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reature known as the Oracle. To me she was just Calliope, but she was the only one of her kind I’d ever met, and Keaty wasn’t out of line pointing his investigation in her direction.
Calliope, a half-fairy/half-god, had a bad habit of needing to feed off a life essence other than blood—though she was also a fan of the red stuff. She preferred to eat aura energy. Specifically the aura energy of young male virgins.
I wasn’t implying that Petey hadn’t been a sex stud in his living years, but the sixteen-year-old didn’t strike me as a pussy magnet. However, he would have been Calliope’s type.
Calliope had been many things in her timeless life: muse, model, destroyer of lives and worlds, lover of vampires, and for a few brief decades, one of the most famous movie stars in the world. It wasn’t that I thought her killing people was outside the realm of possibility. In fact, I’d have been shocked to learn the Oracle hadn’t killed anyone. She didn’t have the same reverence for human life as, say, a vampire who had once had their own mortality.
Calliope was immortal. Scarily, genuinely immortal.
So what was the life of a sixteen-year-old to her?
Logic told me why Keaty believed it was her. But personal experience told me he had to be wrong. I’d seen her victims after she’d fed off them, either their blood or aura. They were often dazed and a little woozy, but they always walked out alive after the fact. And usually with one hell of a big tip. She had thousands of years to hone her control, so no, I didn’t believe she’d had a slipup and accidentally killed someone.
But if I thought she was innocent, why wasn’t I going to see her to ask her point-blank?
For starters, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she was innocent. The evidence was stacked against her, and I didn’t want to run into her house demanding she explain herself if there was another way. And that brought up another problem.
Calliope wasn’t called the Oracle for no reason.
She could see the future.
So if I was planning to barge in and start accusing her of murder, she’d see it coming. And if she was guilty, it would mean she’d be ready for me. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to go head-to-head with an immortal being who was older than recorded time if she knew to expect me.
For the time being, I was stuck in old-school PI-research mode. I had to find Kellen, and I had to prove Calliope hadn’t killed the pizza boy. Without supernatural help.
All before the full moon next week, if I could.
No big deal.
I started with the murder investigation, trusting Keaty would stay true to his word and ask about Kellen with his sources. Nothing says serious detective like showing up at a Papa John’s at eleven o’clock at night on a Thursday.
“What can I get you?” A bored-looking teenage girl snapped her bubble gum and stared through me like I was invisible.
“Did you know Peter Giambi?”
Now I had her attention. “Petey?” Her expression fell, and genuine sadness replaced her ennui. She’d liked him. “What do you want?” she demanded, her tone suspicious.
“I’m a private investigator working with his parents. ”
“You have a badge or something?” Man alive, when did teenagers stop being blindly trusting? I pulled out my PI license and showed it to her, not bothering to hide the holstered gun under my jacket.
“Did Peter have any regular runs? Places he delivered to all the time?”
“Sure, we have a few regulars. People who order two or three times a week. It’s New York, lady, no one cooks anymore. ”
Sad, but true. A lot of people in the city viewed their ovens as a wildly unnecessary waste of good bookshelf or closet space. My own kitchen was about the size of a shoebox.
“Did anyone request him by name?”
The girl—her nametag said Becca—shook her head. “No, ma’am. We have a real serious policy about that. If a customer requests a specific delivery driver, we send the manager instead. It’s a safety thing. ”
I was impressed. They took care of their staff here. Too bad it hadn’t helped Petey.
A man was standing behind me now, the smell of him woodsy, like pine and dirt. I bristled. He was a werewolf, and I didn’t need to turn around to know he wasn’t part of Lucas’s pack. I slipped a card out of my jacket pocket and handed it to the girl.
“If you could make a list of any locations in the Hell’s Kitchen area Petey delivered to on a regular basis, that would be helpful to me. ”
She took my card and gave an enthusiastic nod. I could tell the idea of helping in the investigation of Petey’s death was important to her.
