Page 50 of The Vampire and the Case of the Malevolent Mermaid

‘Back at you.’

He gave me a wry smile and slid into his truck. He was off to keep the king’s goons busy – and I had a plan that involved a certain hag.

The rain had washed away any scent a canine could track but a hag tracked by something entirely different.

Chapter 30

I called Gunnar and updated him on everything I’d found and everything I suspected. My gut said that the girls were key to freeing Sidnee and I told him as much. I’d put crime scene tape around the bunker, but we’d have to go back together later to do a proper forensic overhaul. Without Gunnar’s help, it would take hours and hours.

‘Things are cooking,’ he said approvingly. ‘I’m meeting Mafu at his house for questioning shortly. I’ll speak to him then join you at the site.’

‘You got it. I’m going to drop Shadow and Fluffy home and run to the store to buy some baked goods for Matilda. I’ll summon her near the bunker – hopefully she can track the girls even in this weather.’

‘Good idea. Keep me in the loop,’ Gunnar rang off.

I dropped my four-legged friends home, gave them food and fresh water, and went to the shop. Annoyingly, the store was out of fresh bakery doughnuts so I bought two boxes of pre-packaged ones instead, one chocolate and the other coated in icing sugar. I hadn’t tried them on Matilda yet, but she didn’t seem overly picky as long as her treats were sweet.

I drove back to the site and hoofed it overland to the bunker’s entrance. I took Essie’s backpack with me, still wrapped in its protective plastic bag. If the hagdidneed a scent, I had one to give her.

Grasping my treats in my hands, I put the backpack at my feet and called for the hag. As before, she didn’t take long to appear. ‘Hey, Matilda,’ I smiled at her.

She focused on the boxes in my hands and I passed her the first one. She sniffed, examined the slightly different boxes then took a chocolate doughnut. Within seconds, she’d devoured the rest. ‘Good sugar snack,’ she said when she was done. ‘More?’ she asked, eyeing the second box.

Icing sugar drifted down when she lifted a pastry to her mouth and she frowned. ‘Is sand?’ she asked, as though I were giving her something bad.

‘No!’ I reassured her hastily. ‘It's sugar. Taste!’

She licked the white stuff then devoured the rest of the doughnut like she hadn’t eaten in years. ‘Matilda want only this sugar snack,’ she announced, jabbing her claws emphatically at the empty box.

That could be a problem. We had a fairly consistent supply of pastries made by the store, but getting the manufactured pre-packaged kind in such a remote place as Portlock was not a certainty. ‘I’ll try. It can be difficult to find this one.’

She stared at me as she handed back the empty boxes. At least she hadn’t shredded them. I crumpled them and tucked them inmy pocket. ‘Matilda, the girls – including the vampire girl – were kept here in this cement box.’

She wrinkled her nose and looked at the metal door. ‘Vampire girl in there?’ she pointed.

‘No, not anymore. It looks like they escaped – I think they’re in the forest.’ I opened the plastic bag containing the backpack. ‘This belonged to the girl who isn’t a vampire – she’s a sea serpent.’

Matilda bared her teeth. ‘No like water.’

‘It’s fine, you don’t have to go in the water. But do you think you could find the girls from this?’

She gave the backpack a tentative poke with a long metal fingernail. When it didn’t react, she leaned in and sniffed it, then she licked it. I wasn’t expecting that but I held back in my inner ‘eww’.

Once she was done, I put the backpack in the plastic bag and resealed it – now with added hag spit. Yes, I’d contaminated the evidence a smidge, but did I care? No, I did not. Sidnee had been in a cell for entirely too long and even with Sigrid keeping her company, I was not happy with the current situation.

Matilda sniffed the air, her pointed, mouse-like nose twitching. ‘Smell serpent girl,’ she confirmed. She sniffed around the door then sank into the earth and disappeared from view.

Dammit! I’d expected her to take me with her like she had in the mines. It was my fault for not clarifying what I wanted.

Luckily, she was back just as suddenly as she left. She danced a bit on her dirt-encrusted feet. ‘Girls that way.’ She pointed into the depths of the forest. It wasn’t the way we’d come when we’dreturned from the opposite end of the tunnel and I grinned in triumph; this might be a real lead.

‘Rabbit Girl pleased with Matilda?’

‘So pleased! Thank you! You’re wonderful. Can you show me where they went?’

She nodded, turned and trotted into the trees. Her strange shape gave her a twisted, lurching gait, but she was fast and I had to jog to keep up. We ran for what felt like miles, though we didn’t pass through the barrier so it couldn’t have been that far. Matilda stopped a couple of times to sniff, then corrected her course and off we went again.

After a while, I realised we’d turned back towards town. Had the girls played it safe and gone home or headed to the Nomo’s office? But surely if they had, Gunnar would’ve called me by now.

---