The Samantha Rain Mysteries

Chapter 18

18

Relieved she’d at least get a good look at the victims, Sam relaxed slightly. She would never admit it to Lilith but she’d half-expected to get a random message from her to say the bodies were already burned. Dealing with the beautiful woman could be lovely, but it was certainly a chore. From all the difficulties she had as a Warden, she hadn’t expected Lilith to be one of them.

She shot a look at the woman next to her and grinned. Oh, who was she kidding? Lilith was the biggest difficulty of them all and Sam welcomed it.

“What are you smiling about?” the other woman asked.

“Nothing.” Samantha averted her gaze as she snapped on a set of blue gloves. The sour smell of death wafted up from the corpses, making her eyes water. And here she thought she was used to that stench.

“Okay…?”

Ignoring Lilith’s confusion, Sam wiped her eyes and gestured to the dead bodies waiting on the metal tables. “Shall we?”

For a mortuary run by the Nox, the entire operation was surprisingly professional. Instead of preparing the bodies for cremation, the Burn Brothers had taken the time to remove as much glitter as possible and treated the spots where they hadn’t managed to stop the rapid decomposition. Their faces were still covered but they’d done a great job on the bodies. She didn’t know whether that was protocol or if Lilith had anything to do with that.

From the annoyed glares from the two men running the place, she guessed the latter.

She pressed start on the small recorder and removed the white cloth covering ‘Oliver’. The stark light of the mortuary caressed his lifeless face and as peaceful as he looked, nobody would mistake him for being asleep. His eyes were empty and his body stiff from the cold that only death brought.

Samantha sighed as she examined some of the decayed patches on him. The glitter was coarse on her gloves but smooth and malleable on the skin where it ate away at the flesh underneath.

She examined his body without any illusions, she wasn’t a trained medical examiner after all, but couldn’t find anything to help confirm his identity. He lacked teeth but without working with the police, they wouldn’t have been able to get a dental match anyway. His fingerprint or any other characteristics were just as useless. Without reference it was impossible to figure out who he was. The same was true for the woman lying next to him.

The bruises littered over her entire body made Samantha wince, but they wouldn’t help her identify her any easier. Besides the blue and black marks, there wasn’t much else to tell. The Brothers hadn’t been able to remove as much glitter from her but they’d manage to free most of her face.

Sam frowned as she studied her features. She looked strangely familiar but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

“What are you seeing?” Lilith asked, moving closer to Sam.

Her arm brushed past Sam’s as she reached for something and Sam quickly stepped back. Catalina’s words echoed through her head as she stared at Lilith. Was there something going on between them?

There better not be.

Sam shook her head, trying to get rid of her foolish thoughts. She was clearly overreacting. Lilith wasn’t interested and why would she be? Even if she was… It wasn’t like Samantha was completely opposed to the idea. Sure, they’d have to figure out some things. There was plenty she didn’t know about the other woman yet, but that was what dating and getting to know was for, right? From what she’d seen so far—

No!

These kinds of thoughts were exactly what she was trying to avoid. She could take Lilith not being interested, she even understood it. It was fine when she wasn’t interested either. But if she admitted to herself that she was interested and developed an unrequited crush? She didn’t have the heart to deal with that kind of pain.

She tried to draw her attention back to the two people on the examination tables. On top of acting like a teenager, this was an extremely inappropriate place to think about all that.

Death was part of the job but it was never casual, never something nonchalant. These bodies deserved respect and she wasn’t giving it to them. Shameful. If she wasn’t wearing glittery gloves, she’d have slapped her own cheeks.

Samantha banished her emotional turmoil and leaned in to inspect the woman’s face more. She was sure it was familiar, but why?

She racked her brain, running through multiple faces and tricks she’d put in place to remember names. She just needed to pinpoint a specific characteristic on the woman’s face to snap everything into place but it was damn hard when parts of her features were concealed.

“Can we try and remove some more of the glitter?” she proposed, reaching for the tray with surgical instruments. Scalpels, syringes, all kinds of clamps and scissor-like contraptions. This was definitely not her expertise.

Lilith hummed. “We can try.”

“Alright… But what to use?” she mused. She reached for one of the more flatter tools at the same time as Lilith did. Their hands bumped into each other and as if she was burned, Sam snapped hers back and the tool clattered to the floor.

“Watch out!” she snapped, unnecessarily harsh.

“Sorry.”

She bent down to pick up the scraper and groaned. “Now we have to sterilise it again.”

“I can get one of the Brothers to do it.”

“No, I’ll just use something else.” Sam put the tool on another tray and chose another instrument. Underneath the glitter she’d find the answers of the woman’s identity, she just knew it.

With a steady hand, she scraped the foreign substance. If anyone had told her Pixie dust was this destructive, she’d have laughed. Not just at the notion of stubborn glitter but the mere existence of Pixies. Yet here she was.

Painstakingly slow, inch by inch, she freed the woman’s face to reveal a set of bushy eyebrows, chapped lips, and a dark mole under her nose.

A light went on in Samantha’s head and she dropped the scraper.

Lilith sighed. “Again?”

“Look at her face.” Sam brought the magnifier over and zoomed in on the exposed mouth area. “That mole…”

She stared at the spot, the sense of familiarity taunting her. She’d notice it before but where?

Lilith shrugged. “Lots of people have moles.”

“I know, but still…” Sam ran through her memory, but came up empty. If she’d made a mental note, she couldn’t remember. “Ugh, I don’t know why but it’s pinging my brain.”

“It’ll come back to you. Shall we take a break? I can put off the cremation and we can return tomorrow.”

“Sure?”

“Good, although I’m not looking forward to it. I don’t find dead people particularly charming company.”

“That’s because you didn’t live with Melissa,” Sam muttered darkly.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She stared at the two corpses, remembering all the time she used to spend staring at faces like them. Some immaculate, some destroyed beyond recognition, but all begging her to find answers. A worthy cause that had ultimately ruined her marriage.

She took a step back and snapped her gloves off. “Actually, I could do with some fresh air.”

“Finally.” Lilith breathed a sigh of relief. “The smell is getting to me.”

Sam chuckled. “You also get used to that.”

“I don’t want to.” The other woman smoothed out her dark dress and waved one of the Brothers over. “Right, I’ll work out the specifics. I’ll meet you outside?”

“Yes, sure.”

With a polite nod, Sam left the Nox to it and found her way back to the reception. Eager to be alone and have a moment without Lilith breathing down her neck, she leaned against the facade of the morgue. Crematorium. Whatever it was.

It wasn’t too clear but that just seemed to be the case for all the Nox business. Blurry lines, unspoken rules, and vague rules. A world of chaos that Sam was trying to bring order to.