All I had wanted was for him to tell me about Zezi, but now I was beginning to think that he was involved. Heck, maybe I’d flash my Agency identity card at him and force him to go into Agency Headquarters with me for questioning in a cold and ominous interview room. That would serve him right, having to explain to all his friends why law enforcement wanted him for questioning. It seemed to me that nobody knew he was a goblin, and so far I had done him the courtesy of keeping that quiet.
By mid-afternoon I was sick and tired of the wild goose chase. I headed back to Finch’s dormitory room and I left him a hand written message taped to his door telling him in no uncertain terms that I expected him to call me or I would make things official. I decided to take a break and headed to a nearby café to grab a panini and some coffee, and to read Zezi’s diary more thoroughly.
Dear Finch, she had begun every single entry with:
Dear Finch, It is so exciting to be at university. I never thought mama would let me go, but I made a deal with her that I would live at home to save money and babysit the kids during my spare hours and I would get a part-time job to help put towards the bills, and she said we’ll see how it goes. I miss you. I wish now that I’d had the guts to stand up to mama when she told me I couldn’t see you anymore. You were my best friend….
Dear Finch, Lectures are really hard and I’m struggling to keep up with everyone else. The lecturer talks about stuff that everyone thinks is basic background information, but I’ve never heard of it before. And I don’t have time to do all the extra reading because in the evenings I need to feed the kids and they won’t give me any peace and quiet. It’s a full-time job trying to keep the boys at home and doing their homework instead of out on the streets, where mama doesn’t want them to be. And I’ve had to turn down a couple of shifts at the café I’ve been working in because I had to be home with the kids. They didn’t like that. Luckily a new friend here said she would cover for me. She’s a goblin, but she hasn’t told anyone else here. She’s scared they’d fire her. I think of you often, and how wonderful it would be to be able to give you a call. The boys used to love you. You could have taken them to play basketball in the park nearby. Maybe mama wouldn’t have minded that if she hadn’t found out about you.
Dear Finch, They fired me at work. My boss was really mean. I think she wanted to make me cry, and I’m embarrassed that I did because it was such a shock when she said to me in the middle of the staff meeting that she had to let me go. Just me and my friend, the one who is a goblin. Nobody else. A couple of days ago one of the customers somehow guessed what she was and walked out after making a scene and not bothering to pay the bill. They docked the bill from my friend’s wages. It’s so unfair! And mama will never let me stay at university now. She said I have to drop out and get a full-time job. I wish I was like you. I wish I could run away and live your kind of life where people are powerful and free. Where life is exciting. I wish I had the guts to call you and tell you I miss you…
Dear Finch, I’ve met the most exciting new people and they’ve offered to pay me to be a waitress and socialize at their parties. They’re your kind of people, and I secretly daydream that one day I am going to bump into you at one of the parties and it will be just like old times… I’ve got enough money for the bills now but mama hates my job. I think she knows that I can’t be working a normal job and she’s suspicious of the people that I’m hanging out with. Why does she have to be so mean and worried and angry all the time? Why can’t she just trust me? If only you were here again. This time I would tell her to back off and leave us alone…
It was all the usual heartache and joys and angst that I imagined any eighteen-year-old at her first year at university would be feeling when life was changing so much so quickly. Not that I would know. I had never been to university.
It was odd to me that she had addressed the whole thing to Finch. There had been no mention of whether she and Finch had just been friends or in a relationship or anything in particular about Finch himself.
The feelings I got from the diary did not offer any new leads. No hints of anyone dangerous that she had met, no visions of any of the events that she wrote about, and nothing more than wisps of the emotions she had felt as she had written the entries down.
The diary entries ended suddenly. The last one was another entry addressed to Finch where she daydreamed about meeting him and having fun and dancing together at one of the parties that she was hired to work at, but most of it was just talk of her feelings and insecurities, with no mention of any names.
By the time I finished reading it was just past 5:00 pm. Still daylight. Too early for me to go to the Ronins and too early for me to go back to the bar that I had met Marielle in to check that out again. Marielle had not called me either. She had not offered me her number, and I hadn’t asked for it given that she was a private citizen and a vampire to boot. I was being impatient. It had only been a couple of days and she probably didn’t have any news yet.
I sent Storm a message saying that I was still chasing leads on the Zezi Shahidi case and that I would see him tomorrow.
Feeling impatient to do something useful, anything at all, I ended up calling the cowboy. Ronin had said I could make use of the cowboy while investigating the case, and I had assumed he meant as a chauffeur.
The cowboy answered his phone immediately. “Do you think vampires would be awake by now?” I asked him.
“Sure thing,” he said. “They don’t like the daylight much but that doesn’t mean they’re not up in it. They don’t need much rest.”
