“What are you doing?”
The voice startles me so much that I drop the photograph. I manage to snatch it out of midair just quick enough to stop the glass from smashing. Hot tea sloshes all over my hands and on to the pale cream rug. Cursing, I quickly place the mug on the shelf, and blow cold air onto my stinging hands.
Looking irritated, Eliza Fenway goes into the kitchen and emerges with a cloth. She uses it to mop up the spilled tea.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Who are you?” she demands. “A reporter?” She looks angry and scared all at the same time.
I shake my head. “I’m Diana Bellona. I’m with the Agency.” I show her my badge.
She looks at it, and now she looks agitated. She glances towards the door as if she hopes her uncle will arrive to rescue her from me.
“I’m here to help find who did this,” I tell her.
“It wasn’t Mo!” she bursts out. Then, as if she wishes she hadn’t said this, she hurries into the kitchen, leaving me behind.
I follow her. “Why do you think it wasn’t Mo?” I ask.
“It just wasn’t,” she snaps. “Mo would never have cheated on me.”
“Jennifer’s friend seemed to have thought so,” I say.
“Jenny,” she says reflexively. “She was Jenny. She didn’t like Jennifer.”
She is standing over the sink rinsing out the cloth as if she wishes I would just go away. Her shoulders are hunched, defensive.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond for a moment but then she nods resentfully. I switch on the kettle. The still hot water boils quickly. I pour her a cup and take it to her. As I hand it over, I touch her wrist with my other hand, squeezing it gently. Her grief and self-blame wash over me like a suffocating wave.
I hadn’t expected that. I had touched her on the off chance it might spark a vision. It is all I can do to not snatch my hand away.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” I say.
“So is everyone,” she says snidely.
“You didn’t get along with her?”
“How do you know that?”
I shrug.
“You saw the pictures in the press of her and Mo,” she says accusingly. “You think they were having an affair.”
“Her friend took pictures of them together on several different occasions. You weren’t in them. Why would your boyfriend be hanging out with your little sister so often?”
“He’s an idiot, is why,” she mutters.
She moves to the kitchen table and sits down abruptly. She cups the tea with both hands and inhales its fruity scent deeply before taking a sip. “This was my favorite tea. I couldn’t find it anywhere when I moved out. Uncle James must have it shipped from somewhere special.”
“It’s good tea,” I say, taking a seat opposite her. “You don’t live here then?”
She shakes her head. “I moved out when I went to university. I couldn’t wait to get my own life.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Is it? I moved out over a year ago. I never came back to visit her. Not once. Is that understandable?”
“Then how did Mo and Jenny meet?”
She shrugs. “Randomly. Or maybe not. My sister was always the socialite. Turns out she and her friends somehow managed to get into my university club-night with their stupid fake IDs. She found him. And now he’s been arrested and it is all my fault.”
“How is it your fault?”
She seems too distracted to have noticed my question. “He was always better looking than me. Just like her. I thought she must have been trying to take him away, like she took everything away. She was good at that.”
“Is that what you argued about the day she went missing?”
She nods bitterly. “I hated her so much. We went to a human high school, you know. Dad was human and didn’t want to send us to a mixed school. Growing up I always thought I was so lucky to be the human one. Lucky that only a few of them hated me. I thought she would have it worse. She showed her powers early. We always knew she’d be a succubus like mum. I thought they’d hate her for being a demon.”
“Otherkind,” I correct her.
She shrugs. “What’s the difference? That’s what most people think, isn’t it?”
“So what happened at school?” I ask.
“They loved her of course! She was always good at making people love her.”
“Did she make Mo love her?”
She looks up at me sharply and her eyes flash with anger. “No. That’s the funny thing. She came to the club hoping to bump into me, she said. It was just like her. She could never admit to needing my help. Only I wasn’t there. She said Mo was nice. She could talk to him. Couldn’t tell him everything though.”
“What did she need to tell you?”
She shrugs. “He only met her because of me. And now they think it was him who did it.”
“I know who did it,” I say.
She looks at me hard. “What do you know?”
“The truth. I’m a psychic. It’s my job to know.”
She continues to stare at me, breathing hard. “It’s not true,” she says. “It isn’t!”
“We both know it is. You can’t keep denying the truth, Eliza. It will come out in the end.”
Her lips are trembling. “How do you know?” Her eyes flit wildly around the room. “Is she here now? Did she tell you?”
I consider telling her she is, but I don’t think I could sell it. Even I don’t believe in ghosts. I shake my head. “Jenny isn’t here. She’s passed on. She’s gone.”
“Oh God!” She squeezes her eyes shut and tears come pouring out of their corners. Her face has turned red and her mouth turned downwards into a grimace of grief and horror. She keeps shaking her head as if denying the truth will make it go away.
