Page 36 of The Vampire and the Case of the Perilous Poltergeist

‘Your snores are more delicate, more like the rumble of a car on the road,’ I reassured her.

‘Hey! I was kidding! I don’t snore!’

I laughed. ‘You totally do, Sid.’

‘Well, no one has ever complained about it!’ she huffed, folding her arms.

‘You’re too pretty to be kicked out of bed for a little light snoring.’

‘I am.’ She flashed me a grin before sobering. ‘We need to focus. Where are we going to summon Aoife?’

‘In the offices – at least no one will be around if she arrives wailing.’ I winced at the thought.

Sidnee rolled on to her back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Should we let Gunnar know what’s up before we get our asses tossed out?’

‘Nah, let’s leave that as a surprise.’

‘Everyone loves surprises, right? And they don’t always have to be good ones!’

We chatted quietly until the clock rolled over to midnight and it was ninja o’clock, then we rolled out of bed and sneaked silently across the hall to wait for Danny. When he joined us, we slid downstairs in our stockinged feet. Sidnee and I were built for the night, so we led the way; we didn’t need anything other than the illuminated exit signs to light our way.

It was quiet, almost too quiet. The recruits were asleep upstairs and surely Captain Engell was finally in his fancy apartment suite; at least his office light was out. Like before, Iclimbed over the reception desk to the office. Sidnee was close behind me and Danny was bringing up the rear.

We took the key from the receptionist’s desk and let ourselves into Captain Engell’s office. Even with the door closed it wasn’t totally dark because the light over the front door was streaming through the reception window and giving plenty of light for a mer and a vampire. Ravens were diurnal, but when I turned to Danny his eyes were glowing slightly. It looked like the shifter had his own skills.

I quickly explained about summoning Aoife and Petty. ‘All right with me,’ he said. ‘As long as neither of them scream and get us caught.’

And wasn’t that the kicker? I looked at Sidnee. ‘You ready for me to call Aoife?’

She looked around nervously. ‘Yeah. Do it.’

I whispered, ‘Aoife I need your help.’ We waited. Nothing happened. Bugger.

‘Aoife Sullivan! Please come, it’s important!’ I said a little more loudly, although I wasn’t sure that it was my voice that called her because I always felt a tug in my chest when I summoned her. Maybe it was my witchy power; some day I’d know all my own secrets, dammit.

This time a wind whipped around my braid and Aoife’s pale form materialised in front of me. She had her translucent arms crossed over her chest and she was tapping her foot. Luckily, she was silent.

‘Cool,’ Danny murmured, and she flashed him a flirty smile.

I cleared my throat. ‘Thanks for coming, Aoife. I know it’s probably a pain, but we really need your help. Can you summon Petrovich for us? We have very little time to find out who is threatening the academy and how they’re doing it, and we don’t have a clue where to start. If you can get Petrovich to point out something, maybe we can stop whatever is upsetting him.’

By the time I’d finished, Aoife was looking intrigued. She opened her mouth. ‘Don’t say anything!’ I said sharply and held up my hand. ‘We have to keep quiet – but can you help us?’

She looked thoughtful then gave an uncertain shrug and faded from sight. Danny whispered, ‘Does that mean yes?’

‘I don’t know. Ithinkso. I guess we snoop around while we wait to see if the spirits are joining the party.’

We separated and started searching through the papers on top of the desk and in the drawers. There was an old desktop computer on the desk – next to a shiny silver laptop.

Sidnee, who was more tech savvy than me, opened the laptop and stared. ‘It has a fingerprint scanner.’ Then she smiled. ‘But it also has this!’ She held up a small sticky note. ‘The password. This computer does either/or!’ She lifted her hands showily, cracked her knuckles and typed in the password. ‘I’m in!’ she crowed triumphantly.

I squatted next to her to see what she was looking at: a file labelled ‘Academy’. ‘I’m going with door number one,’ she said and clicked on it.

‘What thehellare you doing?’ An angry voice demanded. Uh-oh.

I looked up and mentally amended my ‘uh-oh’ to ‘oh fuck!’.

Chapter 28

---