Page 63 of Tested

I tip my head to press a kiss against his hair. “I will,mo mhuirnin.”He sighs and I pull him closer. “Now spill.” I squeeze him like I can force the information out of him. “What did you not want to put in a text message?”

He plants his hands on my chest and shoves, forcing me to give him a little more space. He’s smiling, which is about the prettiest thing in my world. “Well,” he says. “First we learned that those old friends were high school royalty, and the have-nots don’t remember them fondly at all.” He goes back to his laptop, opening a new browser page and typing something in.

“And, they had a fourth, a girl named Donna DelMarco.” He holds up his laptop to show me the image of an old LA Times article. The picture that goes with the article shows a beautiful girl with long, straight hair that curled back from her face starting at about her cheekbones.

“Apparently they were close enough their parents called them the brat pack.”

“Cute.”

“And Donna died right after high school graduation.”

“What’d she die of?” I ask, turning because I hear Trajan’s footsteps on the stairs.

Trajan reaches the main floor in time to answer. “She drowned off the Santa Monica pier.” He joins us in the living room. “The LA Times article implies the kids were partying, and the cops at the time ruled out foul play.”

“So a drunken accident, then?”

“Something like that,” David says. “Although that doesn’t seem to be much motivation for murder, especially forty years later.”

“Hmph.” I reach around to give Trajan a kiss, because it’s been too long. Have I seen him since the night he got shot? Maybe. Even with the caffeine, my brain is next to mush. “So I did something weird tonight.”

Both of them ask what, so I continue. “Smith and I consulted a necromancer, and—”

“You have got to be joking.” Trajan’s calm is gone in a second. "Necromancers are the worst. What if they find out where you live?”

I pat his arm. “I didn’t even give her my name, let alone our address, so calm down.”

“What did you give her? They don’t come cheap.”

“Smith told her to invoice the LAPD, but that’s beside the point. The necromancer raised the spirits of Adaline, Monica, and Jasmine, and you know what?”

Another chorus of “What?” and “Tell us already!”

“They were surrounded by the body of an enormous serpent, and when the necromancer asked who’d murdered them, the snake threatened us.” I shake my head. “One of the top ten freakiest things I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, hold on to your sunbonnet, sweet pea.” David’s tone is jocular but his expression is dead serious. “Because tonight we talked to the dead girl’s parents. They’re biscione, an Italian shifter that can turn themselves into a snake.”

The room gets very quiet.

“Well, shit,” I finally say. “Looks like we might have our killer.”