The High Priestess - The Darkest Desires Series

XIV

B

y the time the afternoon came around, Echo was bored of the Detectives company. As she was giving McQueen a timeout for his blatant disregard for her needs, she wasn't having any fun. Archer had quickly left the group, claiming an important meeting he couldn't miss, and he was gone before any officer could counter his declaration. That was fine though, because they were very busy making sure their shoes were shiny and their hair neat for the fuck up they'd just created.

Echo, on the other hand, had to remain behind. She'd been escorted to the 'comforts' of the back of a police car while the Detectives had finished off, then she remained in the back seat while they 'tidied' up at the station. The sun was low in the sky by the time they took her to The Finvarra Peoples Hospital and to where the morgue was. The entrance was in a loading bay at the back surrounded by overhanging trees and giant ferns. The vegetation had turned the white walls of the hospital a murky, wish-wash green with numerous rust stains dribbling down from pipes and exhausts.

"What a delightful place." Echo muttered to herself, stretching as they let her out the car. She noted how it had changed in a few years. It had been greener before, but now there was more burnt orange on twisting dead branches and scattered on the floor. Winter was on its way and if it wasn't a pine tree, it was dying off. Last time she was here it had been Spring right in the middle of an April shower.

Adin's death hadn't even hit the print yet, and the police were already patting themselves on the back. Part of their due diligence was informing the family, which meant a body identification. Echo had walked into the morgue dripping wet and her shoes had squelched under foot. The officers at the time had asked her if she wanted an umbrella, but she'd stubbornly said no, not trusting cops. She still didn't trust them really.

Ushered into the morgue, with Hale and McQueen at an elbow each, Echo wasn't surprised everything inside had remained the same. Unlike what most people believed, the morgue its self wasn't cold. It was quiet, too quiet but it wasn't the temperature that gave people the shivers. The blank white walls and the smell of death made it feel cold. The lack of life and presence.

"This way Ms. Headly." Hale said in a hushed tone. Echo smirked. Cops - she found - were always the one's most scared of death. Maybe they called it respect, or maybe because they spent so much time in the morgue, they felt they couldn't escape it, so treated it like home.

Following behind the two tall men, Echo tried to resist old memories. She noticed the same light, three in from the door still flickered at every four second interval. The doors still creaked at the same moment as they close, and the same ugly gurneys lined the halls. The double doors on the left that took you back upstairs to the busy hospital still hung from the hinges wonky.

The hospital was full of either the dead or dying; or as Echo called them, delusional. Everyone came to a hospital thinking they would walk back out again, but it was funny how slim those chances actually where. McQueen would probably say the hospital was a place to find peace. Echo didn't believe that. But even as she thought that, her traitorous mind threw her an image of Adin, dead. He'd looked... at peace which was something she'd never seen on him. Maybe McQueen had been partly right, in the physical sense at the very least. Maybe when you die, that part of you finds peace. Adin had never lived a peaceful existence, and Echo knew, even now, years later, he still haunted her dreams and woke her in a cold sweat. He might have looked at peace, but he would have boiled the seas with anger for what Echo had done. Done to him.

✽✽✽

Entering, Echo smiled back at doctor Cassi's bitter scowl as she took in the same metal walls and sterile plastic scattered decoration. The coroner might have changed in recent years, but the room sure hadn't. The Doctor had changed into scrubs and her body language seemed more relaxed in this form; like her street clothes were uncomfortable. She was younger than the old man she'd met before, but still had that old, stale air around her. "Detectives." Doctor Cassidy greeted, ignoring Echo.