by Alexis Hall
He gave a huff of laughter. “You could say that.” And hung up.
Huh.
I looked again at the posters on the wall. You didn’t keep that many photos of someone on your phone unless you really liked them. Or you really liked stalking them. As far as I knew, I was still Patrick’s wallpaper.
Ashriel was waiting by the bar. “What’s the deal with this dame?” I asked, jerking my thumb at Miss Parma Violet.
“Professionally, personally, or supernaturally?” His voice rolled over me again, warm and sweet as an Irish coffee, without too much of the coffee.
“Supernaturally?” This could be bad, very bad.
“When she isn’t working, his name’s Kauri. He’s one of Julian’s descendants. His philetor is Jasper Glyde, who is Julian’s third parastatheis.”
My eyes glazed over. Vampire family trees were practically fractal, and I always got the terminology muddled up. It didn’t help that no two bloodlines seemed to have the same name for anything. “Wait, rewind. Kauri’s a vampire?”
“A fairly young one. I think he’s dating one of the Vane-Tempests.”
“Was dating.”
Ashriel’s brow twitched upwards.
You’d think vampires and werewolves would hate each other, but, assuming nobody gets murdered on anyone else’s doorstep, they’re actually on fairly cordial terms. That said, werewolves think they have this sacred mandate to police the other supernatural races, which meant that even if Andrew didn’t have enemies, his family probably did.
“Anyone here have a problem with the Vane-Tempests?”
“Not as far as I know.” He shrugged. “And besides, why would anyone waste hate on werewolves when there are so many mages running around summoning things that shouldn’t be summoned?”
“There’s genuinely nobody who would object to one of Julian’s, uh, grandkids getting it on with a woof?”
“Not that I would know about. I try to keep away from other people’s sex lives.”
“What about Kauri, then?”
“His too.”
“Ha-ha. No, I meant what sort of person is he?”
“Oh, you mean did he randomly murder his boyfriend in a fit of crazy vampire bloodlust?” Ashriel looked thoughtful. “In my estimation, no. Julian’s very careful about who she turns and who she lets people turn. And if something had gone wrong, he’d probably have come to us directly.”
And who in their right mind would kill their lover on their boss’s turf and then leave the body right outside?
At that moment, someone came running in. He was wearing black jeans and a black vest and the traces of last night’s makeup. Even without the glitter and glamour, he was striking, hard muscles standing out on his bare arms. Cultivated stubble framed the red smear of his lips, and there were dark smudges beneath his gold- and blue-painted eyes. This was probably Kauri.
He glanced between Ashriel and me. “What’s happened to Andy?”
“Take a seat.” I hated this part.
“People only ever tell you to sit down when it’s really fucking bad.” But he slipped onto a barstool.
“It’s Mr. Vane-Tempest.” I tried to pause in a sensitive sort of way. “I’m afraid he was killed last night.”
Kauri’s eyelashes swept across his eyes, but his expression didn’t change. I wasn’t really telling him anything he hadn’t already guessed.
“Was killed?” he repeated softly.
“That’s what I’m investigating. We think you were the last person he spoke to before he died.”
“Yeah . . .” Kauri looked bleak. “I was telling him to fuck right off.” I gave him a moment or two, and he went on. “We’d had this fight. One of his jealous freak-outs. And, hello, he hasn’t even deleted Grindr. Oh fuck, he’s dead.”
I gave him another moment or two. But this time he was silent, looking down at his painted nails.
“Any idea what he might have been doing in the alley?” I asked.
“He waits for me after the show. But I left him hanging for being a dickhead.”
He probably felt fifty shades of shit. I wanted to say something comforting, but I’m crap at that. “Did he have any enemies?”
“No way. He was a complete fluff-bucket.”
“Do you have any enemies?”
He pulled back his drooping shoulders and indicated himself with a sweep of his finger. “Who’d have a problem with this?”
Unexpectedly, I remembered Julian grinning at me. I’m a motherfucking vampire prince. I guess it ran in the family.
