The Experimental Murders (Elysium #2)

Chapter Thirty-Two

 Daphne was slightly taken aback when they stormed into the house and demanded to see her gills. But she obliged to their madness, as she always did. Booker ushered them into the laboratory where he sat Daphne on the operating table and removed one of the portable aquariums. With careful movements, he managed to keep most of the water from sloshing onto the floor. Setting the device on a workbench, he gently moved her hair aside and allowed Trinket to lean in for a better look.

"I can retrieve a candle if it will help," he offered.

But she didn't need one. Her eyes traced the scar around the gill, taking in every inch of skin. The redness had disappeared, and it now looked as if the piscine organ and the human flesh were one. As though they had never been two separate pieces. Like they had been welded together.

Images of the other experiments ran through her mind: the talons, the skin flaps, the webbed fingers, the snout. All of them had one trait in common: they looked out of place. Like they had been patched on. They did not resemble Daphne's additions. Unlike hers that had clearly grown into one flesh, the others had remained separate. There had been no sign that the two different types of flesh had even attempted to combine.

Why? Why the difference?

And then the note came to mind. That last line. That line that neither she nor Booker could make sense of.

"Trinket?"

She turned to Booker, her heart beating madly. "The note."

He furrowed his brow.

"The note, the note, the one from the girl with the scar. Where is it?"

He went to his desk and retrieved the wrinkled piece of paper. Smoothing it out, he handed it to her. She snatched it up, reading the last line over and over again.

Her nails are disgusting enough to raise the dead.

Nails. Dirty nails. Nails so encrusted with dirt that it was as if the young man had dug himself a home in the ground.

Or had dug something out of the ground.

Clutching the note tightly, she lifted her gaze to Booker, hardly able to contain her excitement. "They were already dead."

He squinted at her. "Who?"

"The bodies. The mutilated bodies. They were already dead."

Raising his eyebrows, he nodded slowly. "Yes, they were dead when we found them. Are you sure you didn't hit your head too hard?"

She waved the note in the air and paced back and forth. "No. Before they were experimented on. Before he sewed the animal parts on. They were already dead."

Now she had caught his interest. He gripped the side of the operating table. "How can you tell?"

"After seeing Daphne's stitches, something kept tugging at my memory. There was something off, but I couldn't seem to grasp what it was. That is, until I saw the woman at the Clocktower. Look."

She walked back to Daphne and gently stroked the scar tissue along the gill. Booker followed her movements carefully, his eyes taking in everything she touched.

"See how you can barely tell where the fish part ends and the human part begins?" she said. "But then think back to the corpses. Did you notice how on each corpse, the parts that had been sewn on didn't seem like they were a part of the body? They looked like a patch on a skirt or a shirt. Securely attached, but clearly out of place. Why?"

"Because they never got a chance to heal," Booker finished. He turned to her, eyes wide. "Because dead flesh can't heal."

The corners of her mouth lifted as the thrill of deduction took over. "Yes. And now look at this last line."