I tugged open the door and lunged for the closest vampire.
‘Not another step,’ said a vamp with the muzzle of a gun pressed to Shift’s head.
Outnumbered and outgunned. Not ideal.
‘My name is Enoch and these are some friends of mine.’
I recognised the gunman as the upstart at the conclave I’d snooped on: the cool customer with the harelip. The vampires with him were the crew he stormed out with.
‘How about you show us inside, Mister Fletcher? You and I need to have a little chat.’
I shook my head at Shift despairingly. ‘See, I told you that morph-job wasn’t fooling anyone.’
‘Hey, that impersonation was flawless,’ he crowed.
‘You’re right,’ Enoch told him. ‘But no amount of camouflage could have disguised the smell of the cheap perfume you’re wearing.’
‘That’s Chanel No. 5!’ Shift shot back, only falling quiet when the vampire’s gun bit deeper into his temple.
‘Easy,’ I said. ‘Come on in and let’s talk this out.’ I stepped off the welcome mat to allow the door-stoppers inside.
The Vengari filed through the door. Under the lights of the lobby I was able to get a better look at them. Enoch was a miserable-looking specimen, but his backup were concentration camp-thin, with cheekbones so sharp they were close to piercing flesh. I wasn’t about to let their malnourished bodies fool me, though. Vampires were fighters, these ones especially.
‘Why don’t we start with you telling us why you’re tracking the Arcadian?’ Enoch said with breath that made halitosis smell like air freshener. This was the first time I’d encountered the Vengari with a working nose, and the bouquet they gave off was absolutely foul.
‘That’s private,’ I said. ‘As in private eye.’ I hooked a thumb at the door behind me—the one with my name and title stencilled on its window.
Enoch looked at the door then back to me. ‘Paranormal Investigator, eh?’
‘You can read? Wow, what other tricks can you do? How about rolling over and playing dead?’
His lips stretched thin with hatred.
‘Silly me,’ I said. ‘I guess the horse already bolted on that one, didn’t it?’
I expected him to call the kettle black, but instead he nodded in the direction of the office door. ‘Fletcher & Fletcher,’ he recited. ‘Except I only see one of you. Where’s your partner?’
Was he mucking me about? Did Enoch really not know that Frank and I were huddled together like a couple of Russian nesting dolls? Then again, why would he? Him and his boys slipped away from the Vengari soirée before our names even came up; no wonder he wasn’t privy to all the gossip.
‘My partner stepped out,’ I explained. ‘It’s just me here.’
Enoch nodded agreeably. Okay, I was definitely onto something. First the bloke failed to pick up on the irony of a ghost roasting his lack of mortality, now this. To Enoch, I was a regular Insider: a living, breathing normal who knew about the Uncanny but wasn’t of it. When his fingers did the walking through the Yellow Pages and he saw the words “Paranormal Investigators” on our ad, he must have taken it to mean that we were to folks who investigated the paranormal, not that we were investigators who were paranormal.
Come to think of it, this wasn’t the first time someone had made that mistake. I once had a potential client visit the office asking me to help him evict a man renting out his cellar. Apparently, the feller had turned it into a laboratory and was stitching together body parts he’d nicked from the local graveyard. Imagine the landlord’s shock when Frank stepped in looking like Eddie the Head. Poor bloke must have thought it was Frankenstein season.
All of which is to say that my ad copy could probably use some tweaking. Then again, the misconception was paying off here, so maybe keeping what I did vague wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Food for thought.
Another thought: the Vengari not knowing that Fletcher & Fletcher were a double-dead combo meant the vamp whose arm my partner tore off most likely hadn’t made it back to the clan. Probably collapsed on the street when he bled out and cooked away when the sun came up. Lucky for us. Not so much for him.
I guess I couldn’t blame the Vengari for not putting it together. A ghost merging with his own reanimated corpse isn’t something you see every day. In fact, I don’t know that it happens anywhere outside of our peculiar partnership. Which was all the more reason to keep my gob shut. If they wanted to believe I was a breather, so be it. Let them be in the dark. It’s where vampires belong.