She speaks through her sobs, the words tumbling out as if she needs to confess and unburden herself. “She came to find me. She wanted to be friends again. She must have known about the tea. She sent me a package of it in the post. Isn’t that a funny thing for a sixteen year old to do? To notice that I might miss the tea?”
“You have to tell the truth, Eliza,” I tell her softly, reaching for her hand and feeling that horrible outpouring of her grief and self-hatred again. Even so, I hold on, sensing that she needs the reassuring touch. “The Agency need proof. They need to hear from you what happened.”
She starts sobbing so hard that her words become barely recognizable. “She needed me. I’m her big sister, but I left her behind. I didn’t want to know.”
“She still needs you. She’s your little sister. You can give her justice. Only you.”
The kitchen door bangs open. James Fenway is standing there looking every bit the furious Hollywood hero. “What the hell is going on here?” he roars.
Eliza starts crying harder and louder. He comes striding over to her and puts his big hand on her slim shoulder. His accusing eyes are on me. “What did you say to her?” he demands.
I push my chair backwards, moving away from them both. He looks like he might punch me.
“Your niece was just telling me about who murdered her sister,” I tell him calmly.
“It was that boy Mustafa. That disgusting creep!” he yells. “You people already arrested him!”
“That would be convenient for you, wouldn’t it?” I say snidely before I can stop myself. Except it wasn’t me. It was the little voice, slipping into the front of my mind for a second and taking command of my tongue. Furious, I firmly push her aside. She goes reluctantly.
“What?” James Fenway says, looking astonished at my words.
“Mustafa Salehi has been taken in for questioning,” I say more calmly, hopefully more professionally. “He hasn’t been placed under arrest yet. We don’t arrest people without proof.”
No matter how much you want us to, says the little voice in my head. I don’t repeat her words out loud.
“What
the hell are you talking about?” Fenway roars. “Just who do you think you are?”
His shouts have drawn an Agent into the room. A young man I do not recognize. He looks alarmed. Seeing him seems to embolden James Fenway.
“Who is this girl?” he roars at the young Agent. “She’s accosted my niece. Put her in an awful state. I’ll have her badge! I’ll have yours too!”
The young Agent’s mouth drops open. He looks at me helplessly. He seems to sense things might kick off but he doesn't know who to blame. His hand goes to the weapons belt at his hips and hovers uncertainly between his restraints and his stunbommer.
It strikes me that he must be new to the job too. I had expected him to immediately make me apologize and hustle me away. I probably have only a minute or two until someone senior arrives who does have the authority to make me leave.
I can’t leave now. Not when I am so close.
I fix my eyes firmly on James Fenway and try not to cower in my shoes. “You’re very good at making up stories Mr Fenway. Like the one you made up for the press about Mustafa Salehi. You must have thought he was the perfect patsy. It was you who got Jenny’s friend to release those pictures of him to the press, wasn’t it? If we speak to her, is that what she’ll say?”
“What? You! I… No such thing!” Fenway blusters. Then he seems to swell with self-righteous indignation and finds his voice. “How dare you make these unfounded accusations? You’re finished. You’ll never work in this city again!”
I had no idea whether my hunch about the friend with the photos would pay off, but his response tells me I am on to something. But unless he or Eliza confesses, I have no shred of evidence. And a powerful man like James Fenway will get away with his lies.
And I am sick to death of murderers getting away with it. I’m going to make him pay. I’m going to prove to Constantine Storm that he was right to hire me, and close this case right now.
A sense of certainty fills me like a balloon. I can already feel the thrill of success.
“It was you,” I tell Fenway firmly and loudly. “You couldn't resist seducing your succubus niece. When we find the proof I bet you’ll change your story fast. You’ll say it was her, the succubus, who seduced you. Except she was only a child. Only sixteen. How long has it been going on? One year? Two?”
Eliza is staring at her uncle with wide eyes. She gives a whimper. He glances at her and quickly looks away. Eliza makes a sound that is half sob, half wail. She staggers away from her chair, thrusting her uncle’s hand off her shoulder. She moves in a daze towards the Agent, as if he will help her. She cowers next to him.
James Fenway’s fists are clenched. He wants to hit me. I take another step away from him but I keep him pinned in my gaze, determined to extract a confession. “Why did you kill her?” I demand. “Was she finished with you? Did she want to end it? Did she threaten to tell Eliza?”
“You have no proof,” he snarls at me. “No proof!”
Eliza screams. She is hurling herself towards her uncle, her arm raised like she is going to slap him. But she doesn’t slap him. She has something in her hand that looks like a small flashlight. She rams it into his mouth. She presses the button on its base. Its proximity alarm gives a brief warning whine but she doesn’t let go.
