Shadows & Dreams (Kate Kane: Paranormal Investigator)

by Hall, Alexis

  Right. Better see about getting that feather.

  We walked on for I don’t know how long. I was glad to have a guide because there was no way I’d have been able to find my way around this place on my own. Haunted forests aren’t big on landmarks, and I’m not big on haunted forests. Under normal circumstances, I’d have worried that this was a gigantic setup, but if I knew anything about faery magic, the Merchant of Dreams couldn’t go back on a bargain.

  “There.” They pointed.

  I looked and saw nothing but more forest.

  “Between those two trees.”

  Between those trees was still more forest, but since this was Faerie, that meant absolutely nothing.

  “What’s on the other side?” I asked.

  “What you bargained for.”

  I decided to chance it. “And what did Corin bargain for? Since I paid for the tour.”

  They thought about it for a moment. “That seems fair. She traded the soul box for twenty thousand pounds, an unregistered Walther police pistol, and safe passage through my patron’s realm to a place where she would find someone who would protect her.”

  “Thanks.”

  “This was a trade, not a favour.”

  There didn’t seem much I could say to that. I had a murderer to catch, and I wasn’t about to stand around in a haunted forest debating social conventions with a magic pawnbroker. I headed for the gap between the trees.

  “Oh, and Kate?”

  I stopped. “What?”

  “Sheyne.”

  “What?”

  “My name.”

  I was pretty sure that hadn’t been a trade. “Thanks.”

  The Merchant of Dreams nodded and walked away into the darkness.

  I pressed on through the trees until I felt cold wash over me. The good news was that I was probably out of Faerie. The bad news was I could be basically anywhere. I appeared to be in a very slightly different spooky haunted wood. Over the past six months, I’d dealt with a faery shit lord, demons from Hell, and bloodthirsty vampire armies, but the countryside really freaked me out. I’d never been a Girl Guide; I’ve never gone camping. I had a hard enough time finding my way around parks, let alone some strange forest fuck knows where. I pulled out my phone in the hope of finding myself on GPS, but there was no reception.

  Well, fuck.

  If it came down to rainwater and berries, I was killing myself.

  I suppose if things got really bad, I could call on my mother’s instincts but, knowing my luck, I’d probably go feral and spend the next six years living in a forest, stealing picnic baskets. Besides, the more you use that kind of thing, the easier it is to keep using it. It’s basically like drinking. By the time you should be stopping, you’ve forgotten it’s an option.

  I tried to look on the bright side. Assuming I was still in England, then this place couldn’t be that big. It was probably only a few miles across, so if I just picked a direction and kept walking, I’d get to a road eventually. Of course, I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to get me to Corin, but mystical faery bargains have a way of working out.

  I set off vaguely forwardish.

  On the whole, things could have been worse. The real world was about a million times safer than Faerie, and I was pretty sure I was still in England, which meant I wasn’t about to get attacked by a bear or a pack of . . .

  I heard wolves howling in the distance.

  Okay, either I wasn’t in England at all, or this was werewolf territory. That wasn’t as bad as it sounded. Most werewolves are very reasonable people, as long as you don’t blunder onto their land without announcing yourself. Oh, wait. But, if I was lucky, I’d be at Safernoc, and I’d be able to tell them that their Alpha wouldn’t want me dead until she’d had a chance to bang me.

  If this was woofle country, then I’d be better off heading towards the blood-curling howls than away from them. For a start, if you run away from them, they’ll just hunt you harder. Plus, werewolf land tends to have a lot of other greebly shit living on it.

  I caught a flash of white through the trees.

  Before I had time to worry about it, half a tonne of pissed off unicorn thundered out of the forest towards me.

  I threw myself sideways onto the frost-cracked earth. The bastard just missed me, and I was on my feet before it could turn around. I’ve tangled with unicorns before and they’re nasty fuckers.

