Under Wraps

by Hannah Jayne

  Hayes shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand the Underworld.”

  I picked at another donut, popping a bit of pink frosting into my mouth. “You know all you need to. Demons exist in every aspect of your daily life—”

  “And I should stay away from fairies.” He grinned.

  “Everyone,” I said, breaking off another piece of donut, “should stay away from fairies.” I smiled back at Hayes, my resolve softening as I studied the warm, pale blue flecks of color in his eyes.

  Our moment was broken when there was the sound of shuffling papers, then a chirp from Hayes’s cell phone, and then Chief Oliver was standing in the doorway, his lips set in a hard, thin line. He knocked on the door frame and looked in at us.

  “There’s been another murder,” the chief said solemnly.

  My mouth went dry and my palms started to sweat. Hayes stood up and grabbed his coat. He glanced over his shoulder at me while I began collecting my files.

  “We don’t have time for that,” he said. “Come on.”

  “Don’t worry. I don’t have to be down at work for the rest of the day so I can stay around and clean up—”

  Hayes cut me off. “You are at work. This is our case.” He took my elbow, and I stood, numbly beginning to follow him.

  “We’re going to the crime scene,” he told me.

  “Crime scene?” I mumbled. “You mean, the scene of the crime?” My stomach dropped into my knees.

  Hayes roughly put his arm across my shoulders and pulled me toward him, a hint of a smile on his moist lips. “Lawson, you’re a natural.”

  My hands were gripping the seat as Hayes squealed the squad car out of his parking space and roared out of the lot.

  “Shouldn’t you put your sirens on?” I asked, trying to keep my voice an octave below hysterical.

  “The guy’s dead. He’s not going anywhere.”

  I must have paled considerably—or gone completely green—because Hayes blew out a resigned sigh and clicked on the lights and sirens. Then he sunk the accelerator to the floor and we jerked through an intersection, cars screeching around us, action-movie style.

  “He’s dead, remember? Not going anywhere? This is not a chase scene from Cops!”

  “If only,” Hayes muttered as we reached the commute gridlock on Market Street. I saw heads swinging in our direction, tourists hugging their GAP purchases to their chests, civilian cars peeling to the sides to let us through as our police sirens howled.

  I started to feel Hayes’s adrenaline, and as we sliced through town, I tried to hold back a grin.

  “Can I get a set of these lights and sirens for my Honda?” I asked, poking at the ceiling. “It would seriously cut my commute time in half.”

  Hayes chuckled and took a corner at record speed and I rolled into him, my seat belt cutting off my circulation, my head thumping against his chest. His firm, soap-smelling chest. I breathed deeply, hoping my olfactory ogling wasn’t completely obvious.

  “You women are always turned on by danger,” he said, staring down at me with a seductive grin.

  I struggled to sit up, to keep myself from getting too comfortable, nestled against his chest. “As if,” I managed to mutter, letting my heartbeat slow to a normal rate.

  After a few minutes, Hayes slowed the car down and pulled into the driveway of a swanky Pacific Heights Victorian. As he pushed the gearshift into park I noticed the crime-scene tape, the swarm of cops and onlookers, and then it hit me: there’s probably a dead person inside that house. I clamped my mouth shut, feeling my teeth begin to chatter. My heart started to speed up again.

  He killed the engine, pulling the key out of the ignition. Hayes kicked open the car door and stepped out, then dipped his head back inside and looked at me. My feet were bolted to the floor, my eyes boring through the windshield at the one-car garage door in front of me. My palms were damp, and I held them firm against my thighs.

  “You coming, Lawson?”

  I tried to lick my lips, but I had no saliva. I prayed to God, Buddha, Oprah—whoever might be listening—then forced my lips to move. “Is it still in there?” My voice came out raspy and low.

  Hayes’s dark eyebrows shot up, almost lost in the soft brown curls that tousled against his forehead. “It? You mean the perp? No, he’s not still inside.”

  Hayes sat down again in the driver’s seat and looked at me, his blue eyes warm and concerned. “The place was clean when the guys got in here. From what I hear, the vic may have been dead awhile.” He reached out and touched my arm softly, his fingertips soft and trailing up my forearm.

