Until now, I don’t think either of us had even given the idea of healing a second thought. The wounds of our past gaped open. We only did our best to cover them up.
But having him there with me, even completely wasted and snoring loudly, it was… I felt hope. As if maybe I could move forward with this. Be normal. Let myself fall for him.
Because I wanted to. I wanted to let go, stop trying to protect myself and throw caution to the wind.
Eventually, I fell asleep, and it was good.
Lachlan woke me up the next morning because he was vomiting in the toilet loudly.
I got out of bed and wandered over to the bathroom. I knocked on the door. “You want some water?”
“I need blood,” he said from inside.
“Oh,” I said. “Do you want to like… I mean do you want my blood?”
“No.” He threw open the door, wiping his mouth. “Never.”
“Right,” I said. “Um… they have blood at the Flamingo. I mean, most restaurants in town do.”
He shut his eyes and rested his head against the door frame. “You want me to drink blood in public, where anyone could see me?”
“You don’t do that?”
“I…”
“Or is it that you don’t want to eat breakfast in public with me?” I said. “Because then everyone will know that you probably spent the night with me.”
“Penny, I am not ashamed of us or you or whatever. I don’t know why you would think that.”
“You’re ashamed of being a vampire.”
He shut the door in my face. “Give me a minute to get ready to go to the restaurant.”
I stood at the door, trying to think of how I should respond.
But then I just went to the other bathroom to get myself ready.
We had to stop at Lachlan’s car, which was parked haphazardly outside the hotel, to get his sunglasses. But then we walked down the sidewalk together to the Flamingo, just like we were a couple or something.
Was it weird that it excited me to have him there?
Once inside, I steered us to a booth in the corner where we wouldn’t be incredibly conspicuous. “There’s a buffet breakfast that’s for my hotel guests,” I said. “It’s what I usually eat. But I need to order the blood special, so I’ll just go and put that in, okay?”
He slumped in the booth. “I should have asked you for ibuprofen when we were still in your apartment. My head is pounding.”
I dug in my purse for my little travel container and tossed it to him. “Go nuts.” Then I went off to snag a waitress and ask for blood.
That done, I headed back to the table. I slid into the booth opposite Lachlan. “I hope pig’s blood is okay, because she said they were out of everything else.”
“Fine,” he said. He handed me back the ibuprofen. “Thanks.”
I nodded.
And then we were quiet.
“Is this really awful for you?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“Yeah, I’m crazy hungover,” he said, rubbing his temples.
“But that’s the only reason?”
“Well, I’m kind of… I don’t know, I feel bad about the last couple of days. I need to find out what happened at work, because I pulled like a twenty-four hour shift or something, and they made me go home, and I don’t know if I thoroughly embarrassed myself or what.”
“I’m sure it was fine.” I reached across the table to touch his hand.
“I try not to be real obvious about the fact that I’m a vampire, because I’m fairly sure I’m the only magical creature employed by the police department.” He sighed. “But I’m never going to fit in there.”
“Do you want to?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I don’t care. What did you do last night?”
“Um… well, you know since the vampires at The Dungeon probably didn’t kill Fletcher, I kind of…” How to put this?
“Kind of what?” He took off his sunglasses. “What did you do?”
“Penelope, you’re not alone this morning,” said a voice.
I was happy for the interruption. I smiled up at Ophelia Diaz, the owner of the Flamingo, who was standing over our booth. She was a mage, and she was a tall, black woman with a voice like maple syrup.
“Hi, Ophelia. How are you doing?” I said.
“Can’t complain, child,” she said. She eyed Lachlan. “You look like you’ve been dragged behind a truck and left to die.”
“Thanks,” said Lachlan ruefully.
She laughed, and she kept staring at him, looking him over as if she was trying to figure something out. “We’ll get you fixed up, don’t worry. You should both get yourself some coffee.”
“I can get it.” I started to get up.
Ophelia was still looking at Lachlan. “My name’s Ophelia.”
“Like Hamlet?” said Lachlan. “It’s a bit of an unfortunate name in that context.”
“Oh, she has a marvelous death scene.” Ophelia shrugged. “Anyway, she only went out that way because she was badly used by a man.” She put her hands on her hips.
Lachlan cleared his throat.
At that moment, the waitress came by with Lachlan’s blood.
She set it right in front of him, and Lachlan attacked the glass like he hadn’t had anything to drink in days.
Ophelia raised her eyebrows. She took me by the arm. “Let me help you get that coffee, Penny.” She led me away. When we were out of Lachlan’s earshot, she said, “Who is that?”
“He’s, um, the man I work with. I brought him here for lunch once.”
“There’s more to it than that.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “He’s a vampire?”
“Yeah, but he’s a good guy. He didn’t do it to himself on purpose.”
“I was in the back, minding my business, prepping veggies for omelets with the prep cooks like I do every morning, and I feel…” She gestured with both hands. “Power. Coming into my restaurant. So, I leave my knife, and I follow it. And it takes me to your table.”
“What?” I said. “Lachlan has power?”
