Tiago prowled around the tables, looking at the males, his lip curled. That one—yeah, he remembered that one. The Wyr had died of blunt-force trauma to the head. The trauma had been Tiago’s boot heel coming down on him. One side of the Wyr’s face was now concave, but there was enough left of the other side to get an idea of what he had looked like.

Rune was still ostensibly chatting up Dr. Medusa What’s-hername, but he said telepathically to Tiago, You recognize any of these gentlemen, T-bird?

Just from the attack, Tiago said. You?

Nope. They’re all new to me.

One advantage to conducting an autopsy by magical means was that the examiner could use disinfecting spells instead of chemicals. The decision was a tricky one for the examiner to make, as it depended on the forces involved in a death, since spells could disrupt any lingering Power that might provide vital clues, or they could even have a toxic effect when certain kinds of differing Powers combined.

These jokers were not that complicated. Death-by-stupidity was the cause as far as Tiago was concerned. Who the f**k didn’t know by now that Niniane had been sheltered and was supported by the Lord of the Wyr?

The most important thing about these autopsies was how any information might aid in the investigation of the attacks. Dr. Medusa What’s-her-name had foresight. She knew the Wyr would have a keen interest in the proceedings and had kept the autopsy procedure clean of any scent contaminants. Tiago found a box of gloves on a corner cabinet and snapped on a pair. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye as the medusa took a sudden step forward. Even her head snakes looked alarmed. Rune put a restraining hand on the medical examiner’s arm, smiling down into her anxious face.

“It’s okay,” Rune told her. “Tiago knows what he’s doing. He won’t mess with your results.”

She nodded although she looked uncertain. They both fell silent and watched as Tiago examined the bodies. The visual inspection didn’t tell him anything he did not already know. Inspecting them by scent was more complicated, as the bodies had accumulated layers of different scents. No matter how tightly a crime scene might be processed, a certain amount of scent contamination occurred. Aside from their individual scents, these bodies carried scents from the last places they had been, including the scene where they had died, along with residue from the plastics and rubber gloves that had been used in transporting, storing and examining them.

He could detect the faintest hint of cigarette smoke on all three. He checked the teeth and gums of each dead guy. None of them had smoked, which didn’t surprise him. Wyr, with their greater sense of smell, tended not to. Did that offer a clue to where they might have been, or had some police officer f**ked up and taken a smoke break at the scene of the attack? Frowning, Tiago moved from the Wyr themselves to their clothing and possessions, which were sitting bagged and tagged on a nearby table.

None of the guys had carried an ID. All they had carried were weapons and cash, and one of them had a half-empty packet of Chiclets. Still, their possessions helped to solidify scent impressions much better. Confident now, Tiago said, “They met at a bar. Someplace that serves draft beer, greasy food, and allows smoking, because none of these guys smoked.”

“That’s certainly consistent with the contents of their stomachs,” said the medusa. She gave Tiago a look of surprised approval. “Two of them ate a meal of fish and chips, and the other one had a large cheeseburger with jalapenos. All three had consumed a certain amount of alcohol, maybe some form of Dutch courage as they were gearing themselves up to fight. I don’t have a tox report back yet, but at a guess I don’t think they would have imbibed enough to impair driving or motor skills. That takes some heavy drinking for Wyr, and there’s no other evidence to support it.”

Tiago looked at Rune. “There are other scents of Elder Races on their things, but no one scent stands out. I just keep getting hints. We need to have someone canvass the bars in the area that are frequented by the Elder Races.”

Rune nodded. “Somebody served dinner and drinks to these f**kers. We might get lucky and get a positive ID on one or all of them, which would mean we could look for where they lived and check to see if any of them received any large amounts of money recently. They had some motive for the attack. Maybe they got paid to do it.”

“We might also get a description of somebody they met,” Tiago said.

The two sentinels exchanged hard-edged predatory smiles. They didn’t have to ask what the other one was thinking. In that moment both Wyr were of one accord. It felt good to go on the hunt and not stay stuck in a position where they were forced to react to a situation beyond their control.

