by Alexis Hall
“Fuck off, Corin.”
“I know you’re angry with me, Kate,” she whispered.
“You murdered my partner. Angry is kind of an understatement.”
“I know what I did was wrong, but I was lost then, so lost and so afraid.”
“No, lost and afraid is what happens when you let go of your mum’s hand in a supermarket. What you did is shoot a man in the chest.”
I caught a glimpse of Corin’s face pressed against the grill in the door. Her lovely eyes had already begun to glisten with tears. I turned my back on her.
“I know you must hate me,” she continued. “I know you have no reason to be kind to me, but Tara is in such a fearful temper that I really must know what you told her about me.”
Okay, Kate. Think about this.
I wanted to say, I told her you were a lying, murdering scam artist, but the fact was I hadn’t, and Corin had something I needed. The problem was going to be getting it out of her without letting her get inside my head.
I swung round to face her. She was watching me through the bars, wide-eyed and stricken.
“I told her what I’d worked out.”
Corin said nothing but stifled a sob.
“I know someone broke you out of jail. I know you robbed Marcus Fox and Isis Fortuna, and I know what you took. I know the deal you made with the Merchant of Dreams. And I know you woke up the Morrígan.”
“Oh, Kate,” she whimpered, “I had no choice. They’d have...they’d have killed me.”
A tiny, irrational, and faintly horny part of me wondered why anyone would want to hurt this poor, innocent girl.
“Look, Corin,” I said. “I really need to know who hired you.”
“I can’t... I...you don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
“I’ll protect you.” Oh shit. She’d got me again.
“You’re so good to me, Kate. I know I don’t deserve it.”
“Tell me who hired you.”
“Not now. I... I...the old woman, she doesn’t trust me.” I’ll bet she didn’t. “Perhaps tomorrow, when we can be alone.”
She vanished from the window and slipped away as quietly as she’d come. And that was when I realised I’d given her everything she wanted and she’d given me fuck all.
Chapter Nineteen
Kissing & Telling
She didn’t come back tomorrow. I was only visited by a couple of servants who brought me food and the other necessities of being stuck in a prison. Yet again, I was depressed to realise that this wasn’t the least dignified situation I’d ever been in.
I spent another day bored out of my skull. It wasn’t even as if I had a case to think about. Until Corin told me who hired her, I’d done as much as I could. At least they’d given me some blankets.
I’d resigned myself to another night on a cold dungeon floor when I heard Corin’s voice.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I came as soon as I was able.”
Given I’d assumed she was leaving me to rot, I was actually pretty grateful she was there at all. “It’s fine.”
“We have to leave. I’m so terribly afraid of what will happen if the wolves return, and they find us, or they hear that I’ve been speaking to you.”
“You can get me out of here?”
“I can try. I’m not strong like you, Kate, but I do what I can.”
Almost immediately, there was a soft click, the door eased slowly open, and Corin slipped into my cell. Her eyes glistened. “Oh Kate, it’s so hard to see you like this.”
“Unchain me and you won’t have to.”
She knelt down beside me, trembling slightly, but the moment she started to work on the lock, her hands were rock steady. Within seconds, I was free. She was good, I had to give her that. Too good, that was the problem.
“You will keep me safe, won’t you, Kate?”
“Yes.” Oh shit. I kept doing that. “Right, how do we get out of here?”
Corin reached into a tatty canvas satchel and pulled out the Hand of Glory she’d nicked from Professor Fox.
Instinctively I took the Zippo out of my jacket pocket, leaned forwards, and lit the candle. Corin’s delicate face flared gold in the sudden light.
“We must go,” she said. “Quickly.”
We crept through Safernoc Hall, the pale light of the Hand of Glory keeping us hidden, and out to the courtyard where the various members of the Vane-Tempest family had left their fleet of terrifyingly expensive vehicles.
“How’s your hot-wiring?”
Corin gave me a look of wounded innocence. “Oh Kate, I wouldn’t begin to know how to do such a thing.”
I knew she was lying, but I went with it anyway.
She reached into her bag again, and this time brought out a set of car keys. “I know I shouldn’t have. But I could see no other way.”
She led me over to a gold TVR Chimaera, which I was pretty sure had to be Tara’s. I’d have felt bad about stealing her car if I hadn’t just spent the last day pissing in a bucket. As it was, she was going to be very lucky if I didn’t drive it into a lake when I was done.
Corin meekly handed me the keys, blew out the Hand of Glory, and shrank into the passenger seat.
I hopped in beside her and put the pedal to the metal, and a few minutes later, we were cruising at high speed through Safernoc Forest. I thought I saw a unicorn glaring at me through the trees, but it was probably my imagination.
“Okay,” I said. “Spill.”
There was a long silence and, finally, Corin spilled. “You mustn’t be angry with me, I don’t know who they are, only what they asked me to do.”
“You must have spoken to someone.”
