Iron & Velvet (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator #1)

by Alexis Hall

  I blinked up at her. “You could have warned me.”

  Julian yawned and stretched like a cat. “Did you mind?”

  “Well, I’m not going to look a gift orgasm in the mouth. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

  “I’m the vampire prince of pleasure, sweeting. What were you expecting?”

  She had a point.

  “So I suppose I won’t be needing your services anymore.” She grinned. “Not your professional services, anyway.”

  “I’m still not sure about the first attack.”

  “Somebody attacked me, someone is being punished for it. I’d rather do it myself, but I’ve decided to let it slide because I like you.”

  “I’m not sure that works for me. You hired me to solve a murder, not find a scapegoat.”

  Julian nuzzled into the side of my neck, her legs still holding me tight. “Whatever happened to the customer always being right? It already goes against my instincts to leave this in the hands of the Witch Queen. Frankly, I’d like to put this whole thing behind me. I won’t be hiring you again.” She kissed the tip of my nose. “Your loyalties are too conflicted and your rates are exorbitant.”

  “You’re not Miss Easy To Work For, either. You keep trying to shag your employees.” Her teeth grazed my earlobe. “I don’t like mixing business with pleasure.”

  “Sweeting, my business is pleasure.”

  I sighed. “Do we have to be fucking for you to call me Kate?”

  “You’ll have to work that out for yourself.”

  I did the stagger of shame back to my flat at about seven o’ clock in the morning and face-planted into my pillow. I woke up around noon with that strangely hollow feeling that always comes at the end of a case. It’d be great if everything tied up in neat little bows like in an episode of Poirot, but in my line of work there are no easy answers. You can’t put all the suspects in a room until one of them confesses. You just do what you can with the evidence, and try to make sure you don’t get too many people killed. If you’re lucky, you’re left with something that makes some sort of sense. If you’re not, there’s just a bunch of stuff that happened and the nagging feeling that you’re missing something. Like when you put up a piece of flat-pack furniture.

  I thought about calling Julian, but it wasn’t like I had anything to report, and she’d been pretty clear about where she stood. I was off the books. The case was closed. I’d fucked the client. And right now, all I was doing was lying around in bed, picking at loose ends and feeling vaguely unsettled.

  I didn’t even think I’d got it wrong, just that I hadn’t got it right enough. If Archer had been here (not in my bed, obviously), he’d have told me to either let it go or do something about it.

  I think his exact words would have been Shit or get off the pot.

  Besides, how needy would it look if I rang her up saying, “Hey Jules, you know that murder you don’t care about anymore? Can we still investigate it together anyway?” Shagging the prince of pleasure was probably a one-time deal, but I’d known that going in.

  I went for a shower to clear my head. Gently rinsed the gash on my thigh. Sponged the vampire bite on my neck. Tended to the puncture wounds on my arm. Wow, I was a mess. At least Mr. Squidgy hadn’t left anything permanent. I know chicks dig scars, but they draw the line at tentacle monster love bites.

  Huh.

  Now I was looking closely, these weren’t the same marks that I’d found on Andrew. Sure, they looked similar, but, if you wanted to get technical about it, mine were more bruisy and less rippy, and the stabby bit was cleaner. It didn’t mean much by itself, because mages can summon all kinds of shit, but it was something else that didn’t add up and something else that suggested that I was looking for two attackers. Surely if it had been Maeve both times, she’d have used the same monster twice because it was easier, or completely different ones to cover her tracks. There’s no reason to make your second crime look like a bad copy of the first.

  Unless that’s exactly what it was. Just like she’d claimed.

  Perhaps I was grasping at straws, but it was starting to look a lot like there was something else going on here. The problem was, with only two attacks, I couldn’t tell what fit the pattern and what didn’t. You can always draw a straight line between two points, but it doesn’t actually mean they’re connected. Maybe Maeve had tried to attack the Velvet, then tried to attack Julian. Or maybe someone had hired Maeve to attack the Velvet, then she’d decided to attack Julian on her own. Or maybe someone else had attacked the Velvet and Maeve had jumped on the bandwagon. Or maybe someone else was behind both attacks, and Maeve was just covering for them. Or maybe it was Ashriel. Maybe he was Keyser Söze. With the information available, I had no way of knowing.

  Fuck. I had to get back on the case. On my own time. For no money. Fuck.

  I knew there was a reason I didn’t work for vampires.

  I still didn’t have what we in the detective business call “evidence,” but at least I had something I could point at and say “that right there doesn’t make sense.” And sometimes that’s all it takes. First thing to do was call Julian. Well, first thing to do was get out the shower, and then call Julian.

