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The corpse had been withered and covered in ants, its dark eyes open as if in surprise. He’d cried as he’d used the rake to pull it toward him, backing toward the opening they’d made in the skirt and the beam of the flashlight Bobby shone toward him.

He’d gotten the job done and never gone beneath the trailer again.

Shepherd gave a little nod and smiled at Argent.

“I suppose it was inevitable as we both work with the queen.”

“We came about the body,” she said. “The one from the Night Market?”

“Which one?” Shepherd nodded to the wall. It was the sort you saw in morgues, at least in movies, with multiple refrigerator doors.

“The man in the suit,” Adam said.

“Oh, yes, our John Doe in bloody gray. I should warn you, with the backlog from the attack, I haven’t had time to process him.”

“We need to expedite this,” Argent said.

“I understand. Brace yourselves.”

Shepherd considered the doors, opened one, and pulled the drawer out. The smell intensified. Adam was surprised that he didn’t gag, but he took smaller breaths as they regarded the body.

“John Doe?” Adam asked. “Does that mean you weren’t able to identify him?”

Adam almost turned away, but did not. The man’s eyes were blown wide, as they’d been when the banshee had emerged. His mouth was torn, his jaw unhinged, and his throat lay at a broken angle. Blood caked his mouth, face, jacket, and shirt. It had stained his tie, also gray, but with some yellow and blue stripes to give it some personality.

Adam hoped he hadn’t suffered.

“I will now.”

Shepherd pondered the corpse for a moment, then he laid a hand gently to the man’s cheek. He frowned. The blue light of his eyes dimmed as he concentrated.

“Nothing,” he said, pulling his hand away with a scowl. “It’s curious. I get nothing when I try to contact his spirit. It’s as though his body is⁠—”

“Empty,” Adam said. “It’s like the souls Cole snagged at the concert. Wherever the spirit jars are, they’re bound behind heavy wards. We couldn’t summon them either.”

“Whoever is behind this is clever,” Argent said in a tone without any admiration.

“Let me try,” Adam said.

Argent nodded. Shepherd took a step back. He knew the warlock wound was dangerous to his kind. Adam had killed other demons with it, though they’d been cruel and mindless beasts. The worst part of it, the thing he tried not to think about, was that the warlock wound almost always hurt, just a little. It was like a scar that never fully healed, never fully closed. Other times he thought of it as a rabid dog that slept when sated, because it was only then, only for a while after he’d consumed a spirit or a powerful spell, that it gave him peace.

“It’s okay,” Adam said. “I’m just going to use my Sight.”

He opened it, stared at the corpse, slowly looking, layer by layer.

“What are you hoping to find?” Shepherd asked.

“Traces of the spell that birthed the banshee or helped it cross over from the Between.”

It wasn’t easy to keep looking, to root around in the man’s body, but he refused to give up. He looked carefully, layer by layer, like peeling an onion, trying to find anything they could use, but found nothing, no hint of magic or trace of the man’s identity.

The concert victims at the hospital had been like this, devoid of magic, even though their bodies had continued breathing and working. He wondered if he was the same when he spirit walked, how much of his consciousness, if any, stayed behind.

Something buzzed.

“Is that . . .” Adam reached into the man’s suit coat pocket and extracted a cell phone. It had buzzed to warn its owner that it was nearly out of power.

He and Argent turned to Shepherd.