“Good point, well made.” That won a wan smile from him. Vampires tend to be pretty proud of their enemies, so I didn’t have any particular reason to disbelieve him. I guess not everybody shared my talent for pissing people off.
Everything about this murder said opportunistic. Unless the killer knew that Andrew would have a fight with his boyfriend, and that this would make him wait in an alley until four in the morning. I wasn’t ruling anything out, but that’s a lot of fuss for somebody completely unimportant. As much as I hated to admit it, Julian was right. It probably was all about her.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Kauri asked.
Ashriel answered for me. “The body will be returned to the family. What happens next is up to them.”
When I was a teenager, I’d hung out with this posh girl called Heather from the private school up the road. A little while after Patrick had shown up, I’d found out she was a werewolf. And a little while after that, I’d found out she had a crush on me, which I hadn’t really known how to handle. When her granddad had died, she’d had to go on some kind of sacred hunt thing to protect the body, but I was vague on the details. I didn’t think saying to Kauri, “Well, actually, I think something nasty might come out of the woods and eat him,” would help with his grieving process.
I’d learned just about everything I could here. Andrew had no enemies of his own and a boyfriend who didn’t look good for it, which meant it was either vampire stuff or werewolf stuff. Time to talk to Julian and let her know the score. My body remembered her in a flare of heat that travelled all across my skin.
Plan B.
“Ashriel,” I said, “tell Julian what’s going on. I’m going to speak to the werewolves.”
Back at the office, I made several unsuccessful attempts to get an appointment with Tara Vane-Tempest, the local alpha woofle. She must have had a lot of fans who rang her publicist claiming to be private investigators, because they kept me on hold for three hours. So I hung up and read her Twitter feed instead: Tallyho darlings, getting ready for La Perla at The Dorchester tomoz. So busy. See you at the launch partay #mwah
Oh, dear God.
I spent that evening and the next morning getting my ducks in a row. I needed to do some fairly basic grunt work on everyone involved, and that meant making appointments, ordering files from records offices, poking around the internet because it’s amazing what people will put in the public domain, and doing a lot of other banal shit. After lunch, by which I mean a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a glass of whiskey, I took my camera and my fake press pass and headed for the Dorchester.
The Mayfair-situated, inherently British, five-star Dorchester hotel combines 1930s glamour with a contemporary edge. I know because the website told me. It also currently contained a crazy powerful werewolf doing a lingerie shoot. And she was about to learn that a member of her family had been offed outside a vampire’s nightclub.
It wasn’t the sort of place where I was likely to fit in, but the trick to getting anywhere you’re not supposed to be is Just Go For It. I strode through the main doors and was halfway across the lobby before someone finally plucked up the courage to try and stop me.
“Excuse me, Madam . . .”
I flashed the pass. “I’m here for the shoot.” And kept moving.
Nobody dared chase me down. Tally-fucking-ho.
It’s usually fairly straightforward to locate the big events at these sorts of places. Edging out of the
Bar Mitzvah in the Crystal Suite, I followed the bustle and the air of excitement all the way to the penthouse on the eighth floor. They were still mid-shoot, so I was able to stuff myself discreetly into the small crowd.
I was in the sort of room that had a statue of a naked dude over the fireplace. Full-length mirrors decorated with green swirly shit took up one whole wall, and the other walls were hung with red floor-to-ceiling curtains. And they say red and green should never be seen. I guess if you spend enough money, it doesn’t matter. Enormous French windows opened onto a balcony bigger than my flat.
A balcony with a fountain on it.
A fountain with a statue of a naked woman and a swan.
I shit you not.
The room had been cleared to make way for lights, cameras, and those big umbrella things. There was a mound of bright silk cushions on the floor. And on the cushions sprawled Tara Vane-Tempest, wearing a red basque, matching knickers, and a pair of shiny black riding boots. The boots were climbing a pair of supple golden legs that went on forever and ever. I knew because I checked. Thoroughly.
