Hell's Menagerie by Kelly Gay Read Free Book Online Page A

Madigan.” She shut the door behind her. “How is it you can afford to send your kid to a swanky place like this?”
    I was going to kill Hank. The blabbermouth.
    I stood and moved aside. “It’s called child support. Automatic draft is a wondrous thing.”
    â€œAh, that would explain it.” She set down her case, opened it, and withdrew a small pair of latex gloves, which she put on with a loud snap. Then she knelt next to Amanda to check her pulse and listen to her heartbeat. “Heard over the radio you have a live one here.” She sighed, preferring to analyze the dead over the living. “Not exactly my specialty but . . . How old is she?”
    â€œSixteen,” I answered quietly, allowing Liz to be the brilliant medical examiner that she was. Of course it didn’t hurt that she was also a kick-ass necromancer. Usually, what the dead couldn’t tell us from our investigation, they could tell Liz. But we always tried to solve a case ourselves. It took a massive amount of energy and life force to raise the dead. And if Liz did it for every John Doe who rolled through the door, she would’ve lost her own life a long time ago. After a long moment, she removed the earpieces to the stethoscope.
    â€œAnything?” I asked.
    â€œHeartbeat is so damn faint and slow you can hardly hear it with the stethoscope. At this rate, she should be going into cardiac arrest. Looks like all the others.”
    I glanced impatiently at the door. Where the hell were the medics?
    Still hopeful, Liz examined Amanda’s skull. “There appears to be no external damage to her body at all. Maybe an aneurysm, or . . .” She lifted Amanda’s eyelid, and we both gasped even though we’d seen this a dozen times in the last week.
    I knelt down. “Damn.”
    A cloudy white film glazed over Amanda’s eye. Goose bumps crept up my arms and legs, a sign of foreboding that left me downright cold. The Pine-Sol scent of the room was starting to give me a headache.
    â€œLooks like ash has just moved uptown,” Liz said on a resigned breath.
    Hank dropped to his haunches next to me and took in this new information. A steel curtain slid over his features. Hank always showed his emotions. And with the realization of what we were seeing, ash making its way from Underground Atlanta into a midtown private school, Hank should’ve been cursing or hitting something by now. I studied him intently and didn’t miss the telltale flex of his jaw before he stood. Yeah, something was definitely up.
    â€œMom! Mom, what’s going on?” Emma’s terrified voice echoed from the hallway.
    Motherhood and work. Usually I had no trouble keeping the two separated, but this time the lines were seriously blurred. “Damn it.” I closed my eyes for a second, hating that they had crossed, hating that they’d even come close. I drew in a deep breath and switched gears from detective to mom. “Hold on a sec,” I told Hank and Liz and then walked calmly into the hallway, mentally preparing myself.
    Seeing her standing there in her uniform, all tall and thin, approaching twelve way too fast, it suddenly hit me how much Emma had grown in the last year. A rush of sad realization squeezed my chest. Time was racing by where my daughter was concerned. She pressed against the police tape, which had gone up while we were inside, and pushed against the school security officer. He held her back with a hand on her shoulder. My hand went to the service weapon on my hip. An automatic gesture. I didn’t intend to use it, but the guy had better get his paws off my kid.
    â€œHey.” I placed my hand on his left shoulder, probably harder than I should have. “I got it.”
    He hesitated. He might be the big guy here at school, but he knew not to mess with an ITF agent. Our training and selection process had become legendary. Not many people could look a hellhound in the eye