By Midnight

by Mia James

  ‘You okay, honey?’ April turned to see Fiona standing there, nervously stirring her drink with a straw. April took her arm and turned her away, so no one else could see their faces.

  ‘No, I am not okay,’ she said. ‘I’ve just given Caro a hard time when I shouldn’t have, so on top of everything else I feel like a terrible friend.’

  ‘Why did you give her a hard time?’

  ‘I got home to find the place deserted. I thought you’d all been murdered.’

  Fiona laughed. ‘No, Davina just thought it would be fun …’ Then she stopped. ‘Oh, God, I can see why you might think that,’ she said, covering her mouth with her hand.

  April glanced around. ‘So you know, then?’ she whispered.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘About the, you know, vampires.’

  Fiona frowned and sucked on her straw. ‘What? No - what vampires?’ she said, clearly confused. ‘No, I meant coming home to the place where your dad was, well, you know …’ She pulled a face. ‘And then finding us all gone and your mum too, you could have jumped to any conclusion. I’m sorry, we should have waited for you, but Benjamin was so persuasive, he said it was the best thing to do and that Gabriel could bring you along later if you felt up to it.’

  Damn, they are good, thought April, taking another gulp of her drink. ‘What excuse did you give my mum anyway?’ she asked Fiona.

  ‘That Gabriel was taking you for a walk, she seemed to buy it, but then she’s pretty cool isn’t she? I mean, not many mums would come out with their daughter’s friends, especially not on a day like today.’

  ‘What?’ said April. ‘Are you saying my mum’s here?’

  Fiona watched as April looked around her wildly.

  ‘Oh, I thought you knew.’

  ‘No, I didn’t bloody know!’ she snapped, then strode off as she suddenly recognised the blonde woman talking with Davina.

  ‘Mum!’ she shouted, grabbing Silvia’s arm and spinning her around. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh hi, darling,’ said Silvia, her words slurring. ‘Just came for a little after-show party, glad you found us.’

  ‘We’ve only just buried Dad!’ shouted April. ‘How could you?’

  ‘It’s only one little drink and, anyway, Davina said something very true.’

  ‘Davina said … ?’ April repeated, glaring at Davina.

  ‘No, listen,’ said Silvia, wagging a finger at her, her eyes glassy. ‘Davina said that your dad would want us to have a good time today, to celebrate his life, because he was such a special guy, and you know what? He was a special guy. So I thought this would be a better way to remember him than sitting around in that house with a load of cousins and uncles who never liked him anyway.’

  ‘You’re pathetic!’ shouted April, then stopped, hit with the sudden terrible realisation of what she had said. Those were the very same words she had shouted at her father the morning he was killed.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, taking her mother’s hand and hauling her to her feet. ‘We’re going home.’

  Silvia staggered dangerously, but caught herself just in time. ‘You know, I think you’re right, I don’t feel too well actually.’

  ‘Are you okay here? Need a hand?’ Benjamin had come over, Gabriel just behind him.

  ‘No, I think we’ve got it. Fee? Can you take her other side?’ The two girls propped Silvia up between them and moved towards the exit.

  ‘Here, I’ll clear the way,’ said Gabriel.

  Remembering Gabriel’s instructions, April turned back to Davina.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ she said. ‘It was a nice idea, but …’

  ‘Oh, I totally understand,’ said Davina, doing her pout again. ‘It’s been a long, difficult day for you. See you in school, yeah?’

  April forced herself to smile.

  Outside in the blessedly cold air, they flagged a cab and bundled a now-senseless Silvia into the back seat. When Fiona was safely inside and out of earshot, April turned to Gabriel.

  ‘Now get back in there and look after Caro. I don’t want to hear she’s been bitten, okay?’

  Gabriel smiled. ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘And be at my house tomorrow morning, eight sharp. We need to talk, okay?’

  ‘But tomorrow’s Wednesday, aren’t we going to school?’

  ‘I’m in mourning so I’ve got the day off school and I’m pretty sure skipping a few lessons won’t harm your education.’

  ‘Okay.’ Gabriel grinned, and then suddenly leant over and kissed April on the cheek.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, touching the spot where his lips had brushed against her.

  Gabriel laughed. In a daze, April turned and climbed inside the cab. Then she turned back and pulled down the window.

