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She looked astonished for the briefest moment, and I was not sure whether this was because I had guessed what she was or because I had so abruptly stopped my game-playing. She let out a shout of delighted laughter. It was a gorgeous and delicious sound, as if she had cultivated it over the decades. It turned out that her name was Marielle Zamas, and that she was a happily-married law-abiding vampire who, as much as she loved her husband, was sick of staying in her nest under the thumb of her mother-in-law all the time.
“She’s such a drag,” she moaned. “And like you said, a girl has got to live a little.”
Her turning out not to be a big bad vampire was both annoying and a relief. A relief because now I wouldn’t have to consider killing her for being illegally out on the hunt, and annoying because it looked like she was not going to be able to point me in Zezi’s direction either.
“Have you been coming here long?” I asked.
“Oh years,” she said airily. “Half of the clientele are otherkind. They really don’t mind a vampire or two. They even serve my margaritas the way I like them.” She gestured at her glass of deep red stuff and I realized for the first time exactly what was in there. I grimaced and she giggled.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to discriminate against your food or anything.” I might not be too impressed with the blood drinking apart, but it was better that she was drinking her blood out of a glass than from anywhere else.
“So if you’ve been coming here for a couple of years, I wonder if you’ve seen this girl?” I took the photo of Zezi Shahidi out of my pocket and slid it across the smooth wooden bar top towards Marielle.
It was a small passport photo, creased up from being handled over the years. Zezi’s mother had not kept anything else. When Zezi had first gone missing two years ago, her rather strict mom had been furious, convinced that Zezi had run off to live with her new and tawdry friends. Feeling abandoned and rejected, Mrs Shahidi she had confessed that she’d dumped all of Zezi’s things in a pile in the garden and set it on fire. To teach Zezi a lesson, she had said.
A couple of weeks later when it had become clear that her daughter was not staying with any of her friends, and certainly had not gone anywhere of her
own free will, her mom had been horrified and distraught. Not only had she let two weeks pass without calling the police, she had burned up all the evidence than might have pointed to whatever had happened to her daughter. Zezi had never been found and her mother had never forgiven herself. When I had visited her recently, her pain had been raw and difficult for me to be around. It had been like a crashing tumult of fierce waves thundering and tearing at me and leaving me feeling flayed. It had even managed to temporarily flip my sunshiny mood upside down.
Back then the police had forwarded Zezi’s case to the Agency of Otherkind investigations - where I was currently consulting on a part-time basis - because Zezi’s mother had insisted Zezi had involved herself with otherkind. Goblins apparently. There had been no evidence of this so the Agency had rejected the case as being outside of their jurisdiction, and the police had not been interested in pursuing a girl who her own mother had initially thought had run away. Especially as the girl had been eighteen already. And so poor Zezi had been consigned to the pile of missing people that nobody had any time to look for, not even her mom who was run ragged raising her other three rambunctious children. Zezi had been the eldest. She used to help look after her troublesome teen brothers and her baby sister while their widowed mom was working two jobs. Zezi’s disappearance had practically destroyed their already struggling family.
For me Zezi’s case file had hummed against my psychic radar so loudly that it had drowned out nearly everything else in the stack of cold cases that my boss Agent Storm had assigned to me to review. The humming had been like a haunting music singing to my subconscious. Not actual music, but that didn't stop me from almost hearing it. Find Zezi, it said. Find her. Find her. Find her. Don’t you dare let her go. Despite the fact that I was also interested in one of the other cases in the pile, this one grabbed hold of me like a limpet.
It was typical that even my new and improved psychic senses still gave me nothing more useful than an insistent feeling that I must find Zezi. But one thing was for sure - if my senses wanted me to find Zezi, even without bothering to tell me if see was dead or alive, then it must mean that what had happened to her was important. I had chosen to believe for now that she was alive.
Marielle had picked up the little photograph of Zezi and was staring at it curiously. The lighting in the photo was crap and did not show Zezi with her gleaming glossy espresso complexion to her best advantage. Even so, it was hard to miss Zezi’s bright curious eyes and her mischievous smile and those mirrored dimples in each cheek.
“Pretty girl,” said Marielle. Then she grimaced. “Which isn’t a good thing in this case, I suppose. It’s a dangerous world out there. You said it’s been two years. Are you sure it’s worth your while to be looking for her?”
“I hope so. Does she ring any bells?”
Marielle shook her head. “I can’t say I remember seeing her. But I can ask around if you like?”
“That would be great. Her name was… is Zezi Shahidi.”
Marielle nodded. She took my number so that she could call me. I left the bar shortly afterwards, knowing that I wouldn’t be making any more progress tonight. I was feeling pretty good though. I felt bad for Zezi, but wasn’t she lucky she had me? Because unlike the others, I intended to find her. Sunshiny optimism be damned. It might be false, but I was real and I was darn good at my job.
It was a fine clear night, and I decided to walk a couple of blocks and enjoy it. I clicked along in my silly heels and hummed along to the psychic background almost-music in my head, which was currently melodious and befitting of London in summer. Both the music and the night were marvelous and warm and delightful. This was how I had thought being here would feel back when I had first come to England, having escaped my trapped and awful existence in America. I had thought that I would finally feel free, and that life would be full of possibility. But I had still felt trapped and so often angry and full of doubt. That was until Theo’s magic had set me free.
And set the killer in me free too. Oh yeah.
Humming to my music, I danced a couple of steps as I walked, not caring who was watching until one passerby whistled lewdly. I stopped to glower at him and bared my teeth to show him that I was a beastling, not some sweetie pie for him to pick on. There must have been something scary in the look in my eyes because he got the message and hurried off quickly. Or maybe he just thought I was too crazy to be worth his time. I could never be sure of what people saw when they looked at me.
I resumed my strutting and humming until suddenly the music of the world turned into a crashing walloping crescendo. It rose up out from nowhere, bringing me to an astonished standstill. What the heck was that? It seemed to be coming from some way up the main street in the direction I had already been heading towards. Feeling excited, I quickened my pace, following it. Maybe this was the clue I had been hoping for. I trotted down a narrow side street and the music led me to the entrance of a much less classy bar than the one I had been in earlier.
I went inside and down a darkened stairwell, arriving in a fume-infested pit of a room where people clearly didn’t care that smoking indoors was against the law. There my eyes took in a scene that was the last thing I expected to see.
One guy, clearly out of his mind, was squaring up to fight a bunch of eleven beefy dangerous-looking folk. That one guy was Special Agent Constantine Storm. My very dishy boss.
Chapter 2
DIANA
Although this smoky bar was the last place I would have expected to see him, I recognized Storm immediately. That sable-black head of hair was wonderfully tousled right now, and I was intimately familiar with the way he his tall and muscular body moved, having spied often enough on him prowling around the office with the leonine grace of a predator. He still had it now even though he was currently stumbling around in a way I had never seen before.
I scowled, wondering if someone had hit him with a stunning spell, but no one in the crowd was looking smugly mage-like. I realized the simplest explanation was the right one. He was drunk. And about to get walloped by eleven angry guys. Half angelus or not, in his current inebriated state that was going to do some damage.
“Darling!” I screeched loudly, so that everyone within earshot winced. “Darling! Honey-boo!” I continued, as I raced across the bar and flung myself bodily at storm.