  “You’re fine. You’ve got practically every cop in the area looking out for you.” He grinned. “Plus one very adequate detective.”

  My stomach flip-flopped, but not in the delighted, hot-guy-touching-me sort of way. It was just that I had never seen a dead person who was actually … dead.

  “The body,” I whispered, “will it still be in there?”

  Hayes looked confused, his dark eyebrows knitting together. “Of course. This is a crime scene. They won’t have moved anything—or anyone—until we go through. Is that what you’re afraid of? Seeing the body?”

  I bit my lip. “Um, no.” I forced a nonchalant lilt into my voice, not wanting to appear the meek, freaked-out little girly girl that I actually was. “I was just checking.”

  Hayes blinked, a small smile playing on his lips. His voice went soft and I was touched by the kind warmth in it. “It’s never easy walking into a crime scene, Lawson, but we really need you here to help with this. You’ll be okay, I promise.”

  I nodded, certain that if I opened my mouth to answer properly, my thundering heart would fall out onto the car floor.

  Stepping out of the car, I followed behind Hayes, who stopped to talk to an officer guarding the door.

  “It’s our second time out here in as many days,” the officer was telling Hayes. “The owner called it in. It seems there was an attempted break-in here yesterday.”

  “Or an attempted murder,” Parker said solemnly.

  The officer nodded his head slowly and then stepped aside. He looked from Detective Hayes to me, his tired eyes going a bit softer as he looked at me. “It’s pretty gruesome in there.”

  “Aren’t you people supposed to be impartial at stuff like this?” I leaned up on my tiptoes to whisper into Hayes’s ear.

  “Come on, Lawson,” Hayes said, ushering me inside.

  My mood wasn’t helped when we were each handed a pair of latex gloves and papery booties to cover our shoes. I struggled into the gloves and slipped the booties on. Hayes already had his on when he looked over his shoulder, studying me. “You sure you’re ready?”

  My deodorant went into hyper drive as a bead of sweat rolled down my back. “Yep,” I whispered, following him through the front door.

  When we walked into the foyer, I sucked in a breath—not at anything crime-related, but at the sheer beauty of the place. Although the room was littered with cops unfurling yellow-and-black crime-scene tape, the opulence of the house still shone. My entire apartment could fit in the enormous, open entryway, and from the looks of it, I could park my CRV in the guest bath with room to spare.

  “Whoa,” I whispered under my breath.

  Despite the paper booties covering them, my heels clattered on the marble floor and echoed up to the high, vaulted ceilings.

  “This place is unbelievable,” I told Hayes.

  “And secured like Fort Knox,” he replied, glancing at a sophisticated-looking jumble of wires and flashing lights hung in a metal box on the wall. He shook his head. “Whoever it is that’s doing this is not the least bit fazed by modern security. This is certainly not the work of your run-of-the-mill opportunist perpetrator.” He closed a metal door over the alarm system and slid a painting back over it. “Not a single wire has been tripped or cut.”

  “Is that bad?” I asked.

  Hayes took me by the elbow, steering me out of earshot of the o
ther officers as they milled about.

  “You tell me. Do”—his voice dropped—“your people have the ability to get around technology?”

  I chewed on my lower lip. “Well, not exactly. I mean I’m pretty sure there are spells to get around that kind of thing. Witches and warlocks would know, I suppose. And a vampire could certainly trance or glamour a human into turning off an alarm system. A fairy or pixie might be able to do that, too, with a glamour, but they usually wouldn’t have the patience. And I’ve heard that on occasion, certain demons can wreak havoc on an electronic field.”

  Hayes’s expression was suspicious, and I hurried on. “But the bottom line is that it’s not exactly standard operating procedure. Alarms—and disarming alarms—that’s really more of a human thing, don’t you think? I mean, demons are pretty much old school.”

  “Old school, huh?” He seemed to consider this and then said, “Come on,” one paper-bootied foot poised on the bottom stair. “We’re going upstairs.”

