by Shéa MacLeod
Kabita shook her head, frowning. “Doesn’t ring any bells. I guess I’ve just got one of those faces.”
I burst out laughing. “Yeah, as if. You so do not have one of those faces.” And she didn’t. There may have been some people who had bland, ordinary looks. People who blended into the crowd, but Kabita Jones wasn’t one of those people. With her cloud of waist length jet black hair and cinnamon skin, she stood out anywhere, even in a multicultural city like London.
Kabita’s brother had gotten a spot right near the sky bridge. Brownie points to him. At least we didn’t have to trudge all over creation just to find the car.
Dexter Jones looked nothing like his sister. Granted, he had the same black hair and cinnamon skin, but the similarities ended there.
While Kabita was actually a couple inches shorter than my own five foot five, Dex towered over both of us at a good six foot two. Also, while Kabita had her mother’s more exotic Indian features, Dex’s were pure Anglo, right down to his gray eyes and slightly Romanesque nose. Dex must take after their father. And while Kabita’s accent still held the music of her Malaysian childhood, despite twenty years living in England and another three in the United States, Dex’s accent was pure London. The posh side of London.
What I knew about Kabita’s family could fill a thimble. She didn’t like talking about them. All I knew was that while her mother’s family came from India, her father was some sort of English mucky muck. His family had a lot of power and influence in the British government, especially with agencies like MI8, the supposedly disbanded agency for the study of the paranormal and supernatural. How he’d ended up married to an Indian woman from a tiny village in Malaysia was most likely an interesting tale, though I’d never heard it. In any case, he did and Kabita and her brothers were all raised in the same village until they were old enough to attend University. Then they’d all hit the UK. And stayed.
Inigo was her cousin on her dad’s side. I knew her dad had never left the UK other than for brief visits to his wife and kids in Malaysia. And now I knew she had a cousin in MI8. Or rather, who had formerly been with MI8 and now lay dead in the morgue somewhere. And that was all I knew about the family of Kabita Jones, my best friend and boss.
Maybe it was odd I’d never pressed her about her family, but I’d always been of the opinion that for the most part, people will share their personal stuff when they’re good and ready. There was no need to be all up in each other’s business all the time.
Once we were settled in the car with Dex in the driver’s seat, Kabita said, “Tell me.”
Dex was quiet as he steered the car out into traffic. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “I think it best if you wait to talk to Dad.”
Personally, I would have pushed him for more info and I expected Kabita to do the same. I guess she knew her brother better than that. She just sighed. “Fine. When does he want to meet?”
“Tonight. Eight o’clock. The Cinnamon Club.” He glanced at her. “Missed you, K.” She smiled and reached over to squeeze his arm.
Man of few words, I guess. But I was excited about the meeting place. The Cinnamon Club was quite possibly the poshest Indian restaurant in the whole of London. The food was supposed to be beyond amazing. When I’d lived in London I’d never been able to afford a place like The Cinnamon Club.
“Fine,” Kabita said. “I’ll wait. But you know I don’t like this.”
Dex just shrugged.
I wondered about her relationship with her family. Granted, my mother and grandmother drove me nuts pretty much on a daily basis, but Kabita seemed unusually distant with hers. Except maybe Dex. There was genuine warmth there, if a little strained.
Not my business. I stared out the window enjoying the sights of the city that had once been my home. I felt a sharp stab of nostalgia.
“I’ll pick you up at fifteen to eight,” Dex was saying.
Kabita didn’t answer, but he obviously took her silence as consent. I caught his eye in the rear view mirror and the smile he gave me was a little sad around the edges.
I wondered if the sadness was because of the death of their cousin, or the strain in the relationship with his sister. Maybe it was a little of both. I smiled back. It was all I had to give.
Chapter Three
The Cinnamon Club stood on Great Smith Street in Westminster. It was a gorgeous red brick building which once housed the old Westminster Library back when libraries were all mellow wood and dim lamps instead of bright beacons of glass and steel.
