After saying goodbye to the Bear Wesen lawyer, Nick hurried straight to the medical examiner's office and found Harper in the autopsy room.
"Although I know this is a strange request, and I don't intend to explain why, I need to examine the two victims' tongues."
"Uh-huh, looks like you already know." Harper did not seem surprised and turned to open the cabinet behind her.
"Huh?" Nick froze. Why did that answer sound like something he had just heard somewhere?
"Stop looking. The bodies were so badly bloated that I removed the tongues to examine their mouths. They're here."
Seeing Nick put on gloves and reach to pry open the jaw of the body on the autopsy table, Harper took two glass jars filled with formalin out of the cabinet.
"Were they members of some secret society, or girls from some high-end escort club? I've never seen anything like this before."
Harper fetched a long pair of forceps, lifted a section of tongue out of the preservative, and placed it beneath a desktop magnifying glass, pointing to the heart-shaped mark on its underside.
"I only just discovered it myself. It's strange. This isn't a tattoo. It looks more like some special kind of brand. Who would do something so cruel to two pretty girls?"
"Perhaps they volunteered," Nick said pointedly.
Seeing the identical marks on both tongues dispelled his last lingering reservations, but also left him with a few more questions.
Just how many Hexenbiests had come to Portland? Neither of the two dead women was the one I encountered at the hospital. That leaves Adalind Shade, whom I haven't met yet. Could it be her?
After telling Harper that the mark had nothing to do with the case and suggesting that she need not include it in the autopsy