Chapter 6

G ordon’s phone was ringing, and it was too early for it to be doing that.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, trying to untangle himself from his sheets with only moderate success. The blinds were drawn in his bedroom, but he saw daylight spill down the hallway outside, not enough to warrant being awake, but daylight all the same.

His phone kept ringing. Making it stop was paramount. Last he remembered, the damn thing had been in his jeans pocket.

“Fuck,” Gordon repeated, this time with feeling, but the phone ignored him and continued producing the offending ruckus. He tried to grab his jeans, which were on the floor next to his bed and just out of reach. Gordon stretched further without leaving the comfort of his sheets and pillows. Just a little. He could almost reach them.

In an ungraceful half-tumble, he fell out of bed and sat up on the floor, pulled his jeans to him and fumbled his phone out of his pocket.

“Yeah?” he asked, blinking sleep away with little success.

“And top of the morning to you,” said Maxim with disturbing cheer. “We’ve been invited to watch an autopsy. I’ll come pick you up in, oh, ten minutes.”

Gordon rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the ball of his hand. “What?” There should be a punitive fee for cheery morning people, especially for cheery morning vampires.

“I can make it fifteen minutes. You sound like you need fifteen.” Maxim was still achingly cheerful. If anything, he was more so.

“Can you start again from the top? What’s going on?” It was getting easier to see, but rarely if ever was morning worth such close observation.

Maxim gave a put-upon sigh. Does he practice these in front of the mirror? Did he take voice coaching from an older vampire to learn how to sigh properly?

“It is saddening that I can tell just from your mood that you went to bed alone last night, Gordon. Detective Adler invited us to observe that nasty case of his, and you get to closely observe the autopsy, which I will observe only casually, but I thought we should carpool. Thirteen minutes.”

Adler. Right. Thinking of the Detective lifted Gordon’s mood. “Be here in half an hour or so, and I might be decent, how does that sound?”

“Like you are testing my patience, but very well. I shall go and entertain Heath for a while.” Maxim hung up, and Gordon got to his feet in pursuit of a shower and clothes.

“So why are you coming along to the autopsy in the first place? You never come visit me for the autopsies,” Gordon said from the passenger side of Maxim’s car.

Maxim, his long hair woven tightly into a golden braid, looked over to him. “But I do. Even if I do not generally enjoy your place of employment. Paperwork, you understand. Do you not recall our pleasant chat over the case of the werewolf in the satyr costume a few weeks back? I avoided goat jokes.”

“Yes, you did. Fine. Most of the time you don’t stay around for autopsies. What’s so special about this one?”

Maxim winked at him. “And here I thought you were too sleep-addled to notice. Have you perchance been doing a bit of reading up on the old Ripper case?”

Gordon nodded. “Someone murdered women, brutally, then blamed the fae for it, and because two of the victims were actually fae, most people assumed it was some deranged human who had it out for the fair folk.”

Maxim glanced at Gordon again. “Did you read nothing of the panic that ensued among supernaturals? They didn’t reach the conclusion it had to have been a human right away. That came later, and even then, given that the case was never fully solved, speculation is going strong to this very day. At first though, after the very first murder, one of the wolf packs of London, one of the more prominent ones, was blamed for it. Then after the second one, people got even more incensed and readily blamed those wolves. Several of the pack members were beaten viciously.

“It turned very nearly to the pitchforks and torches stage. At the same time, though much less publicized, wolves blamed vampires and vice versa, and the fae were angry at everyone, saying no one was doing anything to protect them. I was never gladder to have opted to vacation in Italy at the time.”

Gordon was fully awake now. He could imagine what Maxim was describing, but also not. There were laws now protecting supernaturals from the more open, discriminatory hate directed at them. Gordon had never really experienced anything like that himself, then again he was an affluent vampire for all intents and purposes, living in a nice part of town and with a secure job at the Forum.

With a pang, his thoughts went to Adler. Had that strong man ever suffered prejudice directed at him? Had he ever encountered colleagues talking behind his back or not willing to work with him? It hadn’t seemed that way from how the police officers had reacted at the scene the day before, but appearances could be deceptive.

Gordon glanced at Maxim. “I didn’t go into that much historical detail. I focused on what the Ripper did to the victims.”

“Fair enough. Know also that the London police tried very hard to avoid talking about those riots, even worked to suppress the mention of it in the papers. And yes, I do call what happened then riots. I would rather not have anything like that repeat here in New Amsterdam. That kind of mob justice is detestable and gives me a headache, you see. So be nice to your human counterpart, yes, Gordon? No telling them how to hold the scalpel. Find things to bond over, rather.”

Gordon groaned. “I don’t tell colleagues how to hold a scalpel, Maxim. I think you are confusing me with yourself.”

Maxim made a moue as he pulled into a parking spot outside of the medical examiner’s office. “You know, Gordon, it is baffling to me that Detective Adler’s presence turns you shy and bashful like a kitchen maid who is secretly a princess and waiting to be asked to dance. Oh, have you ever attempted putting a pea under your mattress to determine if you are secretly a princess? Or prince, if you prefer.”

Gordon felt himself blush. “Don’t be silly. And with the detective, it’s really not what you think.”

The vampire chuckled as he put his car in park. “What I think is you’d both be best served if you spent more time together, preferably with your clothes off. And you should have started when I bullied you into coming to my bar to set you up with Adler.”

Gordon’s mouth fell open. “You—you?!” He remembered that Maxim was a much older vampire with all the age-related clout and cleared his throat. “The fuck? Since when are you so frank all of a sudden?”

Maxim rolled his eyes. “Since you wouldn’t take my subtlety. Now, come along, Detective Adler is waiting for us inside.” He unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car, a spring in his step.

Gordon, in an attempt to collect himself, ran a hand through his hair and down the front of his shirt while Maxim was already rounding the hood of the car. All of a sudden, Gordon wondered if he looked okay. He hadn’t even had coffee after all.

He pulled down the sun visor and checked himself in the little mirror. There were rings under his eyes, and he hadn’t even moisturized. His hair wasn’t perfect but sort of okay, and he worked the strands through his fingers.

Maxim knocked on his window. “Hurry, Doctor. The dead are restless.”

So Gordon got out, feeling light and just slightly anxious, and the prospect of observing an autopsy had nothing to do with it.