  It swung itself round to face me and stared at me with its dead black eyes. There was something faintly familiar about its air of horsey malevolence, and it was looking at me like this was personal.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Not you again.”

  It lowered its head and pawed the ground.

  “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

  It snorted, steam rising from flaring nostrils.

  “I’m a motherfucking faery princess. Show me some respect.”

  To my surprise, it did. It was staring like it hated me, but it knelt passively on the ground and lowered its horn.

  “This better not be a trick. I can still send you to the magic glue factory.”

  I edged my way cautiously round to its side, and when it didn’t try to impale me, I swung my leg over its back. Werewolves plus a unicorn with a grudge meant that this was definitely Safernoc. Corin’s bargain for passage through Faerie to a place where she would meet somebody who would protect her was suddenly making a lot of sense. Fond as I was of Tara, she was exactly the kind of person that Corin could get her hooks into. Somebody aggressive, horny, and overprotective.

  My unicorn rose grudgingly to its feet. “Okay,” I told it. “Take me to the big house.”

  And off we went.

  Safernoc Hall rose out of the darkness like something from a really cheesy horror movie, all black towers and flying buttresses. I ditched the unicorn in the car park, knowing full well it would fuck off the moment my back was turned, and headed for the entrance. I knocked and the door was answered by someone straight out of Downton Abbey.

  “I need to see Tara.”

  The butler stared down his nose at me, which took some doing because I was about three inches taller than him. “Miss Vane-Tempest is not receiving visitors.”

  “My name’s Kate Kane. She’ll see me.”

  “No, madam, she will not.”

  “Look, it’s important.”

  “It always is, madam.” And the fucker closed the door in my face.

  Right. Plan B. I skirted round the side of the building, looking for something I could climb up or crack open. At the back, I squinted up and saw a light coming from an open window. It was four floors up, but there was a proper Romeo and Juliet balcony complete with climbing ivy, and it was as good as I was going to get. I swung myself up.

  Here lies Kate Kane. Splatted on the flagstones while breaking into a Gothic mansion looking for a werewolf and a con artist. Beloved daughter. Sorely missed.

  I was never an outdoorsy kid, but I’ve climbed into a few windows in my time, not always for professional reasons. It was tough going, but I didn’t let go, and I didn’t look down.

  I scrambled over the edge of the balcony and pressed myself flat to the wall, so I wouldn’t be stupidly visible from inside. When I got my breath back, I peeked round the corner. Even though the window was open, the curtains were mostly drawn and waving around in the wind, which made it hard to see anything. I slipped in behind the curtain and took another look.

  Well, I guess I’d found Tara.

  And Corin.

  They were kind of busy.

  And I was standing upwind of a werewolf.

  Tara’s head snapped round, her eyes a feral amber.

  I waved. At this stage, I didn’t know what else to do.

  Corin made a girly noise, slithered out from under Tara, and wrapped herself in the covers. Tara snarled, rose from the sheets like a really pissed off Venus, and stalked towards me. She was naked except for a gold leather corset-harness and the obvious attachment. It sho
uld have been too absurd to be intimidating, but this was Tara Vane-Tempest, model, It Girl, and Alpha werewolf, and she looked as if she was about to blow my house down.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “It’s kind of a long story, but I’m after her.” I pointed at Corin who was huddled up against the headboard looking terrified and innocent. She was probably working out the angles.

  “And what made you look in my bedroom?” demanded Tara.

  “Like I said, long story.”

  I realised I was sort of screwed here. Okay, bad choice of words. Tara was exactly what Corin was always looking for. And I was guessing Corin was just Tara’s type, in a predator/prey kind of way, with those big doe eyes and that neck you could snap with one hand. There was no way I was going to be able to convince Tara that Corin was a low-down, lying, cheating, swindling, murdering femme fatale, at least not with her sitting right there looking all save me, save me. Right now there was a good chance Tara would fling me off the balcony.

  “Basically,” I said, a bit desperately, “there’s this vampire queen tearing the shit out of London. I thought Corin might have seen something important.”