“Skeert of the both of you,” muttered Dr. Telemar.

A cold voice spoke from the doorway. “Or maybe you’re hoping to plant evidence that leads other investigators away from the Wyr,” said Dark Fae Commander Arethusa. The tall female stepped into the room. “I should not be surprised to see you here contaminating the autopsy results on the three bodies.”

The beast in Tiago lunged to the end of its chain and clawed at the air. Everything dropped away except the sight of the Commander’s anger-filled face. Growling, Tiago started forward. Arethusa drew the two short swords she had strapped to her back.

A Mack truck slammed into Tiago. He crashed back into a wall. The truck turned into Rune, who pinned him with a muscled forearm across his neck. Dragos’s First went nose-to-nose with him, his fierce golden lion’s eyes blazing. “No, Tiago.”

Tiago swore and tried to heave Rune off him. He was heavier than the other sentinel and stronger, but Rune was faster than shit and had the weight of his long, lean body distributed too well for Tiago to shake off. He said, “She’s been asking for an ass-kicking for a while now.” His voice had changed, turned more guttural.

“My give-a-shit button’s broken. You’re my boy, and I say no.” Rune slapped him in a controlled flat-handed blow. It dislodged the sunglasses on Tiago’s face. They fell to the floor with a clatter. “Snap out of it.”

Dr. Telemar backed into a far corner. Arethusa stared at them, her face whitening.

Tiago snarled at Rune and heaved again. He gripped Rune’s imprisoning arm with taloned hands and shoved as hard as he could, but he could get no leverage with which to break the other sentinel’s hold.

Rune stared point-blank into Tiago’s gaze, his handsome face hard and unflinching. The First said in a calm voice, “I know you’re in there. You can hear me or you would have drawn blood by now. Think for a minute. Who needs us?”

Tiago sucked in a deep breath that shuddered through his frame as he fought to contain the beast. He turned his head to one side and growled, “Niniane.”

“That’s right.” Rune lowered his voice to a barely audible murmur. “You better listen to me. You f**k things up now and you can’t go back. They’ll never let you get near her again. Got it?”

That snapped Tiago’s head back into place like nothing else could have. He stopped straining against the other sentinel’s hold and said, “Got it.”

Rune’s tawny eyebrows rose. He lessened the pressure he had been exerting against Tiago’s clavicle. Tiago remained quiescent, as he maintained a hard grip on his beast. Rune nodded, let go and clapped him on the shoulder.

Rune turned to face the Dark Fae Commander. He said, “Okay, first, you’ve been harshing my good friend’s chi. I’m not liking you so much right now.”

“I’ll add a second point to that,” said Dr. Telemar, who stepped out of her corner. All her head snakes were looking at the Dark Fae Commander. “I’m not into inter-demesne politics, but you just maligned the integrity of my office and I’ll not stand for it. There’s not one damn thing out of place with my autopsy procedures, up to and including how the bodies of these Wyr are being processed.”

Despite getting her ass chewed on two different fronts, the cold anger in the Commander’s angular face dissipated. She straightened out of her defensive fighting crouch and looked thoughtful as she sheathed her swords. A couple of the medusa’s head snakes turned to blink at Rune. He gave them a whatthe-fuck shrug.

Arethusa looked from Rune to Tiago. She said, “I heard what you said.”

Tiago might have gotten a grip on his beast’s leash again, but he didn’t trust himself to speak. The muscle in his jaw jumped. He bent to pick up his Ray-Bans and slid them back on his nose.

Rune was the one who replied. “To which bit are you referring, Commander?”

Arethusa looked at Tiago. He noticed she took care to remain on the other side of the room, but the scent of aggression had faded from her pheromones. She said to him, “Whatever else the Wyr could be involved in, it really does matter to you that the Dark Fae heir might need your help.”

“You think?” Tiago said from between his teeth. Sometime he wanted to get just one good shot at the Commander’s face. One of these days, Alice, he thought as he stared at her. Straight to the goddamn moon.