‘Are you going to tell me why you stopped by with a gun to my friend’s head?’ I asked. ‘Or is this just your way of saying hello?’
Shift cringed as Enoch cocked the hammer of his pistol.
‘We’re looking for the Arcadian, too, and we think you might be harbouring him.’
‘Then you’re on a hiding to nothing, mate,’ I replied.
Enoch hissed into his hostage’s ear, ‘What’s he saying?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ squeaked Shift. ‘I only understand about half of the things that come out of his Limey mouth.’
Enoch turned the gun on me. ‘How about you be a good host and show us around, Mister Fletcher?’
‘I’d rather not.’
‘What’s the matter? Do you have something to hide?’
I knew I had no choice but to cooperate with the home invaders—that’s unless I wanted a second ghost with a bullet through the head to avenge.
‘Come on then,’ I groaned, ‘why don’t I give you the tour?’
I started off by leading Enoch to the office, which his lackeys tossed from top to bottom, eyes peeled for any sign of the rogue Arcadian. Naturally, they found none. After they were done there, his boys split up and took a shufty at the rest of the premises. After a few tense minutes in the company of Enoch and his hostage, a voice called from down the hall.
‘We found something in the back room, boss...’
They must have sniffed out Tali. I was hoping she’d be canny enough to stay hidden, but it looked like they’d rooted her out. Enoch nodded to the office door and off we shuffled to the showroom. We stepped through the ragged curtain that led into the showroom. I expected to find Tali with her hands in the air, but instead I found three vamps with their mitts in my coffins.
‘What do we have here?’ said Enoch, taking in the room.
The parlour housed six caskets in total, laid across trestles the way I found them when I moved in. If you weren’t aware that the building used to be a funeral home, I suppose you might find them a bit suspicious, if not downright ominous. The only reason they were still there—aside from the fact that I hadn’t got around to renovating the back end of the building yet—was because Frank used one of the coffins to sleep in. If you could really call it sleep. It’s more like he zones out for a few hours at a time, really. Honestly, you’d hardly be able to tell the difference unless you really knew him.
Enoch eyed the one coffin that his cronies had yet to crack open.
‘You like it?’ I asked. ‘Must make you feel right at home.’
Following Enoch’s order, the vamps flipped the lid on the last coffin and found it as empty as the rest. I breathed a sigh of relief. Tali had obviously been smart enough to find a better hiding place than that. I cast a glance about the room and caught a quick glimpse of her face peeking out from a wall before it dipped back in again. Clever girl. There was no telling what might happen if the Vengari found her, and from a selfish point of view, my case completely fell apart if she got snuffed out for good.
‘You’ve had a rummage and come up empty,’ I told Enoch. ‘Now how about you and your boys jog on before the sun comes up?’
Shift winced again. I’m sure he’d have preferred I play nice with the Vengari given that he was the one with the gun to his head, but it just wasn’t in my nature to kowtow to vampires. Horrible fuckers. How they’ve ended up portrayed as gorgeous, brooding fiends is beyond me. All I can say is, they must have
a bloody good P.R. team, because there’s nothing gorgeous about 99.9% of them. Vampires are diseased relics who breed like an undead pyramid scheme.
Enoch gave Shift a shove, sending him in the direction of one of his men, who caught his neck in a chokehold. I wondered for a moment if it was possible for Shift to transform into someone better suited to a fight—some hench bastard with a short forehead and prison yard muscles—but I guess that wasn’t in his toolbag.
Unencumbered now, Enoch turned his attention to yours truly. He placed the gun he was holding in its holster, a power move, a way of letting me know that the weapon was unnecessary and that he could rip me apart with his bare hands if he fancied it.
‘Listen up, and listen well,’ he said, giving his voice a real twist of pepper. ‘You work for me now, Mister Fletcher, Paranormal Investigator. You’re going to find the Arcadian, and when you do, you’re going to bring him to me.’
‘That’s funny,’ I said, ‘the fae just gave me the same pitch. Better get in line.’
