“Are you sure that this is the right move?” Bria asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror. “It’s a big risk, going down there, especially right now. If someone sees you, then our advantage is gone.”
“It doesn’t matter so much if they see me. It’s if they recognize me that we’ll be in trouble.”
In addition to keeping out of sight, I had also taken the extra but necessary precaution of wearing a disguise—a short blond wig, bright blue contacts, and clear glasses with silver frames. Roslyn had been nice enough to bring me the items from her stash at Northern Aggression, since her workers used the wigs and more to satisfy the fantasies of their clients. She’d also brought over the tight black suit jacket, short, fitted skirt, and towering heels that I was wearing, along with a black patent-leather briefcase. Apparently, some folks were really into the whole corporate-raider look, which I found a bit disturbing, but the suit would get me into practically every building in Ashland, including the one where we were going.
Jo-Jo had done my makeup, adding a bit of bronzing powder to my pale skin and slick plum gloss to my lips. The dwarf had even let me borrow a chunky string of her pearls to wear over the black suit. All put together, I looked like a completely different person—and about as far away from Gin Blanco as I could get.
Oh, if someone who knew me well studied my face for any length of time, she would eventually see through my disguise, but I was betting that wouldn’t happen. Everyone would be too focused on Bria to pay much attention to me, the office drone drifting along in their wake.
That was my hope, anyway.
Bria steered her sedan out of the subdivision, through Northtown, and into the downtown loop. Thirty minutes later, she pulled up to a familiar location—the Ashland Police Station.
She parked in one of the lots close to the impound yard, and I rose up just enough that I could peer out the backseat window. In the distance, wide sheets of cardboard covered the gaping hole that I’d left in the side of the station. I grinned. Madeline might have her faux dedications to Mab, but I’d left my mark on things around here too.
“You ready for this?” Bria asked.
“I’ll be behind you all the way, just like we planned,” I said.
“All right, then. Here we go.”
She opened her door, got out, and headed toward the station. I waited a minute, then slipped out of the sedan and followed her. It was early, just after seven in the morning, but people were already moving into the station, coffee, cell phones, and briefcases in hand, getting ready for another long day of all the headaches, paperwork, bribes, and bureaucracy that went along with the Ashland legal system.
I made sure that two people were in between us as Bria and I went through the metal detectors. She didn’t look back as I collected my briefcase from the cop working the X-ray machine and started walking behind her.
It had only taken us about two minutes to get through security, but that was enough time for folks to realize that Bria was here. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at her, but my sister kept her eyes forward and her head up as she moved deeper into the station. Of course, all the cops had heard about what had supposedly happened to me, and a great number of them had been on the scene at the Pork Pit. But what surprised me was how many of them stopped her to say how sorry they were for her loss. Some of them actually seemed to mean it.
Bria gave them all sharp nods and tight smiles before moving on. I followed about fifteen feet behind her, and the only reason the cops looked at me was to leer at my legs. But I fixed my face into a frown, as though I were deep in thought about something, ignored their stares, and hurried on.
Finally, Bria reached an elevator and stepped inside.
“Hold the elevator, please,” I called out.
She nodded and held her hand out, so that the doors wouldn’t close and I could step inside with her. When the doors slid shut, she murmured out of the side of her mouth.
“Well, that was easier than I’d thought it would be.”
“Don’t jinx us just yet.”
She snorted, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.
After a couple of stops, the doors finally pinged open in the basement. This wasn’t the cops’ domain, though.
It was the coroner’s.
From what Madeline had said last night, the coroner would be doing my supposed autopsy first thing this morning. I wasn’t sure how he would try to go about identifying my supposed body. It wasn’t like I’d left dental records and DNA samples just lying around for anyone to find. But I definitely didn’t want him telling Madeline that the burned body wasn’t me. That would ruin everything else I had planned.
Bria and I stepped out of the elevator. Unlike the main floor, this one was deserted, so we walked together down the long corridor until we reached the glass door that led into the coroner’s office. We entered and found ourselves in a small waiting area with padded chairs along the walls, dusty plastic palm trees in the corners, and several large boxes of tissues lined up on a glass coffee table in the middle of the room.
Bria went to the back of the waiting room and swiped her police ID through a scanner attached to the wall. Another door—this one made out of thick, frosted glass—buzzed open.
We stepped through to the other side and found ourselves in a room made largely out of metal. Stainless-steel vaults fronted with doors lined two of the walls, looking like gym lockers, although they held dead bodies instead of sweatpants and dirty socks. A series of long metal tables took up the center of the room, and several drains were set into the floor. The air was cool against my skin, and the faint antiseptic stench that permeated everything reminded me of Beauregard Benson. My stomach turned over at the memory of the vamp’s lab and the torture I’d endured there, but I forced myself to focus on the man standing next to one of the tables.
The coroner was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt under bright blue scrubs that brought out his dark hazel eyes and ebony skin. His black hair was cropped close to his skull, and a small black goatee clung to his chin. I’d seen him many times over the past year, the most recently being at the Bone Mountain Nature Preserve, back when his office was dealing with all the bodies that had been found at Harley Grimes’s remote camp. The coroner had given me a jaunty wave back then. I hoped that he would be even more accommodating today. But what I’d brought along in my briefcase should help with that.
A badly burned body lay on the metal table before him. It looked exactly as I remembered it from the Pork Pit—a charred husk with dull bits of teeth and bones gleaming here and there. I breathed in, and the scent of smoke and ash drifted over to me, making my chest clench.