by R K Dreaming
I caught that scent again and tried to jerk my head away from it.
“Blood,” I said in a slightly intoxicated tone. “I can smell it everywhere. In the café. In here. It’s dancing in the air. It’s dancing here.”
I started giggling madly.
A tiny voice in my mind was telling me to shut up. I was saying stuff that I did not want to say. It was true that I had been smelling blood in the castle, and now even here. But smelling blood everywhere was not a normal thing. It was creepy.
I saw Jasper and Allegra take a concerned look at each other.
I found it hard to care. Maybe it was something in my drink, or maybe it was just the sheer excitement of the night. I didn’t care. It felt good. I had kept myself apart from the night for too long. I liked it out here. I felt like I belonged here.
I caught a glimpse of Captain Villain. He was now sitting at the bottom of the empty swimming pool. He’d had no problem getting into there, being a cat and all.
The sight of him sitting there all alone just seemed incredibly funny to me to some reason. I pointed at him and threw back my head and laughed and laughed.
“Oh Captain Villain,” I said. “You want to come for a swim with us too? You can party with us when it’s all done! Whoop!”
He threw me what I was certain was a filthy look.
What is wrong with you? he said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Absolutely nothing. I feel fabulous, darling.”
“Who are you talking to?” said Allegra, beginning to sound a little annoyed.
“Captain Villain,” I said. “Isn’t he marvellous? You hear him?”
“No I can’t,” said Allegra, looking at me disapprovingly.
Are you coming down here to take a look or not? said Captain Villain, sounding very annoyed by now.
I plopped myself down on the side of the pool. If Captain Villain wanted me to look at something, then I was going to look.
“How did you come here anyway?” I said to him.
Because she brought me here, he said irritably.
“Who?” I asked, not caring that Jasper and Allegra were looking at each other with concern about me.
Lily, said Captain Villain.
“Ooh! Lily!” I exclaimed. “Is she here?”
Of course not, he said. She is a restless spirit. She is wherever she wants to be.
“But you said she bought you here,” I said.
She did. Earlier today. I’ve been looking for you all evening!
“Well excuse me! I’ve been out and about,” I said. “I do have a life you know.”
Well then it’s your fault that you missed her, he said.
“Damn shame,” I said. “If she were here, she could have told you what happened that night.”
No she couldn’t, he said. She hardly knows anything at all. She’s not fully there. She drifts about. I was lucky to have been able to follow her here.
When I started scrambling down the side of the deep end of the empty pool, Jasper and Allegra grabbed hold of my arms.
“What are you doing?” she said, sounding half worried, half angry.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I just wanna take a little look and see what’s there.”
“Nothing is there,” she said. “And if we get caught messing around here, we’re going to be in big trouble. You know what Oberon Maltei Senior is like. He hates people interfering in his business.”
“And he’ll be furious if he knows we’ve come here planning to ask questions about the Lily murder,” said Jasper. “He won’t want one of his businesses linked to a murder. Come on, we don’t want to be seen messing around here and then get chucked out before we do what we came here for.”
“But this is what we came here for,” I insisted. “Are you two just going to stand there? Or are you going to help me down?”
I glared at them, and they acquiesced.
They each grabbed hold of one of my arms and gently lowered me all the way down into the pool.
The bottom of it was concrete and a bit uneven against my heels. The tiles had not been laid down yet. I carefully tottered over to Captain Villain, who was still sitting there, cool as you please.
About time, he said. It’s under here.
“What is?” I asked him.
But I didn’t need him to answer. I could smell it. Blood. It was very strong here.
Well actually probably not that strong. But my nose was sensitive towards it these days. I had been imagining the smell of blood since Lily died, but right now I was sure that I was smelling it for real.
“Ew,” I said, wrinkling my nose.
Not much of the light was getting down into this deep end of the pool and I couldn’t see where the smell was coming from. I crouched down and sniffed. And then I knew.
“Hey,” I yelled at Jasper and Allegra.
I waved my arms at them, indicating for them to come down.
“It’s over here!” I called.
They looked at each other ominously, as if I was being silly.
“Are you both coming or not?” I said. “Quick! Before someone comes and finds us here!”
Jasper shrugged. He jumped right down into the bottom of the deep end, without even bothering to lower himself down gently. He looked very athletic as he did it. I appreciated the view.
He reached backup to help Allegra who was gingerly lowering herself down.
They both came over to me, and looked down to where I was crouching. Allegra lit up the tip of her wand.
“What?” she said, looking disappointed.
All she could see was the concrete.
I pointed to the spot exactly where Captain Villain was sitting.
“It’s there,” I said.
“Are you sure that you’re feeling alright, Esme?” she said, furrowing her brow a little. “There’s nothing there.”
“Underneath,” I said irritably.
“What is?” said Jasper, looking confused.
I shrugged. I didn’t know after all, but I had a very strong feeling about this.
“We need to take a look,” I insisted. “Allegra, are you going to do this or not?”
