Page 11 of The Vampire and the Case of the Perilous Poltergeist

‘Hewhat? That fucker!’

She studied me. ‘You’ll have to straighten it – and quickly – or it’ll heal wonky.’

‘Motherfucker.’ I looked in the mirror and saw that she was right: my Greek nose was looking distinctly aquiline. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I grabbed the part that was hooked and pulled it straight. Pain exploded again and more blood spurted out. ‘Ow!’ I complained.

‘Lordy,’ Margi breathed. ‘That looked painful.’

‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ I bitched.

Margi turned on the tap and I blinked when a stream of water flowed not straight down into the sink like gravity would dictate, but directly to me instead. I stood still as she carefully cleaned me up then turned off the tap and sent the water back to the sink. The now-bloody water drained away.

She turned to me and frowned. As a result of her ministrations, my face was cleaner but my clothes were utterly soaked. She hummed a little and the water droplets were pulled directly from my clothes and danced down the sink. Nice.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My nose was healed, the blood was gone and I didn’t even have any bruising. Sometimes being a vamp was a pain – Iwantedto look brutalised, at least for a day or two, otherwise it looked like Thorsen had only given me a damned nosebleed.

When we returned to the mat room, Thorsen and Marks were still absent. Sergeant Wilson had hastily been tagged to fill in and the dour-faced man had everyone doing drills.

Annoyingly, soon after I returned so did Thorsen and Marks. Thorsen’s body language appeared contrite but his eyes were still on fire when he glanced at me. He’d had his wrist slapped and it’d had precisely no effect on him whatsoever. Marvellous.

Marks checked me over and looked relieved. I showed no signs of the blow other than the remaining blood on my gym clothes. He called us over and gave a crisp lecture about maintaining our professionalism and not allowing perps or our fellow recruits to push our buttons.

I couldn’t believe it! It looked like that bastard Thorsen was going to continue his classes with no more than a telling-off, like he was a toddler that couldn’t control a tantrum. Ugh. I’d have to devise a better plan, one that showed him going out of his way to hurt someone – preferably one of the supernats, since we could take it.

‘You okay, Bunny?’ Jones asked quietly. ‘That looked like a real hefty punch.’

‘He didn’t pull it, that’s for sure,’ I agreed darkly. ‘But I’m okay.’

‘You’re a tough cookie.’ His gaze was admiring, maybe a little adoring, and he was looking at me like I’d look at a puppy. I gave him an awkward pat on the back. Whoops. It looked like my kindness to Jones had landed me with a bit of an infatuation. I’d have to make sure to let him down gently because I was all fixed for a boyfriend.

Thinking of Connor made my heart twinge. God, I missed him more than scones and jam. I couldn’t finish the course quickly enough.

Chapter 9

Captain Engell dealt with the financials for the school and taught a few classes when he wasn’t in Anchorage doing his regular trooper job; lucky him, he was our instructor for the morning session.

The atmosphere was tense; we were obviously divided between those who thought Thorsen was a hero and those who thought he was a pillock. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself surrounded with plenty of people – pedsandsupernats – who were willing to offer me their support and send a clear message to Thorsen that his behaviour wouldnotbe accepted.

I watched Engell as attentively as I could, given the depth of boredom his material inspired in me. He was probably in his early forties, dark-haired and muscular; if he’d retired from the MIB, he didn’t look like any retiree I’d ever seen before. His eyes were dark and brooding and, despite the unholy level of tedium in his class, there was something that felt inherently dangerousabout him. As he stalked around the classroom, it felt like being in the zoo next to a tiger which, frankly, felt like a bad idea.

Engell was teaching us a mini-clinic on forensic accounting. If he was,or had been, MIB, he was surely the most boring of the lot of them. My eyes nearly rolled up in my head as he spoke and I struggled to keep them open. His teaching style left much to be desired – he even made Polk seem animated – but he seemed knowledgeable. Most importantly, he didn’t bully Jones.

An hour into class, when most of us were struggling to stay awake, the same podium fell over again with a bang and jolted us all awake. The poltergeist didn’t stop with that, however; all our papers, pens and pencils were sent flying directly at the hapless instructor. Engell ducked behind his podium; the clatter of instruments striking it and the board behind him was like the noise of a hailstorm.

‘Someone shut the damned window!’ he shouted. Danny hastily stood, but he waited until the poltergeist had dissipated before sliding closed the fractionally open window.

Engell stood up. If he knew about the paranormal world, his slightly stupefied expression didn’t convey it. Either that or he was a pretty good actor.

‘Are you okay, sir?’ Thorsen asked with surprising concern. Maybe even he could show some empathy now and again, though the cynical part of me suspected he was brown-nosing.

‘You wouldn’t think the wind could come through with such force,’ Engell muttered. ‘I only opened it a little for some fresh air.’ Nobody pointed out that the trees outside were wholly still. He was bleeding from various superficial cuts so we took a quick break whilst he cleaned himself up, then he continued his lousy lecture like nothing had even happened.

When the lecture finished, we were divided up and taken to either the gun range or the obstacle course. My squad and Sidnee’s were at the range.

Unlike the revolver that Gunnar had started me with, the academy used Glock 17s. It was a commonly used police gun, though I hadn’t shot one before. It was a different experience because the safety mechanism was built into the trigger. The advantage was that it was far faster in an emergency since all you had to do was point and depress the trigger fully to get it to work.

Since I’d been practising regularly with Gunnar, I was a decent shot and sailed through my turn. I had started to really enjoy shooting because it was the one exercise where your skill wasn’t dependent on your physical strength; with a gun in my hand, I didn’t have to hide anything.

Sidnee wasn’t keen on shooting but she’d been around Gunnar since she was seventeen so she knew how to do it. She aced her turn, too.

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