Life is for the Living Read online

  Pulling into the station, her mother turned to Kasey. "You need to be cautious in dealing with the Ainsley's. Arthur is a political animal. He has fought his way to the head of the Council, leaving only wreckage behind him. He has money, power, and magic. He is best avoided."

  "It was never my intention to end up at odds with him, Mom. His son is a pig. I didn't even know who they were until Arthur showed up at the station. As soon as I get him to drop this lawsuit, I'll be done with the lot of them. I have far more important things to worry about than the posh end of town."

  "Kasey, ever since you told us about Danilo, I've been thinking. Whoever was hunting you has tremendous reach. They were able to dig up your records from the Academy of Magic and track you here. Be careful, trust no one, not even the Council."

  "You think the council might have something to do with it?” Kasey asked.

  "I don’t, know," her mother replied. "Just keep both eyes open, you see anything suspicious, call me. You aren’t alone in this."

  "I will, Mom." Kasey leaned over and threw her arms around her mother. It was awkward over the center console of the car, but Kasey persisted and drew her mother in anyway. "Say hi to Sarah and the kids for me. Langdon too, if he is home."

  "He should be in later today. Sarah mentioned he was getting back from his conference in Germany. We’re going to pick him up from the airport."

  "Well, give my best."

  "Will do, hun." Jane fixed her with a knowing stare. "If you need help, just call. We are here. You will never be alone."

  Kasey popped the door open and smiled. "Thanks, Mom."

  Sliding out of the car she shut the car door and made her way toward the precinct building. It had only been a day, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Pulling open the large double doors, she entered the station.

  "Kasey?" a voice called across the lobby. "What on earth are you doing here?"

  Kasey froze, and so did her heart.

  Chapter Two

  Kasey searched for the source of the voice. Her hand trembled as the heavy station door pushed back against her.

  Scanning the lobby, Kasey spotted Detective Bishop striding purposefully across the lobby to greet her. Bishop’s forehead was creased with worry.

  "I said, what are you doing here?" Bishop repeated.

  Kasey cocked her head. "I work here, or at least I did the last time I checked."

  Bishop smiled. "That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You were almost killed last night. No one would blame you if you took a day off. In fact, the chief told us you would be taking the week."

  "Well, he hasn’t told me yet, so I’m here," Kasey replied, throwing her hands up and doing her best impression of a cheerleader’s spirit fingers.

  Bishop looked Kasey up and down. " I’m glad to say you’re looking a lot better than you did last night, that's for sure."

  "It's amazing what a full night's sleep and washing the blood off will do for you," Kasey replied. "So, where are we on the case?"

  Bishop put her arm around Kasey and steered her toward the elevator. "Officially, it's closed. You may have missed it, but the chief did a piece on Good Morning New York this morning. With the perp on ice in the morgue, the chief wanted to get the word out as quickly as possible. The other women have been released from protective custody, as well, now that the danger has passed. Unofficially, we are just taking care of the last of the paperwork.

  “Vida took some time off this morning for a personal matter, so we're still waiting on him for the autopsy. Not that we are expecting any surprises there. We got a good look last night, Kasey. Pretty sure the cause of death was the piece of steel you put through his chest before barbecuing him, that sound about right to you?"

  Kasey nodded. "Pretty much, Bishop. It took everything I had but it was him or me."

  Bishop's face was difficult to read but the glistening in the corner of her eye told Kasey all she needed to know. Bishop was still upset about Collins.

  Before the killer had revealed himself as Danilo Lelac, they had known him as Agent Collins and believed him to be a liaison assigned to the case by the FBI.

  Collins and Bishop had got on like a house on fire. Unfortunately for Bishop, Collins had turned out to be a sociopath and a serial killer. As muscle for hire, he had been paid to hunt down Kasey. He had almost succeeded, but Kasey had emerged from the burning apartment victorious and Danilo Lelac was no more.