She sighed. “You’d better be right about this,” she said. “Because I don’t want to get done for vandalism. Especially by Oberon Maltei Senior.”
“He’s not even here,” I said. “If we don’t find what we’re looking for, we’ll just run away.”
An image of the three of us running away in a slapdash manner popped into my head, and gave me a fresh fit of giggles.
Allegra looked like this did not inspire any further confidence in me.
She sighed, and pointed her wand at the concrete anyway.
“I’ll need a little space,” she said.
We all backed away towards the middle of the pool. Captain Villain came to stand near my ankles.
Allegra aimed her wand.
“Frakas!” she said sharply.
There was a crack like a gunshot, and the surface of the concrete shattered completely. Spiderweb cracks spread out from the midpoint where Allegra had pointed her wand.
I ran across and started excitedly picking the bits of concrete away. It came off in layers and chunks.
And then I gave a scream and fell over backwards.
“What is it?” said Allegra in panic, grabbing me.
But I didn’t even have to answer. Because now she could see.
There was somebody underneath the concrete. I had just exposed his face.
15. Sugar Daddy
“Wowsers trousers,” I said.
Jasper looked at me in concern. “What?”
I shrugged. I was saying any old thing that came off the top of my head.
“You heard me,” I said.
We hurried away from the gap in the concrete, wanting to get away from our discovery. We went to the shallower end of the pool where we could more easily climb out.
Captain Villain needed no help. He leapt out of the pool with a single
bound.
Gotta love you and leave ya, he said, heading off into the night.
“Hey wait,” I called.
I didn’t know why, but I didn’t want him to leave yet.
He obviously didn’t feel the same, because he disappeared into the blackness of the night, leaping off the rooftop to what I hoped was another one below.
“Be careful,” I called after him.
He did not reply.
“Who do you think it is?” said Allegra in a shaky voice behind me. She was looking back at the gap her wand had made.
I shrugged. “You guys are more likely to know than me. I hardly know anyone I see in this town anymore. All the faces are different. I suppose they’ve grown up.”
I shut my mouth. This urge to babble was going to make me say more things that I shouldn’t say.
Jasper shook his head. He didn’t know the guy either.
“We’d better call Chief Hardwick,” said Jasper.
Allegra and I made a face.
As Jasper made the phone call, the three of us headed back to the doorway and loitered there, waiting.
Allegra and I had a quick chat and agreed it was not a good idea to alert the club staff to our grisly discovery. After all, if someone here had something to do with this then we didn’t want to give them an opportunity to hide anything.
Jasper finished his phone call.
“Chief Hardwick is going to send someone over,” he said.
“I wish it were Chief Raine,” I muttered. “Hardwick is going to chew us out for being here in the first place.”
“It’s weird isn’t it,” Allegra said. “We came to find a clue about Lily, and we found this instead.”
“Maybe it is a clue,” I said. “I mean, what are the chances that there’s not a link between the two things?”
“Or he got blackout drunk and fell into the wet concrete,” said Jasper, frowning at the pool. “It’s not like they even put any safety barriers up, and this door isn’t even locked!”
Allegra winced. “Gosh, that’s horrid. The poor guy.”
“I think it has to be connected,” I said stubbornly.
But I simply could not fathom what that link might be.
“Did he look older to you?” I asked. “Like a sugar daddy? Do you reckon he might be who Lily was meeting that night?”
“And then what?” said Allegra. “He fell in? She ran off? She’d have stuck around and tried to help him.”
“I don’t think he was the sugar daddy,” said Jasper thoughtfully. “He looked only in his mid-twenties.”
I had thought so too, though the concrete had been covering up a lot of his face. I sighed. There went my theory.
“So neither of you know who that guy is?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” said Allegra. “But I’m not going back there to take another look.”
“Me too,” said Jasper. “That poor dude. I wonder how long he’s been under there?”
“Can’t have been too long from the looks of it,” I said. “Maybe a few days? How long do they wait for it to set before they put tiles on?”
“If it was only a few days then that matches with Lily,” said Allegra. “You said that she must’ve died late on Wednesday night or in the early hours of Thursday morning.”
An idea popped into my head and I blurted it out.
“Even if he’s not Sugar Daddy, she could still have been meeting this guy after she got rid of Oberon,” I said. “And maybe Sugar Daddy caught them and got really angry and killed this guy, and then killed Lily too.”
My voice trailed off because I had realised my theory didn’t work.
“But then why didn’t the killer also hide Lily’s body under the concrete?” said Jasper, which was exactly what I had been thinking.
We stopped theorising because we heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs towards us. It sounded like several people. Chief Hardwick must have sent a team.
I wasn’t surprised when Agent Constantine came through the door.
He saw the three of us and his mouth tightened a little. He looked frustrated at seeing me here again, and like he wanted to tell me off. But he bit his tongue. Maybe because the person who was following hot on his heels was none other than the vampire patriarch Oberon Maltei Senior himself.