Again, Shift shot me hate rays. Even Frank, who’d been quiet until now, was voicing his disapproval inside my head.
Enoch went on. ‘You’re going to hand the Arcadian over, otherwise me and my boys will be paying you another visit, and this one won’t be so cordial.’ He nodded to a lackey, who handed me a card with a phone number on it. ‘The minute you lay eyes on the Arcadian, you send me a text.’
‘Thanks for the offer, but I’m old-fashioned. I prefer to chat face-to-face.’
A reptilian smile played on Enoch’s lips. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘Oh yeah? And why’s that?’
His wicked grin stretched from ear to ear. ‘I thought you’d never ask...’
He nodded to the two vamps who weren’t busy holding Shift in place, and they lunged forward, seizing me by the forearms. I struggled to break free of their grip, but even with Frank’s hulkish brawn I was no match for them. Despite their twiggy bodies, the Vengari were possessed of incredible strength. They were like ants: nothing to look at, but able to perform immense physical feats. I suppose that was the trade-off for being carbonised by sunlight, not to mention looking like cursed waxworks from a condemned seaside attraction.
The vampires slammed me into one of the open coffins, a tasteful number with faux-gold handles and a white clamshell finish. Out came a knife, six inches of cold steel in Enoch’s hand. He turned it over, enjoying the play of the parlour’s gallery lighting on its cool steel edge. I went to strike out with my feet, but Enoch used his free hand to slam shut the lower portion of the casket lid, protecting him from any stray kicks.
I could have jettisoned from Frank’s body and landed a punch or two, but where would that have got me? Chances were Enoch could have taken us as a twosome, and even if we did manage to put him down working separately, he still had three more knee-breakers backing him up. No, I had to stay out of sight—spring the trap only if it was a matter of life or death.
‘Get off me, you toothy bastard,’ I cried.
Enoch tested the tip of his blade with his thumb and drew a bead of blood.
‘Hold still. It’ll hurt less that way.’
He placed the knife between his teeth then grabbed my face, digging his sharp fingers into the flesh of my cheeks. With his free hand he forced his spare digits into my mouth deep enough to trigger my gag reflex and bring up some of Frank’s last meal. I tasted brains as Enoch rooted around my mouth and fished out my tongue. I fought him every inch of the way, but he succeeded in yanking it between my lips and holding it there, rigid and taut and longer than I knew it could stretch.
Enoch transferred the knife back to his weapon hand.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you have a big mouth, Mister Fletcher?’
The edge of the knife met the pink eel pinched between his forefinger and thumb and began to saw. Cold white light shot through my eyes and down my spine, all the way to the soles of my feet where it ricocheted back again and exploded in my brain. My fingernails embedded in the palms of my hands, deep enough to draw blood, so deep I thought they’d come out the other side. I tried to scream but it lodged in my throat as a hard bulge.
I wanted to go, wanted to escape Frank’s body and leave the pain behind, but I couldn’t do it. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t let him suffer alone. Despite my scream being trapped inside of me, my partner’s rang loud and clear, an anguished howl, raging through every filament of my being. Frank could feel what was happening to his body just as much as I could. The soul bond Jazz warned us about had seen to it that he could feel pain, so I wasn’t the only one affected by our partnership; he’d had changed, too. While I’d gained the ability to smell and taste and touch using the body I was born with, Frank had gone from being a vengeful automaton to a man with thoughts and feelings. It made him human, but wrapped up in that package was the suffering that came with the human condition. You might say I got the better part of the deal, but it really didn’t feel that way, not in that moment, because Frank’s pain was mine to share. And yet as torturous as it was—the vampire’s knife shearing through muscle and tissue in ragged bites—the pain would have been doubled if it wasn’t being shared.
I heard an audible snap like a rubber band coming apart and the back of my head struck the bed of the coffin. Through eyes stung with bitter tears I saw Enoch, still grinning. The severed tongue laid across his palm like a fat, bloody slug. The harelipped vampire stuffed the grim trophy into the pocket of his coat, then stooped over me and wiped his bloodied knife across the lapel of my jacket.
