The mortuary was always cold, but tonight it felt wrong. The fluorescent lights above flickered just once as you drew the scalpel down Hannah Grace’s pale chest. No wounds, no burns, no obvious cause of death—at least not one the human body was meant to bear. Her skin was tight, waxy, stretched too perfectly over bone.

Your icy blue eyes narrowed, trained on the corpse with the practiced calmness of a woman who had seen far too much. Yet, when the overhead vent rattled, and the faint sound of wings—flies—buzzed in the still air, your hand faltered for a second.

The steel door groaned open behind you. Boots against tile. You didn’t have to look up.

“Babe?” Luca’s voice—low, warm, carrying that California lilt even in the grave silence of your mortuary—echoed softly. “You’ve been down here for hours. I thought maybe you were avoiding me.”

You exhaled slowly, setting the scalpel aside. “You should be sleeping. Don’t you have a call-out in the morning?”

He stepped into view, tall and broad-shouldered, the quiet swagger of a man who’d stared down barrels and firestorms without flinching. His gaze slid from you to the corpse, and then back. “And leave you alone down here with… her? No chance.”

Your lips pressed thin. You’d never told him, not in full, about what sometimes clung to the dead. The whispers you heard when you cut too deep, the shadows that lingered near their bodies. He suspected—he had to. But suspicion wasn’t the same as belief.

Tonight, though, something in the air was shifting. The body twitched. A hand. Just barely.

Luca caught it. His humor vanished, jaw tightening, his easygoing mask slipping just a fraction. “Did you see that?”

“I saw.” Your voice was steady, though your pulse climbed. “You should go.”

“Not happening.” He stepped closer, a hand brushing your arm—steadying you or himself, you weren’t sure. “Third generation SWAT, remember? We run toward the nightmare.” His eyes cut back to Hannah Grace’s corpse. “So tell me, babe. Is this one of those nights?”

You sigh and nod, '' I can't take her fingerprints. Also flies. They say she died during an exorcism, you know? ''

You show him her driving license, and point at her eye color which stated brown, with Hannah's brown eyes reflecting back from the photo. But the corpse had electric blue inhumane eyes.