Inked

along the skin between her thumb and finger. “I didn’t watch you dress this morning. What color are they?”
    Oh. She smiled. “Leopard.”

3
    MORGUES in California are as chilly as those in other parts of the country. Lily was glad for her jacket—the one she hadn’t gotten blood on yesterday—as she studied the pale body of a man who looked about thirty.
    Caucasian, brown and blond, weight maybe one-eighty carried on a five-foot ten-inch frame. Steve Hilliard had been built like a fullback, with streaky blond hair and the sort of face that gets called all-American…if you think of Americans in terms of an all-white, Andy Griffith Show cast.
    He was clean-shaven, which was typical for a lupus; Rule’s father was the only one she could think of offhand who wore a full beard. No visible scars. Also typical, since lupi heal without producing scar tissue…unless the injury comes from a demon’s poisoned claws. But demons were—thank God—rare, especially the ones with poison. Rule was the only lupus with a scar.
    A quick visual told Lily that Steve Hilliard had no obvious physical flaws. Aside from the large one in his throat, that is. And as long as you didn’t consider tattoos a flaw.
    He didn’t have a lot of dried blood on him, either. And that was odd.
    “Look just like us, don’t they?” the morgue attendant said.
    Lily glanced at him. Morton Wright was over forty, reed-thin, with geek glasses and acne scars—not exactly Steve Hilliard’s twin. But she liked the sentiment. “Lupi, you mean? Yes, they do. Some people have a problem with that.”
    He shrugged. “In this job, you get philosophical. Used to be, some folks got churned up about skin color. Now they worry about people turning furry or whatever. But they’re all dead by the time I get to know them. Way I see it, black or white, part-time furry or not, dead is dead.”
    Lily didn’t think everyone had gotten over the skin color thing, but she let that pass. “They do call it the great equalizer. Was Hilliard cleaned up before you got him?”
    “Hell, no.” Wright was offended. “We may be a Podunk little town, but we’ve got professionals here. We don’t clean up a body before the autopsy.”
    “Sorry. I needed to ask. Not much blood on him, is there?”
    Wright switched back to agreeable. “Not what you’d expect, huh? Not from a wound like that. You open up a guy’s jugular that way, you’d expect blood to go everywhere.”
    “Yeah, I would.” She hadn’t seen the police reports yet, didn’t know anything about the site where the body was found except the general location—higher up in the mountains, according to the newspaper.
    It should have been a county case, dammit. Lily knew some of the county law enforcement people. But Del Cielo had drawn its city boundaries with great optimism, and they included the neglected hiking trail where Hilliard’s body had been found.
    A body that would be taken to the county morgue tomorrow to await autopsy. Del Cielo didn’t have the facilities for that; this morgue was in the basement of their small hospital. “I’m going to get a few pictures of that tattoo.”
    She’d fastened her phone to her jacket pocket earlier, so unclipped it now and bent to study the tattoos ringing Hilliard’s neck. The design went all the way around, like a wide, lacy choker interrupted by the gaping wound across the front of his throat. The tattoo was intricate and nonpictorial—no images of flowers or daggers or whatever. No words or recognizable symbols.
    Recognizable to her, anyway. Briefly, fiercely, she wished for Cynna, whose body was covered in tattoos rather like this one. Tattoos that were actually spells.
    But Cynna was in another realm…alive, Lily reminded herself. Alive and doing okay, according to the optimism she’d promised herself for another three months. She raised her phone and took pictures of the tattoo from various angles, then had the attendant roll the body on its side so she could get the rest of the pattern, which went all the way around.
    Finally she put her phone away. “I’ll need to scrub before I do the rest.”
    Wright nodded amiably. “Sure. You explained about that. Sink’s to your left.”
    Lily scrubbed thoroughly. The body hadn’t been autopsied yet, and though it was unlikely the lab results would be useful—body fluids from those of the Blood tended to screw up lab results, even after death—she’d do this by the book. “Did you know Jason