Jessup escorted Reg into the building, standing very close to her, friendly and helpful. Reg looked sideways at her. “You mind giving me some space?”
Jessup moved a few inches away. “Sorry. We’ll just go over here to one of the conference rooms and see if we can work anything out.” She pointed to the hallway Reg had been down before.
“You said you have some things to tell me,” Reg reminded her. This was to be an information session, not an interrogation.
“Yes, yes, we’ll cover that once we sit down.”
Reg went warily into the interview room Jessup pointed out. She took an uncomfortable chair and looked around the cold, cheerless room. Like most of the interview rooms she had been in, it was not a happy place. Sometimes, nicer rooms were used to talk to families, witnesses, and victims, but Reg didn’t usually get one of those. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at Jessup.
“Okay, what’s new?”
“First, I wanted to know if you have remembered anything or if anything came to mind that you might want to share with us.”
Reg pressed her lips together, reminding herself not to say anything stupid. “No.”
“No to both?”
Reg stared at her, waiting for her to move on.
“Okay. I told you a little bit about the victim. We still only have his street name…” Jessup gave Reg a significant look, warning her that Devaughn and the police department clearly were not in on the fact that Nagendra was a troll. “The postmortem has been completed and the ME has given her opinion that he died of a snakebite.”
“Diamondback?” Reg asked, then bit her lip, wishing she could take the query back. It had flown out of her mouth too fast for her to stop herself. Devaughn looked surprised at her question. She probably wasn’t supposed to know that part.
“Uh, surprisingly, no,” Jessup said. She spoke slowly. “We thought from the circumstances that a diamondback was probably the most likely scenario, but the ME says not. She has some other possibilities to check still, but so far, the kind of snake is unknown.”
“Unknown?” Reg frowned. Was it that hard to identify what kind of snake had bitten someone? She had thought that each snake would have a different kind of venom, and it would be easy for the scientists to put some on a slide, stick it in a machine like the ones on TV, and it would come back with a spectro-something analysis showing certain peaks that would tell them which kind of snake it had come from. But apparently, it wasn’t quite that easy. Maybe all rattlesnakes had the same type of venom. Or there were only certain kinds entered into the database and they were missing more rare species of snakes. Or they couldn’t get a good enough sample of the venom from the troll’s bite mark. Who knew? Science didn’t always work the way it was shown on TV.
“Unknown,” Jessup agreed, nodding. “She’ll send the test results around to a few snake people and see if they can be of any help, but she said it didn’t match anything she had in her reference materials. Not something widely known.”
“Do you think… it’s a new kind of snake they’ve never seen before? They talk about there being all of these new species of animals around us, like frogs and insects, and we don’t even know it.”
Jessup’s shoulders lifted and fell. “She’ll do some more checking.”
Reg nodded. She waited for more information or questions.
“I have a request for you, Reg,” Jessup said, using a friendly, encouraging tone.
Reg was immediately on alert. Jessup normally wouldn’t dare call her Reg in front of her coworkers. Nothing to indicate that they had a close relationship. Jessup calling her Reg now could only mean that Devaughn would approve of her treating Reg like she was an ally, asking for favors.
“I’ve told you everything I can.”
“I know. What I’m wondering is… would you look at Mr. Nagendra, see if maybe his face triggers anything for you…?”
“You already showed me his picture. I don’t know him, and it didn’t make me think of anything.”
“I don’t mean his picture. I mean him.”
Jessup wanted her to look at the body. Ew. Reg started to shake her head. Why would looking at the body be any better than the pictures Jessup had already shown her? It wasn’t like Nagendra would look more lifelike in person than he had in the pictures. Reg would have to deal with any postmortem bloat, the smell, and who knew what other indignities at the morgue. They didn’t take civilians to the morgue, she knew. That was just a dramatic TV thing. In real life, they showed pictures or a TV screen. Not face-to-face.
Jessup waited for Reg to finish working it through. Reg took it a step further. Why would it make a difference for her to see Nagendra’s body in person?
Reg did communicate with the dead. That was kind of her thing. And one thing that would be different attending in person instead of looking at a picture would be how strong his spiritual presence was. There was no guarantee that Reg would be able to see or hear his ghost. But if she could, it would be strongest where his body was, until he was buried.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Reg wasn’t keen on seeing the body. She heard enough ghostly voices without intentionally putting herself into the path of another. But Jessup was right; it was the one thing that she could do for them. No one else could ask Nagendra what had happened to him, just Reg.
The medical examiner’s office was in the same building as the police station, so they didn’t have to go anywhere else. Just a walk down the hall to take the elevator to the basement. Why were morgues always in the basement? Because it was easier to keep them cold? Because nobody wanted to see them by accident?
To keep the ghosts away from everyone else?
Reg waited in an undecorated lobby area with Devaughn while Jessup went in to talk to the medical examiner and get things prepped for her. Reg was a little nervous about how it was all supposed to go. She couldn’t very well have a conversation with a ghost with nonbelievers watching. Not if Jessup wanted her to give them something usable as if she were just a regular witness who happened to remember something when she saw the victim’s face in person. She wasn’t sure how they were going to swing it.