It is the stunbommer. Realizing what is about to happen I stagger back in horrified shock. The weapon’s magic ignites. The force of the magical stunbomm blows James Fenway’s skull open. It throws me aside. Seconds later I am still cowering on the ground near the table, my ears ringing from the force of the magic wave. I stare in disbelief at the blood and brain matter spattered over the beautifully patterned floor tiles.
Racing footsteps come our way, and then Storm is standing in the doorway. He looks at the headless dead man. He looks at an unconscious Eliza Fenway, her face and torso spattered in gore, stunbommer still in her hand. He looks at me.
“Holy hellfyre,” he says. “What have you done?”
Chapter 2
DIANA
Two years later I am half-jogging, half-walking to my job at a catering company. Jogging because my cat AngelBeastie had somehow managed to unplug my alarm clock in the middle of the night, making me wake up late. But still half walking because I cannot afford to turn up at work all hot and bothered.
Today’s catering event is for a blue-chip financial company, a premium shift that I’ve been lucky to get, and I cannot be disheveled in front of the clients. My boss already has enough reasons to not like me.
Walking is a bad idea. I knew that before I started out. Head office is halfway across town and the weather forecast had predicted rain today. A thunderstorm. A heavy shower had ceased before I left my apartment, so I’d decided to take my chances. Otherwise I would have had to take the bus, wasting money I can ill afford.
Of the two jobs I currently have, this is by far the better paying one. I need to look good because the tips are worth more than the wages.
My second job is evening work at a local restaurant. It has the benefit of being near my apartment, but the pay is minimal, the tips non-existent, and the greasy food they serve leaves my hair and skin and clothes smelling of fat. But at least Luca, the boss, is kind. I’ve learned a kind boss makes up for many other evils.
The earlier rainstorm has left deep puddles in the sidewalks and on the pavements. I tread carefully, keen to avoid getting my one pair of shiny black shoes full of water. It is the morning rush hour on a Friday, and I am not the only one in a hurry to get to work. The London crowd is bustling and unpredictable. I weave and dodge through it, an expert at navigating it by now.
The appearance of a sudden hefty torso, man attached, emerging from an alleyway catches me off guard. It sends me swerving sharply towards the road. A big red bus rushes past, sending a giant swoosh of water up from a puddle.
I screech in quiet dismay as the grimy water drenches my pristine and crisply ironed white blouse. I stare down at my chest in disbelief. What the hell am I going to do now?
I stomp grimly onwards, my mood completely ruined. And it hadn’t been that great to begin with. If I were anyone else, any normal person, I could have afforded to go into a store and buy a new shirt. I could have afforded to replace my bicycle when it got stolen.
But I am not a normal person. I’m the Angel of Death apparently, though no one would know it to look at me. Heck, I wouldn’t know it if the little voice in my head didn’t keep insisting it. My adoptive family didn't know it either, but they’d still kept me locked away. I’d had no work experience to speak of, and I suspect that it only my blond fragile looks landed me my jobs.
The bundle of money that Magda, my biological mother, had given me two years ago is tied up paying the deposit on my crappy rental apartment. An apartment that I could only afford back when I was supposed to get a decent salary from the Agency of Otherkind Investigations. A job I no longer have. Since then I’ve been subsisting on whatever cash I’ve earned from week to week.
London is not cheap. My shifts this week are barely enough to cover my rent. I had to beg for a couple of them, including today’s one. Forget about food. These past couple of months I’ve been eating leftovers at work and making the rest up with the tinned fish and lentils I’ve scavenged from local stores.
It doesn’t help that I am hungry all the goddamn time. It’s like my adolescent years of starvation at the Coltons’ have finally started to catch up with me at age twenty-three. Worse, I’ve burnt myself on the grill twice at work this month. Both times at my catering job. Both times because Rosalie, my fellow catering waitress, was carrying a large tray into the kitchen and claimed to have not seen me.
I had to hide the burns and pretend they weren’t there. How else would I explain it when they magically healed overnight? A healing process that left me famished.
My hand goes to my navel, my fingers feeling for the hardness of my navelstone. The moment I feel it my fingers drop away. I don’t know why I do that. Touch it, I mean.
I’
ve spent what feels like a lifetime trying not to touch it, trying not to even see it. The stone, which is fused into my flesh, is shiny black and sharp edged like a grotesque gem. I had always hated it. It marked me out as an oddity. It had made Mrs Colton think of me as an obscene devil child.
I had been healing in my sleep for years. I had never realized until recently that it was my hated navelstone that was responsible. Godstone, Magda had called it, but the letter she left me before being murdered had given me no useful information at all. It had warned me only that evil people would try to steal the power of the stone, and that I must remain anonymous to protect myself. It had warned me that DCK, the Devil Claw Killer himself, was after me.
Copycat Killer Page 2
