Iron & Velvet (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator #1)

by Alexis Hall

  “You,” she said suddenly, “have extraordinary eyes.”

  I do. They’re purple. Thanks, Mum.

  But Julian’s voice came over me like a rush of silk, and it took me a long moment to remember that I was done with vampire bullshit. I turned to leave. It was mid-morning, so I was spared a full-on vamp-bamf, but she darted past me anyway, an inhuman blur.

  One day, a vampire will do that to someone and they’ll just keep walking. One day.

  But not today.

  I stopped just before we collided. We were so close that I’d have felt her breathing except she, well, wasn’t. She was shorter than me—most people are—but that just meant she had to turn her face up to mine as if she was expecting a kiss. Damn it. Damn it.

  “You didn’t invite me here to practice cheap pickup lines.”

  She grinned. “No, but I’m willing to be flexible if you are.”

  “I’m armed, you know.”

  “I do know.” She took a step forwards, her body aligning itself to mine, cold but yielding in all the right places. “I enjoy dangerous women in fedoras.” She danced her fingers down my forearm, outlining the shape of my knife through my sleeve.

  I sidestepped, and she followed as though we were dancing.

  “Oh my,” she murmured. “Your heart is beating so fast. I can almost taste it.”

  I leaned away from her. “Do you actually need a PI?”

  She moved back and ran a hand through her hair, which was short and dark and looked like it would be as soft as feathers beneath my fingers. Which I wasn’t thinking. Not at all. “You distracted me,” she complained, as though it was somehow my fault that she’d jumped all over me. “There’s a dead body in the alley outside.”

  “And it just slipped your mind?”

  “No, I just decided to seduce you first.”

  “Corpse first.”

  “He’s dead, he’s not going anywhere.”

  “You’re dead.”

  “Yes, but I’m better in bed.” She waggled her eyebrows.

  I growled. “Tell me about the goddamn murder.”

  “And Ash said you wouldn’t take the case.”

  “Wait, what? I . . . haven’t taken the case.”

  She smiled brilliantly, snow white teeth and cherry red lips. “Then why are you asking me about it?”

  Well. Damn it. Damn it again. She had me there.

  She sauntered off and took a seat on the edge of her desk, one leg drawn up to her chest, the other swinging idly. Lethal had never been so cute. “Obviously I’m paying for your discretion as well as your . . . services.” She did the eyebrow thing again. “I really don’t need the mortal authorities to start poking into my business, or for the press to get hold of this. ‘Man Horribly Killed While Trying to Have a Good Time’ is not going to sell out my venues.” Her expression turned momentarily thoughtful. “Or maybe it would, I don’t know. People can be so macabre. Anyway, find out who did it so I can stop them doing it again.” Her fangs flashed. “By killing them.”

  “What makes you think it’s connected to you?”

  “Sweeting, I’m a motherfucking vampire prince. Everything is connected to me.”

  “Any actual evidence for that?”

  “Killing on my premises is personally insulting.” Her eyes met mine. So very very blue. Ngh. “Take the case, Kate.”

  I knew it would be nothing but trouble. I knew she would be nothing but trouble.

  But.

  Eight hundred a day plus expenses would make a change from zero a day and expenses.

  And there was no denying it. Julian Saint-Germain was my kind of trouble.

  I nodded.

  Julian grinned. “Fabulous. Shall we shag to seal the deal?” She put her hands behind her and rested her weight on them, her body arching beneath the spill of lace and velvet like a cat’s.

  “Dead body. Downstairs.”

  She looked disappointed. “Well, I’ll be here if you change your mind.”

  “I’m not going to sleep with you.”

  “Not now.”

  “Not ever.”

  “Ever is a long time, sweeting. I should know.”

  I left the room with great dignity, her laughter following me like smoke from a cigarette. Cigarette. I put one to my lips but thought better of lighting it indoors and made my way downstairs, telling myself I could have it after I’d seen the body. I’d forgotten how work could get in the way of your lifestyle.

