A quick check over my shoulder confirmed I was still alone. With the sun at his back, Comeaux’s silhouette was visible through the thin fabric separating us. He was half-turned, arguing with someone. One of the guys I had spooked away from the fan was probably tattling on me.

“Enough with the stalling,” I muttered. Skin crawling with grim resolve, I pressed a single finger to the girl’s spine through the filter of her damp hair. Residual power answered that barest touch with sickening force, and I had my answer.

Godsdamn it. I recognized the magical signature. She was one of ours all right. Another victim of a serial killer agents of the Earthen Conclave had nicknamed Charybdis, after a mythical sea monster.

The girl’s species eluded me. A hint of earthy magic convinced me her people were native to this realm and not a descendant of Faerie. Indigenous magic registered on my scale in an indeterminate way, making the brush of Charybdis’s power all the easier to identify for it.

The gallon jug of hand sanitizer I had been eyeballing sat on the ground near the exit flap. I walked over and pumped until clear goo dripped through my fingers then massaged out the worst of the echoes before resuming my visual examination.

Milky-blue eyes gazed at the stump of her missing arm. Her thin lips mashed together as though even in death she held back a scream. The roundness of her childish features churned a memory that frothed with kinship for the dead. I stared at her hard, willing a resemblance to another lost girl to surface, but there was none. Whoever she had been, she was no Lori.

The quality of light changed, and I assumed Comeaux had joined me. “Has her family been notified?”

A rusty growl vibrated on the air. “Her family found her.”

Startled, I lifted my head.

A tall man filled every inch of the entryway. Wiry muscle packed his lean frame. Dark hair was slicked to his scalp. Grungy stubble covered his face. Feral intelligence sharpened his hazel eyes as they pierced mine. Bands of black ink circled his wrists, and towering cypress trees grew from them to trace up his forearms. A small figure flashed on the inside of one wrist when he shoved aside the tent flap, but he lowered his arm before I could identify the marking. Mud covered his naked torso. His jeans were soaked through and held low on his hips by determination alone. His feet were bare and caked with dirt. Haggard and exhausted, he looked like a man primed to walk off a cliff’s edge just to get life the hell over with so he could finally get some sleep.

“Agent Ellis—” Comeaux shouldered into the tent, giving the man a wide berth, “—this is Cord Graeson. He’s the victim’s brother.”

Gravel churned in Graeson’s voice. “Her name was Marie.”