Contact. Evelyn Vaughn

Greg often smelled of balloons. It was because of the latex gloves, Faith knew. But the scent had remarkably pleasant, innocent associations, all the same.

      “I’m fine,” she assured him. He stood beside the desk where she sat. Although his brown eyes seemed concerned behind his wire-rimmed glasses, Greg didn’t come at her with the shield of sympathy that so many other people in the office had…probably because, despite being a nice guy, he remained distracted by the job.

      “Even coroners aren’t cavalier about the bodies of people they know,” Greg insisted. “People you know are different. They’re supposed to be.”

      “I’m okay.”

      “You should probably take some time off.”

      “No. Really. I kind of like being here.”

      Greg’s eyebrows rose as he looked around them. Unlike those on television, the crime-scene unit consisted of four rooms and one small hallway, crowded into too little floor space on the third floor of a generic municipal building. Faith’s desk, up front, was open to a room with three other desks and two crowded worktables. Books overflowed on shelves. The place smelled like a cross between a library and a science lab, with an undercurrent of death because of the morgue down the hall.

      “I’ve been handling the practical stuff,” Faith tried to explain. “Calling her family—Krystal was from East Texas. Packing her belongings for when they come. Contacting a local funeral director to make arrangements for after…”

      Her need for a deep breath surprised her. So much for Krystal’s lessons in stress management through breath control. Maybe Faith wasn’t so okay after all.

      “After her body’s released?” Greg finished for her, gentle.

      Faith nodded. “And contacting the coroner to see when that will be. The family wants to have two funerals, one here for her friends and one in Caddo, just for them, so I’ve been helping to arrange that.”

      Greg picked up the sheaf of evidence reports that still needed to be entered into the computer system and turned it over. “All the more reason you need a break. Things are crazy with that gang shooting.”

      Krystal’s death hadn’t been the only murder that weekend.

      “But this is a break. Everyone at home…well, they were friends with Krystal longer than I was.” Her roommates smelled of salty tears and wet misery. Their very breathing sounded like an uneven dirge. The usually strong Absinthe’s moods seemed to carry an unpleasant edge of guilt, too. Not that Faith blamed any of them. She felt more than a little guilty that her own grief felt so distant and so, well…mundane.

      Absinthe had distracted herself by increasing the spiritual “shields” around their apartment, with incense and crystals; she’d stayed up all night making protective amulets for each of them. Faith wore hers even now, under her top, more for sentimental reasons than because she believed in it.

      She didn’t disbelieve.

      Moonsong had taken to bed, hoping Krystal’s spirit could contact her in a dream so that they could say a proper goodbye—though Faith thought it was as likely that grief or depression had simply exhausted her. Evan, bless him, had run interference with Krystal’s other friends, spending hours on the phone, answering the same questions over and over. No, they didn’t know why anyone would have killed Krystal. No, the police knew nothing. No, they couldn’t believe she was dead.

      Maybe that was the difference. Faith was the only one among them to have spent time with Krystal’s corpse. She very much believed her friend was dead, so she seemed best able to handle all the customary indignities that shouldn’t be heaped on people in mourning, either her roommates or the poor Tanner family.

      Greg sighed. “Then don’t go home. Go to the zoo or the aquarium. Take a riverboat ride. Go shopping.”

      Faith shook her head. She could justify forgetting Krystal for whole minutes at a time, to focus on her work. But to shop? “I’m good here.”

      “That’s debatable.”

      She stared, confused, and he sighed. “Since you’re personally involved, you’ll want to keep some extra distance from this case. You understand that, don’t you? It’s not that I distrust you, but if anything compromises the evidence…”

      “I understand.” Between this job, and her pre-law work at Tulane, she got evidence.

      Her boss’s pale eyes focused on her as intently as they might focus on a strand of hair, or a fingerprint, or a particular bug he might be studying. Which, from Greg, was quite a compliment.

      She was still startled when she caught a whiff of attraction. Even more when, almost as if an afterthought, he tucked a strand of her blond hair behind her ear.

      Because he was wearing latex gloves—he almost always did, around here—the touch didn’t send an unpleasant jolt through her. In fact, she wouldn’t describe the sensation as unpleasant at all.

      He was a human. She was a human. It was human contact.

      But here, it still unnerved her. To judge from how his eyes widened, it unnerved him, too. Greg stepped quickly back, fisting his hand as if he’d done something wrong with it. And he hadn’t. It wasn’t like he’d traced her lips, or her collarbone. It wasn’t like he’d told her she looked hot in black.

      “I…” he said, then cleared his throat. “Sorry. We’ve still got that Storyville shooting to deal with. I’d better go check on some ballistics results the lab was faxing over….”

      To maybe the relief of both of them, Faith’s phone rang.

      She smiled reassurance at Greg as she picked it up, but he was already hurrying away. “Evidence,” she said.

      “I told you the Quarter was a dangerous place.”

      Faith hadn’t had time to brace herself against this second wave of guilt. “Mother?”

      “I just saw the news,” insisted Tamara Corbett. “Krystal Tanner—she’s one of your roommates, isn’t she? The one from Texas?”

      “Well…she was.”

      “Please, Faith. Don’t try to make light of it!”

      “Trust me, Mom. I’m not making light of anything. But there’s no reason for you to worry. You know she wasn’t killed at the apartment, don’t you?”

      “But she was in the Quarter. Were you there, too?”

      Faith scowled at her computer screen, not sure how to answer that.

      “Oh, baby…” moaned her mother, which was even worse than lecturing. Tamara had always been overly protective of Faith. All they’d ever had was each other. Leaving home to move in with Krystal and the others had been one of the hardest things in Faith’s life. Especially since she’d been able to hear the reality of her mother’s despair in her catching breath, in her pounding heartbeat, as she left. She’d been able to smell it on her, to taste it in the air.

      But that wasn’t the only thing Faith had been sensing when she moved out. The guilt in the air hadn’t just been her own. And until her mom was able to explain what that was all about…

      Well, wasn’t Faith’s life complicated enough?

      “I’m okay, Mom,” she said now, feeling like the grown-up in this equation. “I mean, of course I’m not okay, but considering everything, I’m as good as can be expected. Try not to worry.”

      That was like saying try not to fly away to a frightened bird.

      Or like saying try not to wonder where you’re from to a fatherless girl, which was essentially what her mother had said whenever Faith tried to pursue the mystery that shrouded her past. Had she inherited her freakishly keen senses from her dad’s side of the family? Was it possible she might have cousins, even distant cousins, even one, who understood what she was going through?