Page 6 of The Vampire and the Case of the Hellacious Hag

When we arrived back at the office, a person was waiting for us – or, more precisely, waiting forme. As I put down the black bag, Gunnar escaped to his office. Sidnee had picked up Shadow for me and sat at her desk with the cat on her lap. I gave her a questioning look as I glanced at the woman sitting in the waiting area. She shrugged.

‘Are you Officer Bunny?’ the woman asked as she looked me over.

‘Yes. How may I help you?’ I was curious why she’d waited for me when she could have given the information to Sidnee if there had been a crime. Did she have some sort of prejudice against mermaids? The thought made me bristle.

‘My name is Hayleigh Farnsworth. I read about you in the paper – you know, how the Fanged Flopsy solved that werewolf case. I was wondering if you could help me.’

Great: that whole Fanged Flopsy thing was going to follow me to the grave, and since I was a vampire, that might be a very long time. ‘Sure. Can you tell me what you need help with, Hayleigh?’

Hayleigh was middle-aged, with mousy brown hair pulled back in a tight bun on top of her head. She was shapely, albeit she had a little extra timber, and was dressed in a sweatshirt, a blue rain jacket and baggy pants. I couldn’t tell what type of supernat she was – and there was the outside possibility that she was human.

She dug around in her huge, purple bag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. She handed it to me. I smoothed it out: it was a photo that had clearly been printed at home. It was dark – it must have used up most of her ink to print it – and it showed a heavily forested area with a darker blob in the centre of the trees. I couldn’t make out anything clearly.

I looked up at her. ‘What am I looking at?’

She sighed. ‘I thoughtyou’dbe able to see it.’ She lowered her voice and waggled her eyebrows. ‘You know, with your extra powers and stuff from the government experimentation.’

I wanted to roll my eyes but I didn’t; I just waited patiently. One of the things that the academy had taught us was that silence was a powerful tool; if you maintained it long enough, the other person would feel uncomfortable and try to fill it.

Hayleigh looked around as though someone might be watching. No one was except Sidnee, who was hiding herhead behind her computer screen and trying not to smile. She leaned over the counter and whispered, ‘It’s bigfoot. He’s trying to get in my house and … you know … ravish me.’ She didn’t actually seem that upset at the prospect, maybe just a little nervous.

I blinked. Several times. ‘Bigfoot?’ I knew the creatures existed – in fact I’d had a run in with more than one nantinaq. They were scary and territorial andoutsidethe barrier, and they definitely wouldn’t be after her body. But what if one had come inside the barrier? Was there a rip? I couldn’t afford to ignore Hayleigh’s claims, even though the whole thing seemed absurd.

‘Yeah, you know, tall hairy, big feet, big—’ she went on.

I interjected hastily before she could tell me about anything else big. ‘I know what you’re talking about!’ I really did.

‘Can you come and look around? See if you can find him? I live alone.’

I looked at Sidnee, who’d started to cough in an attempt to disguise her amusement, then I looked at the pink slips for callbacks on my desk. I nodded, ‘Sure, I’ll come by in an hour. What’s your address?’

She wrote it down on a sticky note before she left. The moment the door closed, Sidnee couldn’t contain her snickers. ‘Banged by bigfoot! Imagine!’

‘I’d rather not,’ I admitted. ‘Bigfoot is real. And terrifying. If one did get inside the barrier, I’d rather know now than worry that the barrier is failing again.’

That sobered her right up. ‘You’re right. I didn’t think about that. I don’t think it is, though. She strikes me as a lonely woman and this is a cry for help.’

‘Then I’d better give it to her, hadn’t I?’

‘Yeah, you’re right. If I were lonely and scared, I’d want someone to check on anything creepy. Especially spiders.’ She shuddered.

‘Well this isn’t spiders, so guess what? You get to come with me.’ I needed back-up on the off chance that it reallywasthe nantinaq: one of us to try and fight it and one of us to get the word out that the barrier was down.

Sidnee held up both hands in surrender. ‘I’ll never laugh at you again,’ she said, only a little huffy.

Fluffy barked. ‘Yeah, you’re going too, and so is Shadow,’ I told him. If a nantinaq was on this side, Shadow would be the biggest help with his special brand of weird smoky magic. It was going to be a total circus, but needs must.

I checked the pink slips on my desk; nothing was pressing, and most requests could be completed with a few phone calls. I hurried through them and was done in thirty minutes.

I wasn’tlooking forward to the visit at bigfoot lady’s place, but it seemed expedient to get to it. ‘Are you ready, Sidnee?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, but we should wait until April gets here. She’s due in five minutes.’

She was right; it was best not to leave Gunnar here alone in case something big came in. ‘Good idea.’

I tidied my desk. The damage that Stan had done whilst cursed into his polar bear form was completely gone, though we no longer had a lowered ceiling. That made the room more spacious, if a little less refined.

The door opened and April Arctos, bear shifter and mum extraordinaire, breezed in. ‘Hi, ladies! I’m so glad to see you both back!’

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