The Sweet Scent of Blood s-1

by Suzanne McLeod

  She stopped, hand still outstretched. ‘You do?’

  ‘Toasted in a sandwich for breakfast,’ Katie chimed in. ‘BLT’s for lunch, ’cos the salad stuff is green and good for you.’ She ticked it off on her fingers. ‘And for dinner, bacon, poached egg, medium-soft to dunk the chips in, and grilled tomato,’ she giggled, ’cos it’s healthier that way.’ She pointed my pen at me. ‘Never varies, although you don’t always eat the healthy stuff, do you?’

  ‘You’d never know you worked in catering, would you?’

  ‘My God, Hon.’ Toni’s voice was horrified. ‘I knew you ate in the café, but don’t you ever eat anything else but bacon? Does Stella know? She’s madder than a cornered cat if she catches us eating even so much as a crisp.’

  I put the sandwich down and picked up the phone. ‘Toni, really, don’t worry. It’s not a problem for me.’ I turned on the phone and thumbed through to check my messages.

  Toni shook her head doubtfully. ‘You really eat the stuff all the time?’

  ‘That and liquorice torpedoes—’ and, oh yeah, vodka, venom and blood, but I wasn’t going to mention that out loud.

  I had a message from Alan Hinkley: he wanted to meet at midnight in Victoria Embankment Gardens before going to Old Scotland Yard, he’d found an informer, another fae, who would only talk to me. Um. I wasn’t sure if that was good news, bad news, or some sort of trap ... well, looked like I’d find out come midnight. Pursing my lips, I texted him back.

  ‘Maybe that’s why ...’ Toni paused and tapped her pad.

  I looked up. ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why you can’t do witch-magic.’ She waved her fingers. ‘I’d better get back to the desk.’

  I looked after her thoughtfully. Maybe Toni had a point. I’d have to try a few experiments.

  Katie picked up my pad and grinned. ‘And what would Madame—Oh, way cool!’ She grabbed the two silver invitations and waved them in my face. ‘Wow, Genny, where’d you get them? What—’

  ‘Katie—’

  Katie’s face lit up even more. ‘These are so you can find the killer, aren’t they? Who gave them to you? No, wait, don’t tell me’—she held the silver oblongs up to the light and squinted at them—‘let me work it out.’

  I gave up, prised the lid of the orange and took a sip. It tasted better than it had the previous day—but then, nothing tasted good when the venom cravings were at their worst. I stifled a shudder as I remembered Gazza: hopefully Katie would be able to put my mind at rest about what had happened to him.

  ‘So what happened to that new pot-washer?’ I asked. ‘Did Freddie sack him yet?’

  ‘Nah, the creep pulled a sickie.’ She turned one of the silver invitations over, studying it minutely. ‘Got his mum to phone in for him. Claimed he got beat up or something.’

  Relief filtered through me. He’d run home, just as I’d told him to.

  ‘This one’—Katie flicked one of the invitations—‘is from the Earl. It’s got his name stamped on the back. And you can tell by the size of the sapphire. Did you know they’re made by dwarves in Iceland? And the sapphire’s from Ceylon. And they’re all limited editions. You’ve got number thirty-six out of one hundred here.’

  ‘You know way too much about the vamps,’ I mumbled past the last of my BLT.

  She stuck her tongue out. ‘Now this one doesn’t have a name stamped on it, and I’ve never seen it on the website.’ She put the invitation back on the desk. ‘Guess what edition number it is?’

  I shrugged, ‘Lucky thirteen?’

  ‘Wrong!’ She slid the oblong towards me. ‘Look.’

  I leaned over and peered at it. Underneath the gemstone was engraved, 1/1.

  She blew her fringe up. ‘That’s what’s called an original, I think. What d’you s’pose the stone is?’

  I pushed the card back. ‘Jet, probably.’ Picking up the gremlin job details and my phone, I tucked them in my bag.

  ‘Nah, s’not jet. Its got little red splatters on it, like blood.’ She shot me an excited look. ‘Hey, I bet its bloodstone—that’s really cool.’

  ‘You get all this off the website?’

  ‘Yep.’ She held up both the invitations and waggled them. ‘So which one d’you think murdered Bobby’s girlfriend?’

