Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

Brenda’s in deep donkey poo and I still don’t want to be a detective.

T o say Brenda was a hot damn mess, her eyes wide and her body shaking like a Yorkshire Terrier on ice, was an understatement. Dressed like she was going to dinner—with her stacked bracelets and shiny earrings—instead of on the lam from the law, she still looked terrified.

And with good reason, if the online news reports (the human ones) I’d read about her were true.

She was wanted as a person of interest for questioning, by both the paranormal council and the human authorities. The council had sent out an email alert to all of us about her.

The council doesn’t like when you kill people. It kinda blows our cover if you’re convicted and you get a life sentence from a human judge.

When you’re immortal, serving life has a whole new meaning that can’t be explained to a human prison warden. Not to mention, escaping a human jail would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

The clan council would wanna wrap this up, and fast. As in, they’d take her out if it meant avoiding our exposure to the human world, and her name all over the news as a person of interest was def an issue.

Sure. We live amongst humans, but the risk of exposure is real and, if found out, could mean we end up in some damn science experiment. The various councils would go to extremes to keep us protected.

And if the human po-po was after Brenda, too, things could get hinky—quick.

But at least she wasn’t crying about how she couldn’t believe she’d been turned into a paranormal. In our other line of work with OOPS, there’s a lot of crying, and proving the supernatural really do exist by lifting cars over our heads while Marty shifts into a snarling werewolf and makes a damn mess all over the floor with all her hair, with Wanda right behind her, shedding like a Malamute.

It’s exhausting proving you’re not somethin’ straight out of a Spielberg movie to a human who’s scared shitless.

But murder, and not just the human law, but the council hot on her heels, too?

We were gonna have to tread lightly in our world—eggshell light.

As Marty and Wanda got her settled in a chair and had Archibald, our manservant (I’ll explain him later) bring her some tea, Bertrand swooped in on the poor woman, his camera pointed in her face during probably one of the worst moments of her life.

I gave him a nudge with my elbow (a light one, swear) as I leaned up against Marty’s desk, setting my hip on the edge of the surface. “Dude, back off. Can’t you see she’s freaked out? Learn to read the room, buddy. Also, she’s probably not gonna want this on film. Camera off, and delete whatever you’ve got on the client, um, please .”

Bertrand instantly backed away, pushing his curly mop of auburn hair from his face. “Sorry,” he muttered, scurrying to the corner of the basement.

As Arch brought in some tea, Brenda shook her head, her blue eyes tired when she acknowledged him. “None for me, thanks,” she whispered, barely glancing at him.

Arch, once a vampire turned human, recently turned cute blue troll, but most of all loyal family member, gave a curt nod. “Of course.”

I sniffed the air around Brenda. I didn’t only smell fear and desperation mixed in with a heavy spritz of Charlie. I smelled her essence .

“Vampire?” She hadn’t specified in her email.

I should have smelled that when she’d first waltzed in; meaning, her fear had overridden everything else about her.

Brenda nodded, twisting her pale fingers together. “Yes. A vampire who’s in a lot of trouble.” She paused for a moment, her eyes, artfully made up, going wide. “I’m begging you, please, please help me. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

Marty gave her the Marty smile—the one that said everything was going to be all right, now that she was on the scene. “First, we don’t want your money. We will ask that you make a donation to an animal shelter or a children’s hospital, in accordance with your financial situation. Second, hi, Brenda. I’m Marty Flaherty—a werewolf, if it matters. How about you tell us what’s happening first. Your email was exceptionally vague.”

“I can help with that,” I offered. “Brenda’s in deep shit for allegedly killing one Owen Barker, who she thought was her online boyfriend, but turns out to be a married guy with a coupla kids.”

Brenda’s shoulders began to quake as she let out a keening wail of despair. She pushed her artfully styled, chin-length hair from her face. “I didn’t know! I swear, I didn’t know about any of it! He said he was single and didn’t have any children. I can show you the emails!”

