Under the Skin (Ritual Crime Unit) Read Online Free Page B

“Got an analysis job for you.” She held up the evidence bag.
    “Fantastic.” Jennifer Hayes peered out at her through a gap between cardboard boxes, a view that showed little more than a glimpse of her silver-framed glasses and wavy black hair. She gestured vaguely towards the left side of the room. “Put it with the other fifty-seven. I’m sure that I’ll get caught up sometime in the next few decades.”
    “This one’s a priority,” Pierce said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind her. She squeezed her way past a box of ring binders to reach the desk.
    “Aren’t they all?” she said with a wry purse of her lips, but she shoved a stack of books aside to free up some desk space. “All right. What miracles are you expecting me to work for you this time?”
    Pierce set the evidence bag down in front of her. “I need everything you can tell me about this.”
    She peered at the bag, for a moment more intrigued by the lack of labelling than the dark hair within. “Ooh, unmarked evidence.” She looked up with a slight smirk. “What am I doing, hunting down your ex?”
    “I don’t know when you think I had the time for one of those,” she said. If police work ate into your private life, then working for the RCU swallowed it whole and crunched up the bones. They were writing the book as they went along; so much about magic was still undocumented and poorly understood.
    “You’re telling me field investigation isn’t the glamorous rock star lifestyle that I’ve been dreaming of so long?” Jenny grinned, then bit her lip. “Sorry, I suppose that was poor taste,” she said, clearly thinking of the events of the night before. “Any word on how Sally’s doing?”
    “She’s stable.” A term that ought to be reassuring, but only served as a dark reminder of how close it had come. “Still waiting to hear from Leo Grey about the Firearms Officer who was hurt.”
    “Nasty business all round,” she said soberly. She studied the hair in its evidence packet. “This is from that?”
    “Hair from the shapeshifter’s pelt,” Pierce told her. “All that we’ve got left. Some goons claiming to be the ‘Counter Terror Action Team’ took over our case, seized all the evidence, and managed to give the suspect that we had in custody a chance to off himself while they were at it. Officially, it’s no longer our business.”
    “Officially,” Jenny echoed, and gave her a knowing look. She took a deep breath and pushed her chair back to stand. “Well,” she said, regarding the unmarked bag. “Obviously, the chain of evidence has been compromised here, so there’s no point passing this on to the officers handling the case.”
    “None at all,” she agreed.
    “ So , since it doesn’t need to be retained, I could always use it to test a new divination process I’ve been trying to refine.” She slid a sidelong look towards Pierce. “Of course, I’d need somebody from the department to follow up on the results and verify the findings are correct...”
    “Well, if it’s for the cause of advancing our knowledge of magical forensics...” She spread her hands.
    “Absolutely.” Jenny led the way down to the ritual lab in the basement.
    Unlike the cluttered workstations filling most of the offices, the small square table in the centre of this room stood bare. Etched into the concrete floor around it was a ritual circle, bounded by concentric rings of symbols. On the ceiling above was painted an exact duplicate. Containment circles, there to trap anything that might be raised here; Pierce was careful to stay well outside the bounds.
    An industrial refrigerator hummed away to itself in the furthest corner of the room. Beside it stood a row of fireproof cabinets. Jenny fished a key out of her pocket to unlock the leftmost, rooting briefly through shelves of labelled boxes and plastic bags. “Ah, here we go,” she said as she retrieved a cloth-wrapped bundle.
    She tugged the cloth aside to