  Ashriel was leaning against the bar, hands in his pockets.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  He could have been a dick about me taking the case, but he let it pass, and I allowed myself to feel pleasantly surprised. Perhaps this was the start of a beautiful indifference.

  “The body was found this morning by a delivery man. No witnesses, but we spoke to a homeless guy who said he was woken up by strange noises coming from the alley at about four this morning.”

  “I’ll want to talk to both of them.” I reached into my inside pocket for a pair of latex gloves and tugged them on.

  “That will not be possible.” A different voice from right behind me. I wheeled round.

  Patrick was standing far too close and was glaring intently. Acting like he hated me was how he showed he cared. My dad’s favourite joke was that Patrick turned me gay. He didn’t. He was just a phase I went through, a phase I’d have really liked to leave behind. Sometimes I hoped he’d find some new faery-blooded, purple-eyed teenager to fall for, but I wouldn’t wish Patrick on anybody.

  He was still gorgeous, in a boy-band kind of way: pale and sculpted, with glowing, tawny eyes and copper-touched hair that was always slightly tousled. But even though he hadn’t changed, I had, and I couldn’t find anything to like in him anymore, let alone love. I mean, the first couple of years were fine because there’d been plenty to get in the way of us actually being together. His profound self-loathing, people trying to kill me, and the Queen of the Wild Hunt trying to kill him. And then he went through a cycle of leaving me for my own good, until I finally realised we didn’t have anything in common and the sex did nothing for me, so I dumped him. Of course while all this was going on, I was also coming to terms with being half faery, which meant I’d flunked all my A-levels and blown my chances of getting into a decent university.

  So here we were. Me, one vocational qualification, ten years, two demon invasions, and three thousand cigarettes older. And Patrick, still the sort of Class A wanker who spouted ominous bullshit while standing directly behind you.

  “For fuck’s sake, Patrick. You shouldn’t have blanked them until I was done.” There was absolutely no point arguing with him, but I couldn’t seem to stop doing it.

  “They had nothing of value to say.”

  “That’s my call, not yours.”

  He looked very grave. “The preservation of vampire society is my responsibility, Katharine.”

  Patrick is an agent for the Prince of Wands, which is kind of big deal for a vampire less than two hundred years old. Wands is basically head of vampire MI5. His business is secrets, which includes keeping the ones that have to be kept. Like pretty much everything about the existence of vampires. He didn’t always succeed, and people tended to find out about this shit because it was kind of massive, but there was still technically a no-witnesses policy.

  Patrick was involved in a mix of PR and recon. He fed information to the press to cover up supernatural snafus, monitored mortal institutions like the police and the government, and occasionally infiltrated high schools to keep an eye on teenage girls with otherworldly heritage. Which was what he’d been doing in my A-level biology class. His job was actually one of his few interesting features. Of course, when we’d been going out, he wouldn’t tell me anything about it. For my own protection.

  The annoying thing was, he was probably right on this one. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, especially when the supernatural is involved. But I hated being forced to rely on Patrick. He’d always
been big on the sort of trust that only went one way.

  I went to look at the body instead.

  It was lying just beyond the fire escape in a contorted pose. Male, mid-twenties, attractive in an engineered-hair, dead kind of way. His clothing, the regulation club wear of dark-wash jeans and a dress shirt, was rumpled and probably designer. He had the sleek look of privilege about him and defensive wounds on his hands and wrists. From his colour, he’d most likely been exsanguinated.

  Ashriel joined me. Patrick had probably gone to brood in a corner somewhere.

  “Someone freak out and nom a patron?” I asked. The simplest solution and all that.

  “No.”

  “You’re that certain?”

  “You met Julian. She doesn’t react well to being crossed.”

  Do any of us? But he had a point.

  I crouched down and carefully turned the head so I could take a look at the neck wounds. Normally I’d have been more careful about contaminating the crime scene, but nobody calls me in for a mundane kill. The skin here was a mass of mottled bruising and burst blood vessels, which didn’t look like a vampire bite. Then again, I’ve known vampires to tear a victim’s throat out to cover up the marks. Classy, right?