Wanda patted her hand and gave her a sympathetic smile. Wanda’s the comforting bosom you rest your head on when the world becomes too much. Not my head, mind you. I don’t need her bosoms, but if you need a compassionate ear (and some bosoms), she’s your girl.

“I’m Wanda Jefferson, Brenda,” she offered, her eyes soft. “Please, take a minute to gather your thoughts. We’re going to have a lot of questions for you. There’s no rush.”

“The hell there isn’t a rush. Brenda’s in deep poo…” I mumbled, but no one was listening.

While they doled out tea and sympathy, I decided to do some poking around online where Brenda was concerned. As paranormals, we have all the same social media platforms humans do, buried deep on the web by some gargoyle tech guru so only the supernatural have access. We have human profiles, too, to keep our covers and blend in the human world.

If Brenda’s Facebook page was accurate, she was a sixty-two-year-old (in human years) vampire (turned over one hundred and sixty years ago), single, had an iguana named Doug and two dogs named Peppermint Patty and Linus. She loved needlepoint—there were plenty of pictures of her creations to prove it—swimming, astronomy, and ’70s music.

Damn. She’d been turned at a time when vampires were the new Salem witches. People had gone from creating hysteria about witches and moved on to a fear of vampires in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

I had a tapestry depicting some of that mad-cow shit that went on back then and the battles that ensued, but Martha Stewart one and two had decided it was too gory for clients to see, so they’d taken them down—as if a good history lesson didn’t cure what ailed ya.

Anyway, she wasn’t on Insta or TikTok, so the deets about her were slim, but it was enough to give me some insight into who Brenda was.

Brenda was lonely. Cripplingly lonely. Even though her relationship status said “complicated”.

That she’d been accused of killing some guy she’d met on an online dating site wasn’t a surprise after scrolling her Facebook page. Her memes were all about clicking like if you (fill in the blank). Name any insecurity, and she had it. Her page screamed needy.

But if I’m being fair, when you’ve been hangin’ around as long as Brenda has, outlived almost everyone around you, who wouldn’t be needy? I don’t know what the hell I’d do if my mate and kids weren’t immortal, too, not to mention my two kooky friends and their families.

Scrolling Brenda’s friends list, I noted she didn’t lack for ’em. She had a shit ton, but just like human Facebook, were these people her friends -friends, or just some online acquaintances you’re forced to label friends?

I didn’t see any family members, which could mean Brenda’s family was long gone. She was also on a zillion paranormal dating sites. E-Mortal.Com, to name one.

I set my phone down and settled into my office chair, ready to ask the harder questions my friends would only tiptoe around. When I glanced up, Brenda looked like she’d mostly gotten her shizz together enough to tell us the deets about what happened.

“So, you’re in deep shit with the law, Brenda. How’d that happen?”

“Nina!” Marty yelped, slapping her hand against the surface of her desk. “Could you use some tact here, please?”

See? Tiptoe. Tiptoe…

I rolled my eyes at her. “Piss on tact, Marty. She’s got the cops breathing down her neck, both human and fucking otherwise. You got the email alert just like I did. We’re harboring a potential fugitive. I don’t know about pack law, but clan law says they’ll have our damn heads if they find even a whiff of her here. We have to move fast.”

Brenda shook her stylishly coiffed blonde head, clenching her ringed fingers together into a fist. “It’s times like this when I wish I could still cry. I didn’t do anything wrong! I never even met him. How can I be a person of interest if I never met the man in person?”

“Well, he’s kinda dead. So somebody met him,” I pointed out. “Any thoughts about why they think you did this and who’d wanna whack him? Especially this way?” I held up the newspaper article on my phone about Owen’s death.

Someone had strangled him. There were few details about the actual crime, and no explanation as to why Brenda was a person of interest, but that was bound to be the case. The human cops were playing this close to their vest, not leaking any more intel than they had to in order to keep the killer out of the loop.

I’ve watched some Rizzoli & Isles . I know how this shit goes down.