  My mouth fell open. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, one of them must’ve, else they wouldn’t have invited you. Murderers always want to find out what the detective knows, in case they’ve been twigged.’

  ‘Katie, I think the vamps are more interested in the fact that I’m sidhe.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I get the whole thing about humans tasting like water and fae like a fruit smoothie.’ She pulled her you’re-such-an-idiot face on me. ‘But you’ve always been sidhe, Genny, all your life, and they weren’t sending out invitations before, were they?’ She waggled the silver oblongs again. ‘So, c’mon, Miss Detective, which one d’you think did it?’

  ‘I am not a detective.’

  ‘’Course you are! Look, it’s easy.’ She leaned towards me, her long pony-tail falling onto the desk. ‘All you have to do is go there and talk to the staff, y’know, like the tea-boy, or the janitor.’

  ‘I don’t think the Blue Heart has tea-boys.’

  ‘Y’know what I mean.’ She flicked her hair back. ‘I see it all the time on the telly when me and Mum watch murder mysteries together. You just listen to what everyone has to say and put all the clues together and then you work out who the murderer is.’ She frowned. ‘Either that or the killer bumps you off to stop you blabbing his secret.’

  ‘Thanks, Katie—that is so reassuring.’ I stood up. ‘Anyway, I’ve got gremlins to deal with, and I expect Freddie will be tearing his hair out if you don’t get back soon.’

  She ducked below the desk, searching for her shoes. ‘Freddie’s bald.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Ha, Ha.’ She shook a flip-flop at me, then gave me a pleading look. ‘You’re going to go, aren’t you, and find out who killed Bobby’s girlfriend for him?’

  ‘Decision time—let me think: should I visit a vampire club where every sucker wants to drink my blood and turn me into a blood-slave while I’m looking for a murderer who wants to kill me, or not?’ I gave her a mildly sarcastic look. ‘Definitely a no-brainer, Katie.’

  Her face turned serious. ‘Well, it’s always possible the murderer might try and kill you anyway, unless you can find him first.’

  Damn. She was right. And attack was said to be the best form of defence, wasn’t it?

  ‘Sometimes you’re way too smart.’ I took the two silver invitations from her and dropped them into my bag.

  She chewed her lip. ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Genny?’

  ‘As a vampire in a thunderstorm,’ I muttered.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I walked into Leicester Square, my heart thudding in my chest. The bright signs of the clubs, pubs, cinemas and restaurants flashed like gigantic goblin badges. It was a couple of hours before midnight and the Square heaved with punters. Their voices hummed against my ears. Popcorn and excitement scented the air, and the hot dryness of the heat-wave coated my skin. I touched tentative fingers to the silver invitations lodged in my jacket pocket and stopped a not-so-comfortable distance away from London’s premier vampire nightclub.

  The Blue Heart had been a cinema in its former life and the outside still looked much the same. Two-foot-high silver letters hung down over the entrance, with the ‘a’ in ‘heart’ replaced by an actual blue neon heart that pulsed like it was alive. Film-style posters advertised the current Vampire Calendar Celebrities: Mr September had top billing as a neck-ruffed Elizabethan, Mr August in his twelfth century Crusader get-up was the outgoing act, while Mr June in his WWII uniform was obviously the understudy for October’s absent star.

  It had taken nearly an hour on the club’s website, and three trawls through my wardrobe, to finally settle on something to wear: a black Lycra top, banded round my neck and waist, that
covered my front and left my back bare, and a Lycra wraparound skirt, also black. It was one of my Sucker Town outfits. But as bare flesh to vampires is like wearing a come-and-fang-me-sign, I’d topped it off with a knee-length bronze silk coat. The shoes matched the coat: bronze Vintage Westwoods with two inches of platform and six inches of thin metal heel. Okay, so they weren’t that easy on the feet, but hey, what girl wouldn’t suffer for some killer heels?

  ‘Mm-mm-mm: don’t you smell just totally delicious,’ the contralto voice purred in my ear.

