Page 44 of The Vampire and the Case of the Malevolent Mermaid

Ofcoursethe vampire king’s people would want to check up on the only vampire police officer in the Nomo’s office. Technically, I was one of the king’s … I wasn’t sure of the word. Constituents didn’t work with the monarchy, especially a true monarchy. Serf? No, too feudal. Peasant? Nope, that didn’t work. Bitch? Yeah, the vampire king probably thought I was one of his bitches. I snickered at the thought.

Gunnar stared at me. ‘You doing okay there, Bunny Rabbit?’

I shook my head and took a deep breath: I was definitely punchy. Dodging these creeps and hiding out was not my style and I was only doing it because Connor had asked me to. I wondered how he was getting on with the heartbeat charm because the sooner I got that, the better. And how was he coping with his father’s men stalking him? It had to be horrible knowing his every sneeze was being reported back.

‘Everything will be okay,’ Gunnar reassured me softly. ‘We’re going to find Kate and Essie, clear Sidnee, and those interfering vamps will leave.’

To be fair, they hadn’t really interfered that much so far. Yes, they’d popped up at the crime scene, but as far as I knew that was the worst they’d done and no one had complained about them.

Gunnar continued, ‘To answer your question, they want to work with you on this case.’ His jaw tightened. ‘They’ve made it clear that they would prefer to work with their own people.’

‘Racists,’ I huffed, enraged on his behalf. ‘You’re twice the officer I am!’

He smiled. ‘I have twice theexperience, sure, but you’re chasing my tail feathers. You’re good at this, Bunny – you follow the evidence even if it makes you feel sick. And I’m proud of you for that.’

‘But if the evidence points at Sidnee, what are we going to do?’

He sighed and scrubbed at his face. ‘It won’t. But if it does, we paint a picture of her instability, her vulnerability. We get evidence of Donovan’s bullying. We find evidence that hewasone of the men who kidnapped Cadence and Casiah – and maybe even killed them. We paint a picture of a very dark man and then we ask for the council’s mercy, even if Sidnee didn’t kill him in self-defence.’

I hated that Gunnar had clearly been thinking about this. ‘What did you tell the vamps?’ I asked.

‘That because one of my officers was currently out of commission, you were extremely busy and I had no idea if – or when – you’d be able to speak with them. But that will only holdthem off for a hot minute, so we need a better plan than you going out one door as they come in another. They’ve identified you now and they saw you at the scene and put two and two together. If you flee a third time, they’ll realise there’s a reason you’re running.’ He looked at me. ‘And that will be bad.’

He wasn’t wrong. I swallowed, hard, then pulled out my phone and texted Connor.How’s the charm coming along?

I got an almost immediate response.Liv’s working on it now. I miss you. Xx

My eyebrows shot up.Liv?! So much for hot sex with a masseuse called Dimitri – she’d run off to finish my charm.

Shehadlooked at me a little weirdly but I’d assumed it was just Liv being Liv. She must have known the charm was for me. I bit my lip; during her long life she must have come across a hybrid or two and she’d know why I needed to hide my heartbeat. Bugger. Of all the people I wanted to know my secrets, Liv was at the bottom of the list.

‘Were those men planning on coming back soon?’ I asked Gunnar.

‘I doubt it. I said you were out chasing a lead.’

‘Good. I need to finish examining the list of missing girls that April gave me. Maybe something in it will point to a clue – a common area they went missing in, or something like that.’

‘Go for it. I’ll get the search warrants prepared for Mafu’s property, including his boat.’

I nodded and stood. As I did so, an application to join Portlock caught my eye from someone called Lynnae Bran, a necromancer.For Liv’s sake, I hoped the council decided to let her in but applications were low on all of our list of priorities right now. Lynnae had better be good at waiting.

I sat at my desk and scruffled Fluffy’s head. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked. He wagged his tail. ‘Okay. Keep an ear out for those vamps. Bark if you hear them coming and I’ll scarper as quickly as I can.’ He wagged his tail again and I turned my attention back to April’s list.

The information made me frown. The dates weren’t consistent, but two girls a year had been going missing in Portlock for at least eight years. April’s list didn’t go back any further; I’d ask her to expand the search when she got in.

Although two girls had always gone missing, they hadn’t disappeared in pairs; Cadence, Casiah, Essie and Kate seemed to be the exceptions to the pattern. With what I’d learned from my mystery woman, I wondered if some sleazy bastard had put in a request for twins – but why had Kate and Essie been taken together?

I’d been assuming Kate was the target but Essie was an incredibly rare form of shifter: a tizheruk. I needed to dig further into what that was. Her mum had said it was an Inuit sea serpent; that didn’t sound appealing to me, but different strokes for different folks.

I checked the previous year first. The girls who’d disappeared had been in foster care. They’d been reported missing by the school and it was assumed they’d run away because they’d done it before. When an anonymous caller had said they’d been seen heading outon a small fishing boat, the case had been moved to the State Troopers in Anchorage to pick up.

Two years ago, another two girls had gone missing: one of them had to be the girl I’d interviewed. I quickly identified her from her school yearbook photo. Her name was Darcy Clark and I already knew what had happened to her. I was pleased to see that she now had a job in our local library; for someone who’d been through some shit, the calmness of the stacks was the perfect location..

The other girl from that year had been reported missing by her single mum. Again, she was a known runaway and the file was sent to the State Troopers.

The pattern repeated: girls being reported as runaways and their files turned over to the authorities outside Portlock. It was possible somehadrun away – Portlock was a small place and kids could sneak out on fishing boats to seek adventure. If they were brave enough – and wanted to risk the beast beyond – they could escape to Seldovia or Nanwalek, native villages on the other side of the mountains. There had been roads before they’d been allowed to revert to nature when Portlock went from a ghost town to a hidden supernatural town about seventy-five years ago. Gettingoutof the barrier from Portlock was easy enough, but getting back in was much harder – it had to be to keep the beast out. You had to know the keyed phrase to return.

Although the other towns weren’t protected by the barrier, no one in those villages had reported attacks by our beast. I wondered why it had chosen Portlock. It could be terrain or something else, or maybe other villages were better at keeping out the unwanted.

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