I stood there dazed as they finished the shoot, Tara obligingly adopting a series of interesting positions.
She was rather flexible.
When they were done, she shook out her long blonde mane and slipped into a silk dressing gown that came all the way down to her ankles and covered precisely nothing.
My professionalism was hanging by a thread.
She was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of flunkies and flatterers, and I stepped forwards, looking for a way to draw her aside.
Her eyes lit up when she saw the press pass stuck in the band of my hat. “Oh, marvellous,” she cried. I’d expected her to have one of those terrible cut-glass accents that came directly out of the nose, but instead her voice was rich, dark, and smooth like a perfect cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain. “You’re from Horse & Hound, yah?”
Well, never look a gift horse (or hound) in the mouth. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”
She wafted her dressing gown vaguely around her limbs. Ngh. “Let’s go onto the terrace, yah, so we can have some privacy. I adore horses and hounds. In fact, the thrill of the hunt inspired this whole collection. You hunt, of course, Miss . . .?”
“Kane. Kate Kane.”
“How charming. It makes you sound like a private investigator.”
We stepped onto the balcony, and I closed the doors behind us. “That’s because I am a private investigator.”
Suddenly I noticed that Tara Vane-Tempest was taller than me. It had been too swift and subtle a transformation for me to really track, but I’d come outside with a lingerie model, and now I was face-to-face with an alpha werewolf. She stared at me with bright amber eyes, distant and predatory. And it took all my willpower not to flinch.
She leaned in and inhaled deeply. “You smell like death. Which of them sent you?”
“I’m working for Julian Saint-Germain.”
“And what does the Prince of Cups want with me?”
“I’m investigating a murder,” I explained. “I’m afraid the victim was a member of your family. Andrew Vane-Tempest. His body was found outside the Velvet this morning.”
Tara turned away from me and stalked across the balcony. It seemed a lot smaller now I was stuck on it with a pissed-off lycanthrope. “I was under the impression,” she snarled when she came back, “that the Velvet was a safe haven. How did she allow this to happen?”
Defending Julian was not part of my job. But all the same . . . “It actually happened outside.”
“It’s still her territory. If she can’t defend it, then it should pass to someone who can.”
“I’m here to solve a murder, not discuss politics.”
She smiled, the wolf fading from her eyes. “You’re talking to an alpha werewolf on behalf of a vampire prince, and you don’t think it’s about politics?”
Huh.
“Go on then,” I sighed. “Politics me.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have hurt one of our own, yah.” She tossed back her hair in a ripple of gold and sunlight. “And the vampires don’t shit where they eat, which suggests to me that somebody wants to start a war.”
“Or someone has a personal grudge against woof— er, werewolves, and is lashing out at whoever they can.”
Tara sat down on the edge of the naked-woman-swan-fountain thing, crossing one leg over the other. “Anyone with a grudge against werewolves has been dealt with. I can protect what’s mine. It must be the Witch Queen.”
I really hoped it wasn’t. That would be embarrassing. And it didn’t seem her style. I admit I’ve made some bad dating choices, but last I checked, Nim wasn’t a complete psycho.
“I’m not sure what the mages would get out of it,” I said carefully.
“Power. Chaos. Opportunity. New hoodies. Who knows what those wretched little upstarts want.”
I blinked. This was way above my pay grade. “They probably just want to be left alone.”
“Well in that case, they shouldn’t dabble with powers beyond their understanding.”
“Do you have any other suspicions?” I asked, trying to salvage the conversation.
“Demons find people too valuable to kill, and faeries don’t do politics.”
“But they hold grudges, don’t they?” I knew that from experience. “And your people have been hunting basically everything for like a thousand years.”
Tara’s head snapped round, and she glared at me. It wasn’t a happy experience. “We watch the edges of this world, yah, because no one else can. If it wasn’t for us, you’d all have been slaughtered or enslaved centuries ago.”
“Which means you must have made some powerful enemies.”