  My pulse jumping, I took a step away, then turned sharply to face Rio, the manager of the Blue Heart. I recognised her from the publicity shots on the club’s website, and from her fuzz of tight curls dyed her trademark pale blue. What the photos hadn’t shown was her height. She had to be an inch or two over six feet tall, but the thigh-high platform boots of electric-blue leather added at least another six inches to her long legs while her blue leather hotpants looked spray-painted onto her narrow hips. She stood grinning at me, her huge lavender-coloured eyes dancing with mischief in her café-aulait face, while the sheer fabric the blouse tied at her midriff did nothing to hide her almost nonexistent breasts, or her obvious excitement.

  Shit. How had she managed to creep up on me? My vamp radar was usually better than that. Maybe last night’s G-Zav was still screwing with it.

  She brought her hands together with a soft clap. ‘Oh, did I scare you?’ A pink tongue darted out to lick her full bottom lip. ‘I do hope so. Fear adds such a piquant flavour to the blood.’

  Trying to calm my speeding pulse, I held up one of the silver invitations between my thumb and forefinger. ‘Sorry to disappoint.’ I smiled, with just a touch of smirk. ‘Invited guest, not part of the catering.’

  She made an exaggerated pout as she plucked the invitation from my hand. ‘And there I was getting all tingly at the prospect of a sip of sidhe.’ Handling the silver slab carefully by the edges, she scraped the metal with a sharp blue fingernail, turning it over and around as though it were something new she’d just discovered.

  ‘An invitation from the Earl, no less.’ She offered the silver slab back, then as I was about to take it, snatched it up out of my reach. ‘Why settle for second-best?’—she stroked a long finger down her missing cleavage—‘when I could make you a much better offer.’

  Giving a loud sigh, I held my hand out.

  ‘As you wish.’ She dropped the silver into my hand.

  I pocketed it, and strode towards the entrance.

  ‘You really should consider it.’ She fell into step next to me. ‘Or rather, consider me. Something as delightful as you deserves to be relished, like the finest dessert, licked and nibbled and sucked’—her voice lowered as she gave me a fang-filled grin—‘and eaten right up, one glorious mouthful at a time.’

  Ignoring her, I halted inside the foyer near the semi-circle of ticket booths. The small Monitor goblins manning them were perched on jacked-up barstools. They were only eighteen inches tall, so they needed the boost—not that their size made any difference to their ability to sense magic, of course. The one nearest me, his powder-blue dreads swinging, briefly turned his black wraparounds in my direction while sliding a triple-jointed finger down his nose. I returned the greeting. Then he carefully stamped the back of his lilac-haired customer’s hand with a blue ink heart the size of a fifty-pence piece and waved the woman away. She wandered off through the crowd, handbag swinging from her arm, and into the gift shop.

  The vamps had more than one way to bleed you dry.

  Rio circled behind me like a restless shark. ‘Welcome to the Blue Heart, delicious sidhe.’ She trailed a finger down my cheek.

  A shiver of induced excitement slithered down my spine. Mesma.

  I stepped away from her and the sensation faded as soon as she no longer touched me. Mentally I downgraded her. She might call the Earl second-best, but in reality she was much further down the pile.

  She laughed, the husky sound vibrating through the air, and the people milling about all stopped, their eyes drawn to her. She spread her arms wide and turned a slow circle, breathing in the scents of the excited clubbers.

  ‘Oh, such a response,’ she shivered. ‘Aren’t humans wonderful? ’ She cocked her head to one side, looked down at me. ‘Here’s hoping your visit is as exciting’—she winked a large lavender eye—‘as I desire.’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ I said, adding sweetly, ‘I would so hate to ruin your evening.’

  ‘You are going to be such fun.’ She shook a blue-tipped finger at me and the glint in her eyes turned more predatory. ‘So I’ll make you a promise, my sweet little sidhe: for your first night at the Blue Heart, there will be entertainment such as you will never forget.’

  ‘Please, don’t put yourself out on my account.’ I gave an indifferent wave. ‘I’m not here to do the tourist thing.’

  ‘Oh, but you must—’ Her animated expression closed up as she looked over my shoulder.

