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“I don’t know who ordered the Bond villain from Temu,” I said to my husband, “but can someone please get him to reel his Bronze Age morality system back in, it’s way out of control right now.”

Donovan looked around the house with open dismay, nose wrinkled up in disgust. “Yeah. Gotta agree with you. This is gnarly and I thought military operations were bad.”

It does say something that his first thought upon seeing this place was active combat.

We’d been called in because this was the weirdest situation the Nashville Police had ever seen. Put on a scale of my cases, a one being huh that’s odd and a ten being was this aliens?, we were likely a solid eight on the scale. The house looked like the set of a slasher horror movie with blood everywhere—walls, ceilings, floors, furniture—and the smell was rank. Oh my god, even with the mask over my nose and mouth, the stench was horrendous.

This much blood, rotting in a house with no A/C going, in the Southern heat of August, was the worst possible combination. I’d need to scrub my nose out after we leave here. Just to give it some kind of chance of recovery.

And the stench of this place would linger in my psyche a long time. That I knew.

Borrowman jogged toward me, meeting me right in the middle of the living room. At least, judging from couches and TV, it looked like a living room? Nothing else about this place really resembled a home, to be honest. Not from what I’d seen. Which was a shame. From the outside, this had been a very nice house once. One of those McMansions that were popping up everywhere, all nice finishes and three levels.

My detective friend looked disturbed and exhausted. “Jon, thank fuck, I don’t even know where to start with this one.”

“Well that’s never good.”

“Cliffnotes version, this place was being used by a cannibal as his meal making factory.”

I just barfed inside my own mouth. “Ewww.”

“It gets worse,” he warned me, but his lines were in agreement on the eww. “Man killed at least fourteen people that we can find shallow graves for, and your mom’s already in the backyard, talking with corpses and finding any grave we didn’t locate on the first try.”

Oh, so she was hard at work already? “Awesome.”

“She’s seriously gotten even better ever since re-anchoring,” Borrowman noted as a sort of aside to Donovan. “Your parents are clearly pros at being good anchors, is this some kind of family talent?”

“It’s turning out to be one,” he admitted ruefully.

Really, the only member of his immediate family who wasn’t an anchor was his sister—which rather said something.

“Anyway.” Borrowman put a hand on his hip, head sinking to a weary angle. “There’s weird shit in this house I can’t even identify. Jon, since you seem to know everyone—”

I was both a Southerner and naturally friendly with people, he didn’t need to make that sound like an accusation.

“—I’m hoping you can do two things. First, take a looksee and tell me who else I need to call. Second, clear the family. The ones who actually own this house are swearing up and down they had nothing to do with this. They arrived after the initial responders got here, pure coincidence, funnily enough. I understand she saw the house and fainted. Cops already on site called 911 and she’s only just recovered enough to talk.”

“Both are still on site?”

“Yeah, wife refuses to leave until she’s cleared, said she’s not coming back here if she can help it.” Borrowman ardently wished for the same ability, to leave this scene well behind him, judging from the disgust in his lines. He glowed like a flashing pink neon sign.

“Lead the way,” Donovan said.

I fell into step just behind him, as the narrow hallway kept us from walking abreast. Lots of disgusting things in here, some of which I chose not to examine too closely. One room had nothing but freezers lined up, and I had a good suspicion as to what they held. Also sent a prayer up on behalf of my poor mother and the forensic people who got to deal with the contents. That was nightmare fuel, right there.

We cleared the main floor, kitchen after dining room after study of bloody surfaces, rotting tissue, and oh my god the killer had actually stacked up femur bones near the back patio door like they were some kind of woodpile. This was one sick individual.

Donovan’s lines were a clash between deep ultraviolet sadness, hot red anger, and hot pink disgust, which was quite the color mix. “This is evil. That’s all this is, pure evil.”

He couldn’t wrap his head around why someone would eat humans. But then, my Donovan would never hurt someone without cause. Without being driven to that point. It was part of why I loved the man.

Borrowman gave him a miserable nod. “Agreed. All right, Jon, there’s our homeowners. Tell me if I need to arrest one of them.”

I looked both over. Middle aged, successful, trust fund babies—both of them—with a bit of a superiority complex mixed in because of said generational wealth, and they looked like they’d come here for a vacation. The wife was in one of those floor-length white linen dresses, hair in a sleek pony tail, makeup just so, looking very upper middle crust. Her shock overrode everything, though, and from her lines she was very tempted to go throw up some more.

This was very much not her doing.