  I followed Parker up the winding staircase, our booties making a soft shoosh-shoosh sound as we sunk into the lush ecru carpet. I glanced down, noticing fresh vacuum lines and stared behind me, seeing the lone trail of our footprints.

  “Who vacuumed?”

  “The maid. She told the officer who’s with her that she vacuums before she leaves each night.”

  “Is there another way up?” I asked. “A back set of stairs or something?”

  Hayes wagged his head. “Not that we’ve found. Why do you ask?”

  “No footprints on the carpet. I mean, other than ours.”

  “Good catch.” Parker grinned, chucking me on the shoulder.

  I nodded, a bit proud, feeling very junior sleuth.

  Maybe I could get used to this detectiving.

  “The maid said she found the vic when she let herself in this afternoon. The discovering officer didn’t mention another set of footprints.” Parker glanced down, pointing at his feet. “I’ve been walking in the prints already left here.” He picked up one foot. “See? No tread. Those marks are from the booties.”

  “And there were no footprints.”

  Parker nodded. “So, the victim was either killed last night while the maid was in the house,” Parker paused, frowning. “Or it could fly. Are we looking for something with wings now?”

  I looked around Hayes at the undisturbed carpet. “Not necessarily. Vampires have no quantifiable weight. They wouldn’t leave any tracks.” I thought of Nina, the silent way she flitted around our house. “Lots of other mythical creatures wouldn’t leave footprints, either,” I said quickly.

  We crossed the hall and I glanced through an open door where the maid, in a crisp, pale blue uniform, was sitting on a rose damask loveseat. She was sobbing loudly, working a rumpled handkerchief between her thick, stubby fingers while an officer stood by, taking notes.

  At the end of the hallway, we paused in front of a set of double doors, and Hayes looked over his shoulder at me. “Ready?” he asked.

  I nodded and he pushed open the doors.

  The master suite was phenomenal, even in its dimmed-light state. The huge bay windows were obscured by pale gray floor-to-ceiling curtains that only let in a few meager shards of sunlight. An imposing carved-wood bed took up one whole wall, and tucked daintily into the bed a woman rested, peaceful, eyes closed, pale lips drawn, her golden hair spread out in fairy-tale swirls on her white silk pillowcase.

  “She’s so young,” I said, frowning, looking around the pristine room. Delicate antique perfume bottles were lined up on a glass tray, and a vase full of tulips—not a single petal lost—arched over the nightstand. Not a thing was out of place. The calm of the room was palpable.

  “Why do they think this was a murder?” I asked, stepping closer to the sleeping woman. “She looks so peaceful. Maybe it was natural causes? Heart attack, cardiac arrest, choking …” I ticked off all the causes of death I could think of from watching Grey’s Anatomy. “And she’s got eyeballs, right? This doesn’t look like our guy.” I clapped my hands, a prickly wave of relief washing over me. “I guess that’s it, right? Should we head back to the station? Grab a cup of coffee from the diner? I’m buying.”

  Hayes ignored me and moved closer to the bed, putting one gloved hand on the bedclothes carefully folded over the woman. In one swift motion, he folded them back.

  I gasped, my heart lurching, my knees buckling. The hardwood floor felt cool through my skirt as I sat down hard and my feet kicked away, trying to shove my body farther from the offensive scene.

  “Oh. God,” I gasped, then clamped my mouth shut. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

  Hayes looked back at me, panicked. He crouched down next to me, his knees touching mine, his hands on my shoulders. “Lawson, are you okay?”

  I wagged my head and fought to get up, one hand still clamped over my mouth. Hayes stepped out of the way, and I found the bathroom door, shoved it open, and vomited.

  Chapter Six

  I was splashing cold water on my face when Hayes appeared in the doorway, a combination of concern and amusement washing over his face. “I barfed at my first crime scene, too,” he said companionably.

  “Good for you,” I said, swishing water in my mouth and then spitting it into the sink. “But I don’t think I’m cut out for this.” I turned off the tap and wiped my hands on a towel—a dead woman’s towel—and felt the urge to vomit again. It passed and I pressed my hands against my heart in an effort to keep it from thundering through my chest. “This was a bad idea. I’m an administrative assistant. I don’t do murders. I file papers. I take fingerprints.”