  I turned and saw the Earl. The flop of blond hair remained the same, but he’d ditched the ‘boating at Henley’ look and gone instead for a navy lounge suit with a pale blue shirt open at the throat, the double cuffs linked with heart-shaped sapphires the size of a thumbnail. His top pocket sported a silk handkerchief the same colour as his shirt. He exuded ‘relaxed man-about-town’ charisma, but as he strolled towards Rio and me the azure of his eyes shone colder and sharper than the sapphires at his wrists. Something told me he and Rio were not the best of blood-buddies, even though the Earl had been the one to Gift her.

  ‘Genevieve, what a great pleasure to see you again.’ He gave me a wide smile that somehow managed not to show his fangs, a practice a lot of the old vamps still followed. ‘I am delighted you chose to accept my invitation. I do hope you haven’t been waiting long.’

  ‘I haven’t been waiting at all.’

  Rio gave a snide little chuckle.

  ‘How wonderful.’ He held out his arm to me. ‘My dear, I shall escort you. I would not want you to get lost’—he looked at Rio—‘or waylaid during your time with us.’

  Pouting again, Rio sidled up to him and wrapped both hands round his arm, then turned to face me. She topped him by almost a head. ‘What a shame. I was just about to show our little sidhe round. I’m sure she would enjoy that much more.’

  ‘Another time, maybe, Rio.’ The Earl gave me a gracious smile. ‘Ms Taylor is here at my invitation tonight.’

  She plucked his handkerchief from his pocket, patted it between her breasts. ‘Perhaps we might entertain her together?’ she purred. ‘That would be fun.’

  The Earl’s smile didn’t change. ‘I believe not.’

  It was a like watching a big kid poking a snake with a stick, and I really wasn’t interested in being anywhere within striking distance. I started to step away, but between lifting my foot and putting it down, the air around me ... shifted. I had a moment’s disorientation; pressure popped at the back of my head, then I blinked hard and stared in front of me.

  Fuck.

  Rio was gone. The Earl was still standing there as though he hadn’t moved, but the handkerchief was back in his pocket and his smile held a glint of satisfaction.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Earl had done the same freaky time-pause thing as in the police station. It gave me a hollow feeling in my gut. ‘Annoying you, was she?’ I asked.

  He inclined his head. ‘I prefer to spend my time in your company, my dear.’ He offered me his arm again. ‘Shall we?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s such a great idea—I mean, I really don’t think bronzes are my thing, y’know? And that is why you invited me, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said without missing a beat, ‘but first I must compliment you.’ He reached out and took my hands. ‘You look absolutely charming, Genevieve. Such beauty as yours is a pleasure to behold and refreshes the heart.’ He smiled, his expression highly amused. ‘Although maybe in my case, I should say it could r
efresh ... well, other parts of me.’

  Surprised, I laughed. The Earl hadn’t seemed the type for innuendos. ‘Well, at least you’re honest about it.’

  ‘Trite as it may seem,’ he bowed over my hand, then turned it and pressed a kiss into the palm, ‘I have always found honesty to be the best policy.’

  A light flashed to the side of us as he raised his head. ‘But forgive me, I get ahead of myself. I feel we should perhaps get to know each other before indulging in such intimacies.’

  Sounded good. Of course, that statement was all about definitions, wasn’t it?

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I gave him a half-smile, my attention snagged by another flash: a Japanese tourist brandishing a miniature camera.

  The Earl tucked my hand into his bent arm. ‘Sadly, not everyone today is of the same opinion. The whole world rushes past faster and faster, and people appear to be unable or unwilling to consider the long-term consequences of their actions, wishing only to gratify immediate desires.’

  ‘Those desires seem to be gratifying a lot of your vamps just now.’

  ‘It takes time and experience to truly understand what the future holds, and what is necessary to keep it secure.’ He sighed, patted my hand. ‘The young are unable to understand that our planet is suffering through their cavalier use of its glorious bounty.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Great, just what I needed: a green vampire, lecturing me on the evils of the world.

  ‘We hope to educate them, not just on the larger environmental—’

  There was another flash and the Earl’s hand on mine tensed, annoyance flickering across his face. Then a vampire dressed in house uniform—navy trousers and silver-striped navy shirt—appeared next to the tourist and took her arm, removing her camera from her unresisting hold.

  ‘My apologies, Genevieve,’ the Earl murmured. ‘The staff will ensure the photograph is destroyed. Sometimes our guests fail to fully grasp the Blue Heart’s rules.’