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A knock at the door interrupted a world-class belly rub, and I got the evil cat death stare from hell when I put her back on the floor. If anyone doubts me when I say cats are demons, they’ve never owned one. I avoided her retribution by stepping over her and pulling the door open.
She got one look at my visitor and vanished under the loveseat with a hiss.
“What did I ever do to her?” Holden asked.
“Beats me. I can’t even blame it on you being a vampire. She loves Brigit. ”
“I bet she likes your pet dog, too, so there’s no accounting for taste. ”
I wrinkled my nose at him but stepped aside so he could enter the apartment.
“Speaking of dogs,” he continued. “Where is yours?”
“Desmond is working late. ” I shut the door behind him, and we stood close together in the front entrance.
Holden was busy assessing the new décor of my living room. “Dear God. FAO Schwarz’s window display has exploded in your apartment. ”
I held back a laugh because his reaction was so similar to my own. Instead I chided him. “Don’t be such a Grinch. ”
He gave me a quizzical look. I was always astonished at how a two-hundred-year-old vampire could be so out of the loop on pop-culture references. The Grinch wasn’t even modern pop culture.
“A Scrooge,” I said, finding something more his century.
“Ah. ”
“Thanks for coming so fast. It’s not like you to actually check your voicemail. ”
“What can I say? I’m at your beck and call now. ”
“Jump,” I said with a smirk.
“What?”
“You’re supposed to say how high?”
Holden didn’t look amused. He buried his hands in his coat pockets and stared at me. Ever since I’d saved his life, his moods shifted from teasingly cheerful to downright sullen at the drop of a hat. I was used to the brooding side of Holden. It was the turn towards the manic that tended to throw me. Could vampires be bipolar?
“You said you needed me for something. ”
“I’m going hunting. ”
“Secret…”
“As long as I have someone from the council with me, Sig can’t complain about it. And I’m not hunting vampires. ”
“What are you…we hunting?”
I told him about my meeting at the police station and the details Cedes and Tyler had provided me about the murders. Holden was as stony as ever, but he didn’t interrupt me at all, which meant he was at least taking me seriously.
“Does it sound like anything you’ve ever heard of before?”
“When I still lived in Dorchester, before I came to America, there was an Irish family living in the village. ” He leaned against the wall and removed his hands from his pockets. “This was when I was still human. The mother would tell stories some nights, and if you were quiet enough, you’d be able to hear her clear across town when the windows weren’t shuttered and the wind was low. ”
Vampires never got straight to the point. Their stories tended to be Dostoyevskyian in length, and even the most trivial tale could be drawn out for ages. I bit the inside of my cheek and resisted the urge to ask him to get to the point. He noticed my reaction and sighed.
“Long story short, she would tell her children that if they weren’t good, a wicked fairy would come and take them away in the night. ”
“But fairies don’t eat children. And they certainly don’t chop them up. Not to mention the current corpses are adults. ”
