She unfolded the garbage bag, clearing a space on the floor to spread it next to the body. “You should always know what happened,” she told me as she worked. “It might make a difference to the cleanup. Usually the witch who did it—or Kirsten, if it’s a bad one like this—will fill you in, but I’ve seen this before, so she didn’t bother.” She motioned me to go crouch by the guy’s feet. “Death magic usually involves trying to contact the dead. This guy probably knew one of the witches and asked for help to talk to someone.” She leaned back for a second, showing me the importance of what she was saying. “A lot of things happen in the Old World, Scarlett, and some witches have a lot of power to manipulate the magic. But magic doesn’t like it when someone tries to cross the line between the living and the dead. It takes a very, very powerful coven to control death magic spells. Those witches couldn’t do it, and the magic went right back through them and zapped him. Like a lightning strike, but with no marks, which is why we have to take care of the body. No coroner is going to be able to determine cause of death.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Kirsten said, leaning in the doorframe. “Your magic—or lack thereof—costs you nothing.” Her eyes were sad. “For the witches, there’s always a cost. Some of us can’t afford to pay it.”
Listening to the two of them talk as if we weren’t gathered around a corpse was starting to calm me down. But then Olivia smiled at me, reached down, and wrapped her gloved hands crudely around the guy’s head, nodding for me to take his feet and help lift him onto the bag. I had no choice but to look. The guy’s feet were on the smallish side, and he’d had a pedicure recently (thank you, LA). I put my hands gingerly around his ankles, sticking my elbows out so his toes wouldn’t brush my forearms, and Olivia counted to three. When we lifted him, he felt awful—just dead, a dead sack of meat. His sad little penis lolled around with the movement, and the second he hit the bag, I was moving, darting out of the room. Kirsten had already backed into the hallway, pointing at one of the doors with a look of sympathy. I ran by and got the toilet lid up just in time to puke up all of that night’s dinner. I lost control of my body, which kept heaving and heaving, ignoring my attempts to calm it down, until at last it allowed me to collapse back against the tub. I stretched out one leg and kicked the handle on the toilet.
“Thanks,” I said to Kirsten, who was standing in the doorway.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. She gave me a sympathetic smile. “First one, right? It gets easier.”
But I don’t want it to get easier, I thought. I’m not supposed to be moving dead bodies; I’m supposed to be a regular person.
“Scarlett, get back in here,” Olivia barked. She sounded furious. “I can’t use you if you’re going to go to pieces at every little thing.”
I froze. I’d never displeased her before. Kirsten frowned, checking my face, but I managed to give her a shaky smile and a shrug. Then I got up and hurried back to Olivia.
We arrived at the comic book store just before 4:00 a.m., and Cruz came around the van to open my door for me, which I thought was incredibly cheesy. We circled around to the back of the building, where a bunch of that yellow crime scene tape segregated the section of the parking lot between the dumpster and the store. Even from thirty feet away, I could see the rust-colored blood still oozing sluggishly down the sides of the dumpster. We weaved through the parked police vehicles and approached the scene.
Before I could worry too much about his plan, Cruz took my hand in his warm brown one and led me straight over to a squat, nerdy-looking guy in his late twenties who was painstakingly cleaning the lens of an enormous camera.
“Hey, Dale? Have you got a second?”
The heavyset guy looked up, wrinkling his nose in a squint at us. “Hey, Jesse. What’s up?”
“Dale, this is my girlfriend, Scarlett.”
I smiled winningly. Or tried to.
“She’s studying photography at the U. I was hoping maybe you could show her around the scene a little, say she’s your apprentice.”
Dale looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know, Jesse. They’re pretty careful about who gets across the tape these days.”
“Aw, come on, man. Don’t make me look bad.” He leaned in, and I heard him murmur to Dale, “You know that new Kate Beckinsale movie? How’d you like to go to the premiere?”
Dale’s eyes bugged out. “Really? You can do that?”
“My dad’s working on the set, man. He can do anything. You think you can help me out?”
“Sure, yeah.” Dale nodded his head enthusiastically.
“Thanks, Dale.” Cruz squeezed my hand and turned toward me. “You go on home when you’re done, baby. I’ll have somebody drop me off at my car when I get done. It might be late.” He gave me a mischievous grin, then reached over and patted my ass. “Go get ‘em.”
I glared at him behind Dale’s back, but he just smiled sweetly.
He trotted off to join the other cops who were milling around the tape line, and Dale looked me over with interest, taking an extra-close look at Molly’s leather pants. Never borrowing these again, I thought.
“Wow, you’re pretty. Okay, so how far are you in your classes? Have you taken two forty-five with Crawford yet?”
We started walking toward the yellow tape ourselves.