Chapter 4

Four

We stop at the doors to the manor. Phang rings the bell, and the sound leaves both of us cringing. “What?” he asks irritably. “It’s habit.”

“Do you really think anything is alive in there?” I hiss, the hair on the back of my neck rising. I can already feel the ghosts pressing in on me for answers. For absolution. For revenge.

He grabs the door handle, his eyes flapping wide when the door is yanked open from the inside. Phang stumbles over the threshold, into the foyer.

“Are you coming?” He turns to me, snickering when he sees me half the way back down the drive.

“You know I can’t, not until I’m invited, you overgrown hairball.” He lets go of the doorhandle, his fist clenching as he rotates. It’s my turn to snicker. Phang hates any reference to cats. He hates them as much as I adore them. I can’t help it. I’m half witch.

“Ahem,” A throat clears. Phang and I stop arguing, both of us looking down. A creature in a black suit, approximately three feet tall, with white, tufted hair and wrinkles so deep I’m not sure how his rheumy pale blue eyes can see, commands our attention. “Master Fürst, you may enter the premises. Master Gharlick’s study down the hall. Enter the library, then the double doors on the west wall. You won’t find anything, but you are free to look.”

Before he’s finished speaking, I’ve returned. “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” I shake my head, gathering myself as best I can from the shock of finding something, or someone, still breathing on the property.

“I do. But naturally, you may,” the man answers turning around and walking into the house without introducing himself.

“How do you know who we are?” Phang asks, assuming if the small man knows my name, he knows who my partner is. Most of my clients aren’t aware I don’t work alone. Phang prefers to work behind the scenes.

“My employer is descended from the oldest family of Slayer’s on the continent,” he announces, his chest puffing with pride. “It’s my business to know these things.”

My eyes narrow. I should hire this little twerp. He’s good. “You’re remarkedly calm for someone who lived through the mass magical murder of your employer and what,” I blink, trying to erase the carnage as soon as I bring up the memory of what I found under that tent. “Three hundred of his nearest and dearest associates?”

The man continues down the hall, his bowed knees causing him to rock and wobble like a top as he moved. For all his bobbing and weaving atop his stubby height, his speed is remarkable. “My kind are a rare, Mr. Fürst. So rare I doubt even a vampire of your age would recognize one. No matter. What I am is not relevant to your case. Has Ms. Galena been tended too? I heard her screaming. I’m surprised, as much as she hated Mistress Sivvy.”

“Mistress Sivvy?” I inquire.

“Ms. Siobhan Bryne, of course,” he says, as if we’re silly for not knowing exactly who he is referring to.

I choke. “The Bryne’s are a witching family. Pray tell, why would Ms. Bryne be at the family home of a Slayer?”

The ancient mound of manservant tuts, not deigning to even turn his head. “Master Gharlick was not a Slayer. He was a businessman. And Mistress Sivvy was his fiancé.” He finally turns, managing to look down his bulbous nose at me from more than three feet below me. “Did you not get an invitation, Master Fürst?”

Phang and I exchange a loaded glance. “Please excuse me. I’ve got to make a call. I think I’ll make it outside.”

Phang turns to walk back out of the still open door. “As you wish,” the man mutters, waving a hand to the side as if Phang was nothing more than a fruit fly. He continues to march forward, only stopping when the werewolf’s steps faded. Turning to face me, he crosses his arms over his barrel chest. “I know you’re dying to tear this place apart, but you aren’t going to find anything. Ask me your questions, then kindly leave the premises. I must pack. I’ve been summoned…” he trails off, waving his hand again, as if to dismiss his own train of thought. “No matter. Ask Master Fürst, so I can be done with you.”

Rude little twat . “Who inherits Mr. Gharlick’s estate?”

“There’s a trust. Ms. Galena gets the grounds, but both girls will inherit enough money they’ll never want for anything.”

“How did you survive the attack?” I fire quickly.

“Easily,” he parries, lifting a brow.

“What is your name?” I cross my arms, then clench my fists as he smirks.

“If you need to reach me, all correspondence regarding Master Geldhardt Gharlick can be sent to this address.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small notebook with a pencil nub in the wire spine. How odd. I’d think the snobby prick would only write on parchment with a quill pen.

I take a second as he scribbles to consider my next question. He rips off a sheet of paper, stubbing the nubby writing utensil back in the spiral binding of the notebook before folding the sheet and handing it to me. “Why isn’t Galena inheriting your services?”

One look at his face tells me I’ve mortally offended the compact butler. “How dare you!” he snaps, drawing to his full height. The heels of his black patent leather oxfords clack together. “Get out. You are no longer welcome, vampire,” he intones, calling on the old magic.