Dex pulled the car up to the curb and turned off the engine. “Ready?” he asked Kabita. She nodded, every line of her body screaming the exact opposite.
Curiouser and curiouser.
He escorted us inside the restaurant. It was even more beautiful than the outside. Crystal and silver sparkled in the candlelight while old wood gleamed gently, lending the place an atmosphere of sophisticated elegance.
I felt only slightly out of place. I didn’t really do elegant dining. I usually ended up feeling like a bull in a china shop. Fortunately, I was also really good at hiding my insecurities.
The air was redolent with the scent of Indian cooking spices: cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric, chilies and curry leaves. Gods, I’d missed this. The little hole in the wall Indian dive Kabita and I frequented back in Portland was good, but it had nothing on the kind of Indian you could find in the restaurants of London.
Dex led us to a secluded table off to one side. Its sole occupant stood to greet us.
He was tall, nearly as tall as Dex. His charcoal suit was beautifully cut and perfectly tailored to show off a lean physique. Despite his silver hair and icy gray eyes, there was no doubt at all that Dex was his son. Kabita, on the other hand, looked nothing like her father.
“Dad.” Kabita’s voice, always calm and cool, held zero emotion. Her face was devoid of expression. “This is my friend, Morgan Bailey.”
My friend. Not my colleague. Not my fellow Hunter. My friend. Interesting.
Apparently Dad thought so, too. His perfectly groomed left eyebrow went up. Oh, yeah, now I knew where Kabita got it.
“Morgan Bailey. At last we meet. I’ve heard much about you from my friends at the SRA. As I’m sure you must know, I’m Alister Jones. Welcome back to London.” His handshake was firm, voice the utterly polished and carefully modulated upper class English gentleman.
I wondered who at the Supernatural Regulatory Agency had been talking about me, but I wasn’t going to ask. Instead, I smiled and resisted the urge to tell him that while he may have heard about me, I’d heard nothing about him. Didn’t think Kabita would appreciate me getting all snarky with her dad.
“Thank you. It’s good to be back.” I meant it. Portland might be my home and the city of my birth, but London was still in my blood. I didn’t think it would ever come out.
“Where are Adler and Adam?” Kabita’s voice was still very nearly expressionless as she settled into her chair. The cold front between her and her dad was nearly palpable. What was with this family? Seriously, they were taking the whole British stiff upper lip thing way too far.
I took my own seat, assisted by Dex. Kabita was starting to worry me. Her manner wasn’t the only thing that had changed since we’d arrived in London. She’d altered her appearance, as well. For dinner, she’d dressed in a sleek navy blue dress and put her hair up in an elegant bun thing like a ballerina. Every little wisp of hair perfectly in place. Worst of all, she was wearing pearls like freaking Donna Reed. Creepy.
She must have noticed me gawking at her, as she suddenly started toying with the creamy pearl bracelet on her left wrist. A sure sign she felt uncomfortable.
“The twins are on assignment.” Alister Jones’s voice was as cool as his daughter’s. “They don’t know about your cousin yet.” Something moved behind his eyes, something hard and very, very angry. Contrary to outward appearances, he was pissed as hell. I found it odd he’d referred to the dead girl not as his niece, but as Kabita’s
cousin. I wasn’t sure if his anger was due to his niece’s death, or the fact that his sons weren’t there to share in the family tragedy. Possibly it was something else altogether. All I knew was it completely creeped me out.
I probably shouldn’t butt in to family business, but this was no ordinary family, and I was no ordinary friend.
I looked Alister Jones straight in the eye and said, “What was her name?”
He didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about. “Alison. Her name was Alison.”
“Alison Jones?”
He quirked his lips a little at that. “No. She was my sister’s child. It was Alison Reynolds.” He took out his wallet and pulled a photograph from it. He held onto it for a moment, his face void of expression, before handing it to me.
