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.

The coroner had gotten an even earlier start than I’d expected. I couldn’t tell how far along into the autopsy he was, but he’d already started making notes, judging from the clipboard and pen that were lying on another, smaller table.

He looked up at the sound of the door’s buzzing open. A faint wince creased his face as he spotted Bria, and he stepped in front of the table, as if he wanted to shield her from the sight of the burned body.

“Oh, Bria,” he said in a quiet, sympathetic voice. “I thought that I might see you here today. But . . . later. Much later. After I was . . . finished.”

Bria glanced at me, and I nodded. The coroner frowned as he studied me, as if I seemed familiar but he couldn’t quite place me. I stared back at him, completely calm, as if I had nothing at all to hide, even though my heart started thumping a little louder and faster in my chest.

But my disguise must have fooled him because he turned back to Bria. “You shouldn’t be here. Most people would find it very . . . upsetting. If you’d like, you can wait outside with your friend. I have to warn you that I will probably be quite a while, though. Given the . . . state of the remains.”

He kept his voice low and gentle. He was trying to spare her from the horror of seeing the charred body of her supposedly dead sister and then watching as that body was sliced open and examined from head to toe.

“But I’ll take good care of her,” he continued. “I promise. Just like I always do.”

Bria gave him a thin, brittle smile, playing her part well. “Thanks for your concern, Ryan. I appreciate it. Really, I do. But I’m fine. This isn’t my first body or autopsy.”

“I really don’t think that you should be here for this, Bria. There are some things you just can’t unsee.”

She nodded. “And I agree with you one hundred percent. But I needed to talk to you.”

He frowned. “About what?”

That was my cue. I stepped forward, put my briefcase on another table, and popped open the top. I reached inside and drew out a fat envelope, which I passed over to Bria.

She put the envelope on the table next to the coroner’s clipboard, then stepped back. “We all know that’s my sister. Nothing’s going to change that, especially not waiting days for the results to come back on all the tests you like to run. Do the autopsy and the tests if you like, but I want you to go ahead, make a positive ID, and declare that that body is my sister, Gin Blanco.”