‘Find the Arcadian quickly, otherwise the next time you see me I’ll take more than what’s in your mouth.’
With that ultimatum delivered, the Vengari exited the parlour and slipped away into the last of the night.
I stayed crumpled in the coffin, merged with Frank still, squeezing our hands together to stem a frigid tremor.
Tali emerged from the wall to check on us. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, even if it was obvious we weren’t.
Shift came over and placed a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, his mouth forming a weak smile. ‘Oh, Fletchers… what have you gotten yourselves into this time?’
Despite our best efforts to conceal it, Frank and I were trembling all over. I told myself it was rage giving us the shakes, but after what we’d been through, fear had taken the lead from rage by a good few furlongs.
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Body and Soul
I was getting payback for what they did to Frank, that was a promise. The Vengari were dead wrong if they thought they’d brought me to heel. Carving up my partner had only given me purpose. Now I was a wasp at a picnic: I wasn’t going anywhere and I was going to make it my mission to fuck up their day.
We left the office travelling two abreast, Frank leaning on me for support, my arm wrapped around his waist. When we arrived at Legerdomain, Frank shot out a hand and grabbed the door handle like a drowning man reaching for a piece of passing driftwood. We stumbled inside, causing the shop bell to tinkle a merry tune that was very much at odds with the mood.
Jazz Hands was sitting upon her usual stool as we entered, busy talking to someone on the phone. She didn’t give us the courtesy of looking our way, giving us a wait finger, instead.
‘We need your help,’ I said.
‘Not now,’ she hissed, refusing to be interrupted, eyes still trained on nothing in particular while she concentrated on a conversation that couldn’t possibly be more important than the one unfolding right in front of her.
Jazz wasn’t the easiest person to get on the right side of. I often think of her as a maze. Somewhere in the middle of that maze there’s a heart—a place of compassion and understanding—but to get to it I have to navigate a complex tangle of corridors and wrong turns. Finding my way to Jazz’s gooey centre can take a long time. Sometimes it can feel never-ending. But when I find my way there, it’s always worth the journey.
‘Jazz, seriously—’<
br />
She turned her back on me and continued her phone call. ‘You’ve got it lodged where?... How is that even possible?’ A looong pause followed. ‘Let me get this straight: you just happened to be naked and accidentally sat on it? Sat on a magic wand?... No, I don’t think stranger things have happened, actually.’
‘Jazz, this is importa—’
Without turning to face me, she made a fist and gave it a firm shake, warning me off.
‘It’s a hospital you want, not me,’ she barked into the phone. ‘I don’t care if they do manage to fish the thing out, you’ve voided your warranty. Ha! If you think you’re getting a refund after that, you’re in for a big bloody surprise.’
She slammed down the receiver on her ancient bakelite phone, disconnecting the call. Finally, she swung about to face me, her neck mottled red with anger.
‘What? What is it?’
‘It’s Frank, he—’
I didn’t get any further than that before she cut me off. ‘You brought Frankie boy?’ she chirruped, her mood taking a rapid U-turn. ‘Get over here, my little ray of sunshine. Come on, come to Mama.’
Frank stayed where he was.
‘What’s the matter, boy? Cat got your tongue?’
‘A vampire did, actually,’ I replied on Frank’s behalf.
He opened his mouth to say something but all that came out was blood.
Jazz turned ash-grey and crossed herself. ‘What did you do to him?’
‘You think I did this?’ I fired back, but Jazz was already brushing past me on her way to turning over the shop’s Closed sign.
She rushed to Frank’s side, fussing over him, steering him gently to a seat (technically not a seat but one of those metal rigs that runs up the trouser leg of a human statue, giving the impression that they’re floating on thin air instead of just wasting everyone’s time).
‘Oh, you poor lamb,’ Jazz cooed, stroking Frank’s tangled hair.
‘Have you got any brain bits handy?’ I asked, knowing she liked to keep a stash in the fridge for our visits.
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 16