  I leaned in to get a better look at the body, my senses sharpening. It was a reflex, as unconscious as blinking, and another unwanted inheritance. My mother’s power is the strength of wild things, the hunter’s hunger, the taste of blood and fear. Some of it is inherent in what I am, and the rest of it I keep locked up tight in a box marked No Fucking Way. Faery magic is ancient and abstract. It’s about being and becoming. And, frankly, the idea of turning into my mother would be frightening enough if it wasn’t a literal possibility.

  With my new unwanted super-smell, the mingled scents of blood, death, cigarette butts, vomit, back-alley action, and—oh joy of joys—a nearby sewer grate washed over me in a fetid, chaotic tide before I managed to block it out again. You’d think super-senses would be useful for a PI, but I’d learned pretty quickly that the world got ugly if you stared at it too hard. And you can’t concentrate when everything stinks.

  Up close, I could see that the marks on the neck were concentric rings of tears and scratches, each with a deep puncture wound in the middle. Not a clean sort of puncture, either. The skin was puckered up like when you stick your tongue into an orange. If I hadn’t been dragged so mysteriously out of my office, I’d have brought my camera, but as it was, I had to make do with my phone. I snapped a few pictures and made sure not to socially network them. Not that I was in many social networks—not after Eve—but I didn’t want to accidentally invite my family to Like my Gruesomely Deceased album.

  What I’d initially thought were defensive wounds on his hands and arms turned out to be the same as the marks on the neck. I took out a nail file and scraped under his fingernails, transferring the grey-brown gack I found there into one of my handy ziplock drug bags.

  I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that whatever had killed this guy was icky.

  Possibly even squamous.

  That was it for the body. I went through his pockets and assembled the usual jigsaw of personal effects. There wasn’t much: a bank card, a money clip holding two crisp twenties, a single Yale key, a condom (Kimono MicroThin Ultra lubricated), a small quantity of recreational drugs, and an iPhone. He probably couldn’t have carried any more without ruining the line of his jeans.

  I flipped over the bank card—the familiar green of Coutts of London, in the name of Mr. Andrew J. H. Vane-Tempest.

  Well, fuck.

  That was a corpse of a different colour.

  The Vane-Tempests were the biggest werewolf family in the Southeast. And they probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about one of their own turning up dead on a vampire’s doorstep. This was worse than murder. It was politics.

  And it meant I was going to have to voluntarily talk to Patrick.

  I called his name, and he stepped out of the shadows. The alley was gloomy, but it didn’t take much to make Patrick’s skin shine like a pearlescent light bulb. I knew his oh-so-sexy roofie bite was a mark of his bloodline, but the stupid glittering was all his own.

  “Bad news.” I stood up. “You’ve got yourself a dead woofle.”

  “That is unfortunate.” His eyes flicked to the corpse. He didn’t exactly sneer, but he added dismissively, “A mere cousin.”

  Lycanthropy is sex-linked, like haemophilia, so unless he had an extra X chromosome, Andrew Vane-Tempest could only have been a partial shifter, able to sprout a few fangs or claws or maybe even do the full wolf-man deal, but not transform completely. Though, since there wasn’t much sign of a struggle, he probably wasn’t even that.

  “I don’t think that’s going to be much consolation to his family.”

  Werewolves protected their own. Vampires protected their own. Mages protected their own. Faeries were just bat-shit crazy and dumped their kids on people’s doorsteps. It was a funny old world.

  Cousins were technically the lowest rank of the werewolf hierarchy, but if you asked me, it was probably the best deal going. No responsibilities whatsoever, but a lifelong allowance. If it wasn’t for werewolf cousins, there’d be far fewer fashion interns, It boys, graphic novelists, bespoke shoe boutiques, and sushi-haggis fusion restaurants in the world. And what a loss that would be. Or perhaps I was just jealous.

  “I will take care of this.” Patrick paused. “If,” he added with what was clearly a tremendous effort, “you are done.”