“My enemies are my business, Kate Kane. They have no part in this.”
Bully for her, but I couldn’t take that on trust alone. “What makes you so sure?”
Her lips curled back, revealing a lot of sharp, white teeth. “I’m sure.”
There was definitely something here, but there was no way I was getting it out of her, at least not without risking a mauling. I made the traditional don’t eat me gesture. “Just doing my job.”
Tara smiled faintly, the tip of her tongue tracing the full arch of her upper lip. I guess she liked displays of submission. Maybe that would come in handy one day. Well, a girl could hope. Then she sighed, her breath stirring a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. “Poor old Andy. What rotten luck. When you find out who did this, I’ll expect to hear from you.”
Unfortunately, I’m not very good at being submissive. “I’m working for Julian Saint-Germain.”
To my surprise, she didn’t freak out and throw me off the balcony. Her eyes swept across my body. “People don’t usually say no to me, Kate Kane.”
“In that outfit, I’m not surprised.”
Her eyes gleamed. “I’m a werewolf, yah. For me this is overdressed.”
I cleared my throat.
“So, Kate Kane”—a playful little breeze twitched the edges of her robe apart—“is there anything else you want to say no to?”
I swallowed. “Not on a balcony at the Dorchester.”
“Some other time, then?”
I made my escape. The worst thing about this job, apart from the shitty working hours and the constant risk of death, was that it was basically impossible to get anyone to tell you anything about anything. Maybe Tara was right and it was totally impossible for one of her family’s enemies to have come after Andrew in that alley, but I was fucked if I was taking her word for it. I’d look like a right knob if I spent the next week unpicking vampire politics, only to find that it was some spirit with a grudge all along.
Yesterday’s grunt work had revealed that the Vane-Tempests had about eight houses in London and a spooky ancestral seat in the wilds of Oxfordshire. I’d visited Heather’s family holdings up by Hadrian’s Wall, and it had been haunted as shit. If I was going to look for greebly monsters that might want to kill
a werewolf, it was the best place to start. And the best time to do that was while the pack alpha was knocking back champagne at a lingerie shoot after-party.
Archer would have told me this was a mistake, and I had no idea what I was getting into. But he was dead, so what could he do?
I took the Tube home, grabbed my iron dagger, then got in the car, stuck on some Tom Waits, and floored it to Oxfordshire. I was headed for Safernoc Hall, a place so hard-core posh it wasn’t even on Google Maps, and my route plan petered out somewhere around Aylesbury. I had to stop and ask for directions in places with names like Ickford, Worminghall, and Shabbington, and although nobody did the full Transylvanian peasant routine, they still looked at me a bit funny. I knew I’d found the place when my mobile phone went dead and I was suddenly alone on a narrow forest road in deepening darkness.
There was probably some god-awful Gothic pile somewhere around here, but I didn’t want to just drive right up and be like, “Hey guys, mind if I stick my fingers in your birthright?” On a rational level, I was aware that wandering around an unknown haunted wood after dark looking for clues was not one of my Top Ten Most Sensible Plans ever, but I hadn’t got where I was by being sensible.
Of course, where I was wasn’t that great. But fuck it, I had cold iron and a Maglite, and I was going monster hunting. Thanks to mummy dearest, I have quite a good instinct for otherworldly shit, and a pretty good sense of direction. All I had to do was stick close to the road and see if I could pick up the trail of something evil and bloodsucking. As recon went, it was pretty basic, but it was better than sitting around in a library.
I let my senses sharpen and set off.
The woods smelled of late summer, leaf mould, and wet dogs. It could almost have been a nice place for a walk, but not enough light got through the trees, and it was colder than it should have been for the time of year.
Yep, haunted as shit. Just like Heather’s place.
A light glimmered in the distance, pale as a star and, to use a technical term, wibbly. I hadn’t been the sort of kid who ran around in the woods a lot, but I was pretty sure chasing after weird lights in the dark was a one-way ticket to drowned in a marsh.