  I didn’t think it was possible, but Corin’s eyes went even wider.

  Tara just looked even more pissed off. “I might have known you were tangled up in this, Kate Kane.” She leaned in, pressed her face against my neck and inhaled. The golden waves of her hair tumbled between us. She was kind of sweaty and very naked, all soft breasts and muscular thighs, and a generous dildo poking into my hip. I’d forgotten quite how little sense of personal space Tara had. “You smell of shadows and dreams. And dead things.”

  I pulled back. “Look, clearly this was a mistake, you’ve got your thing going on. I’ll come back later.”

  She grabbed both my wrists and yanked me into the room so hard, I fell over. She slammed the windows shut, undid the harness and tossed it aside. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.” She shrugged into one of her trademark silk dressing gowns that concealed absolutely nothing. “The pack moves on the Morrígan in the morning. You will tell us everything you know.”

  “Shit.” I rubbed my wrists. “Not you guys as well. This is already a giant clusterfuck. Do us all a favour and stay out of it.”

  Tara leapt across the room and pinned me to the ground. She crouched over me, the ends of her hair and the loose silk of her dressing gown brushing lightly against my body. She put her lips to my ear, her breath a rush of heat, and whispered: “I’ve told you before not to tell me my business. You will come before the pack, and you will tell us what you know.”

  I had three choices. Talk my way out, fight my way out, or sex my way out. Last time, sexing my way out hadn’t gone so well. “If that’s what you want, fine.”

  She sprang to her feet and, after a moment, I risked sitting up. She reached out and pulled on the bell rope, and a couple of minutes later, there was a knock on the door and a servant entered.

  “Take this woman to the large dining room. And if she tries to run, give the call and we will hunt her down.”

  “Very good, my lady.”

  I’d already crossed Tara enough for one lifetime, so I went quietly. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about being taken to the dining room. It was a bit too all the better to eat you with.

  I was shown into a vast chamber, all hardwood and chandeliers. The walls were lined with family portraits, most of them showing intense, athletic-looking women with wolves at their feet. I spotted Tara’s picture straightaway because it was closest to the door. She was standing in full hunting pinks, incredibly tight trousers, and incredibly shiny boots, an arm resting against the neck of one of those impossibly white horses you only get in paintings. A vast golden wolf sprawled at her feet. I was pretty sure that was her as well. The next one along showed a dazzling young woman in a sea-green ball gown standing against the open windows to a formal garden. A silver-grey wolf sat primly by her side, staring out of the portrait with a cold ferocity. I was just thinking how much I’d like to hit that—the girl, I mean, not the wolf—when I realised they were both probably the Dowager, the terrifying old woman who had been overtly hostile to me every time we’d met.

  “Ah, Miss Kane,” came a plummy voice from the bottom end of the table. “Do come in. The others will be along presently.”

  I hadn’t seen Jumbo, the Vane-Tempest PR man, since he’d helpfully pointed me in the direction of a soul-sucking stag monster at his cousin’s funeral. “Hi.”

  “How nice to see you again,” he purred. “I’m so glad you weren’t devoured.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  I walked the mile and half down the dining table to take the chair next to him. Jumbo was a fat, balding man, currently clutching a cocktail in one hand and a cigar in the other. He was one of those harmless-looking people who totally aren’t.

  “If you’d care for a snifter, I believe they’re still serving drinks in the library.”

  It was a nice idea, but there was no way I was going against Tara’s orders, especially if it meant walking into a room full of werewolves who weren’t expecting me. There are some things even I won’t do for a free drink. “I’m good.”

  “I must say,” he went on, “Tara brought you in at rather short notice.”

  “Really short.”

  “You have an air of displeasure, Miss Kane. I hope you are not here under duress.”

  I sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “The best ones always are. I presume you have something to tell us about the situation in London.”

  I might have known Jumbo had his finger in that pie as well. “Looks like.”