I stiffened and took a little step back.
A vampire. An old one. I hadn’t counted on this happening.
Oberon Maltei Senior looked a lot like his son. Dark hair, green eyes, very handsome though his face was a bit more lined. But where Oberon Junior had a softer sweetness in his face and a twinkle in his eye, Oberon Senior’s face was hard and sharp, all angles and darkness.
Or maybe that was me imagining things, because he was a vampire after all.
He looked in his mid-forties but I knew that he was older than that. Much older, by centuries.
“I want these three people arrested,” he snapped, his eyes hard on me and Allegra and Jasper. “They are trespassing on private property!”
To my immense relief, he did not spare me a second glance.
“Easy there, Mr Maltei,” said Jasper. “We got lost. This club should have better signage.”
I sniggered. I can help it. There was definitely something wrong with me. That weird feeling was still surging through my bloodstream.
Allegra gave me a sharp look, silently telling me to shut up. Oberon Maltei Senior had a lot of clout in this town, and the recent change of police chief put us Westbrims at a severe disadvantage.
Oberon Senior stalked over to the pool’s edge angrily and stared down into it.
“And did you happen to stumble into this pool and smash it by mistake?” he snapped at us.
He was looking with disgust at the hole in the concrete.
“You can add property damage to those charges, officer,” he said coldly.
“It was an accident,” I said deadpan. “I stumbled and fell in. You don’t have any safety barriers.”
And then I giggled even though I was trying really hard not to.
“Sorry,” I muttered, when I got a dirty look from Agent Constantine.
“Well?” snapped Oberon Senior, glaring at Agent Constantine as if he was failing to do his duty.
“I’m not arresting anyone,” he said. “Not until I’ve established the facts. And if it wasn’t for these three, none of us would know about that body under the concrete.”
The crime scene team who had come with him had already put on their white plastic suits. They were climbing into the pool and setting up lighting around it so that they could take a better look.
The memory of the face inside the smashed concrete flashed in my mind and I hastily looked away. I didn’t need to see that.
Just then a loud clattering came up the steps and a very glamorous young woman stumbled through the doorway unsteadily. She looked barely eighteen.
She was wearing a glittery gold sheath dress and matching glittering pumps that had very high stiletto heels.
She tottered forwards a couple of steps towards us and looked around in confusion at the construction site, like she couldn’t imagine what it was doing here. Then she gave a cry of joy when she saw Oberon Senior.
“There you are, sugar!” she said.
She spread her arms out towards him and tottered over as if expecting him to be glad to see her.
But his face went even colder. He gestured to one of the two club security men who had come with him and were now standing guard at the door.
“Get her out of here,” he said.
“How rude,” I muttered, unable to help myself.
He hadn’t even bothered to ask her to leave nicely. As if she was a piece of meat.
A security guard grabbed her by the arm and hustled her through the door. She cried out in dismay and looked worriedly back at Oberon Senior.
“But sugar!” she wailed. “I thought we were going to party tonight!”
He didn’t bother to reply. He
had already turned his back on her and was looking down at the pool in disgust.
Sugar, I thought.
Sugar Daddy.
Oberon Maltei Senior.
Rich guy, handsome, powerful.
Could it be?
He looked the part. He was dressed in an expensively tailored and closely fitted three piece suit. The design was cool, not fusty, and looked like it belonged on a much younger man. But the vampire was lean and it looked very good on him.
Yuck. Cunning and arrogant and handsome all rolled in to one. No wonder naïve young women were falling at his feet.
The thought of him and Lily together gave me the creeps. No way. It couldn’t be him. She would never go with him.
Lily had been a witch. Witches did not date vampires. It was frowned upon for obvious reasons. Magic and vampirism were not supposed to mix.
And yet…
Lily had been drawn to Oberon Junior. Could she have been drawn to his father too?
“When was this concrete poured?” Agent Constantine asked Oberon Senior.
“I don’t know,” Oberon Senior said impatiently. “You’ll have to ask the foreman.”
“Was it poured on Wednesday?” persisted Agent Constantine.
“I said I don’t know. What does it matter?” said Oberon Senior.
“That was the night that Lily Silverswift died,” said Agent Constantine.
“What’s that got to do with me?” snapped Oberon Senior.
He leaned over the edge of the pool and snarled at the crime scene team, “We are already two weeks behind schedule. So whatever you are going to do, get it over and done with quickly!”
“We’ll take as much time as we need,” said Agent Constantine coolly.
Oberon Senior spun furiously to look at him, as if he could not believe the lack of respect.
“Do you know who I am?” he shouted.
“Sugar,” I said, before Agent Constantine could respond
Oberon Senior’s head snapped around towards me.
“To some people you are just a sweet old Sugar Daddy,” I said.
He seemed to go rigid with rage. He stalked up to me and leaned down menacingly until he was nose to nose with me.
“What did you say to me?” he hissed.