Like a stage hook, his rescinded invitation triggers my removal. Every cell in my body screams to leave. Like the hairs on the back of a human’s neck, my vampiric instincts drive me out of the not so humble abode of Gebhardt Gharlick. The doors open of their own accord as I stumble out, over the threshold. My feet tangle as I enter the tired gloom of night, tripping into a quickly fading darkness as dawn begins her battle for supremacy.

Fuck. I barely glanced around the house. I really am shit at this private dick gig.

I straighten my shoulders and shove my left hand in my pocket, glancing surreptitiously to the right and then left as I make my way around the side of the house. I stare straight ahead, hating the wet of dew that clings to my skin as random blades of grass from the thick carpet of lawn brush under my wide trouser legs. I command myself to shed the feelings that accompany my failure inside the house and attempt to force my brain to focus on the upcoming task of investigating the carnage in the tent.

My stomach is already turning as the scent of congealing blood clogs my throat. You’re probably asking yourself right about now how it is a vampire is nauseated from the scent of human blood. Isn’t that your primary food source? Isn’t that odd? And you’d be correct. If you asked that question of almost any other vampire. But there are a select few of us, that refuse to ingest human blood. Or at least refuse to use violence or coercion to take our sustenance. That’s what turns my stomach. The stench of terror. Fear thins the blood, infusing it with adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine.

Frankly, those hormones and catecholamines taste like absolute shit. I hate unnecessary violence. I’m fully capable of utilizing force for pleasure and self-defense, but I prefer to walk the path of peace. Why use fists when you ooze charm?

“Dead bodies got your gut?” The odor of wet dog and a carnivorous diet curl under my nose on a wave of body heat. I jump, like a frightened cat, and toss my antiviolence stance out the window. My vampiric speed shakes loose of the ancient magic Gharlick’s manservant invoked as I spin, my arms darting out to knock Phang back a step.

“Maybe. Asshole,” I add sullenly.

“Find anything in the house?” Phang calls the manor a house like casually, as if he were raised in Buckingham Palace instead of a cloistered shifter village.

“Not much,” I answer. I didn’t get a chance to see anything. But I’ll be damned if I’ll admit to Phang it was because I was obsessed with the small creature who answered the door.

“You were obsessed with the Nisse who answered the door, weren’t you? Let me guess, you fired off two or three questions and managed to piss him off before he could answer one and he threw you out of the house.”

One…two… I count, working to tamp down the urge to explode at Phang’s baiting. His lips spread into a smirk. Three…four… one bushy eyebrow glides up his forehead. “Alright! You win. What the hell is a Nisse?”

“That’s not important. Do you want to see what I found? Or should I just fill you in?” He brushes a speck of something off his sleeve, inspecting the leather far longer than necessary. My ire at being read like a billboard fades. Phang knows how much gore affects me. He might tease me for being distracted by a rare oddity, but he’d never poke at me for not wanting to revisit the scene of the crime.

And as much as I’m dying my second death to ask him what in nine hells a Nisse is, the investigation is the priority.

I might not think I saw anything now, but if there was a clue to where Greta Gharlick disappeared to in that foyer, it will come to me.

I was born to be a detective. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty fucking good at. Incredible, with a partner like Phang.

Night is losing her battle. The sun is pulsing just below the horizon, eager to burst upon the scene and fry me to a crisp. “You haven’t refreshed your day walking tattoo, have you?” Phang asks softly. The question is a waste of his lycanthropic logic. We both know I didn’t. Phang sighs. “Let’s go home. You can catch some shut eye while I get busy in the lab.”

“You have cute little canine waiting down there? I thought you said wolves don’t shit where they sleep?” I snort, knowing he knows I know he hates the dog jokes from anyone else, but tolerates them from me. Together we turn and head back towards the long drive. Test tubes clank faintly from inside the messenger bag hanging at his side. “How many samples were you able to get? I wasn’t in the house that long.”

He stops, staring at me as he internally debates how much he wants to say. His expression tells me he’s found enough without running tests to have already have some suspicions. “We need to get you home,” he barks, ignoring my question. The air around him swirls and fractures, and in the next blink of my eyes a giant wolf stands beside me. His clothing is gone. The messenger is strapped around his chest, the bulk of the bag resting on his back. He whines once, and then he’s gone, the force of his leap into a run from a standstill gusting displaced air through my hair.

With one last look back, I follow, shuddering at how the mist clings to the manor, obscuring the once bright building with a shroud of postmortem gray.