Brenda buried her head in her hands with a cringe, her rounded shoulders shaking. “I’m sure it didn’t take the police long to find his fake account and connect it with mine. We shared a lot of private messages on Facebook. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

Marty wrote that bit of info down while Brenda continued.

“Still, I can’t believe anyone would think I killed Owen. I loved him. He reminded me so much of…” She looked wistfully over my shoulder before she said, “Anyway, that much was obvious from our private messages. I know it sounds silly, falling in love with someone over the Internet, but I did love him.”

“Even though you never met the dude. Who’s married and has kids…” I reminded her.

“Nina!” Marty hissed. “It happens all the time. You’ve watched 90 Day Fiancé with me. You know how it works.”

“I know that shit doesn’t work. Name one couple still married on that fiasco of a dumbass show,” I dared her.

Wanda cleared her throat and gave us both her famously stern Sister Lucretia from St. Ignacious of the Hills warning look to shut up, before she turned to Brenda. “Let’s start at the beginning,” she soothed. “How did you meet Owen? Who’s a human , FYI.”

Aw, hell. Owen was a human? That shit would not go over well with the clan. But of course he was a human. I felt like a dipshit for not realizing that. Had Owen been a vamp, the clan would have swooped in and erased everyone’s memories before the human police could blink. Then they’d mete out justice the clan way.

Licking her dry lips, Brenda looked at Wanda, her blue eyes intense. “I met him on a dating site.”

I cocked my head. “A human dating site? He wasn’t on a paranormal one, was he?” Every once in a while, a human found our sites and it turned into DEFCON.

She shook her head, like maybe she was ashamed of dating outside her species. “No. He wasn’t. Judge if you will, but you ladies must know the dating pool in our world is pretty limited. Most who’ve been turned like I was are stuck in the ways of the past or have already mated. I may have been around for well over a hundred years, but I’ve progressed with the times. Who wants to date a vampire who still believes anyone other than another vampire is our enemy? This is 2024, not 1824.”

“So the dating pool got slim and you decided to human dip?” I asked.

Wanda sighed loud enough to let me know she disapproved, smoothing the hairs on her updo that were almost never out of place. “Nina, please. Can we skip the part where you ask questions that do nothing but make us all uncomfortable?”

In turn, I made a face right back at her. The same face I always made when she said I was being too whatever I was being too much or too little of. “I’m just asking the questions that need asking.”

Brenda stared at me, her eyes wide, her painted-on eyebrow somewhere up in her hairline. “To answer your question, Miss Statleon, yes. Yes , I was tired of the same old, same old. So I joined a human dating site to see if I could shake things up a little.”

“Mission accomplished. Bravo.” I tipped an imaginary hat at her.

This time, Wanda threw a pad of sticky notes at me. A pink one, of course.

Marty gnawed at the tip of her pen, crossing her legs and leaning back in her chair. “You weren’t worried about having to tell someone you’re a vampire if things got serious?”

Brenda rubbed her weary eyes, her shoulders dropping beneath her fur-trimmed cape. “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. It was stupid—impulsive. I know that now. I was just thinking about how handsome he was and…”

“And about your downtown bits,” I grumbled.

“Nina!” both Marty and Wanda cried, matching looks of displeasure on their faces.

But Brenda actually laughed, though it was cold and full of irony. “She’s right, you know. I’ve been alone now for almost fifty years. That’s a long time without some kind of?—”

I held up a hand to thwart the inevitable images her words would create. “We get it. So, you found this guy Owen on a dating site. Did he contact you or the other way around?”

Her gaze got all wistful and sad. “He contacted me. I was as surprised as anyone. I mean, look at him.” She dug her phone from her purse and scrolled until she held it up for us to see. “I’m not exactly the hunchback of Notre Dame, but I’m not a supermodel either.”

Owen was a looker, for sure. Tall, dark, and lean, with long legs, and a chiseled jaw covered in a neatly trimmed beard. There was no filter on his pic, no photoshopping. He really was that good-looking. My eyes were not appalled by the sight of him.

