Belle silently handed me a bottle of water once I was done. I rinsed the bitter taste of bile from my mouth and wished I could so easily wash the images from my mind.
“God,” I muttered, my gaze on the rusty blue dumpster. “I really hope that’s not Alice’s mom.”
“Yeah.” Belle rubbed her arms, her usually bright aura shadowed and swirling with horror. She might not have physically seen the body, but she’d caught a glimpse of it through our connection before she’d shut it down. “At least we saved some time by calling the rangers early.”
“Yes.” I hesitated. “It’s making the call to Alice that worries me.”
“You can’t contact her—not until we know for sure who it is in there.”
“She’s going to think the worst has happened if I don’t.”
“True.” Belle scrubbed a hand across her eyes and swore softly. “I wonder if this is the work of another group of hunters after wolf pelts? It would certainly explain her skinned state.”
A shudder went through me and my stomach heaved again. “Except if it is Alice’s mom in there, she’s human rather than wolf, and I doubt there’s a black market for human pelts.”
“Also true.” She hesitated. “I don’t know if there’re many demons who go to the trouble of skinning their victims, though.”
“It’s not like either of us are experts on the matter, although I daresay your grandmother has it noted somewhere in one of her books if there is.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And why would we even be looking for them? Monty’s here now, remember?”
“I don’t think our participation in these matters will end just because he’s here.”
I motioned toward the building. “We’d better wait out the front.”
“It’s certainly better than waiting here.” Belle fell in step beside me. “I’m sure it won’t comfort Alice at all, but her mom’s ghost doesn’t linger. She’s moved on, which means this death was ordained.”
“I can’t help but wonder what the fuck she did to deserve such a horrible death.”
“It’s an unfortunate fact of life that not all deaths can be pleasant.”
“I know, but being skinned—” Horror once again shuddered through me. “I just hope she was dead when it happened.”
“Surely someone would have heard her screams if she wasn’t. There are houses close enough to have done so.”
“That’s if she was killed here rather than just dumped after the fact. Were there any vehicles around your side of the building?”
“No.”
“So either her car has been dumped elsewhere, or the killer now has it.” Although if we were dealing with a dark spirit of any kind, I couldn’t imagine the latter would apply. After all, why would a demon or spirit bother driving his victim’s car away from the scene of his crime?
“There are some capable of taking human shape,” Belle said. “So it is theoretically possible for at least some of them to be capable of driving.”
“Except most demons don’t like the feel of metal.”
“And most cars these days are more plastic than metal.”
“True.” I threw the pack onto the wagon’s back seat, then grabbed my coffee and leaned back against the door to drink it. And wondered just how well it would sit with my still churning stomach. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that we’ve two dark entities on the reservation? Or could they actually be connected?”
“A question we could pose to Monty once he’s finished ranting at us tonight.”
I smiled. “I still think rants could be avoided if you threw a little charm his way.”
She snorted. “Don’t take this personally, but I’d rather avoid getting involved in any way with someone who has any connection to your family tree—even one that’s an Ashworth sub-branch.”
A sentiment I agreed with, but not one we could do much about. Monty had been appointed here, and that meant we were stuck with him—unless, of course, he decided the job wasn’t for him, and given what he’d said about Canberra and his dad, that seemed very unlikely.
Jaz arrived ten minutes later. She was a brown-haired, brown-skinned wolf who’d come here from a New South Wales reservation and married into the Marin pack.