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Theo’s thoughts about dhampirs gave me much food for thought as I made my way home. I stalked down to Oxford Street tube station and made my way onto a central line train, finding it packed at the tail end of the commuters’ rush hour. A heap of shoppers jostled me to get onto the packed train when it arrived and I jostled back.
Once inside it was impossible to get a seat so I didn’t even try for one. Instead I stood smack back in the middle of the train, my body sideways to the direction of travel and played a balancing game, testing how long I could stay upright. The other commuters clung to the handrails for dear life as the train jostled and sped to the next stop.
I was so busy with my thoughts that I had to keep a careful eye out for my stop. I wondered if the Ronins been unable to kill off the dhampir Steffane Ronin and had conspired to put him in prison instead. What did that say about him if he was a vampire that even other vampires were afraid of? Did I really want to set him free?
The truth was no. If he was that dangerous then he belonged in prison even if he was innocent of the crime that landed him in there. But that was leaping to a conclusion instead of doing my job of investigating, which was exactly what I planned to do. Steffane Ronin was the only one who could give me what I wanted. Devil Claw. So I had to hope that he really was innocent.
Several hours later, back at my apartment in Notting Hill, I ended my third attempt to brew the truth serum. I’d botched it again. It had not turned into the colorless liquid that the spell book told me to expect, but into a gloopy gelatinous mess. And I had now run out of the ingredients Theo had given me. Sighing, I swept all of the empty little bottles and tubes off my small table and straight into the bin.
AngelBeastie had been hovering in the vicinity of my ankles for the past hour. I scooped her up and settled with her and my laptop on my bed. If I was going to have to wing it, I had better know what to expect. I fell asleep googling vampires.
In the morning I woke up feeling eager to go and pay my visit to the Ronin’s. But I knew there was little point going until evening. The vampires would be fast asleep at this hour. Going into Agency Headquarters was the last thing I felt like doing. I really didn’t want to have to see Storm again today because I was sure he would be able to sense that I had no intention of listening to him about staying away from the Ronins. Storm was able to read me like that.
As soon as I had decided not to go into the office, I felt miserable. Or as mildly miserable as my buoyant mood would allow me to feel. I looked forward to Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays because they were the days of the week that I got to see Storm. For months now I’d been fighting my feelings for him, and working in the same office as him these past three weeks had only made my feelings stronger.
Deciding to not go into the office today meant that I would not see Storm. I wouldn’t be able to loiter aro
und the coffee machines during my breaks and take peeks into his glass tank of an office. The days when he was out in the field only made my desire to see him grow greater.
All of last week had been a drag knowing that he was not in the office and that I wouldn’t see him and not knowing what was keeping him away. If I don’t go in today, then I might miss my chance to find out. Not that I thought he would tell anyone his private business.
If only he would, then maybe he would stop being such an attractive mystery. I’d realize that he was just Joe average. Any other guy. Just one who happened to be exceptionally tall and muscular and handsome, with those intensely deep and penetrating dark eyes that felt like they were looking right into my soul every time they looked at me.
I groaned. Down girl. There was no use obsessing about a man who, if he had had any interest in me whatsoever, certainly wouldn’t have scarpered out of my bedroom so fast the other morning. How much more of a hint did a girl need before she would lose interest in a guy?
It was times like these that I wished that I actually had closer female friendships; people that I could talk to about this kind of thing, and maybe hatch a plot to figure out if Storm did secretly like me or not. I debated whether that to call Aisling or Deepika and ask to meet them for a drink this evening. But they would probably be working a shift at Luca’s in the evening, and I had to go and visit the Ronin nest. And what was I going to say to them anyway? Hey ladies, I haven’t bothered to come and see you or call you in three weeks or take any interest in your lives, but now I really want talk about a crush that I’ve got on my boss and I was hoping you could help me out? I’d sound utterly selfish.
I resorted to letting myself slip into a little daydream about all of the delicious ways that Storm being in my bed the other night could have turned out. It would have been so intense, but the most amazing part would have been him holding me in his arms afterwards. That’s what I really longed for. To be held and cherished and be told that everything was going to be all right. That I was all right just as I was. And I wanted to hold him, to make him feel safe too, to tell him that whatever was bothering him would work out just fine. That I would magically make it so somehow.