  “I would not wish to partner you at bridge, Miss Kane.”

  “It’d be a good call. I’ve never played.”

  “That much is obvious. You have no talent for communication.”

  “Ooh, burn.”

  He popped the olive out of his drink and into his mouth. “Now, now, Miss Kane, it was an observation, not an insult. I understand that you are a woman of action.”

  “Damn straight. But, since you’re not, do you want to tell me what’s going on here and how you know about the Morrígan? Did Corin say something?”

  “Please, Miss Kane, credit us with some ability to discharge our sacred birthright. There has been, shall we say, an explosion of vampire activity in the capital, but I suspect, given your associations, you know at least as much about that as we do. We’ve been investigating the matter for some time. And, remember, start from the outside and work in.”

  I was about to ask what the hell he meant when the doors opened and a throng of chattering toffs spilled into the room. All of them were dressed up to the nines and most of them were carrying martini glasses. I’d first run into the Vane-Tempests during all the crap three months ago and I recognised a few of them from the funeral. There was the Dowager Marchioness of Safernoc, a bundle of octogenarian hostility in a green velvet evening dress. When we last met, she’d made it pretty clear she hated me and possibly all humans. She was escorted her by grandson, Henry, who seemed to be the only one of the family who wasn’t a complete arsehole. I vaguely remembered two of the others from when I’d gate-crashed a polo game. Tara had called them Tuffie and Smudge, but I wasn’t sure which was which.

  “You’re probably in somebody’s chair,” said Jumbo, and I jumped up quickly. We’d had a dog when I was growing up, and it used to get pretty shirty when the cat tried to sit in its basket.

  I stood there like a lemon waiting for everyone to take their place. Eventually there were only two seats left, the big one at the head of the table and one to the left of it, opposite Henry and next to either Tuffie or Smudge.

  The last time I tried to sit in a vacant seat, it’d been part of a mystical circle and it hadn’t gone well.

  “Is this me?” I asked Tuffie or Smudge.

  “Yah.”

  I sat down.

  There were more knives on the table in front of
me than I had taped to the bottom of my desk. Not to mention the weird bits of silverware that looked like they’d come from an operating theatre.

  I was just getting settled when everybody stood up again and Tara swept into the room. She was wearing another one of her impossible dresses. This one was basically a gold sheath, split to the hip. At least she’d dressed for dinner.

  She lowered herself into her chair, which meant the rest of us could sit down as well. Conversation resumed. And just like that, I was stuck at another dinner party. If anything, it was worse than the last. Tara was pointedly ignoring me. Note to self: never cockblock demons or werewolves.

  Henry made a few attempts to talk, but Tara cut him off every time. And Tuffie or Smudge was too busy talking werewolf shop with whoever was sitting on her other side. At least the Dowager was at the other end of the table, but I could feel her glare from here.

  I had to sit through six courses of this. When the starter or the entrée or appetiser or whatever you call it was served, Jumbo’s weird comment suddenly made sense, and I think I used all the right cutlery. The food was probably really nice but I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. I tried to pick up on the conversation around me so I’d have some idea what the hell was going on, but there were too many people talking at once, and I couldn’t filter out all the polo and fashion show stuff from the hard-core wolf politics.

  Finally, they brought the coffee round, and Tara got to her feet. I was all set to jump up as well, but nobody else moved so I stayed put.

  “Brothers, sisters, friends,” she announced. “Tonight we are fortunate that Miss Katharine Kane has come to bring us news from London.”

  Everybody stared at me, and I stared at Tara with my best what the fuck face on.

  “Stand up,” she whispered.

  I stood up. I hate public speaking. You’re usually told that if you’re nervous you should imagine the audience naked, but I’d already seen Tara naked and she was no less intimidating. Also, she was clearly doing this to freak me out, and I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction.

  “Look,” I said, “it’d be really helpful if you told me what you want to get out of this.”