  ‘Hey! You’d better show up this time,’ she called, as the taxi pulled away, ‘or you’ll wish you were dead.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The doorbell rang at one minute to eight. April and Fiona had been sitting at the breakfast bar discussing the events of the previous day and picking at a couple of croissants Fiona had magicked from the oven. She had been up and about amazingly early, humming a tune and happily tidying away the wreckage downstairs; the kitchen surfaces gleamed. April had always been amazed - not to mention annoyed - by Fiona’s powers of recovery. And when did she become a domestic goddess? she thought. Is this part of the recruitment process? April felt terrible for suspecting her best friend of having been seduced by vampires, but she had begun to find paranoia a useful tool; it was better to suspect everyone than wake up in a pool of blood. Fiona had been awfully pally with Davina and Benjamin the previous day. April had originally planned to discuss everything Gabriel had told her with Caro and Fiona, but now she wasn’t so sure it was such a good idea. She wasn’t sure about anything any more.

  The doorbell rang again, more insistently this time.

  ‘Oh God, he’s early, he’s here,’ said April, leaping up and immediately regretting it as her knee complained. Even so, she straightened her skirt. ‘How do I look?’

  ‘You look amazing,’ said Fiona. ‘Now calm down, he’s only a boy and if he’s early he must be keen.’

  Yeah, right, thought April as she walked to the door. Come on, April, don’t lose it, she scolded herself. She reached up and opened the door.

  ‘On time for once …’ she began, then stopped.

  Itwasn’t Gabriel. It was DI Ian Reece and DS Amy Carling. Her heart dropped.

  ‘Expecting someone?’ said Carling with a nasty smile.

  ‘Oh, no, well, just a friend,’ stammered April before recovering herself. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, looking at DI Reece. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Reece. ‘I just wanted to have a word before school. Could we come in?’

  April glanced over her shoulder. ‘Well, it’s not exactly the best time. What with the funeral yesterday and everything.’

  ‘It won’t take a minute, then we’ll get out of your hair,’ said Reece with a winning smile.

  ‘All right,’ she said, quickly scanning the square behind them for any sign of Gabriel. The last thing she wanted was for the police to start asking questions about their relationship, especially as she wasn’t entirely clear on it herself. She opened the door and showed them into the living room. ‘I can’t be too long,’ she said nervously as they sat down.

  ‘I quite understand,’ said Reece. ‘Do you want to call your mum in?’

  April shook her head. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible and dreaded to think how a badly hung-over Silvia would react to being woken at this time of the morning, especially by a man she had threatened the last time she had seen him.

  ‘No, that’s not necessary,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Reece. ‘Now, first of all, I was rather concerned about your phone call last night, April. What happened there?’

  April could feel herself blushing. ‘Oh, sorry
about that,’ she said, ‘I was a little upset. I thought someone was following me, but I was … well, I was wrong.’

  ‘But what were you doing in the centre of London, love?’ asked Carling.

  Don’t ‘love’ me, you cow, thought April. The friendly older sister routine didn’t ring true with the policewoman’s personality and demeanour. In fact, April seriously doubted she had any friends.

  ‘I, well, I suppose I ran away,’ said April. ‘The wake was full of all these people I didn’t know and they were all talking about Dad as if they knew him better than I did. I just wanted to go somewhere where I remembered him being happy.’

  ‘And where was that?’ asked Reece.

  ‘The patisserie in Covent Garden near my grandpa’s house.’

  Carling flipped open her notebook.

  ‘And did you go in?’ Reece asked.

  ‘No. When I got there, I realised I didn’t have any money,’ said April. ‘Listen, what’s all this about? Have you learnt something new? What’s going on?’

  Reece and Carling exchanged a look.

  ‘We tracked your phone call that night,’ he said. ‘You can be pretty accurate in the centre of a city, so we have a fair idea of where you were.’

  April didn’t say anything, so Reece continued, ‘There was a violent incident near Covent Garden last night. I can’t say too much, but there were details about it that are very similar to the cases in Highgate.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked April.

  Reece shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that at this stage.’

  ‘Why not? Don’t I—’ began April, but DS Carling cut her off.

  ‘Can you tell us exactly where you were?’

  April looked down. ‘Not really. As I said, I thought I was being chased, so I wasn’t really looking where I was going.’

  ‘Who did you think was chasing you, April?’ asked Reece.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She glanced up at him. ‘The killer, I suppose.’

  Carling eyed her sceptically. ‘April? Did you see anything?’

  ‘No, no I didn’t,’ said April, a little too quickly, feeling her stomach turn over. ‘What happened? Was someone killed?’

  Reece paused. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘It was pretty nasty.’

  April put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh no,’ she gasped.

  DS Carling looked at her closely. ‘What’s the matter, April?’ she asked. ‘Do you know something about it?’

