Magic Slays (Kate Daniels 5)

I started toward the house. "If the phone is working, I'm going to call Teddy Jo."

"You're calling Thanatos? The guy with the flaming sword?"

"He is Thanatos only part of the time. The rest of the time he's Teddy Jo, who isn't that bad of a guy. He bought a mortuary freezer a few months ago for a job he had to do. It's sitting in his shed." I knew this because the last time I stopped by Teddy's place, he bellyached for an hour about how much the damn thing had cost him. "I'm going to make him an offer and see if I can take it off his hands. I think he might have a body bag or two to throw in with the freezer."

Andrea sighed. "I'll start processing the house."

The phone did work and Teddy Jo answered on the second ring. I had once read that every day offered a new lesson. The lesson for today, among other things, seemed to be that bargaining with the Greek angel of death should be avoided by any means, because it cost you an arm and a leg.

"Seven thousand," Teddy Jo's gruff voice announced over the phone.

"Four."

"Six five."

"Four."

"Kate, the thing cost me five grand. I've got to make a profit."

"First, it's used."

"Now look here," Teddy Jo growled. "It's not a Cadillac. It's a body freezer. The value doesn't drop because you drive it off the lot." "I don't know what sort of bodies you stuck in there, Teddy. You might have put a leucrocuta in there. Those things stink."

"It's not like the dead gonna care. They can't smell shit, and they themselves ain't gonna get to smelling any better."

He had a point, but I didn't have to admit it. "Four five."

"How's the business going, Kate?"

Where was he heading with this? "Business is going fine."

"The way I heard it, you ain't doing shit. So the fact that you're calling me about a body freezer says to me that you suddenly have a body in dire need of freezing. That means you finally landed a client. Now then, about four minutes after death, the body cells experience oxygen deprivation, which raises the level of carbon dioxide in the blood, simultaneously decreasing the pH, making the body environment more acidic. At this point the enzymes begin to cannibalize the cells, causing them to rupture, releasing nutrients. This is called autolysis or selfdigestion, and the more enzymes and water organs contain, the faster they degrade. Organs like the liver and brain go first. Before you know it, your body is putrefied, the skin sloughs off, and all of your evidence has degraded down to nothing. So you've got to ask yourself, is it worth it to keep arguing with me and risk losing the body and the client, or should you just give me my damn six thousand dollars?"

God damn it. "If you know that I haven't got any clients, then you probably know that I can't afford to pay you through the roof for the freezer."

Teddy Jo fell silent for a long second. "Five grand. My last offer. Take it or leave it, Kate."

"Three grand now, with two one-thousand-dollar payments within sixty days and delivery to my office."

"Business is so bad you've resorted to robbing honest folks now, is it?"

"Teddy, it's a damn body freezer. It's not doing you any good in your shed and people aren't lining up around the corner to take it off your hands."

"Fine. Screw it."

Finally. Something went my way today. "That was a nice bit with the autolysis. Been going to night school in your spare time?"

"I'm an angel of death. I don't need night school, woman. You should just give up on this detective shit and start killing people for a living. It's simple, honest work, and you ain't got the brains for anything else."

"Yeah, yeah. I love you too, Teddy." I hung up. The down payment on the freezer would take a big bite out of my remaining five grand, and I had to keep money on hand to work the case. I could always ask the Pack to up my budget.

I'd rather eat dirt.

Chapter 7

IT TOOK US FOUR HOURS TO PROCESS THE SCENE. WE dusted the workshop for fingerprints and lifted enough partials to use up a whole roll of tape. Crawling on my hands and knees looking for evidence and taking samples of the urine stains did a number on me. My knee was a trouble magnet--first my aunt ripped it up, then the marathon of fights to the death that made me the Pack's alpha female had nearly done it in. I'd hobbled around with a cane for a month, a circumstance aggravated by the fact that I could only use said cane in my quarters, because doing it in plain view of the Pack telegraphed weakness. Now the knee had developed a steady annoying ache, and I had this absurd feeling that if only I could jam something sharp in there, the pain would go away.

We finished the workshop and walked the house. It was a spacious log cabin, all clean honey-colored wood and oversized windows. Adam led a simple life. I found enough clothes for a couple of weeks and a few dog-eared books, mostly engineering, physics, and magic theory. Andrea cataloged the groceries and reported lots of peanut butter and jam in the fridge. The Red Guardsmen's cabin came equipped with cooking utensils and an assortment of pots and pans hanging from the hooks in a wooden frame. The layer of dust on the pans told me they hadn't been touched in a while.

I found a picture of a young blond woman by Adam's bed. She was looking over the ocean, her face serious and tinted with resignation and sadness. Adam's wife. I bagged it and put it into our Jeep.

We took everyone's statements, made everyone sign everything, and drove back through Sibley's twisted roads onto Johnson Ferry. The traffic mess at the bridge had dissolved. An MSDU Humvee painted in blotches of slate gray and charcoal sat on the shoulder. Next to it a short, stocky man with dark brown hair packed an m-scanner into a van with PAD written on the side. The man's red hoodie read WIZARD AT LARGE.

I pulled over to the shoulder.

"Do you know him?" Andrea asked.

"Luther Dillon. He used to moonlight for the Guild a couple of years back. Hang on a second, I'll be right back."

I slipped out of the car and walked back along the shoulder, hands in plain view.

Luther saw me and sighed dramatically. "Stay away. At least three feet."

"Why?"

"The Order fired you for screwing up. Hence, you are besmirched. It might rub off on me." If Andrea wanted to kill Ted, she would have to stand in line. "I didn't get fired, I quit. And considering that I wrapped up your troll for you, I expected a warmer reception."

Luther bowed and clapped. "Bravo! Bravissimo! Encore, encore! Was that kind of what you were hoping for?"