“I... I... I have no idea who she was. She was a vampire, I think. She came to visit me in prison. I thought she was a lawyer at first. I hardly saw anyone when I was there except lawyers and wardens. I was so very alone.”
I was not going to feel bad for Corin. I was not going to feel bad for Corin. I was not going to feel bad for Corin. “So what did this vampire lawyer lady look like?”
“Very pale and very cold. I remember that she wore glasses and had blonde hair, pulled back.”
I was pretty sure I’d killed someone who looked like that. “How did they get you out?”
“I don’t really know. She told the guards to let me out and they did.”
“Is there anything else you remember? Anything at all?”
“Oh. There is one thing. The night before they came for me, I had a red flower on my pillow.”
Well, that sorted out the who. But it still left a big, steaming pile of why. I’d met Henry Percy all of twice, and he’d been trying to kill me both times. I had no idea what he wanted or why he thought waking up the Morrígan was the way to get it, and honestly I didn’t care. I just needed to stop him.
“So what happened to the pot you nicked from the grave?”
“I left it in a storage locker in Kentish Town and left the key in a dead drop in Hyde Park.”
Okay, that was a bit more to go on. Now, if I was a smug beardy vampire wizard and I’d stolen a sodding great urn from a mass-murdering vampire queen, what would I do with it? The sensible thing would be to put it in a vault somewhere. Or maybe not. Even if you had a very good reason to wake the Morrígan, she was dangerous and unpredictable—you’d want to keep the thing that controlled her nearby. The more I thought about it, and from what I’d seen of Percy, he was the kind of guy who’d have it in his front room with a bunch of flowers in it. Like hiding a letter in a letter rack.
I needed a rest and a shower, but before that, I needed a plan. The pack had more than a day’s head start on me. There was no point trying to warn the Council because if they hadn’t noticed a full-scale werewolf attack by now, they were beyond help. So, I made for the Velvet. Julian was pr
obably fine, but I’d feel way better knowing she hadn’t been eaten.
We arrived at Brewer Street at about seven in the morning according to the clock on the dashboard. It was also telling me it was Sunday, which meant I’d lost a whole day in Faerie. Of course, I was expecting the club to be closed, but there was usually someone around, since neither Julian nor Ashriel actually needed to sleep. Except when we arrived, I found the shutters down and a sign on the door saying it was closed for refurbishment until further notice. Things must have been more serious than I thought, and I needed to find someone who could tell me what the hell was going on.
I jumped back in the car and spent the next couple of hours on a whistle-stop tour of common vampire haunts. Aeglica’s old house was completely deserted. I even tried PCM Capital, the Prince of Coins’ financial fortress, and that was in complete lockdown. They were apparently closed for business, but I could just about see the shapes of armed men lurking behind the windows.
It was official: the vampires had gone to ground.
So I went home, left Corin sitting on my sofa looking small, and phoned the office on my landline. I knew I still had one of those for a reason.
“Miss Kane, I have been worried.”
“Sorry, I’ve been in a faery closet and a werewolf dungeon.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Business. What did I miss?”
“I believe the situation has escalated considerably. There have been several more violent incidents since you left, and I am now seeing reports of savage dog attacks. I assume this is in some way linked to your incarceration.”
“The werewolves have stuck their noses in. I think they’ve decided to clean up the city.”
“There have been several high-profile altercations between the various factions which the newspapers are describing as a sudden upsurge in gang-related violence. I believe the situation has, as they say, gone to shit in a shoebox.”
“Has anyone tried to reach me?”
“No, Miss Kane.”
I sighed. Everything I’d done for the last couple of weeks was beginning to look a lot like a waste of time. Even if Henry Percy was behind it all and even if I could find him and even if he had the thing the Morrígan was looking for, that didn’t mean I could get it off him or get it to her or do any of that while the entire supernatural population of the Southeast was at each other’s throats.
It was like that film with the planes in the war. I couldn’t do anything about the mess until I could get through to someone on the Council, but I couldn’t get through to the Council because everything was such a mess.
When in doubt, do the job in front of you.
“Elise,” I said. “I need you to find out everything you can about a vampire wizard named Henry Percy. He’s a smug git, so I think he’s probably one of the ones who hides in plain sight. He’s got a house in Northumberland called Trismegistus Hall, but I need to know where he stays in London.”
“Certainly, Miss Kane. And may I enquire about your activities?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“I was kind of going to have a shower.”
“And after that? I do not mean to be presumptuous, but the events of the last two days have reminded me that it is prudent that we keep one another informed of our whereabouts.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. Things happened kind of fast, and I wasn’t thinking.”
“I understand. But, given your track record, we should plan better for kidnappings.”
“It’s only been twice.”
“Three times, Miss Kane. And in the last three months. I feel that is on the high side of average. And, if you’ll permit me, you have not answered my question.”
I thought for a moment. Whatever was going down, Tara would probably be at the centre of it, but I had no way of finding her, and if I didn’t, she’d probably get herself killed. I needed backup, but there wasn’t any.
