Blood Debt

perhaps that's not the most flattering of comparisons," he murmured to the night.
    Vicki's strength had surprised him, although he supposed it shouldn't—her strength came from who she was, not what. After he worked past the jealousy, he found a tenuous faith in that strength beginning to push aside his expectations, beginning to allow him to have faith in himself.
    The desire to throw her out of his territory in bleeding chunks persisted, but, for the first time, he realized the feeling didn't necessarily have to be acted upon.
    Suddenly hopeful, he headed for the shower to wash off the lingering stink of the hospital.
    "Mike, wake up. We need to talk before sunrise." Only experience allowed her to translate his mumbled response as "I'm awake," but since his eyes remained closed and his breathing had barely changed, she chose not to believe it.
    Rather than use borrowed bedding, he'd rolled his sleeping bag out in the center of the king-sized bed but hadn't bothered to zip it up.
    Kneeling by his side, Vicki reached through the gap and wrapped her fingers around the warmest part of his anatomy.
    "Jesus H. Christ, Vicki! Your hands are freezing!"
    She grinned, having jerked back too quickly for his wild swing to connect. "Now you're awake."
    "No shit." Squinting past her, he managed to focus on the clock beside the bed. "4:03. That's just great. Whatever we need to talk about had better be fucking important."
    "You actually heard me say we needed to talk?"
    "I told you I was awake." He yawned and dragged in another pillow to prop up his head. "So what is it?"
    "If it's our case, then we should discuss it."
    "You couldn't have left me a note?"
    "What, and let you sleep?" Picking up the file folder from the end of the bed, she crossed her legs and started to read. "Henry's ghost was a male Caucasian between twenty and twenty-five, a smoker who probably died of a beating he'd received sometime before he went into the water, who'd had a kidney surgically removed within the last month which was not, by the way, what killed him. After death, his hands, wrists, and about two inches of forearm were removed, probably with an ax. His body was later found in Vancouver Harbor."
    She frowned down at the photocopy of the autopsy pictures. "We can assume, since he's still lying unnamed in the morgue, the police scanned his picture into the system and didn't find a match. At this point, there're three things they should be doing."
    Brows raised at her phrasing—he'd just bet the Vancouver police would love to hear what they should be doing—he indicated she should continue.
    "They should be showing the photographs around at different hospitals, hoping someone can ID him from the kidney perspective."
    "And I'm sure they've thought of that," Celluci muttered. "Can't be a lot of places around that take out kidneys."
    "Depends on what you're calling around," Vicki reminded him.
    "This guy could've been anywhere in the world just hours before he came to Vancouver and got killed." Grinning, she smacked him on the chest with the file folder. "Fortunately, we know something the police don't. The body was naked when they pulled it out of the water, but according to Henry's description, his ghost is wearing a T-shirt advertising a local band. We can ignore everything outside this immediate area."
    "Then shouldn't we tell the police this guy's local?
    In case you've forgotten, withholding evidence is a crime."
    "Okay. Let's tell them." She mimed dialing a phone. "Hello? Violent crimes? You know that handless John Doe you've got in the morgue?
    Well, he's local. How do I know? His ghost is appearing to this vampire friend of mine, and he identified a T-shirt." Hanging up an imaginary receiver, she snorted. "I don't think so. Anyway, they should also be investigating this tattoo." She passed over a page of photocopied pictures.
    He sighed, turned on a light, and studied the collection. "He's pretty beat up. Henry ID from the tattoo?"
    "I didn't ask."
    Since her tone suggested he not ask why, he merely handed back the page. "Looks like a street job. Not much to go after. And thing three?"
    "They should be checking out the gang connection."
    "The what?"

    "Well, why do you think they took off his hands?"
    Celluci shrugged. "Somewhere his prints are on file."
    "Then so's his picture."
    "Not looking like that it isn't." He fanned the photocopies. "The computer isn't going to spit out a match to a face like that and looking through mug shots takes