When I glanced at the clock on my phone again, I cursed and leapt immediately out of bed. Dammit! It was 10:00 am already. I guess that made up my mind for me. I was not going to do the walk of shame into the office late again. I sent Storm a text message telling him that I was going to be out on the field this morning trying to track down Finch Greyiron, the goblin, who I hoped knew something that would lead me to Zezi.
Storm replied saying he wanted me to check in with him at the end of the day.
Sure, I typed. I’ll update you on anything I find.
I knew that what he’d meant was that he wanted me to come into the office to see him so that he could keep an eye on me, but what I meant was that I would just send him a text message when I was done to tell him whether I’d progressed any further towards finding Zezi. Or who killed her.
I hummed to myself as I took a shower and then fed AngelBeastie and myself. It was a darned good job that I was in a mostly weird good mood these days, otherwise I’d probably be feeling a bit lonely and miserable right now. I liked my solitude but sometimes I got scared it might be forever. It would have been nice to be enjoying my breakfast with someone for company. Even if that someone was just a friend. Why was it so difficult for me to make friends? Probably because I didn’t bother to put much effort into it.
AngelBeastie was perched on the chair beside me looking at me as if she could read my mind. The look on her face said, ‘who needs friends when you’ve got me?’ I giggled and tickled her under her chin.
“Thank goodness for you Beastie, otherwise I’d be withering away by myself in here.”
I let myself out of my apartment and Beastie followed me down the stairs to the ground floor of my building. I’d wasn’t allowed to keep pets, and I used to sneak Beastie down inside my satchel for fear that my landlady would find out. But such fears no longer plagued me. Let her try to evict me if she dared.
The hunt for Finch Greyiron turned out to be far more frustrating than I had expected, almost as if the guy was avoiding me on purpose, which did not bode well for him. As a student in his third year at University College London, I had already tracked down the halls of residence where he lived yesterday. But when I turned up there, his dorm neighbor, a ginger-haired pink-faced guy who was yawning widely as if I had woken him up from sleep, told me that I must have just missed him. He could have sworn he’d heard finch moving around next door just a moment ago but now was nowhere to be found.
I refused to let the guy get back to his bed until he had shown me a picture of what Finch looked like. The guy scrolled through his phone until he found a photo, which he forwarded to me. I hadn’t been able to decide whether Finch would be unattractive, as stereotypes said goblins usually were, or whether he’d be a handsome hunky fella given the ardent dedication and longing with which Zezi had addressed her diary letters to him. Finch Greyiron was neither. His photo showed just an average, skinny, brown-haired kid that nobody would look at twice.
The neighbor had already told me yesterday that Finch was a quiet ordinary guy who kept himself to himself, so I didn’t waste time questioning him again. The psychic music coming from the guy wasn’t exactly interesting, and I had no reason to believe that he was hiding anything from me.
The guy was able to tell me that Finch took his lectures in the building directly opposite the halls of residence where he was studying for a degree in biological sciences. The guy did not have a copy of Finch’s class schedule, but that wasn’t too hard to find after some asking around in the building and the library opposite. I managed to find out a few of the lectures that Finch was supposed to be in, and where he tended to hang out with his friends during breaks, so that was where I headed.
But everywhere I went people told me that he had only just been there and now he was gone. I must’ve just missed him. I begin to feel like this Finch guy must know that I was after him, and that he was leading me on a merry dance on purpose. When I got hold of him I intended to teach him a thing or two about manners.
All I had wanted was for him to tell me about Zezi, but now I was beginning to think that he was involved. Heck, maybe I’d flash my Agency identity card at him and force him to go into Agency Headquarters with me for questioning in a cold and ominous interview room. That would serve him right, having to explain to all his friends why law enforcement wanted him for questioning. It seemed to me that nobody knew he was a goblin, and so far I had done him the courtesy of keeping that quiet.
By mid-afternoon I was sick and tired of the wild goose chase. I headed back to Finch’s dormitory room and I left him a hand written message taped to his door telling him in no uncertain terms that I expected him to call me or I would make things official. I decided to take a break and headed to a nearby cafe to grab a panini and some coffee, and to read Zezi’s diary more thoroughly.
