Levi felt his brows snap together. Murdered? By who?
We’re not sure yet. Tanner only knew to check on her because someone left her eighteen-month-old son in the front yard of our lair’s foster home this morning. We sent some Force members to Diem’s house. They reported that she’s been dead for approximately five days. Knox paused. Someone snapped her neck and carved an X into her forehead.
Levi went very still, his insides seizing painfully. His inner demon slunk close to the surface, alert and somber.
The boy wasn’t dirty or hungry, Knox went on. Someone took care of him during the five days she was dead. They fed him, changed his diaper, combed his hair, everything. He suffered no injuries whatsoever, and there are no signs of other abuse.
Levi closed his eyes, swallowing hard as the past swarmed him. It has to be a coincidence, he said, his voice like gravel.
You don’t believe in coincidences.
It can’t be the same person.
I wouldn’t say it can’t be. It probably isn’t. But we’re still alive all these years later, Levi. What’s to say your aunt’s killer isn’t still alive as well?
CHAPTER THREE
Walking through the small gate, Levi looked up at the detached, two-story house. It was nothing fancy. It was simple. Pleasant. Well-kept.
And the scene of a murder.
There were other reapers who could have done a walkthrough of the house and examined it, but Levi needed to do this. Needed to see and sense for himself what happened here.
The person who took Diem’s life couldn’t be the same man who killed Levi’s aunt. Not unless Levi had been wrong in believing that person was dead. Levi hoped to fuck he hadn’t been wrong, because it otherwise meant that the bastard had been out there all this time. Alive. Free. Unpunished. And heaven only knew what he’d been up to.
Levi had been two years old when his aunt, Moira, was killed. She and his mother had been stray demons, and Moira had cared for him after his mother died in childbirth. He had no memories of anything that occurred in those two years, let alone of Moira’s death.
But as an adult, he’d looked into his past. By all accounts, Moira had been a bitter, self-centered woman. There had been little evidence to suggest that she’d been an attentive guardian. He’d often been left with neighbors or home alone, even as a baby. Still, she’d kept him when she could have dumped him elsewhere.
As a reaper, he could pick up left-over emotional vibes from death scenes. But by the time he’d been old enough to return to his childhood home, any emotional echoes had long since faded. And if her soul had lingered a while, it had passed on way before then.
He’d looked into her death, determined to unearth what happened. There hadn’t been much to go on, though. It was a time before forensics and CCTV. Moira’s neighbors had reported seeing a man enter the house—something that apparently wasn’t uncommon—but none were able to give a good description of him.
As Levi had been so well taken care of before being left at the orphanage, the police had suspected the killer could be one of his other relatives. But there had been no way to interview any of them, because no one seemed to know if Moira had any family or who his father was.
Levi might have considered that the police’s theory was correct, but he’d discovered that three other women had died in similar circumstances before his aunt. It seemed more likely that they had all been targeted by the same killer with a weird-as-fuck MO. But as time went on and no other similar cases cropped up, Levi assumed the killer had somehow died. After all, the world of demons was brutal, and deaths weren’t uncommon. Plus, the culprit could even be a breed of preternatural that didn’t have longevity like most demons.
Levi snapped out of his memories when he sensed movement behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he found Tanner coming toward him, his expression grim.
“I figured you’d want to examine the scene,” said the hellhound, sidling up to him. “But I was kind of hoping you’d leave others to handle it.”
Hearing grass rustle, Levi looked to see one of the neighbors—who was also a member of his lair—and her partner standing on the edge of her lawn.
“Please tell me you know who hurt Diem,” said Janelle, clearly distraught.
“You were friends with her?” Tanner asked.
“Not close friends, but we’d talk sometimes over coffee. She was a sweet woman. Real quiet and private, but talkative once she got going.” Janelle briefly peered up at her partner and said, “Clyde and I watched over little Toby a few times while she went here or there.”
“Is he all right?” Clyde asked, scratching at his sideburns. “We heard he’d been taken to the foster home.”