Free Sacrificed in Shadow by S.M. Reine Page A

as she did it, like he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
    “Okay,” she said, licking the sugar off of her lips. “Bonus question.” Elise leaned into him, letting the full length of her body press against his side. “Do you want me?”
    Before Lincoln could answer, Poppy stepped out of the kitchen, heading over to bus their meal.
    He pulled Elise through the bakery and out the side door. The sun had shifted—she only had inches of shadowed safety to get into the passenger’s seat of his cruiser.
    “Well?” Elise asked when he started the car.
    “Let’s go to the morgue,” he said. His pounding heart was answer enough.
    She slid his aviators on again and smiled.

    The Grove County Morgue was in the basement of the general hospital. The attendant on duty, Lance, had been college buddies with Lincoln, and was ready for their arrival. There were six bodies stretched out on surgical steel tables when they arrived, each of them covered in a tidy white sheet. The lumps under the blankets didn’t resemble human shapes.
    Lincoln greeted Lance with a grin and a fist bump.
    “Who’s the lovely lady?” asked Lance, shaking Elise’s hand. She could feel his pulse pounding on her tongue as clearly as though she had pressed her mouth to his neck. It was nerves. Cheer aside, Lance’s adrenaline was running high. Why?
    “Possible witness,” Lincoln said. “Can we have a few minutes alone?”
    If Lance thought that something weird was going on, he didn’t remark on it. “Sure thing. I’ll be outside.” He left.
    Lincoln immediately began preparing. He produced a pair of face masks and aprons, handing one set to Elise.
    “You’re very comfortable here, considering how few murders happen in your county,” she said, taking latex gloves from the box that Lincoln offered to her. She swapped gloves without letting him see her palms.
    “Lots of old people in Northgate, Miss Kavanagh. Murders aren’t the only deaths that get autopsied. I keep Lance company, sometimes.” Lincoln gestured to the bodies. “Do you have a strong stomach?”
    Elise had been to Hell more than once, seen the human-meat butcher shops, dressed herself in leather cured from the flesh of mortal slaves. She had seen men divided into cuts of meat and discarded as offal. She had skinned dozens of demons herself, removing their brands so that she could catalog the markings that helped associate them with the masters in charge. Her stomach was so strong, it might as well have been iron.
    She answered his question by pulling the blanket off of the first body.
    Elise stared for a minute, trying to assemble the pieces mentally, like a puzzle.
    That must have been the jaw. The other piece must have been the back half of a shoulder. There was no hip left, although some connective tissues remained to hint at leg muscle. Everything else had been eaten. No wonder the white sheets hadn’t looked like they were concealing human shapes.
    Now that she understood what she was looking at, it didn’t disgust her. She was, however, somewhat surprised. The killer must have been a very hungry werewolf—or several of them.
    “You tried to feed me cherry pie before we came here,” Elise said.
    “I like to have a belly full of good food before dealing with anything this terrible,” Lincoln said.
    Cherry pie was an interesting choice, considering that its innards looked a lot like the jumble of human pieces she was studying now.
    Tooth marks scored the bone, and chunks had been taken out of the meat. Elise spanned her gloved fingers over it to judge jaw size. Unsurprisingly, it was huge. She didn’t know enough about werewolf bites to confirm the match. She would have to find a specimen to compare—dead or alive. Good thing the full moon was coming up that night.
    Elise examined what used to be the head. “Did you match the dental records to identify the body?”
    “There weren’t enough teeth remaining,” Lincoln said, standing at her side. He was pale-cheeked and