Rune said, “I have to ask you, Commander. What part of this”—he made an all-encompassing gesture that included the three dead Wyr, and Tiago and himself—“makes any kind of sense to you? Why would we send Tiago to find and protect Niniane and then send these bozos after her too? There are a lot easier and more straightforward ways to execute a couple of guys.”

Arethusa sucked a tooth as she considered them. “When I came in, you were talking about trying to get a positive ID on these three so you could look for a money trail. That’s what we did for Geril,” she said. “We looked for a money trail. You know what we found? He had a new Bank of America account in which he had received a substantial deposit this week from an Illinois company owned by Cuelebre Enterprises.”

Tiago’s eyes narrowed. “Which company?” he asked.

“Tri-State Financial Services,” Arethusa said.

Tiago looked at Rune, and they both started to smile.

Dr. Telemar spoke up. “I missed something. What is there to smile about in that?”

Tiago crossed his arms as he leaned back against one of the autopsy tables. He told Arethusa and the medusa, “Somebody made another mistake. Cuelebre Enterprises doesn’t own a company named Tri-State Financial Services.”

The Dark Fae Commander’s eyes narrowed, her expression full of skepticism. “And you know this so conveniently how?”

Tiago said, “Cuelebre Enterprises owns six companies that are based in Illinois. Thanks to Urien’s and Dragos’s recent fight over Urien’s attempt to secure a U.S. defense contract, those companies have come under a great deal of scrutiny at the head office in New York. Stocks have taken a dip, and Dragos is tired of f**king around with them. He’s working on getting them stabilized so that he can sell them off. If you dig deeper into your information, I think what you’re going to find is that you’ve got a dummy corporation on your hands.”

Arethusa stepped forward. She gripped the edge of an autopsy table and leaned on her hands, her mouth pursed as she regarded the corpse in front of her without appearing to really see it. “Okay,” she said after a few minutes. “I’ll check it out. Now what do you mean, somebody made another mistake?”

“Whoever set Geril and his buddies on Niniane didn’t know how much self-defense training the sentinels had given her,” Tiago said.

“Which was a lot,” Rune added. “She was not exactly an easy study. That’s simple enough to verify. Just ask her. We had to keep going over and over some things. That training was what saved Niniane’s life.”

Tiago continued, “They also didn’t know how much scrutiny Cuelebre Enterprises’ Illinois companies have been under recently in New York, or they might have chosen a different, less easily verified way to frame the Wyr. They also didn’t know that I had come to Chicago, or they would never have sent these guys after her. And that’s not all. We’ve now got two attempts to frame the Wyr. What do you have when you have the same MO in two different crimes?”

This time Dr. Telemar stepped forward to join the circle around the autopsy table. She cradled a snake head in her hands and pet it, her eyes wide with fascination. She said, “You’ve either got a copycat or you’ve got the same perp.”

Rune smiled at the medusa. He said, “It’s possible we could have a copycat, but unlikely. A copycat would have to know some pretty obscure information that we’re only just now piecing together, which would indicate some intimate knowledge of the perpetrator of the first attack. He would also have to have the means with which to act very fast in setting up the second attempt. The odds are we’re looking at the same perp for both attempts.”

Tiago buried his chin in the heel of one hand as he regarded the Dark Fae Commander from under his brows. Arethusa cocked her head at him and said, “What.”

“Something else occurs to me,” he said. “We’re only talking now by accident. And if we hadn’t talked, we wouldn’t all know what we know.”

Arethusa said, “Are you thinking someone has been counting on that lack of communication between the Dark Fae and the Wyr?”

Tiago nodded. “Maybe if we start sharing more on our investigations, we should keep it quiet. That might give our perp the opportunity to make another mistake.”

The Dark Fae Commander’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, nobody’s going to see me chatting up you guys in public,” said Arethusa. “Everybody knows I think you’re all a bunch of rat bastards.”

More blah-fucking-blah happened. Other people called it pleasantries. Polite chitchat. Tiago called it agonizing. The beast crouched inside him and waited, and its silence took over his mind.