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The hint of sed building it threatened to overwhelm my senses

I wrinkled my nose

Come on Sift past the fire stink

I drew another breath Under the acrid sht dried blood and the sour scent of son scent that did smell a hell of a lot like the blood Biana had drained from me

My vampire eyes adjusted immediately to the inky darkness of the inside of the club, but besides Degan and Nathanial, there wasn’t nizable as tables and chairs, littered the large roouessed it had been a bar at one time Support beaner had decided to decorate with a post-apocalyptic theme A few bottom steps remained from a wooden staircase, but the fire had consumed the rest

I walked to the center of the room and turned a full circle

"No body" No blood pool either

Degan pointed up, and I glanced at the dark, half-fallen ceiling Okay Second floor But the stairs were burned to a crisp Nathanial could fly us up, but unless Degan had climbed up via one of the fallen support beams, I didn’t see how he’d found the body in the first place

The clanless stayed by the entrance, watching lanced at Nathanial

He looked up, and then he was in the air Degan started, his hand reaching for so in an had known, in theory, that Nathanial could fly, but accepting so the proof were very different things I felt for hi a lot at hi it well

"The body is up there," Nathanial said, landing beside me

He reached out, like he would pick me up

I stepped back "I’ll find an could do it, so could I Besides, unless the victim--or possibly the killer--could fly, they had to have found an alternate route upstairs as well

I traced my steps back to the boardedand knelt

Charred bits of wood and ash covered the floor, clearlythe outline of footprints Lots of footprints The boxy, dress-shoe prints were Nathanial’s and stopped right inside the entrance The barefoot tracks were mine There were also three sneaker ied impressions in the ash, one with diae sections of the iht sight of another track, this one smaller, with a pointed-toe, but the person with the diah those s them

Two of the sneaker impressions, and the small, pointedtoe impression, all walked a direct path like they knehere they were going The person leaving the zigzagged sneakerthean

"Let me see the sole of your shoes"

He frowned, but lifted his feet His shoes were old, the rubberfrom the sole in some places So he’s the worn impression He’d followed the direct route I traced his steps

The prints lead into a tiny alcove I hadn’t noticed earlier A cast-iron spiral staircase hugged the corner, hidden fro in the alcove Well, that answers the ‘how to get upstairs’ question

I glanced back at Degan "You walked straight to this stairwell How did you knoas here?"

"Sah We’d both been raised in Firth, and, at least in ht as soon as we could crawl I doubted whichever clan Degan had been thrust out of had beenh the wreckage, settling somewhere in the darkness of the second floor Once I reached the floor myself, it was easy to spot him He wasn’t far from me, and neither was the nude body from the photo