Eventually, Jessup returned, nodding at Reg and motioning her to enter. Devaughn stayed in the waiting area.
It wasn’t a dark place like Reg had imagined. It looked pretty much like an operating room. Brightly-lit, everything white or brushed steel, lots of cruel-looking implements. Like they were going to do surgery on a live person instead of a body. Reg didn’t see any drawers full of people in refrigeration. She looked away from the table with a sheet pulled over a lumpy form.
A woman in scrubs stood in the room, looking Reg over. Her arms were crossed in front of her. “I repeat my objection. This is highly unusual.”
“The witness insisted,” Jessup said. “This is the only way she would identify the body. Said she couldn’t do it from a picture or a video.”
The medical examiner shook her head.
“If you could leave us alone for a couple of minutes,” Jessup suggested. “We won’t be long.”
Reg was already getting a headache. She should have known better than to go somewhere a bunch of ghosts would be hanging out. When she had gone to the ghost village, at least Corvin had given her extra strength and helped her hold a protection spell around her to keep the ghosts from swarming her, fighting to use her for their own purposes. She pressed her fingers against her forehead, trying to stay in control of herself.
The medical examiner looked at Reg for a minute, opening her mouth as if she would object again. Then she just shook her head and walked out. Jessup waited until the door clicked behind her, then turned to Reg.
“Okay. I don’t know how long we will have, so make it quick.” Jessup walked to the table and folded the sheet back from the troll’s face. She placed herself between Reg and the nearby camera so that Reg could appear to be looking at the body even if she were doing something else. Reg turned her back to the camera and looked down.
&n
bsp; “You don’t actually have to look at him, if that helps,” Jessup whispered. “Do you need me to do anything?”
Reg wished that Jessup could do something. “Look,” she said, rubbing her head painfully. “This place is full of ghosts. This wasn’t a good idea.”
“Can’t you see him? Do you need help with knowing which one is him?” Jessup clearly didn’t understand the problem.
“They all want to talk,” she said, forcing the words out. “Imagine everyone in Disneyland trying to get on the rides at the same time.”
“Uh, okay. So how can I help with that?”
“You can’t. You don’t have any gifts. It didn’t occur to you that this wouldn’t be easy?”
“Sorry, no. I just thought… his body is here, so maybe you’d be able to see his ghost and figure out what was going on here… give me a tip or two that might help solve the case.”
“Well, no trouble seeing the ghosts.”
“Sorry.”
Reg looked down at the body, hoping that it would help her focus all her energy on the one ghost and shut the others out. One, in particular, a little girl, was niggling at her. Standing off to the side, crying, asking for help. Reg didn’t know how to ignore her. Kids were always the worst. How could Reg explain to her why her life had been cut short and that she wasn’t going to be able to do any of those things that she’d wanted to do when she grew up? It was over. She didn’t get to be with her family, grow up, date, work, travel the world, or try new foods. She was stuck until she was able to accept it and move on with her next life, whatever form that took.
Nagendra’s face was puffy and doughy looking. Gray. Like a developing bruise. The smell was powerful, making her want to back away and just get out of there before she threw up. She could see the bite mark on his neck. It was bigger than it had seemed in the picture. She had pictured a small snake, but now she was thinking of something larger. She didn’t know how big rattlesnakes could get. She knew they could open their mouths really wide, and that would make the bite look like it came from a larger animal, but what came to mind was a huge python. The kind that could swallow an alligator.
Reg took a deep breath in and gagged, nearly losing her lunch—or her morning coffee—right there. She forced it back down and tried to slow the beating of her heart.
“I am here for you,” she murmured. It would be safer to talk to him in her mind, but with the distraction of the other ghosts, it helped her to hear the words aloud. She grasped the sound of the words and tried to hold them, to keep them from slipping away from her.
“You are the vessel,” came the mournful response.
Reg focused on the ghost on the other side of the table. Nagendra’s ghost resolved, looking more solid. Reg hoped that he didn’t grow solid enough for Jessup to see him or to show up on the camera feed. She would have a hard time explaining that. Though people usually came up with their own explanations when what their senses told them was in opposition to their beliefs about what was true.
“Nagendra,” Reg said, rolling his name around her mouth. It was a strange name, but it didn’t seem foreign to her. It seemed completely appropriate, with him standing and lying there in front of her.
“You are the vessel,” the ghost repeated.
Reg tried to process the words and to understand what they meant. She cocked her head and looked at him.
“The vessel. What does that mean?”
“He said there was another. Someone who was sharing consciousness with him. He was unable to complete the spell because he was tainted.”
“Who? Who are you talking about? What was the spell?”
“I told him he needed to be pure for it to have a chance of working. He thought that because of his great power, he could work the spell himself, that it wouldn’t matter.”
“What spell? What was he trying to do?”
“The basilisk.” The ghost touched his throat where the snake bite was on his corpse. “He was angry when it didn’t work.”