“Excellent! Can you meet me at University College London? I need a lift to the Ronin house.”
I got myself a chai latte to go and made my way to the spot we’d agreed to meet at, outside of a big red crossed-shaped building called the cruciform. Five minutes later the cowboy rolled up in the Cadillac with American country music blaring. The sight put a big grin on my face. The guy really knew how to live big. I liked that.
The cowboy got out to open the passenger door for me but I waved him away. I could darn well open my own door. But then a shout stopped me. I turned towards the source. A guy was waving at me from down the street. It was Finch Greyiron.
Chapter 9
FINCH
Finch had been eating crunchy nut cornflakes that morning in the kitchen of his halls of residence when the doorbell downstairs had rung. He had looked out of the window which overlooked the street and seen a very pretty blond haired girl outside, hoping to be let in. Innocent enough, if it wasn’t for the fearsome and authoritative way that she’d jabbed the buzzer as if she owned the place. Immediately, Finch had been on his guard, worried that she was here to see him.
He had been right, as he’d realized a few minutes later when some idiot had let her in and she had knocked first on Finch’s bedroom door and then confronted his nosy neighbor Matt, demanding to know where Finch was. Finch had been standing behind the kitchen door just a few meters away from her, wondering what the hell she wanted.
He had been careful, he knew he had, and there was no reason for anyone to have come looking for him.
Even so, it was best not to hang around, so he had pulled his disappearing act. Fading, he called it. Fading into the air, becoming a part of it, a rare skill that absolutely no one must ever know that he had. It was certainly not one that goblins were known for, and nobody at his university even knew he was a goblin. Humans were notoriously distrustful of goblins. As they were right to be.
So Finch had faded into the air and drifted past the Diana girl and down the stairs, where he had re-materialized near the front door. He’d swiftly let himself out of the building and made his way to the first of his classes that day. He had not expected the Diana girl to follow him, but she had, proving remarkably persistent.
In the end he had decided it was his turn to tail her. He’d followed her, first back to his room where she had left him a note, and then to a café, where she had sat for two hours with her attention riv
eted to some book that she was reading.
The note she’d stuck to his door had said that she worked for the Agency of Otherkind Investigations and she had insisted that he had better call her back or else she would return in an official capacity. That had been jarring. But if she really knew what Finch was up to, she would never have left a note to warn him she was after him. And if it wasn’t that, then what did she want?
Whatever it was could clearly put his entire life and everything he had worked for in jeopardy since the Agency were involved. Not knowing what she wanted, Finch hadn’t been able to decide whether it was best to speak to her and get it over and done with or whether it was best to avoid her entirely.
The cafe that she’d chosen was inside a bookshop, and very busy with students, so it had not been difficult for Finch to quietly take a seat some distance away from Diana and keep an eye on her.
Growing bored after half an hour of watching her read that damned book, he had pulled his little fading act and drifted over to her to see what she was so engrossed in. And gotten a shock.
It had been a book full of handwritten letters to him. In handwriting that he would have recognized anywhere. It was Zezi’s handwriting. She had been writing to him!
But before he could get a closer look, Diana Bellona had suddenly stiffened and looked around her in confusion as if she sensed his presence, which was impossible of course, since he was nothing more than air. But it had unnerved him. He’d backed off, drifting off to a quiet spot behind a bookshelf to resume his normal form before re-taking his seat at the other end of the café.
He had been shaken. Zezi had been writing to him! What had she been writing? And why did this Diana girl have the letters?
He had sat at his table with his fists clenched, pretending to read a book, but really with his mind in turmoil. The memory of Zezi was an unpleasant blast from the past, and one that left him feeling all kinds of things that he had thought he had left behind him.
When the Diana girl had gotten up from her table, he had followed her down the street until a cowboy driving a pink Cadillac — of all things! — had pulled up next to her. She had been about to get into it. She was leaving, and she was taking Zezi’s letters with her. Before he had known what he was doing, he had called out to her, and she had turned and seen him.
And now she was striding towards him with her eyes narrowed as if she intended to grab hold of him and throw him down on the ground and arrest him. He took a step backwards, and she calmed down, perhaps realizing that he was not going to run away. Finch thought fast.
“Hi!” he said brightly. “You’re the girl that left a note on my door, right? I tried to catch up with you earlier but you disappeared. Good job I saw you again.”
By her narrowed eyes, he could tell that she was not falling for this. “You’ve been giving me the run round all day, little man,” she accused.
Finch blinked. She could hardly call him a little man, being shorter than him by several inches and slender enough that it looked like the wind might blow her away.
“Er, so what did you want?” he asked.