“You and he together, from what I feel, but I don’t know…. I never felt anything like it before.”
I chewed on my lip, thinking about the ancient vamp saying that Lachlan and I were connected.
“So, you tell me, child, what is he to you?”
“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “I think we’re together, but it’s not really official or anything.”
“You do magic with him?”
“A couple times, I guess. We were in danger…” I was confused.
“I never felt anything like it.” She shook her head. “You be careful, Penny. Try not to do anything rash with that one until I can look into it a bit more.”
“How do you mean rash?” I said.
She just shook her head at me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Okay,” said Lachlan, standing in front of the whiteboard by his desk. It was later on that morning. When we’d come into the station, everything had seemed normal. Of course, normal was for no one to pay much attention to Lachlan at all. “So, we’ve got the slayer, we’ve got Alastair, and we’ve got the brother.” He pointed to his desk. “Hand me that photograph.”
I picked up an eight-by-ten glossy of a woman with a scar on her upper lip. She was pretty, with dark hair and dark eyes. “Who’s this?” I said.
“That’s Clarke Gannon,” he said. “The slayer.”
I handed him the photograph.
He put it up on the whiteboard with a magnet. He began scrawling something unreadable under her picture. He really had terrible handwriting.
The whiteboard also contained pictures of Finn Remington and Alastair, both with chicken scratch underneath as well. I noticed the vampires weren’t up there. I wasn’t about to bring that up.
Lachlan stepped back. “Alastair still doesn’t have a motive, but we do have to check him out.”
I made a face. “Today?”
Lac
hlan made a face too. “No, not today. I’m way too hungover to deal with him today.”
“All right,” I said. “So, then either the brother or the slayer.”
“Penny, what were you saying about The Dungeon?” said Lachlan.
“Um, that’s not really that important,” I said. “Maybe we should start with the slayer. Because I think she’s more likely than the brother.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.” He raised his eyebrows. “What did you do?”
“I just scared them,” I said. “And maybe burned down the interior of the club. Told them that if they preyed on the dragon youth anymore that I would hunt them down and kill them.”
His lips parted slowly. “Tell me you’re joking.”
I shook my head.
He sank down in the chair next to his desk. He let out a low groan. “I think I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear this.”
“Okay,” I said in a small voice.
“Because what you did is against the law,” he said. “You understand that, right?”
“I thought you were going to pretend you didn’t know about it. You can’t scold me for something you don’t know about.”
“I’m not scolding you.” He rubbed his forehead. “You’re a grownup. You make your own decisions. Sometimes bad ones, admittedly.”
“My friend’s daughter was going there, and she begged me—”
“Let’s not talk about it.” He sighed heavily. “Just… you didn’t kill anyone this time, did you?”
I hesitated. “No.”
“Oh my God.” He put his head in his hands.
“It was self-defense,” I said in a low voice. “And he was ancient. Over five hundred years, I’m sure. No one’s going to notify the police about someone so old.”
He got up out of his chair and started walking out of the room.
I ran after him. “What?”
He didn’t respond.
“Where are you going?”
“To interrogate Clarke Gannon,” he said. “Assuming we can find her.”
* * *
Happy Harry’s Bar and Grill was a popular hang out for slayers and drakes. It was an odd mix of clientele, but it was a fixture in the magical creatures community. The place was dimly lit with recessed blue lighting, and the jukebox always seemed to be playing something from the 1990s. Right now, it was blaring Korn.
Lachlan said it was the first place we needed to look if we wanted to try to find Clarke.
We combed the place, but she wasn’t there. So, we stopped to talk to the bartender and to ask him if he’d seen her recently.
And the door opened, and she came inside.
She had purple streaks in her dark hair, and she was wearing a leather jacket over tight jeans and thigh-high boots. She had a bow and arrows slung over her shoulder and a gun in a holster at her side. She strode inside and headed straight for the bar.
Lachlan intercepted her. “Clarke Gannon?”
She looked him over. “Who wants to know?”
Lachlan flashed his badge. “I’m Detective Lachlan Flint. This is my associate, Penny Caspian. We understand you’ve done some business for the vampires at The Dungeon.”
She gave us a wary look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was tough, and she could take care of herself. And I knew that she killed my kind for money, but I felt a grudging sort of… respect for her somehow.
“You ever go to Andy’s?”
“The bar?” she said.
“Yeah,” said Lachlan.
“What’s this about?” she said.
“Yes or no? You been there?” he said.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Sometimes dragons come there?” Lachlan said conversationally.
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “How are you really supposed to tell a dragon from a regular person if they haven’t shifted?”
“You go there to stalk dragons to kill?”
“I don’t kill dragons,” she said. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t be stalking them in a bar. Not my style.” She started away from us. “I think we’re done here.”
“Were you at Andy’s on May sixth?” Lachlan called after her.
She didn’t answer. She leaned over the bar and ordered a Corona.
The bartender handed it over.
Clarke gave him some money. She sat down on a barstool and took a long drink. Then she set the bottle on the bar. “No. I wasn’t there.”
