His expression remained stoic, and he simply stood there with his arms crossed, waiting for me to make the move.
“Sig,” I prompted.
“Yeah, he came to see me at my place last Thursday, which is weird enough. I mean, I know he paid house calls to you sometimes, but it’s not all that common for the rest of us grunts. So it was the sort of thing that stuck out in my mind. Especially considering he came all that way to tell me not to do my job, you know?”
It was unheard of for the Tribunal to backpedal on a warrant. So much work and vetting went in to confirming someone needed to die that once a card was filled out and the envelope sealed, the marked vampire was as good as dead.
“Did you ask him why?”
He gave me a pinched look. “Of course I asked why. But do you think Sig was in a huge hurry to tell me his innermost thoughts and reasons behind something? No. He told me to mind my own damn business and do as I was instructed.”
Shane sat down on the bench nearest us, and I took a seat beside him. We were only a few feet away from where the bodies had been found, but it was like the tourists milling around had no idea anyone had died here, or didn’t care. They snapped happy selfies and sipped their expensive coffees, totally oblivious to what had happened here only weeks earlier.
I waited until the park was nearly empty, then got up and moved over to the place where the bodies had been dumped. The pillar in the photo was to the right side of the bodies, so I scanned the nearest one from the bottom up, and sure enough, there was a symbol attached to it.
At first glance it looked like a little seagull, which was disheartening, because a wee seagull doodle wasn’t going to give me the answers I needed. But I snapped a photo of it on my phone and zoomed in for a better look.
Magnified, it appeared more intentional, almost like a pi symbol, but upside down. Certainly not a seagull. I texted the photo to Tyler with a request he run it through our database to see if it matched any known symbols that had popped up in ancient texts or other vampire crime scenes.
It seemed naggingly familiar to me, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. For all I knew it might have been something I’d seen on a stupid Pinterest tattoo somewhere. Like a universal symbol for “don’t quit your daydream” or some other hooey-crystal nonsense.
I stayed crouched near the ground, looking at the area around me as if I might see something that other investigators had missed, but as far as I could tell the scene had been completely checked and photographed. I pushed myself up with a steadying palm, and when I glanced down, I realized my hand had a faint black coating on it.
Like charcoal.
In the grass it had been totally invisible, but when I’d touched it directly, it was unavoidable. There was definitely a smear of charcoal on my hand.
I snapped a photo of that as well, an uneasy feeling turning in my guts. Things were starting to feel very coincidental here, which meant there was probably no coincidence at all. Dead bodies. Charcoal. A killer vampire.
“Find anything?” Shane was standing close by, but not close enough to get in my way.
“I’m not sure yet. But something isn’t right.”
“Of course, someone died here. That leaves a mark.”
I held my hand up to show him. “But a literal mark?”
He made a face. “It’s New York. This place is filthy. I don’t know if you can assume that’s related to the murders. We’ve had plenty of rain since then. That could literally be anything. So you’re going to want to wash your hands super thoroughly after this, because that’s gross.”
“Thank you for that incredibly helpful hygiene information, I really appreciate it.”
“I feel like you’re being sarcastic, but I would like to consider myself something of an expert on the spread of germs at this point in my life. I don’t think a month has gone by in the last three years that either Siobhan or me aren’t sick with something. Kids, man. Tiny little disease factories, I’m telling you.” The glimmer of amusement in his eyes told me he wouldn’t trade his little disease factory for anything in the world.
All my baddest-ass friends were getting soft on me.
He could have been right, maybe the black smear on my hand was just dirt or other indistinguishable city grime, but the location of it was so close to where the bodies had been. In fact right where the bodies had been, which raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
There was something extra hinky about this Sig situation, and I was pretty sure once I sorted it out, I was going to hate what I found at the end of the trail.
Chapter Seventeen
The wardens of the East Coast Council were not accustomed to having a human working in their midst. I’d asked Holden if I might be able to use a desk during the day so I could access some of the old council files on Davos and do some research.
Now I’d been busy plugging away at it all for a few hours, and with the sun down, the wardens had begun filtering in to start their business for the night, and they really didn’t know what to do with me sitting at the typically empty desk, a pile of documents at my side, and a certainly surly don’t interrupt me expression on my face.
The past hours had yielded plenty of interesting information, but I still wasn’t sure how any of it was going to lead me to Sig.
Davos, it seemed, had painted himself as something of a mystic during his prime years in Russia and Georgia. So much so that I wasn’t far off when I’d made the joke about him being Rasputin. Before he’d been driven into hiding and had ultimately come to America, he had a bit of a cult following.