“You all right?” Her tone was excessively casual.

So you heard I was covered in blood. Rosie, I didn’t know you cared. The thought was snide, unworthy of me. She did care. A cop who didn’t care wouldn’t have limped down to the warehouse in her bandages and apologized to me. “I got beat up a bit, but I’m okay.”

“You know what’s going on yet?” This from Carp.

“Not yet, Carp. Can’t rush these things.” I’m beginning to feel distinctly out of temper. Thin winter sunlight caressed my shoulders, the wind had veered and was coming from the faroff mountains; we would have deep frost. Living in semi-desert meant that winters were miserable cold times, especially with the war between the river wind and the mountains breathing on us.

“Wish you could. Press is crawling on our backs. All sorts of wackos coming out of the woodwork.”

I knew. I’d seen the papers. Serial Murderer Haunts Ladies of the Night! was the kindest headline. Even the respectable rags were trotting out the Jack the Ripper comparisons. And the nightly TV news was in a frenzy. “Any incredibly weird, or just the usual weird?”

“Just the usual. Crystal-crawlin’ psychics. Copycats. Nutcases.” Carp sighed. “This is starting to piss me off.”

“Me too.” My tone was a little sharper than usual. I didn’t like being in the dark, and I was failing them. “I’m working as hard as I can.”

“We know,” Rosie soothed. “We know, Jill.” And they did. I’d worked with them for long enough that they did know, and I was grateful for that.

Saul approached. He held up his hand, and something dangled: three thin leather thongs, braided, interwoven with feathers and bits of fur. There were complex knots in a pattern that looked vaguely familiar. A single dart of darkness was braided into the end of it.

An obsidian arrowhead, carefully flaked and probably genuine. Saul’s fingers flicked, and the arrowhead dangled. “Found something.” His face was grim. “Smells awful. Probably related.”

I plunged a hand in my pocket, already hunting for a drawstring bag. Found one, fished it out, and opened it. “Finally,” I breathed. “Come to Mama.”

He dropped it in, and wiped his fingers against his leather pants. The thing was oddly heavy, and coldly malignant. And he was right, it did smell. I caught a faint whiff of a familiar reek.

“I don’t like this.” Saul drew himself up, still scrubbing his fingers against his pants. “That thing is evil, Jill.”

“They usually are.” I was too relieved to finally have a piece of usable evidence to mind much. “Do you recognize it?”

He shook his head, his jaw setting grimly. I stuffed the bag in another pocket, and studied the body. Now that Saul had circled it I approached, cautiously; he had point-blank refused to let me get near it until he had a chance to look. He stayed back as I edged closer, but I felt his eyes on me.

No, Saul wasn’t happy either. But whether it was the case or Perry, I wasn’t going to guess.

Now that I’d seen the creature, I could see marks that matched its claws. There were ragged slices in the flesh, chunks taken out of the thighs and the breasts gone, just divots with glaring-white splinters of rib poking through sodden meat.

I peered into the cavity left by the taking of the viscera, and my eyes narrowed. Wait a second. Wait just a goddamn second.

I looked through the rest of the scene, too, found exactly zilch. But my heart was beating quickly as I nodded at the forensic team and went back to Saul. “There’s something else,” I said.

Rosie and Carp both went still, attentive. Like bloodhounds straining at the leash. I took a deep breath, a chill finger sliding up my spine; it was the feeling of the first piece of a pattern falling into place. “There’s claw marks and other marks. The thing I saw last night had claws shaped like this.” My hands sketched briefly in the air. “The other marks, inside the abdominal cavity and around her eyes—those are too clean, and they’re almost covered by the claw marks. The ones covered up are made by something sharp. Like a scalpel.”

“A scalp—” Rosie trailed off. Her mouth pulled down, meditatively.

“Scalpel.” Carp scratched at his chin. “Well. Okay. So?”

“I assumed the creature was eating what it took. It may be. But it might also be getting a little help. Or eating leftovers.” I folded my arms against the chill in the air, the butt of a gun digging into my left hip.

Carp kept scratching at his chin. “Or it’s covering something up.”

“Either way.” The smile pulled up my lips, baring my teeth in a feral grimace. “Cheer up, boys and girls. This constitutes our first bit of good luck.”

“How so?” Rosie didn’t sound convinced.

“Well, it’s more than we had before. And if that little thing Saul found is from it, we can track it. Tracking it’s the first step to finding it, which is the first step to taking its sorry ass apart. And that will make me very, very happy.”

Saul stirred next to me, and I didn’t have to read his mind. He was thinking that I’d run up against this thing once before and nearly died, so why should tracking it make me happy?

But I did. I felt irrationally happy. If it would make a mistake like dropping something, it could make other mistakes. Unless this was a challenge, a fuck you, Kismet. We nearly got you last night; we’ll get you eventually.

“Do we know the time of death?”

“Hard to tell with the body so torn up. But it ain’t frozen. And if it ain’t frozen with this kind of cold, and on pavement, it’s still pretty fresh.” Carp sounded as unhappy as it was possible to sound without sarcasm.

“The blood’s still a little tacky-wet too.” I cast around. Good luck getting tire tracks on this concrete, and how did they get the van here? If they did get the van here. “The question is…” I sorted through all of the questions in my head, still far too many for my taste. I picked the most useful one. “The question is, why get rid of the bodies like this? What purpose does it serve?”

“Make our lives miserable,” Carp muttered.

“Not as miserable as hers.” Rosie jerked her chin toward the body, now being swarmed with forensic techs.

“I’m going to go do some research.” I rocked back on my heels as Saul bumped into me, crowding me again. His heat was a comfort in the early morning chill. They were right, the body hadn’t frozen yet. Whoever she was, she was freshly killed. “Buzz me if anyone else dies.”

Black humor, maybe. Bleak gallows humor. But you spend enough time looking at dead bodies and hanging out with cops, and that kind of humor becomes necessary. It’s a shield held up against the dark things we see, against the horrific things that can happen to anyone.

I’m lucky. I see inhuman things and how they prey on humanity. I see the aberrations, those who bargain away their souls for power, those who trade everything for the sweet seduction, the canker in the rose, the dominion of the earth. The cops have it so much worse.

They have to see the things human beings do to each other without any help from Hell.

Saul’s chest brushed my back. He had stepped behind me, looming just like a Were. The fresh hickey on my neck throbbed.

“Yeah, we’ll call you. Why don’t you get a goddamn cell phone?” It was an old complaint. Carp hunched his shoulders, fishing a pair of latex gloves out of his jacket pocket.

“Can’t afford to replace ’em, as many times as I get beat up and dumped in water. Not to mention electrocuted, stabbed, shot—”

“Okay, okay. I got it.” Carp rolled his eyes. “Get this one corralled quick, Kiss. Rosie’s getting pissy with the long hours.”

Rosie wasn’t amused. “Fuck you. Glad you’re okay, Kiss.”

I leaned back into Saul before moving away, feeling his hand brush mine. “Me too, Rosie. Thanks.”

Saul followed me to the Impala, sitting tucked out of sight on Edgerton Street. He was sticking so close he might have been glued to me, and after dropping into the driver’s seat I waited for him to come around and get in. He did, and I looked at the red fuzzy dice. They swung gently when I reached up and touched them, a gift from Galina.