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"He gave you orders not to show it to me, didn’t he?" She didn’t wait for a reply, but held out her hand "I know you’re ier and faster than you Come on, hand it over"

"You will tell your lord that I did not do so willingly?" he asked as he gave her the file

"Sure I’ll even give you a black eye, if you want" She opened the folder to a horrific ile of the same scene, as were the other pictures She looked up "Where’s the rest of the body?"

"That is all our people were able to recover, my lady"

She sat down as she studied the photos "If a dead body stays outside long enough, it attracts the usual scavengers" She noticed some black mounds of feathers around the body parts "Are these buzzards?"

"Yes, my lady"

She went to the next photo, which showed a close-up of one of the birds "They look dead"

"They are, my lady The police also recovered some other dead animals near the body"

"Even if the victim had been poisoned, it would have taken a couple of hours to do the sa that fed on the remains These birds look like they dropped as soon as they touched it" She looked up "Is that what happened?"

"We’re not certain yet, my lady" He looked miserable "One of the police near the body They died a fewin contact with the remains" He paused, and then added, "So did one of the forensic technicians working at the scene Evidently one of his gloves tore during the removal process"

She dropped the pictures in her lap "Are you telling me this dead body is so toxic that no one can even touch it?"

"It would seem so, my lady" He took out a handkerchief and blotted the sweat froht of the photos she had seen of Bradford Lawson’s other victims He had dismembered some of them, but not as badly as had been done to this body "Do we knoho the victiia state trooper" Kendrick stood "We have sent tissue saland for Lady Alexandra to analyze Please, my lady, you should leave this unpleasant business to Suzerain Lucan and the other Kyn lords"

"Why?" she demanded When he didn’t answer, she said, "Kendrick, I’m the only real cop on the pre on"

"We were able to recover the video from the trooper’s vehicle dashboard caes on the tape show hi the SUV Bradford Lawson stole fro him"

"Lawson killed this man"

The tresora looked uneasy "We believe the killer has to be a Darkyn using Lawson’s mortal identity A human could not do what he did to this man"

She curled her scarred hand into a fist as she reme when he had killed Ted Evans, and the sense of wrongness about it "What did he do?"

"From the teeth marks on the remains," Kendrick said unhappily, "it would seem that he not only killed this man, but he ate parts of him"

Matthias met Jessa in the library as he had promised, and placed a short stack of books on his desk

"These you should be able to read," he told her, and showed her how he had es in each with a piece of cord "Rowan translated the ones written in French for me, but she cannot read German or Spanish"

That surprised her "Rowan speaks French?"

"She taught herself to read it fro tablet and pen beside the books "Will you translate into English what you read?"