it.”
The mask was split and crushed in places, but Doc Wallace still removed it as carefully as if it were living tissue.
Then they stared at the partially crushed head that had been under the mask, and Grimshaw breathed out the word “Crap.”
CHAPTER 11
Them
Windsday, Grau 31
Not wanting to get knocked over or smacked in the face by a wild gesture, Richard Cardosa sat in a chair and watched his colleague’s feverish pacing around the cabin.
“Did you see anything?” Roash demanded. “Did you see it?”
Cardosa shook his head. “I was too far away from the door.”
“All that fear in the Crowgard, just from something seen for a moment combined with a sound in the dark and a couple of words. I have to interview those Crows and find out what they saw. This is big, Richard. This is breakthrough research.”
It wasn’t even close to being breakthrough research. At least, not on Roash’s end of the project.
Gonna gitcha.
Well, they had certainly done that.
Cardosa listened and listened and patiently listened to Roash’s speculation and conjecture about something that couldn’t be verified from the available data.
And he wondered what Roash would say about the bleach.
CHAPTER 12
Windsday, Grau 31
His brain didn’t work right anymore. Even so, as he approached the body that was hidden by darkness but still too close to the house, he knew he had to be careful. If the Sanguinati found him too soon, all his effort would be for nothing. He couldn’t let that happen.
His brain . . . blinked . . . as it sometimes did these days. One moment he was alone, and the next . . .
A long black cape covered a slender female body. One of her hands held a gourd. The other held a short-handled scythe.
She stared at him without any pity for what he had become. Then she shook the gourd. Rattle, rattle, rattle.
A warning? Like the things she had left behind?
He raised a hand and pointed toward the spot where a Sanguinati and a human had removed the warning. “They . . . work together. Help. Protect. Good.” He struggled for words, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. She was primal, feral. An Elder. A Hunter.
Dangerous.
Was she here to find him? Or was she hunting someone else?
Maybe, if he told her why he had come to The Jumble, she wouldn’t interfere.
A pouch with a cross-body strap carried everything he’d had with him when he’d eluded his keepers in order to reach this place. He opened the pouch and removed a folded sheet of paper. Unfolding it, he showed her the drawing, then pointed toward the main house. “Reader . . . lives here. I come . . . to keep watch. To . . . warn. Protect her.”
He wondered if she understood. He wondered if she cared about anything beyond the hunt.
He carefully folded the paper and put it back in the pouch.
She held out the gourd and gave it a little shake. Not a threat.
“Warning?” He took the gourd and shook it. Rattle, rattle, rattle. Yes. This sound would warn.
He pointed to what was left of the body. “Worked . . . alone?”
She shook her head.
“Worked . . . with others?”
A nod.
“Police . . . need to find.”
She tilted her head, a silent question.
“In village. I know . . . place.”
She attached the scythe to her belt. Then she stared at him for a long time before she removed the cape of black feathers and put it around him, securing the clasp made of woven pieces of leather.
He felt protected—connected—in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.
After swiftly hollowing out the torso, she picked up the body with one hand—and he led her to the place in the human village where the police would find it.
CHAPTER 13
Vicki
Thaisday, Novembros 1
I must have fallen asleep, because my alarm woke me up.
I grumbled my way out of bed, opened the drapes, and stared blearily out the window. Apparently the sun was also not a morning person today, which made me feel a little better. I was aligned with nature. Go, me.