“Just like that, you know?” said Lachlan. “Or was that night meaningful to you for some reason? Maybe that was the night that the vampires at The Dungeon told you to go find Fletcher Remington at Andy’s and to take him down.”
She took another long swig of her beer. “I don’t know what it is you’re talking about. At all. I don’t go to Andy’s. I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me. Leave me alone.”
Lachlan sidled over to her.
She narrowed her eyes. “I think this is bordering on harassment, Detective. Now, you get out of my face, or I’m going to dump my beer over your head.”
We left after that.
* * *
“Well, that went well,” Lachlan muttered, putting his sunglasses on as he started his car.
“She’s probably lying,” I said. “Why would she admit it all to us if she actually killed Fletcher?”
“It’s just that it doesn’t really add up,” said Lachlan, “because Andy saw Fletcher leave with Alastair. So, what did she do? Follow them back to Andy’s place? And how is she going to kill him and get the things she needs to sell if he’s not in dragon form?”
“Maybe she forced him to shift by injuring him or something,” I said.
“That’s possible, I guess.” He put his arm behind my seat and backed the car up. “Thing is, I just feel like we’ve made no progress today.”
“Well, you’re hungover,” I said. “Maybe we could take it easy today?”
“Let’s go see the brother,” he said.
“Or that,” I said.
* * *
Finn was shaking his head. “I just can’t believe you’re asking me these kinds of questions.” He was standing next to the pool at his parents’ place, holding a glass of lemonade and looking out into the distance. “Fletcher was my twin, you know.”
“But he made you angry,” said Lachlan. “The kind of lifestyle he lived. The fact that he was still going to inherit the position in your father’s company?”
“Well, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t going to be on the board of trustees,” said Finn. “I work at the company already. The position that Dad was giving Fletcher, it was technically still the highest position, but Dad had been finagling it so that the position had less power than it used to. He wanted Fletcher to have the position so that he’d be taken care of, but he was simply going to be a glorified figurehead with no real ability to make decisions. Dad was doing his best to make a bad situation better.”
“So, you weren’t angry?” I said.
“No,” said Finn.
Lachlan raised his eyebrows and waited.
Finn sighed. “Okay, maybe a little bit. Maybe… a lot sometimes. But I would never hurt my brother. I loved him. When he and I were little kids, we had this secret language that only he and I knew. I forget it now, all except for a few words, because we grew apart so much.” Finn’s face suddenly crumpled. He turned away from us.
Lachlan rubbed his forehead.
Finn scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I miss him so much. I miss how he was always trying to surf even when there weren’t decent waves. I miss that he used to come in the house and yell, ‘Lucy, A’m ho-oome.’ I even miss that he was a major screwup, because if he was still alive, I’d work harder to help him change. I wouldn’t want him to waste one more minute of his life hung up on all those drugs.”
Lachlan cleared his throat. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Remington, I know this has been difficult, but we do have to cover our bases.”
Finn looked
up at us, sniffing. “I didn’t kill him.”
“One last thing,” said Lachlan. “Can you tell us where you were on Friday, May sixth? The last night that anyone had contact with Fletcher?”
“Um, I don’t really recall off the top of my head,” said Finn.
“Would you like to look at a calendar?” Lachlan said, offering Finn his phone. He pointed. “It was a Saturday.”
Finn furrowed his brow. “I was with my friend Joseph, I think. We were together all night, just hanging at home and playing video games.”
“Uh huh,” said Lachlan. “And Joseph will confirm that?”
“Sure,” said Finn.
* * *
Joseph Vickers opened the door only a crack to us. He was staying in a hotel room, one of the luxury suites in the Hilton. “Yeah, I was with him that night,” he said.
“Were you even in town then?” I said. “How long have you been in this hotel room?”
Joseph scratched the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe two months. I know it would probably be cheaper to rent a place, but I dig the room service. And it’s not like I can’t afford it.”
Lachlan was squinting at Joseph. “You look familiar to me.”
“Do I?” said Joseph. “I never saw you before in my whole life.”
Lachlan eyed him.
“What did you and Finn do together that night?” I said.
“Uh, we played video games,” said Joseph. “We drank some beers and played. We played a couple racing games mostly.”
“Did he leave at any point?” said Lachlan.
“No,” said Joseph.
“So, he slept here?” said Lachlan.
“Uh, yeah. He slept on the couch in here,” said Joseph. “It’s really comfortable.”
* * *
“He’s lying,” said Lachlan, pulling into a parking place in front of the Purple Dolphin.
“Which one?” I said. “Joseph or Finn?”
“Well, I don’t know about Finn,” said Lachlan. “That crying act about how much he missed his brother? I bought that, so I think he’s either innocent or he feels really bad about having killed him. But that Joseph guy? He’s making that up.”
“How could you even know that?” I said.
“I don’t know for certain,” said Lachlan. “Maybe he’s just twitchy. But the way he offered up all that bit about how they played racing games and then looked like a deer caught in the headlights when I asked if Finn slept over? Yeah, he’s making it up. I think Finn asked him to lie for him.”
city of dragons 02 - fire storm Page 13