Unless... “I’m going to see my ex.”
“Could you narrow it down a little, Miss Kane?”
“I’m going to see Eve.”
I hung up and went to wash off two days of dungeon living. I should probably have been a bit less aggressive about telling Eve to get out of my world because I was going to look pretty silly going back there now and asking for her help. But she did say she was working on a way to track vampires, so maybe she could do werewolves as well.
I was scrubbing the ming out my hair when there was a timid knock on the bathroom door.
“Uh, I’m kind of in the shower,” I called out.
And, of course, Corin crept in anyway.
“Um, I’m in the shower.”
“I’m so sorry, Kate. It’s just you’ve been so kind to me, and I... I haven’t thanked you as I should.”
I’d been thanked by Corin before. It would be a really bad idea to go there again. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“I know, but I want to.” Her fingers gently drew aside the shower curtain. A spray of water droplets glistened on her neck and turned interesting bits of her blouse transparent.
“Look, I’m seeing someone.”
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have. I’m just so very alone.” She perched on the side of the bath, looking distraught and slightly damp. The water gathered on her hair and left silver trails across her collarbones. “Oh, Kate, what’s to become of me?”
She was playing me, and I knew she was playing me, but that never stopped it working. I touched one of her slender, trembling shoulders. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
Her hand came up to cover mine. “I know you will. I don’t deserve you, really I don’t.”
I had to get rid of her. I had to get rid of her right now.
Corin swung round and stepped gracefully into the shower. “I understand,” she whispered, looking all wet and vulnerable, “if you don’t want me in that way anymore.”
I just knew she was going to press herself against me, and she’d be slender and silky and yielding in all the right places, so I grabbed her by the wrists. It didn’t help. She made a little noise, somewhere between a whimper and a sigh, and tilted her face up to mine. Droplets of water shimmered on her parting lips.
I accidentally kissed her.
Well, fuck.
It felt so wrong, it felt so right; I kissed an untrustworthy, manipulative, pathologically deceitful murderess, and I liked it.
I jerked back. “Get the hell out.”
There was no way I was doing this again. It was ending, and it was ending now.
She gazed at me with those big innocent eyes. “Kate, I-I’m so sorry...”
I clambered out of the shower, dragging Corin behind me. She struggled just enough for it to kind of turn me on. You had to hand it to her, she was good at what she did. I pulled her dripping down the hall and into the living room, holding her by one wrist as I rang the police from my landline. It was seeing more use in the last couple of weeks than it had in the last year.
“Kate,” she whimpered, “don’t.”
“I’m not playing this game again. You helped me out and I’m grateful, but you still killed my partner and you’re going down for it.”
She wriggled helplessly. “If you send me back there, I’ll die.”
A voice at the other end of the line asked me what service I required. “Police.”
Corin twisted out of my grip and dived behind my sofa. When she stood up again, she had her bag over her shoulder and a pistol pointed at my heart. “Please don’t do that.” Her voice was trembling, but her hands weren’t.
I very carefully hung up the phone. “Guess I should have searched that bag, huh?”
“I’m sorry, Kate. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I... I never wanted to hurt anybody.”
“You’re pointing a gun at me. You can drop the act.”
<
br /> She looked genuinely confused and slightly hurt. “I don’t know what you mean. I care about you. I’ll always care about you. I just can’t go back to that terrible place. Don’t try to come after me.”
She circled round to the door and backed out of the room. I heard my front door open and close. Chasing after her naked sounded like a good way to get shot and look stupid, so I called the cops again. I was just telling them that a dangerous criminal was leaving my flat when an engine revved outside. I ran to the window, phone in hand, just in time to see Tara’s car speeding away.
That hadn’t gone great, and it had come this close to going really, really badly. Putting aside the fact that I could have been shot, there were no two ways about it: I was a shitty girlfriend. All it took was a pretty face, two days in a dungeon, a daring escape, and an experienced seductress in a see-through blouse, and I was anybody’s.
I’d have to do something special for Julian to make up for it.
Like maybe stopping a five-thousand-year-old vampire from eating her city. That, or flowers.
I squelched back to the bathroom, towelled myself off, and put on a clean suit before ringing Eve from the landline. Fortunately, her number was still on speed dial.
“Kate?”
I took a deep breath. “I need your help.”
Eve may have been an overambitious workaholic who had to be the smartest person in the room, but at least she wasn’t a gloater. “What’s up?”
“You said you could track vampires.”
“I said I was working on a way to track vampires.”
“Look, it’s too complicated to explain over the phone, but everything’s going to hell. I think I can fix it, but I need your resources.”
“You always think you can fix it.”
“We’re still here, aren’t we?”
“Just about. Kaykay, I’ll clear my schedule, but I want in on the action.”
“The action is probably going to be an enormous clusterfuck bloodbath between every vampire in London and every werewolf in the Southeast.”
“Then I definitely want in.”