The Sweet Scent of Blood

Chapter Twenty-Two

Who was Hannah Ashby—or rather, what was she? I swivelled in my chair and stared out the window. Everything about her suggested she was some vampire’s daytime flunky—the current PC title was Business Manager. Maybe I would have believed that, if I hadn’t seen her last night in her fancy-dress get-up. No way would a flunky be caught slumming as a groupie, not when it meant the kiss of death to their cushy elevated status.

Curiouser and curiouser.

A knock interrupted my thoughts and I nudged my pad over the silver invitations. Katie stuck her head round the door and grinned. ‘Hi Genny, thought you might be hungry.’ She bounced into the room, blonde ponytail swinging, and plonked a Rosy Lee butty box on my desk along with a large Styrofoam cup. ‘BLT, bacon extra crispy, tomatoes thinly sliced, iceberg lettuce and tons of mayo.’ She beamed at me. ‘Wholegrain brown. Butter. Everything just how you like it. And orange juice, of course.’

‘Let me guess,’ I grinned, ‘you couldn’t wait to hear about Mr October, right?’

Katie pulled a shock-horror face. ‘Would I be that shallow?’ She dropped a wad of napkins next to the cup.

‘In a heartbeat.’ I pulled the box towards me.

Smirking, Katie kicked off her flip-flops, folded one leg under her and sat. ‘So, did you see him, Gen?’

I nodded as I bit into my sandwich, crunching down on the extra-crispy bacon.

‘What was he like? What did he say? Did he have his leather coat on? Was he really sad? What are the police doing? Was Mr Hinkley okay?’ Katie was almost breathless with excitement.

Holding up my hand for silence, I swallowed. ‘Fine, not much, no, yes, nothing interesting, I think so.’

‘Gennnnny,’ she wailed, ‘c’mon, tell me!’

I licked mayonnaise off my finger. ‘Katie, Mr October’s a vampire. Remember? They are not nice people.’

‘But you are going to help him, aren’t you?’ She leaned on the desk. ‘His dad says he didn’t do it. What if he really didn’t do it? What if the police have got the wrong man? Poor Melissa’s murderer would still be out there, wouldn’t he? And you’d be the only one looking for him. You’ve got to find him.’

Mouth full, I waved my sandwich at her.

She lowered her voice. ‘Did you see the body? Was—’

The door opening interrupted her. Toni came in, notepad in hand. ‘I’ve fixed your phone, Honeybee.’ She placed it on the desk ‘And a job’s come in.’ She grinned as she tore a sheet from her pad. ‘Gremlins at Tower Bridge.’

I groaned. Gremlins would take all afternoon. Still at least they weren’t as bad as pixies. ‘Thanks Toni,’ I mumbled.

Toni leaned forward, her forehead creasing. ‘Is that bacon? You can’t eat bacon—there’s way too much salt in it.’ Her voice went up an octave. ‘What if you have to crack a spell?’ She made a grab for the sandwich.

‘Hey!’ I snatched it out the way. ‘That’s my lunch—a little bit of bacon’s not going to give me any trouble, Toni. I eat it all the time.’

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.