And easily thirty years younger than Brenda.

Shit.

So, we had a lonely woman, hungry for attention and obviously frickin’ flattered by this young buck who’d contacted her first.

Classic romance catfish scam.

That she’d fallen for it said Brenda wasn’t as progressive as she thought. Forget her age, who isn’t skeptical when a guy thirty years your junior in human years cozies up to a sixty-two-year-old?

Now, before everyone gets all janky, I’m sure there are lots of successful May-December romances. I’m just sayin’, there are probably more unsuccessful ones.

“How long had you been communicating with Owen?” Marty asked.

Brenda licked her crimson lips as she set her phone on Wanda’s desk. “I guess it was about six months, all told. At first it was just off and on, and then the last three months it was more frequent. We talked about anything and everything. He understood me. He loved a lot of the same things I do. Movies, books… I just can’t believe…”

Tapping my finger on my desk to reroute her from another bout of disbelief, I asked the obvious. “Did ya ever ask to meet him? See him in the flesh?”

Now she really looked upset. She knew she’d been played for a damn fool, and when somebody started fishing around, asking all the questions you wouldn’t ask yourself because you were high on love, the reality begins to sink in, I suppose.

And before anyone says I’m an insensitive cur (see Wanda), I felt bad for this lady. Now that her fear had settled, she smelled like a nice woman who’d been caught up in her loneliness. I get it. I’m not such a shit that I don’t sympathize, but if we were gonna keep her lonely butt from the clan and certain death, we had to get to the point.

Brenda was hearing all her doubts out loud. It showed in her posture and the sad look on her face. “I did ask, but?—”

“He was working in some remote place in the world and couldn’t get away, right?” Marty asked gently, sighing with understanding sadness.

Her cheeks puffed outward, her eyes looking down at her shiny red heels. “Yes. I…I know how that sounds, too, but I was just so caught up in the whole thing, I accepted his explanations whenever I asked. They all sounded so…so plausible.”

“Did he bilk you outta any money?” That felt like it would be a given, but Brenda surprised me when she shook her head.

“Not a red cent. Not a penny. He never asked for anything.”

Huh. Interesting. So what was the end game if not cash?

Wanda gripped her hand. “What did Owen say he did for a living that made him so unavailable to you, Brenda?”

Her snort was derisive and bitter as she tucked her purse close to her chest. “He said he was a geologist and that he traveled often to digs in far-off places. He knew so much about the subject, I never once doubted him.”

Narrowing my eyes as I looked at his picture on her phone, I asked, “You do know you were catfished, right? Somebody stole his profile particulars, did a little research and pretended to be him on this dating site.”

Brenda rolled her eyes at me, sitting up straight. If she still had breath in her, she’d sigh in exasperation. “Of course I know that now . I watched some YouTube videos about catfishing—of which there are plenty, if you wondered. I understand how it works. I know I was lucky that he didn’t ask for money. I also know I was an idiot. But now I’m an idiot wanted by the law, and you know what will happen if the clan gets hold of me. A mere whiff of this kind of sticky involvement with a dead human is enough to have me in deep trouble with them.”

When we sat silent, absorbing her words, she squeezed her temples.

“Look, ladies, I’m not a bad person. I work hard at various charities until things start looking suspicious because I don’t age. Then I move on to the next one. I volunteer at libraries for story hour. I volunteer at homeless shelters. I donate. I…I’m trying to fill my life up with things that have meaning and are of service. I was just…”

Lonely.

I hated how miserable she looked, so I reached out and patted her hand. “You don’t have to say anything else, Brenda, but we kinda need to get into the particulars here. So send me all the shit you guys sent each other. Emails, texts, any and all correspondence between you two, and we’ll get started.”

Both Marty and Wanda looked at me with wide eyes, and they didn’t have to say a word. I knew exactly what they were thinking—because we’re BFFs like that.

“What? Too sensitive? Not squishy enough? Jesus, you two. Pick a frickin’ lane.”