  Sometimes he tried. It would have been endearing if he wasn’t such an arse.

  “I’m done.”

  “Katharine . . .” He stared at me.

  “Oh, not now.”

  “Katharine, this could be dangerous, especially for a mortal. You should not be involved.”

  I sighed. Here we were again. “Not your problem.”

  “I love you. That makes it my problem.”

  “Always the romantic.”

  “I will not allow you to do this.”

  We’d had this argument. We’d been having it for ten years. And breaking up with him made no damn difference. At this stage, it was either punch him or ignore him. Punching him would be more satisfying, but ignoring him would be more effective. Decisions, decisions.

  I turned to go back into the Velvet. I was so Zen.

  “And you should stay away from Julian Saint-Germain,” he added. “She is dangerous.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I mean it, Katharine. You cannot begin to imagine the acts she has committed or the secrets she holds.”

  “Now you’re just trying to turn me on.”

  “Katharine!” His hand closed round my upper arm.

  I turned into his grip and pulled myself free. “Don’t touch me, Patrick. Don’t ever touch me.”

  He looked deeply pained. Or faintly constipated. “You should listen to me. I warned you about that witch. And I warned you about Eve—”

  I hit him.

  My mother’s strength roared out of me, unintended and uncontrolled. Patrick’s head snapped back and he toppled over, landing in a pool of stale vomit. I heard his skull crack against the concrete.

  I wondered how bad I should feel. But he was a vampire. He’d be fine.

  Inside the Velvet, I unlocked Andrew’s iPhone and looked through the contents. I should probably have been grateful for social networking. Those Sam Spade days of creeping through someone’s apartment looking for clues were over. All you needed was their smartphone. And, wow, this was a man who liked his apps. Grindr, huh? I looked at his Facebook page and his Twitter feed and dug through his favourites. Party party party party. Real Made in Chelsea stuff.

  A lot of his recent photos had been taken here. Just your usual drunken club shots of people getting hammered or getting off with each other. He had a whole collection of blurry arm’s-length self-portraits, grinning like an idiot, his head resting against the electric-purple wig of a truly fabulous drag queen. She
looked oddly familiar, but I could count how many truly fabulous drag queens I knew on the fingers of no hands.

  Huh.

  I swiped through the photographs, trying to make the connection click into place.

  And then I recognised her. She was only on the walls of the damn club. I must have been getting rusty. Miss Parma Violet, compere of the Velvet’s Friday burlesque club, Cabaret Baudelaire, and Saturday’s rather more direct Dragaganza. I made a mental note to follow up that lead later, then looked through Andrew’s recent calls. He’d made eight on the night he’d been killed, between two and four, to someone called Kauri.

  Time for an awkward telephone call.

  I pulled out my own phone and dialled the number. It’s received wisdom that you do this sort of thing from the victim’s phone because you might get A Clue from the way the person reacts, but since I’ve never yet had anyone answer with, “Hey, didn’t I just murder you in the billiard room with the candlestick?” it just seemed an unnecessarily shitty thing to do to someone who might genuinely care for the victim.

  I’m cynical, not a complete dick.

  It took a while for someone to pick up, but eventually a sleepy voice said, “Uh-huh?”

  “My name’s Kate Kane, I’m a private investigator. Are you acquainted with a Mr. Andrew Vane-Tempest?”

  There was a moment of silence. This was probably going to be complicated. As far as either of us knew, the other could have been any sort of psychopath, an assassin, an inland revue inspector, anyone.

  And then, less sleepily, with a trace of a New Zealand accent: “What’s this about?”

  “What’s your relationship to Mr. Vane-Tempest?”

  Another measuring silence. At this stage, it had come down to a game of arsehole chicken over who was going to hold out longest. Kauri lost.

  “He’s my boyfriend. Now what’s this about?”

  Oh dear. I was sorry for his loss, but most people are murdered by their nearest and dearest.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Would you like to meet, or would you rather talk over the phone?”

  “I’ll be there. Where should I come to?”

  “I’m at the Velvet on Brewer Street. Have you been there?”