  Though their time together had been short, Collins had clearly meant something to Bishop.

  Wiping her eyes, Bishop deflected, "So, what's the plan, Kasey?"

  "I was going to head down to the morgue and tidy up. Collins cornered me there, and the place is still trashed, or at least it will be if Vida hasn't arrived yet. Best I take care of that before he gets in and has a heart attack. There is no way he'll take kindly to having his office turned upside down."

  "That is very true," Bishop replied. "Any chance we could get your statement today?"

  "Sure thing, Bishop. Just let me tidy up downstairs before Vida gets in, then I’ll pop back up and we can take care of it."

  "You sure it’s not too soon?” Bishop asked.

  “Look, the longer I avoid it, the harder it will be for me to get past it. I’ll be better once I can put this whole affair behind me.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Kasey stepped onto the lift.

  Bishop reached out her hand to stop the doors from closing. "It's good to see you on your feet, Kasey, but when we are done with your statement, you should take some time to recover. You’ve been through a lot."

  Kasey ignored her instincts and wrapped her arms around Bishop. "I’ll think about it. Thanks for having my back yesterday."

  As Kasey embraced Bishop, a familiar mist descended over her vision, blotting out the lobby of the Ninth Precinct.

  What the…? A vision—now?

  When the mist cleared, Kasey found herself standing in an elevator, but the Ninth Precinct was nowhere to be seen.

  Instead, the elevator she occupied was old and poorly maintained. Its dirty green carpet was worn through from decades of wear and tear. The doors likewise were scuffed and tarnished.

  She looked down and recognized her own clothes.

  It's me, she realized with a start.

  She seldom experienced visions from her own life. They tended to revolve around others, sometimes an individual, and other times large swathes of people, but never had she experienced a glimpse into her own future.

  She was in uncharted waters.

  Looking down, she knew it was definitely her. She could clearly see her left arm still wore the bandage Vida had patched her up with after the fight at Hudson Road.

  Searching for a time line, she realized her clothes were different than what she was now wearing.

  At least it’s not today.

  She watched as the elevator’s ancient readout slowly moved from the third-floor button to the second, and then to the ground floor. The elevation halted with a clunking sound.

  The aluminum doors parted, revealing a long hallway. Apartment doors ran the length of the corridor.

  She stepped out of the elevator.

  A figure ran down the hall away from her, the pantsuit all too familiar.

  Bishop!

  Confused, Kasey took off down the hall after her.

  She heard herself speak the words, "Hey Bishop, where did she go?"

  Bishop stopped and turned to face Kasey, her demeanor cold and impassive. Without warning, she drew her Glock and pointed it at Kasey. Kasey's breath caught in her throat.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the vision ended. Grey mist clouded her vision like a dense fog. When it cleared, Kasey was face-to-face with Bishop, her arms still wrapped around her in a hug.

  Bishop was trying to extricate herself from the awkward embrace.

  "Are you sure you're alright, Kasey?" Bishop asked. “That’s an awfully firm grip you've got there.”

  Kasey let go, trying to proc
ess what she had just witnessed. "Oh, sorry. I drifted off for a moment, my bad.”

  She stepped back, and the elevator doors slid shut, blocking out Detective Bishop and her look of confusion and concern.

  Kasey rode the lift down to the morgue, replaying the vision in her mind. What could it have meant? Why would Bishop ever threaten her with a gun?

  Entering the morgue, Kasey was met with widespread destruction. Steel trays and morgue implements were scattered across the floor. A set of shelves lay where it had fallen.

  "Oh, man," Kasey said to herself. "I need to get this cleaned up before Vida gets in. He will lose his mind if he sees his morgue in this state.”

  Sitting in the center of the room lay a steel gurney with a large white body bag resting on it. As it hadn't been there last night, there was only one possibility.

  Danilo Lelac.

  She made her way over to the gurney and unzipped the heavy white plastic sheath. Instantly, she regretted it. The half-toasted remains of Danilo Lelac were an unwelcome sight.

