Page 14 of The Vampire and the Case of the Malevolent Mermaid

All right,nowI was going to lie to her face. If I told her Anchorage, she’d be on the next plane out with Edgy and it wouldn’t do her – or Thomas – any good. ‘We don’t know.’

She breathed out heavily and it was like her spine went with it; she virtually folded in on herself. I needed to distract with something else –anythingelse.

‘I need your help,’ I said hastily. ‘We have two missing sixteen-year-old girls, Kate and Essie, a vampire and a shifter. I have no leads, no clues, nothing. They were taken from a sleepover at Kate’s house – and it turns out that Kate’s dad is here to spy on Connor. Hamish MacKenzie has given us forty-eight hours to find Kate or he’s coming to Portlock. Connor is freaking out – he’strying not to let me see how much, but he totally is. We donotwant his father here.’

Sidnee sat up, spine restored. A good case would keep her mind off her heartbreak for a while. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get over it if it were Connor who’d been taken but staying busy was all I had to offer.

‘I have one of the girls’ laptops,’ I went on, ‘but if I send it to the lab it could be weeks until we get anything off it. Do you know anyone in town who can break into it?’

She sat up even straighter and gave a tiny bounce. ‘Yes! I arrested a hacker a while back. I’ve used her a couple of times since then and in exchange … well, we lost the arrest paperwork. She wasn’t doing anything malicious – she hacked into the school database and changed her friend’s grade from an F to an A. It drew attention because it was such a meteoric turn around, but nowadays she’s more sensible.’

‘As in she doesn’t change grades?’

Sidnee smiled. ‘As in now she changes them to a C. It’s way less noticeable.’

I snorted. Okay, this hacker wasn’t exactly Knight Stalker level of evil.

‘Let me text her – she won’t answer a call,’ Sidnee said.

A wave of relief washed over me. The laptop might be the only clue we had and I prayed it could be unlocked so we’d find a damned lead.

When she was done, Sidnee set the phone down in between us on the couch so we could watch it light up when the reply came. ‘Feel like going to lunch afterwards?’ I pointed to the phone.

‘We just ate pie!’

‘So?’

She shook her head, but before she could turn me down her tummy gave a loud rumble.

‘Sidnee, you’ve had two weeks of pure anxiety and I can tell you’ve already lost a tonne of weight – and you didn’t have much to lose in the first place! You need to eat and keep up your strength.’ Merpeople, like shifters, burned through calories like nobody's business even in human form, and my friend needed to eat often and a lot. In the sea she’d eat high-fat marine life, and on land it took a lot of human food to equal that.

She looked down at the phone but the screen remained dark. ‘Fine.’

'Great.’ Then, because I had to, I blurted, ‘I arrested that prick Donovan from earlier. He started something at the hardware store.’

‘Good.’ She looked pleased.

‘I can’t keep him for long since the only thing I have him on is public drunkenness. But you should know that he went in to buy ammo. According to Ernie, Donovan said he was going to kill you.’

Her eyes went mer black again. ‘Not if I get him first,’ she snarled around a mouthful of incredibly sharp teeth.

‘Sidnee, honey, hold it together,’ I begged as a chill ran down my spine. I’d need to keep a closer eye on her; this loss of control made me afraid for her.

Her eyes went back to soft brown. ‘He’s threatened me before,’ she confessed.

Anger surged through me. ‘What? Why? What’s his problem?’

She shrugged. ‘Anti-half breeds, I guess.’

‘But he’s married to Mafu’s daughter and she’s not mer!’ I protested. ‘If they have kids, they won’t be full-blooded mer.’

My friend grimaced. ‘When he’s in his cups, he says he won’t be procreating with her. He’ll trade her in for a sexier mer model when the time is right.’

I gasped. ‘That’s horrendous. No wonder Mafu hates him. You reckon he’s heard that bullshit?’

‘Oh yeah. If I’ve heard it, so has he.’

I winced. No wonder Mafu was always bringing BS charges against his son-in-law. What an arsehole. ‘If he’s making threats on your life when he isn’t pissed out of his mind, that changes things. You really don’t know what his issue is?’

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