  April closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘No, nothing.’

  But you do! her mind screamed. You do! You were there! That much was true, but beyond that, April really couldn’t tell them anything. Did Gabriel kill those men? She had been sure they were still alive when she ran off. But you didn’t see what he did when you were running up the steps, did you? mocked her mind. Face it, he’s a vampire - who knows what they’ll do when your back’s turned? But why would he kill them? They were no threat to April by then, and what of Gabriel’s line about vampires from the night before: ‘Why kill them? What would be in it for them? Yes, when you applied logic to the problem, it seemed unlikely, but that was assuming vampires behaved logically. Weren’t they bloodthirsty monsters?

  Reece sat forwards and touched April’s knee. She winced.

  ‘What’s the matter, April?’

  April looked at him, anger sparking in her eyes. ‘What’s the matter?’ she snapped. ‘My dad was killed about six feet from where you’re sitting - do you really have to ask? You told me that serial killers are rare, but here it is, happening right in front of me, in my house, following me around. I can’t seem to get away from it.’ She looked up at Reece, her eyes glistening. ‘Do you think it’s my fault?’

  Reece returned her gaze for a long moment. ‘No, April, it’s not your fault,’ he said seriously, standing up. ‘Unfortunately, this sort of thing does happen. It’s not pleasant, but it happens. And London’s a very big place with a lot of people in it. I know it might feel as if it’s following you around, but it’s not. Sometimes these things are entirely random.’

  ‘But what happened, DI Reece?’ she said. ‘I mean, don’t you have CCTV footage or something?’

  Again, the two police officers glanced at each other.

  ‘Yes,’ Reece said, ‘but it’s inconclusive. The incident happened in a tunnel near Covent Garden. Sadly, it doesn’t have cameras. We have footage of you running from Trafalgar Square and then …’

  ‘What?’

  Reece shrugged. ‘It’s probably nothing. We have a fairly clear shot of you running into an alleyway as if someone is chasing you, but there’s no one behind you.’

  April frowned, feeling a horrible clench in her stomach.

  ‘No one?’ she whispered. ‘No one at all?’

  Reece frowned. ‘No. Did you think there would be?’

  April shook her head. ‘Like I said, I thought someone was following me, but I guess I was just imagining it.’

  ‘Exactly. So don’t worry about it, it’s probably just coincidence. There’s a lot of it about.’

  April did her best to smile at the policeman. She knew Reece was trying to be nice, but he didn’t know the truth. He didn’t know that Gabriel was there, he didn’t know he might have killed those men in cold blood. And he certainly wouldn’t have believed her if she had told him the rest of the things she knew about Gabriel Swift. April stood up and showed the officers to the door. She was just closing it behind them when she had another thought.

  ‘DI Reece?’ she called, just as he reached the gate. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  Reece glanced at her, then turned to Carling and told her he would meet her in the car.

  ‘Why did you say “it’s probably nothing”?’ asked April when the other officer was out of earshot. ‘You know, about the CCTV footage.’

  Reece pulled a face. ‘Oh, that. Nothing to worry about, probably just a fault with the camera.’

  ‘But what was it? Was I being followed?’

  Reece shook his head. ‘No, it’s just a shadow on the film, nothing more,’ he said, and tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow. April could tell something was bothering him.

  ‘Please, DI Reece,’ said April. ‘You’re starting to worry me.’

  The policeman looked at her for a moment, then sighed. ‘Okay, just after you run into the alley, something else passes across the alleyway, like a thick shadow. For a while I thought it might be someone following you, but our tech boys assure me they can see the wall through it, so it’s probably just a fault on the disk or something. I really shouldn’t have mentioned it. Now, try not to worry,’ said Reece. ‘I promise you, we’ll get to the bottom of all this.’

  Not before I do, thought April as she closed the door.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  April was trying her best to be brave, but it was breaking her heart to see Fiona load her suitcase into the taxi. It had been wonderful to have her to stay, even if she had spent most of her visit talking about vampires and notebooks and impossible goings-on, but it was still term-time and Fiona’s parents wanted her to get back. April was glad they had let her come at all; she knew she wouldn’t have got through the funeral without her; it was like having a piece of her old, sane life to lean on, one last scrap of normality to cling to, but now April knew she had to let her go. Much as she hated to admit it to herself, April Dunne had become a jinx. More than that: people around her were dying, and after last night, she couldn’t risk the vampires getting any closer to Fiona. She couldn’t lose her too. Not ever.