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A sense of certainty fills me like a balloon. I can already feel the thrill of success.
“It was you,” I tell Fenway firmly and loudly. “You couldn't resist seducing your succubus niece. When we find the proof I bet you’ll change your story fast. You’ll say it was her, the succubus, who seduced you. Except she was only a child. Only sixteen. How long has it been going on? One year? Two?”
Eliza is staring at her uncle with wide eyes. She gives a whimper. He glances at her and quickly looks away. Eliza makes a sound that is half sob, half wail. She staggers away from her chair, thrusting her uncle’s hand off her shoulder. She moves in a daze towards the Agent, as if he will help her. She cowers next to him.
James Fenway’s fists are clenched. He wants to hit me. I take another step away from him but I keep him pinned in my gaze, determined to extract a confession. “Why did you kill her?” I demand. “Was she finished with you? Did she want to end it? Did she threaten to tell Eliza?”
“You have no proof,” he snarls at me. “No proof!”
Eliza screams. She is hurling herself towards her uncle, her arm raised like she is going to slap him. But she doesn’t slap him. She has something in her hand that looks like a small flashlight. She rams it into his mouth. She presses the button on its base. Its proximity alarm gives a brief warning whine but she doesn’t let go.
It is the stunbommer. Realizing what is about to happen I stagger back in horrified shock. The weapon’s magic ignites. The force of the magical stunbomm blows James Fenway’s skull open. It throws me aside. Seconds later I am still cowering on the ground near the table, my ears ringing from the force of the magic wave. I stare in disbelief at the blood and brain matter spattered over the beautifully patterned floor tiles.
Racing footsteps come our way, and then Storm is standing in the doorway. He looks at the headless dead man. He looks at an unconscious Eliza Fenway, her face and torso spattered in gore, stunbommer still in her hand. He looks at me.
“Holy hellfyre,” he says. “What have you done?”
Chapter 2
DIANA
Two years later I am half-jogging, half-walking to my job at a catering company. Jogging because my cat AngelBeastie had somehow managed to unplug my alarm clock in the middle of the night, making me wake up late. But still half walking because I cannot afford to turn up at work all hot and bothered.
Today’s catering event is for a blue-chip financial company, a premium shift that I’ve been lucky to get, and I cannot be disheveled in front of the clients. My boss already has enough reasons to not like me.
Walking is a bad idea. I knew that before I started out. Head office is halfway across town and the weather forecast had predicted rain today. A thunderstorm. A heavy shower had ceased before I left my apartment, so I’d decided to take my chances. Otherwise I would have had to take the bus, wasting money I can ill afford.
Of the two jobs I currently have, this is by far the better paying one. I need to look good because the tips are worth more than the wages.
My second job is evening work at a local restaurant. It has the benefit of being near my apartment, but the pay is minimal, the tips non-existent, and the greasy food they serve leaves my hair and skin and clothes smelling of fat. But at least Luca, the boss, is kind. I’ve learned a kind boss makes up for many other evils.
The earlier rainstorm has left deep puddles in the sidewalks and on the pavements. I tread carefully, keen to avoid getting my one pair of shiny black shoes full of water. It is the morning rush hour on a Friday, and I am not the only one in a hurry to get to work. The London crowd is bustling and unpredictable. I weave and dodge through it, an expert at navigating it by now.
The appearance of a sudden hefty torso, man attached, emerging from an alleyway catches me off guard. It sends me swerving sharply towards the road. A big red bus rushes past, sending a giant swoosh of water up from a puddle.
I screech in quiet dismay as the grimy water drenches my pristine and crisply ironed white blouse. I stare down at my chest in disbelief. What the hell am I going to do now?
I stomp grimly onwards, my mood completely ruined. And it hadn’t been that great to begin with. If I were anyone else, any normal person, I could have afforded to go into a store and buy a new shirt. I could have afforded to replace my bicycle when it got stolen.
But I am not a normal person. I’m the Angel of Death apparently, though no one would know it to look at me. Heck, I wouldn’t know it if the little voice in my head didn’t keep insisting it. My adoptive family didn't know it either, but they’d still kept me locked away. I’d had no work experience to speak of, and I suspect that it only my blond fragile looks landed me my jobs.
The bundle of money that Magda, my biological mother, had given me two years ago is tied up paying the deposit on my crappy rental apartment. An apartment that I could only afford back when I was supposed to get a decent salary from the Agency of Otherkind Investigations. A job I no longer have. Since then I’ve been subsisting on whatever cash I’ve earned from week to week.
London is not cheap. My shifts this week are barely enough to cover my rent. I had to beg for a couple of them, including today’s one. Forget about food. These past couple of months I’ve been eating leftovers at work and making the rest up with the tinned fish and lentils I’ve scavenged from local stores.
It doesn’t help that I am hungry all the goddamn time. It’s like my adolescent years of starvation at the Coltons’ have finally started to catch up with me at age twenty-three. Worse, I’ve burnt myself on the grill twice at work this month. Both times at my catering job. Both times because Rosalie, my fellow catering waitress, was carrying a large tray into the kitchen and claimed to have not seen me.
I had to hide the burns and pretend they weren’t there. How else would I explain it when they magically healed overnight? A healing process that left me famished.
My hand goes to my navel, my fingers feeling for the hardness of my navelstone. The moment I feel it my fingers drop away. I don’t know why I do that. Touch it, I mean.
I’
ve spent what feels like a lifetime trying not to touch it, trying not to even see it. The stone, which is fused into my flesh, is shiny black and sharp edged like a grotesque gem. I had always hated it. It marked me out as an oddity. It had made Mrs Colton think of me as an obscene devil child.
I had been healing in my sleep for years. I had never realized until recently that it was my hated navelstone that was responsible. Godstone, Magda had called it, but the letter she left me before being murdered had given me no useful information at all. It had warned me only that evil people would try to steal the power of the stone, and that I must remain anonymous to protect myself. It had warned me that DCK, the Devil Claw Killer himself, was after me.
It almost makes me laugh as I trudge through the crowded streets, chilled through with grimy rainwater. Magda had been so sure I was special. What would she say if she could see me now? Perhaps she’d think I’d been clever. Nothing makes a girl more anonymous than the ignominy of poverty.
