She began circling the table to the south side. The stove tops and ovens, a stainless steel prep table with pots and pans on a shelf underneath, and an industrial refrigerator and a freezer filled the wall. A few steps revealed the crime scene. The half-demon girl was standing stock-still on the edge of the pool of blood that had flowed from the victim. Dahlia took in the whole picture, then began noting the details.

The corpse was that of the young man who had irritated her, the human donor she’d last observed having words with Don. The man’s throat had been torn out. Dahlia had seen much worse in her long, long existence, but she was irritated at the waste of the blood.

The half-demon girl had not a speck of blood on her, except for her shoes, which were red Converse high-tops, now somewhat darker around the rubber soles. Dahlia raised her delicate black eyebrows and looked across the room.

“Katamori?” she said.

“Lots of people have been through,” Katamori answered.

From this laconic response, Dahlia understood that he’d found nothing tangible on his side of the room, but that there were complex scent trails. That made sense. The north side of the kitchen was the natural route to take to get to the door on the far end of the long room. This door led into a mudroom with hooks for wet weather gear and gardening clothes. On the other side of the mudroom, a heavier door opened out onto the broad apron marking the end of the service driveway. All the humans who’d come to the mansion to donate earlier in the evening had both entered and left the mansion through that door.

“Please stay where you are for the moment,” Dahlia said to the half-demon, who bobbed her head in a series of sharp nods. Since the blood pool and the body took up the whole of the floor between the appliances and the table, Dahlia bent her knees and leaped over the table, landing lightly on her amazing heels on the other side.