  In an effort to hide the truth of what had happened there, Kasey had almost burnt down her apartment. What none of her colleagues knew was that Collins was a Werewolf. She wanted to keep it that way.

  The Werewolf was both a magical creature and part of a World that lay outside the public eye. The World of Magic relied on secrecy to guard against the superstitions and prejudices of mankind. History had not been kind to witches and wizards. Purges and persecution had always followed swiftly in the wake of discovery.

  Kasey's purpose in coming to the station was to ensure that the World of Magic remained undetected. And that required destroying what little remained of Danilo's corpse. She needed to ensure no trace of the shapeshifter remained. She simply couldn't risk Vida performing an autopsy or running any samples. Not to mention how difficult it would be to explain away the cause of death.

  Kasey had killed the Werewolf by stabbing him through the heart with the Spear of Odin. The ancient artifact was made entirely of silver, a substance anathema to the lupine creatures. The silver had stilled Danilo’s beating heart and ended the creature's reign of bloodshed.

  Unfortunately, spears are pretty hard to come by in 21st-century New York City. The wounds it had caused would be difficult to reason away. Kasey couldn't have Vida asking any more questions.

  She hunted around the room for options. Hiding the body would not be sufficient; it needed to be destroyed.

  I’ll never be able to sneak it out of here on my own.

  She began to tidy the morgue as she searched for an answer. She picked up the discarded steel trays and restored them to their place on the Morgue’s examination table. Returning to the floor she gathered the scattered implements. Among them she spotted a bone saw lying on the floor where it had fallen during the fight. She looked at the saw, then to Danilo, and then back to the saw.

  Ew, that’s disgusting. No way I'm cutting that thing into pieces.

  Hunting for other options, she spotted the incinerator. The machine was used for destroying contaminated waste, but it was far too small to deal with something the size of Danilo’s body.

  Kasey wracked her brain.

  "I can shrink him,” Kasey said, smiling at the thought.

  In the Academy, she had always been cautioned against using such spells on living creatures.

  “Most of them will not survive the shrinking and growing process,” her professor had droned on. “The damage to the cells is too severe.”

  Kasey looked at the body before her and shrugged. "I'm not really worried about him surviving, so I guess it's not a problem."

  Staring at the body, she envisioned the size she wished him to be."Crebachu!”

  She felt the power surge through her being.

  An odd gurgling noise filled the morgue as the white plastic shroud and everything inside it began to shrink. In a matter of moments, the giant corpse had shrunk to the size of a matchbox car.

  During his lifetime, Danilo Lelac had been almost seven feet tall, an absolute giant of a man and an even more terrifying Werewolf. Seeing him so small was almost comical.

  Kasey scooped up the miniature body bag and hastily jammed it into the medical incinerator. After setting the temperature to max, she turned on the incinerator.

  A faint whoosh rose from the machine as it whirred to life. Leaving it to do its work, she returned to tidying the morgue. She stooped to pick up a tray off the floor, then set it on the counter. It was still a little bent out of shape from where she had clobbered Collins with it.

  Memories of the fight came flooding back but she tried to drive them away. She had no desire to revisit the experience that had almost killed her.

  She preferred to focus on what lay ahead. Thinking of the vision of Bishop caused her hands to tremble. She knew Bishop would be upset about Collins, but even then, mad enough to pull a gun on her? It seemed unlikely, even for Bishop.

  Kasey made a mental note to keep an eye on the detective.

  Leaning on the examination table, she regathered her thoughts. More than anything, Kasey longed to know who was behind the coming attack on the city. Part of her had hoped that being near Danilo might trigger another vision, but no such luck.

  It seemed the killer’s body would yield no further clues, for her or for Vida. The incinerator would see to that.

  Setting aside her worries with Bishop and the pending attack, she realized she still needed to deal with the Ainsleys. John’s lawsuit had come out of nowhere; it seemed a foolish gambit even for the spoiled brat.