  Hayes leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. “Demons have fingerprints?”

  “Everyone has fingerprints. Except hobgoblins because of the slime but—” I glanced up at Hayes’s amused face and frowned, fists on hips. “A woman is dead here, Parker. I’m having a severe panic attack. Can you be serious for like, one minute?”

  Hayes came toward me and bundled me into an awkward, one-armed hug. His lips were right at my hairline and he whispered, “It’s okay. I’m here, Lawson. Everything is going to be okay. We’ll get this guy.”

  A rush of warmth washed over me and I wasn’t sure whether it was more nausea or Parker’s proximity, but I voted for the latter, then felt immediately guilty for having sexy thoughts in a dead woman’s bathroom. I wriggled out of Parker’s arm, smoothing my hair back.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. “I think I’m okay now. Sorry.”

  “Are you ready to help me with this?” Hayes asked, one hand on the small of my back as he led me back into the bedroom. “Because if it’s too much for you …”

  I steeled myself. “No. I’m okay. Let’s just get this over with.”

  I walked into the room, my eyes immediately going to the bed, to the dead woman. The sheet was still thrown back, and I balled my hands into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms as I willed myself to walk forward, to take in the scene. The woman’s peaceful head still rested calmly on the silky pillow, but now I could see that her neck was barely attached. There were horrible-looking bite marks at her collarbone and across her chest; the skin was puckered, torn, and purpled. There were double puncture wounds on each upturned wrist, and more blood than I had ever seen in any of Nina’s blood-bank lunch deliveries.

  “Who could have done this?” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away.

  Hayes looked sideways at me, his jaw set, that muscle twitching again. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  I found myself stepping closer, examining the corpse. I pushed aside a crumple of torn, blood-soaked nightie and gasped.

  There was a yawning, bloody hole just under the woman’s left breastbone—and her heart had been completely removed.

  I wretched and clamped my hand over my mouth again, but the vomit didn’t come this time. My knees weakened, and before I knew it, Hayes was holding me up, his calm chest pressed against my heaving one, my head buried in the crook b
etween his neck and shoulder. I felt his hands pressing against the small of my back, massaging in small circles softly, as I was sobbing, gasping, hiccupping. He led me into the hallway, shutting the door gently behind us. It didn’t help. The image of the woman’s bloodied nightgown and her naked, hollow chest burned in my pinched, closed eyes.

  “Oh,” I mumbled, sinking down onto the top stair. “Oh, my God.” I leaned forward, my head between my knees. I tried to breathe deeply.

  Hayes hunched down beside me and brushed a few stray locks of hair behind my ear, his fingertips lingering gently on my skin. The movement was so tender that I wanted to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” I sniffled, looking up at him. “I guess I’m not a very good detective.”

  “No one is supposed to be good at this, Lawson. No one should ever be good at this.” He stood up. “You stay here. Catch your breath. I’m going to go in and finalize things, and then we’ll head back to the station.”

  I smiled weakly, and Hayes disappeared back into the bedroom.

  Once the door clicked shut, I steadied myself enough to stand up and shakily followed Hayes through the bedroom door. Hayes had his back toward me, was hunched over, taking pictures of the body and writing in his little black leather notebook. He glanced over one shoulder at me, his blue eyes clear and focused.

  “I think it’s vampires,” he said.

  “No,” I said, my eyes following an arc around the body. “Do you see that?” I pointed, and Hayes’s eyes followed my finger. He frowned and shrugged.

  “What am I looking at?”

  I crouched down to the hardwood floor, my fingers brushing a smooth white powder. “There’s a pentagram drawn around the bed.”

  Hayes wagged his head, eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Veil,” I said, showing him my chalked fingers. “Someone was trying to cover their tracks—magically speaking.”

  Hayes swallowed thickly. “So, pentagrams? That’s demonic, right? So, vampires.”

  I looked at the destruction of the body, the dark red splatters of blood on the bottom sheet, the pool of red seeping into the mattress. “I don’t think so,” I said.