“What is a basilisk?” But even as Reg said it, she remembered the basilisk in Harry Potter and her discussion with Corvin. Had it appeared in her dream? A snake. A big snake. Bigger than the python she had imagined.
Nagendra was shaking his head. “Not like that. That is… imaginary.”
Reg shrugged, feeling herself blush. “I know that. What is the basilisk?”
“It is… a great snake. Powerful. The venom confers longevity. Perhaps immortality.”
“Oh. Then… Corvin was right.” She shook her head. “But what does that have to do with me? Why am I involved?”
“You are the vessel. Your blood ties you together.”
Reg immediately thought of Calliopia and Ruan. The blood of three races on Calliopia’s blade had been powerful magic that had bound them together. Did this have something to do with Ruan? She couldn’t imagine why he would be trying to put a spell on her or trying to achieve immortality. He wanted to be with Calliopia, and if he was immortal and she was not, then the day would come when they had to be parted. She couldn’t see Ruan choosing that.
Whose blood, then? Reg had been referred to as Weston’s blood. But he was already an immortal. He didn’t need any snake for that.
The ‘he’ that Nagendra spoke of had to be someone else. She couldn’t quite tie it all together. She was missing a piece.
“Who? Who are you talking about?”
The ghost looked at her. “The great wizard.”
“The great wizard. Do you mean Wilson? Is that who?”
The name didn’t seem to mean anything to him. Maybe Wilson had never introduced himself by name, only by his qualifications. Or maybe he had paid Nagendra for his services and the payment itself had been identification enough. Like a drug dealer who didn’t need to know his customers’ names, as long as they were able to pay.
“The great wizard,” Nagendra repeated. “He who you share blood with. I told him it would not work as long as he was tainted, but he did not believe.”
“How did he get tainted with my blood?”
“You put a spell on him,” the ghost said. “Without his knowledge.”
Reg thought back to their few interactions. She had never done anything to Wilson until he had drunk the tea and his memory had returned to him. Until then, he had been a nice old man, but when he remembered himself, things were completely different. And Reg had felt obliged to protect herself and the others by using a protection spell to counter Wilson’s power. Was that what Nagendra meant?
But there had been no exchange of blood, literal or figurative, in that spell. They hadn’t touched each other physically. It had just been mind against mind, power against power. And eventually, Wilson had conceded. Reg had not seen him since.
Chapter Forty
“Reg? Reg, are you okay?”
Reg was woozy, but she pushed any assisting hands away. She didn’t want help. She didn’t want anyone to touch her. She braced herself against the cool steel of the table, trying to get her bearings back.
“This is why we don’t do in-person identifications,” a woman’s voice snapped. “Besides the fact that there could be contamination of the body. No one needs to see the person they knew face to face.”
“She’ll be okay in a minute,” another voice said defensively. “Let’s get her out of here and back into the other room. It will be fine.”
Again, the hands tried to help her. Reg blinked, trying to look around her and take in what she was seeing. The shift had been rockier than usual. Probably because she had been trying to maintain a protection spell at the same time. It was easier during sleep. She rubbed her eyes with one hand and stared down at Nagendra’s bloated corpse on the table.
It served him right. Nagendra had failed. He had promised results and then he had gone back on his word, saying that it wasn’t his fault. Then whose fault was it?
“Let’s just go this way,” the policewoman said, trying to direct Reg to the door. “You’ll feel better once you get a bit
of fresh air.”
It was strange seeing through Reg’s eyes. The room, which physically contained only the body and the three women, was filled with ghosts of all description. Faint ones that looked like skinny, strung-out junkies. Bums. An old, well-cared-for woman who seemed to be confused as to why she was there. And Nagendra’s ghost, hovering over the table as if he could do something by hanging around. Bring his inanimate corpse back to life.
Of course, it could be done, but not with the power that Nagendra took with him as a spirit. Too little power to take his body, or any body, back. Ghosts were weak by their very natures. Just another reason Reg never wanted to die.
Reg walked toward the door, feeling at first like she couldn’t remember where to put her feet, but getting gradually steadier so that both women didn’t look like they were going to have to dive in to save her if she fainted.
She walked out of the door and saw the other policeman waiting there. She didn’t remember the names of either one and looked at their name bars to refresh her memory. The woman was Jessup, and the man was Devaughn. The woman in scrubs didn’t have a name tag. Reg supposed she was a lab worker who would put the body away when they were done.
“Sit down over here,” Jessup instructed, motioning toward a couple of unoccupied chairs.
“I don’t need to sit down.”
“I would feel better about it if you did. Just for a few minutes until I’m sure you’re okay.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Did you have breakfast this morning?”
“I don’t remember. Probably not.”
“That’s maybe not the best idea when you’re going to be coming over to the police station to identify a body.”
Reg just looked at her. Jessup shrugged. “Yes, okay, I didn’t exactly have a chance to warn you that’s what we were going to be doing today. Maybe I should have brought some pastries or muffins so that you could have had something before going in there.”
“And ended up with her barfing all over the morgue floor,” Devaughn suggested.
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