She took a glance back at the Cadillac as if she was impatient to get going. The cowboy had got out and was standing by the driver’s door with his arms crossed, watching them curiously. Finch felt like if he ran, the cowboy would happily run him down.
“Since you’ve wasted my time all day, you’re going to have to come with me now,” she said. “I haven’t got time to hang around.”
“Where are you going?” Finch asked warily.
He desperately needed to know about Zezi but no way was he going to trap himself in a car that he might not be able to get out of later. Not without giving himself away. Something was off about this Diana girl, and he wouldn’t put it past her and her cowboy chauffeur to have more to them than met the eye. And if they really worked for the Agency there was no telling what sort of magic might be in that car.
“Never you mind where I am going,” said Diana, and flashed him her Agency ID card. “I’ll interview you on the way and drop you off at the other end. You can make your own way home.”
The look she gave him told him that she would not be taking no for an answer. And Finch needed answers from her too. The last thing he needed in his life was for the ghost of Zezi to mess it up.
“Fine,” he said, getting into the car.
She got into the back seat beside him and the cowboy started driving. Finch hoped that he wasn’t about to regret the choice he had just made.
Diana didn’t bother to put her seatbelt on. She turned sideways to face him. Her long very pale hair was flapping about in the wind but it didn’t seem to bother her. She fixed him with big over-bright eyes that were the oddest color he had ever seen. Midnight blue or purple or black at turns, and so shiny and lustrous that they made him stare.
Realizing that he was staring, he quickly looked away.
“Tell me what you know about Zezi Shahidi,” she said abruptly, making no attempt at small talk.
Her quick concise voice was at complete odds with the way she looked. Everything about her was jarring, and those eyes… Those eyes. For some reason that he couldn’t quite put his finger on they made him feel deeply, deeply uneasy inside. It reminded Finch of the way he had felt before once as a very young child, in the presence of a being that most people didn’t believe existed. The mere memory made him break out into a light sweat. He knew this was making him seem suspicious, but he couldn’t help it.
“So… erm… how can I help you?” he said, trying to gather his thoughts.
“Zezi Shahidi,” she repeated, her voice clipped.
“Zezi was a friend of mine,” he said. Which was true. “Why? What happened to her?”
“I’m asking the questions,” she retorted. “Tell me about your friendship. And don’t even think about lying. I’ll know.”
And so Finch told her. He and Zezi had been best friends through high school. He had liked her a lot, far more than she had liked him. He hadn’t intended to tell Diana this part, but now he was speaking he couldn’t seem to stop. Zezi had been like the sunshine. Everyone had loved her. He’d had hopes of something more between them, but then her mother had found out through the rumor mill that Finch was half-goblin.
It hadn’t mattered to Mrs Shahidi that she had known Finch for years and should have been able to trust him. She had freaked out. She had refused to let Zezi see him any more, and gone to the extent of making trouble at school for him. Everyone had found out he was a goblin. The parents of the other kids had been angry and Finch had been forced to move schools. Zezi had listened to her mother and everyone else. She had refused to take his calls. She had refused to see him again. Their friendship that had meant so much to him had been snuffed out as if it had meant nothing to her.
“Then why did she write you these letters?” Diana showed him the diary.
She even let him read a little before pulling it away from him. Seeing Zezi’s words made him hurt inside. She had missed him. She had wanted him back in her life. There was even a tone of longing. It made him angry. Why had she pushed him away then? And now suddenly, fiercely, all Finch wanted was to see her again. To feel the sunshine of being in her presence. All these years trying to forget her, and it turned out he was still in love with her after all.
“I don’t know,” he said. His voice emerged husky and raw.
Diana had been looking at him with narrowed eyes as if assessing what he had told her. Finally she said, “Zezi was afraid for you. She wrote in her diary that she was scared her cousins would have hurt you once they knew what you were. She had to stay away from you.”
Finch had not thought anything could make him feel worse. So that was why. She should have told him. If only she’d told him.
“What happened to her?” he asked. This time he looked Diana right in the eyes, difficult as that was for him to do.
“She went missing two years ago,” Diana told him.
He knew she was watc
hing for his reaction. Finch could feel his face contorting, his mouth opening and closing but no words emerging while his brain tried to catch up with this fact.
“What do you mean missing?” he asked in confusion.
For three years he’d been imagining what it would be like if he bumped into Zezi in the street. That she’d see him as a mature man now, twenty years old, not seventeen, and she’d maybe marvel at how much he’d changed.
And Finch had changed. He had done things that neither he nor Zezi would have thought he was capable of back then. He was not the same guy that she had known, and he had hopes that maybe she would sense that and be intrigued. Because no way could he tell her what he had done. But it turned out that in all this time that he had been daydreaming of her, she had been gone.
Psychic for Hire Series Box Set Page 76