  To follow through on the lawsuit, he would have to admit to harassing Kasey in open court. It really didn’t make much sense. It seemed more likely than pursuing the lawsuit, he had simply moved onto the next phase in his life’s mission to make her miserable.

  “If I see him again, I’ll wring his wretched neck,” Kasey told herself.

  “Wring whose neck?” a richly accented voice called from the door.

  Chapter Three

  Kasey spun to find Vida standing in the doorway. His mouth was agape. “Kasey, what happened to my morgue?”

  In spite of her efforts, the room was still trashed. She countered with a question of her own. “You’ve heard about Collins, right?”

  Vida nodded as he hesitantly crept into the mess. “Yeah, Bishop told me about him. It’s a little creepy when you think about it, though. We were working side by side with a psycho and didn’t even know it.”

  “Tell me about it,” she replied, scooping a scalpel and some forceps off the floor and placing them in the sink. “I had no idea until he jumped me last night. Unfortunately, he picked here to do it. This was the collateral damage.”

  “Looks like you put up a hell of a fight,” Vida replied.

  “Yeah, didn’t do me a lot of good, though. Still managed to knock me out and get me out of the station.”

  Vida set his bag down on the counter. “That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why take you? He killed the others, so why not just kill you here?”

  She hadn’t been ready for that one and she scrambled for an answer that wouldn’t reveal her gift. “I’m not sure, Vida. It seemed like he was trying to leverage me to get at the other targets. He took a risk to go after Kelly Sachs, but he must have realized that it was a one off. It wasn’t going to keep working for him.”

  “Seems like taking you didn’t work out too well for him either,” Vida replied. “I heard you barbecued him. Speaking of which, where is he? They told me the body had been brought in.”

  She shrugged. “No idea. I only just got in myself. I figured I’d take care of some of this mess before you arrived. I was hoping to save you from having a heart attack when you saw it.”

  “Too late for that,” Vida said. “It’s odd though. I’ll have to work out where that body has got to.”

  Fixing her gaze on the toppled shelves before her, Kasey grabbed the frame and hefted it upright. The shelves tottered off balance before falling bac
kward—right on top of her.

  Vida reached out to help but missed the mark, instead grabbing hold of her bandaged arm.

  “The shelves, Vida, not me,” she groaned through gritted teeth as she struggled against the weight of the steel.

  “Sorry!” Releasing Kasey, he grabbed the nearest shelf and together they righted them and rolled them back against the wall.

  When the shelves came to a halt, Vida clicked the wheel locks down and fastened them into place.

  Turning, Vida reached for Kasey’s injured arm. His face was creased with worry. “I’m so sorry, Kasey. I didn’t mean to.”

  Kasey looked down at her arm and put two and two together.

  I didn’t feel a thing. Mom must have healed it with the others this morning.

  “All good, Vida, don’t give it another thought.”

  The incinerator chimed.

  Oh no!

  In her scrambling to cover her actions, Kasey had forgotten that feature of the machine.

  “What’s in the incinerator?” he asked.

  “Oh, don’t mind that. I was examining Lincoln Strode’s body when Collins jumped me. I ended up a little closer to Strode than I had hoped, so I burned my clothes to avoid risk of infection.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Probably a good idea. Now that the case is closed, we’ll be doing the same thing with him. Turns out he doesn’t have any family here to collect the body.”

  She felt for Danilo’s victim. “That’s awful. Being cremated by the state isn’t much of a way to go out.”

  “Is there such a thing as a good way to go?” Vida asked as he straightened one of the autopsy tables that had been shunted out of place.

  She pondered for a moment before replying, “Death due to excessive sugar consumption seems like a winner to me.”

  “Donuts?” he asked.

  “Too cliché. I think I’d rather set a record on the way out. Something like consuming my body weight in chocolate.” Kasey nodded. “Yes, that would do nicely.”