Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [19]
Shelby bent over the body, examined his hands and face and began to search through the pockets of his black jeans. The man’s black button-down was open almost to the navel, leaving little to the imagination. He was skinny and powder-pale with a small tufting of black hair on his chest.
“That’s true,” Shelby said. “But you don’t seem to want me for a partner, so as far as I’m concerned our proximity is an unfortunate stumbling block to my career goals.”
“You know, miniskirt,” I said loudly, “I haven’t done anything to offend you. I think you’re just worried that getting stuck with the were detective is going to sink your precious career.” She didn’t look up from her examination. I added, “That, or you’re just a class-A rich bitch who can’t even succeed at slumming a blue-collar job.” I adopted Morgan’s snotty tone almost without realizing it, and felt appalled when I heard myself say, “Maybe you’d be better suited to marrying another trust-fund waste of space and pumping out a few brats, because you don’t have any skills that I can see.” Her head snapped up and she glared at me.
“You crossed a line there.”
“If you want to swing on me, you might as well,” I said. “Then we’ll both have it out of our systems and we can get some work done.”
I held her gaze steadily, letting her know I wasn’t afraid, that I was dominant. Or trying to be.
“Luna, you’re probably the most unpleasant woman I’ve ever been around.” Shelby sighed. She came up with a wallet in the dead man’s back pocket and tossed it to me. “But we’re both good cops. You’re right, I am a bitch. Get used to it or quit and go pump out some kids yourself.”
I realized I had been holding myself on the balls of my feet, ready for Shelby to take a punch at me. A deserved punch. What I had said was unforgivably nasty. I relaxed and shrugged instead. “I can live with it if you can.”
“Finally, something we agree on,” Shelby said. There was a pounding on the bathroom door and she hollered, “It’s closed!”
“CSU!” the knocker responded. Shelby unbolted the door and let them in. I opened the black canvas wallet and pulled out the usual—credit cards, bus pass, receipts. No driver’s license, but there was an ID from the Liquor Control Board. The sharp-boned face hiding under black hair matched the rictus grin of the dead man at my feet. I read the name off.
“Oh crap.”
Shelby left CSU to photograph the body and scan it with a portable ultraviolet light and peered over my shoulder in the dim light. “What’s wrong?”
I handed her the liquor ID. “The dead guy is Vincent Blackburn.”
Outside, Trevor’s music cut off abruptly and I saw patrol officers in their blues corralling the crowd. I turned my back on the chaos and tucked Vincent’s ID back into his wallet.
“This is so not good…” Shelby muttered. She had a gift for understatement. If the O’Hallorans were the squeaky-clean face of caster witches, the Blackburns were the things that went bump in the night, blood witches whose incredible family fortune had been pissed away after the death of their scion’s wife.
Nocturne University was built on the grounds of the old Blackburn estate. The family itself was scattered to the four winds. And now one of them was here, dead at my feet, and I was going to be responsible for finding out how it happened.
Freakin’ fantastic.
“Detective, we have some marks here,” said a CSU tech, lifting Vincent’s arm. Ugly black tracks marched in a row to his elbow, the most recent one still oozing blood droplets.
“That figures,” said Shelby. “That just figures. Junkie freaks, living in filth. Every one of them is bad.”
“Could we set aside personal and socioeconomic issues for one tiny minute here?” I asked her, crouching next to the tech. The bathroom’s lighting was weaker than a guttering candle, but I borrowed the tech’s flashlight and examined the tracks. They were stark under my light, deeply bruised from regular use. I flashed over his wrist, hands, the other arm. It was free of marks, but both wrists had circular stains of bruises