Alison Reynolds had been beautiful. No doubt about that. Golden ringlets surrounded a heart shaped face, framing the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen and pouty pink lips that would make Angelina Jolie pea green with envy. Her smile held no hint that she spent her life dealing with monsters and the carnage they left behind.
I wondered how she could do her job and still look so damn sunny. I guessed when the monsters actually looked like monsters it was easier to deal with than the human beings who did monstrous things. I should know. I lived my life among the monsters. I understood them. Sometimes I thought I understood them just a little too well.
I shoved that thought aside very quickly. I didn’t have time to think about the weirdness that had become my life or the Darkness that now lurked constantly just beyond my sight. Waiting. Always waiting.
I shook my head slightly to clear my thoughts. “How did she die?” Might as well get right down to it.
Alister motioned me to wait as a bevy of waiters approached the table loaded down with steaming platters and bowls. The smell wafting off those dishes was so gorgeous it set my stomach rumbling.
“I took the liberty of ordering for us all. I thought we’d share.” For just a moment Alister’s smile was genuine and warm. It reminded me of Kabita’s. Perhaps she was her father’s daughter, after all.
Kabita and Dex murmured their approval, while I tried hard not to salivate. I helped myself to a piece of naan lightly brushed with butter. Perfect.
As we dug in, Alister told us about the death of Alison Reynolds. His voice was calm, detached, as though he was talking about a stranger instead of his own niece. I guess we all dealt with grief in different ways.
“Like most of our family, Alison started working for MI8 as soon as soon as she left University,” Alister began.
I gave Kabita a look out of the corner of my eye, but her expression remained bland. I knew for a fact that Kabita had never worked for MI8, though it seemed to be the family business. Interesting.
“Alison’s specialty was research. And she was particularly good at it. She had a knack for uncovering the truth. More than one life was saved over the years because of her instincts and her unwavering dedication to doing what she believed was right.” There was an interesting edge to his voice at that. One that told me he hadn’t quite approved of Alison’s dedication to truth. I filed it away for future reference.
“Unwavering dedication to the truth is a good way to get yourself killed,” I pointed out. “Truth is usually hidden for a reason.” Though not always a good one.
Alister nodded in agreement. “That was Alison’s downfall. She didn’t know when to back down and turn her research over to someone more qualified. The very focus that made her good at her job, also made her tempting to kill. Obviously someone finally gave into temptation.”
Kabita scowled slightly, but didn’t disagree. I had the feeling she’d admired Alison’s tenacity far more than her father did. I was all for girls kicking ass but could see his point. Alison hadn’t been trained the way Kabita and I had. She hadn’t had the skills to protect herself.
Determination was always attractive, but there was a fine line between determination and stupidity. From the sounds of things, Alison had stepped over that line one too many times and now she was dead. Didn’t make it right, just made it a fact.
“What was she working on?” Kabita asked.
“Nothing official,” Alister said. “But for the past year she’d been working on her own project. She didn’t say much about it, but I got the impression that whatever it was, it was something big.”
Dex agreed, “I got the same impression. I know she was spending a lot of time in the oldest sections of the MI8 archives. I also know she’d been in contact with several police departments around the world regarding some of their cases.”
Now that was interesting. “Cases involving what?”
Dex shook his head. “No idea. Alison had a lot of autonomy and she wasn’t interested in sharing. We found nothing on her work computers and her personal laptop is missing.”
“So, whatever it was she was working on, you think she was killed because of it?” It made sense.
“It is likely, yes,” Alister said. I had the feeling he knew more than he was telling. There was just something about his expression, this sort of shifty look in his eyes, that didn’t sit well with me. “She could have been killed either because of something she found, or something she was about to find.”
“How was she killed?”
Alister shook his head and took a deep draft of wine. You weren’t supposed to gulp wine like that, and Alister struck me as the kind of guy with proper table manners, so I figured he was either a lot more upset about his niece’s death than he was letting on, or there was something else bothering him. It was Dex who finally told me.
