The chill of the morgue seeped into Cassie as she stood to the left of the autopsy table. The stark white of the tiled walls was only broken by the gleam of metal. Zack's office was a different matter, but she couldn't see the warmer and comfier space from where she was standing.
"I'm not done with the post mortem yet," the bat shifter said as he looked between his teammates. "But there's something you all need to see."
Cassie swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. "How bad is it?"
"I put a bucket out." The corner of Zack's lips twisted up into a small smirk as he pointed to the silver bucket a few feet away. If she didn't know better, she'd think he was making a joke.
"Okay, let us see," Hadrian instructed.
Cassie didn't miss how he stood a little straighter, bracing himself for whatever Zack had to show them. It was rare that he needed them to come down to the morgue to see something. Normally, he sent them a report that might include a few pictures. That she could cope with. A body cut open in front of her, not so much.
He pulled the sheet back, revealing the still form of the siren.
"What are we looking at?" Issac asked, stepping forward and examining the body closely.
He might not work in the morgue, but she suspected his necromancer heritage helped to stop the same squeamishness that came over her from time to time. She loved this job. It was easily the best one she'd ever had, and the ability to make as much of a difference as they did was something she never wanted to give up. But that didn't always make it easy and she still had to get used to some elements of it.
"She's had some work done on her vocal cords. See here?" Zack pointed.
Cassie took a deep breath before stepping forward to look at what he was pointing to. The vocal cords didn't look like she expected them to, and not because she'd done something to them. Instead of the strings she'd always imagined them to look like, it just appeared as pink and fleshy as the rest of the surrounding area.
While she might not have known what to expect from vocal cords, she did know how to recognise magic, and the whole area crackled with the residue of it. Whatever spell had been performed on the siren, it would fade now the host body was dead.
"Do you think this is what killed her?"
"There's a small chance of that," Zack admitted. "But without finding the doctor who did the procedure, we have no way of being sure. I think she had this done so she didn't enchant anyone with her voice."
Cassie's eyebrows shot up, while Hadrian groaned.
"There goes that theory," he muttered.
"What theory?" Issac asked.
"The ex is a dead end. There's concrete evidence he wasn't in Birmingham at the time of the murder. Our next line of enquiry was going to be to look into people she'd enchanted in case it was one of them," Hadrian said.
"But if she'd made it so that she couldn't enchant anyone, that seems unlikely," Cassie added. "Though we don't know for sure that it worked."
"I can ask the sister about it when I talk to her. If they're as close as she implied, then she has to know whether or not it worked." Relief crossed his features as he realised all wasn't lost.
"Has she had any other magical work done?" Cassie asked.
"Not that I've found yet," Zack responded. "And I haven't found anything else of note. Everything so far is pointing to the same as my initial conclusion. Somehow, Jessica drowned, even if that should be impossible for a siren to do."
Cassie stared down at the poor woman's face. It almost didn't make any sense.
"At least this gives us something to go on," Hadrian announced, straightening up and stepping away from the body. "I'll swap my focus onto finding out what I can about the doctor who might have done this procedure. Cassie, is there something you can do with the magic sample?"
She frowned. Was there? "It'll be hard to do, but I might be able to."
"Try. If we don't get anything from it, we're at the same place we are now. If we do, then we're ahead of the game."
"It's likely the most I'll get is what kind of paranormal cast the spell, or if it's some kind of potion..."
"That's enough," Hadrian responded. "It'll give me a chance to narrow down the doctors who we need to talk to. If we're lucky, there'll only be one of them."
She nodded.
"Is there anything else you need to tell us?" Cassie asked Zack, realising he might not be done.
He shook his head. "Nothing out of the ordinary. But if this alteration would stop her siren powers of enchantment, there's a chance it also stopped her from being able to breathe underwater. We could be looking at an accident or manslaughter instead of murder."
Hadrian raised an eyebrow. "Let's hope for the sake of the family that it is the former. A senseless accident, but something they can be at peace with. Murder is something else entirely."
Cassie nodded, unsure if she agreed. Maybe murder would be easier to come to terms with eventually because there was someone to blame. Though she suspected that would only work if they managed to catch the person behind it.
"If you send me a sample of the magic up to the lab, I'll get to work," she instructed Zack.
He nodded. "I'll have it for you in about half an hour."
"I'll be waiting for your call."
"Let's have a briefing at the end of the day," Hadrian announced. "We might not have much more to go on, but it'll be good if we can all share what we've known so far."
Cassie nodded, as did the others. Sharing what they knew had led to several breakthroughs before. Hopefully, it would in Jessica's case too.