“When she didn’t show up for work, her supervisor rang me. I popped over to her flat and found her … ” His voice went a little hoarse and he had to cough to clear it. “I won’t show you the photos here, but she was ripped open, neck to groin. Three slashes. Her chest cavity looked as though someone had torn her rib cage apart like a pea pod.” He hand shook a little as he raised his water glass.
My mouth went a little dry. “Was it one continuous movement? Or a lots of smaller motions?”
“One continuous.” Dex had gone a little pale.
Kabita was unusually silent, eating her way through her dinner almost like she was on auto pilot, so I kept up with the questions. I only knew of one creature strong enough to slash someone from stem to stern and crack open a pair of ribs with a single slash. “Were any of her organs missing?”
Dex looked a little pale. “Yeah. Her heart.”
I frowned at that. There should be more missing than just the heart. A lot more. Otherwise, it didn’t fit. “Was anything left behind?”
Dex nodded as Alister took something from his pocket and placed it on the table. It was about the size and shape of an oyster, but flat and paper thin. In the dim light of the restaurant it shimmered blue and green and gold with just a hint of pink. Like abalone shell, but with more vibrant colors.
I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, running my fingers along the subtle ridges. I expected it to be cool to the touch, but it was strangely warm. My hands tingled slightly as though I’d received a slight electric shock except it wasn’t the type of material to hold static electricity. Odd.
I tried to snap it between my fingers, but it didn’t give even a fraction despite its delicate appearance. I took out one of my knives. I tried to cut the disc, but the blade didn’t even scratch the surface.
It was no shell. A shell would have broken into pieces. It definitely would have scratched under the blade, probably shattered. This was something else entirely. But the pieces still didn’t fit. Not quite.
“Are you sure only her heart was missing?”
Dex and Alister both nodded the affirmative.
I gave Kabita a look and saw she was frowning, too. The same thought was running through both our minds and we both were struggling because it didn’t make sense, and yet it was the only thing that did.
“What is it?” Alister leaned forward. “You know someth
ing. What is it?”
“I suspect something,” I admitted. “But I can’t be sure. Some of the facts don’t add up.”
He leaned forward in his chair, food and wine completely forgotten. “Tell me.”
“The slashes, the opened rib cage, the missing heart, even this scale.” I held it up. Because that’s what it was. A scale. Armor plating. Natural armor plating for something really, really big. “They could only mean one thing. The problem is the rest of the organs. She should have been hollowed out, everything taken, not just the heart. But other than that, it all fits.”
“What fits? What killed my niece?” He was angry now. Impatient. But there was an eagerness there, too. Definitely odd.
I sighed. This was not a good time to be right. If I was wrong about this, I would create some temporary chaos. Piss some people off. But if I was right? Then I could start a war. The gods help us all.
“I could be wrong, but from the looks of things, Alison was killed by something that’s not even supposed to exist anymore.”
“What?” he practically snarled at me.
I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. This was not going to go down well. “It looks like Alison was killed by a Dragon.”
Chapter Four
Alister and Dex stared at me as though I’d suddenly grown a second head. I got that. It wasn’t every day someone blamed a murder on a dragon. Especially since dragons had supposedly died out centuries ago.
“Did you just say ‘dragon’?” Dex repeated.
“Yeah, I did.” I slammed the scale down hard on the edge of the table. It gave a dull ‘thunk’ but was otherwise unaffected. “This isn’t metal or stone. If this were just about anything else, it would have broken. It doesn’t scratch, either. I’ll bet if we try and melt it we’ll find it’s resistant to fire. And look,” I tilted toward the light, “it shimmers, changes color like abalone. I’ve read up a bit on dragons, and their scales fit the bill perfectly.”
“This is a dragon scale.” Kabita sounded gobsmacked. I couldn’t blame her. It was pretty cool.