  I dialled the Velvet with one hand and pulled on my trousers with the other. I got through to the back office, and bounced around a couple of promoters, before being told that Miss Saint-Germain was in Brighton on business, and nobody knew when she’d be back or how to contact her. I’d have said this was another reason I didn’t work for vampires, but I had a feeling Julian would have been exactly the same if she was human.

  So where did this leave me? With similar but potentially unrelated monster summonings, a suspect who was good for at least one of them, a victim nobody wanted dead, and an eight-hundred-year-old vampire prince in the middle of it all. If Maeve had been working alone, then it was a slightly weird crime of passion and I’d solved it, so there was nothing to worry about. But if she hadn’t been working alone, then it was complicated. And complicated almost certainly meant politics. And politics almost certainly meant vampires. And that meant there was another prince involved somewhere, because a vampire can’t brush his fangs in this town without a prince knowing about it. If vampires do brush their fangs. Well, they have to get the blood off somehow, right?

  The Prince of Cups was the target, and the Prince of Swords was a crazy Viking in UGG boots, which left Wands and Coins. Julian had suspected the Prince of Coins, and it seemed as good a place to start as any. Besides, when in doubt, follow the money.

  Thomas Pryce operated out of a big, shiny building in the heart of the financial district. He had one of those companies with the words “fund” and “capital” in the name, and he’d spent the last six hundred years moving other people’s money in circles. It wasn’t just that he was wealthy—he commanded wealth. And, unlike Julian, he was one of London’s supernatural power players I had managed to piss off.

  A couple of years back, I was hired to solve this murder that turned out to be the work of a serial killer who turned out be a dashing young vampire with a thing for chopping up women. Something he’d been doing, off and on, for the best part of a century. I stopped him. Hard. Only later discovering that he was Thomas Pryce’s pet sociopath, and that the Prince of Coins did not appreciate people tampering with his property. Still, it’d been a few years, and he hadn’t gone out of his way to murder me, so maybe he was over it.

  I set out for the headquarters of PCM Capital Fund Management. It was a vast glass seashell curved around an open plaza paved in cool grey stone. In the middle of the plaza stood one of those modern sculptures that look like absolutely nothing. I’d probably have thought it was a pile of girders if I hadn’t been on Lime Street. I was braced for corporate cockwaving and marble pillars, but the reception area turned out to be pretty normal for a more-money-than-God kind of place. I mean, yes, the floors were still marble, but they weren’t in your face about it.

  I went up to the main desk, which sat be
neath a tastefully understated sign that read “Pryce, Cromwell, Moore.” So that’s what it stood for. I had no idea who Cromwell and Moore were, but knowing vampire princes, they were probably all the same person.

  “I’m here to see Mr. Pryce.” I didn’t think Horse & Hound was going to cut it this time.

  The receptionist was a fresh-faced young man in a Savile Row suit. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Well, here’s the thing,” I said. “No.”

  “I’m very sorry, but I’m afraid Mr. Pryce is in meetings all day and never sees anyone without an appointment.”

  I guess I should have seen that coming. “Okay.” I gave what I hoped was a charming smile. “Can I make an appointment?”

  There was a very slight pause, and I realised he had one of those spirally FBI earpieces.

  “No, Miss Kane.”

  It was going to be like that, was it?

  I decided to pull out the big guns. “I’m working for Julian Saint-Germain. And I’d like to make that appointment.”

  “I’m afraid that will not be possible. Mr. Pryce’s diary is full for the foreseeable future.”

  So much for him being over it. Honestly, you take out one little serial killer and you never hear the end of it.

  “It’s kind of important,” I tried. “There’s been a murder.”

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Pryce is in a meeting.”

  Right. Time for Plan B.

  “Thank you for your time.”

  I turned and pegged it up the corridor as fast I could. Within seconds I’d been trapped between two pairs of steel security doors and ejected from the premises by a squad of armed guards.

  Right. Time for Plan C.

  There was no Plan C. I’d forgotten how hard it was to get access to a vampire prince who doesn’t want to get in your pants. Thomas Pryce was a paranoid, immortal zillionaire who hated me. I had precisely zero leverage. In fact, with my latest stunt, I was probably in negative equity.

  I sat on a bit of the abstract art and had a cigarette. The only people vampire princes have to listen to are other vampire princes. And even if Julian had been in town, you can’t get the client to interrogate your suspects. It just looks unprofessional. That left Sebastian and Aeglica. I’d never met Sebastian, and besides, he was in Oxford. But, as luck would have it, I’d dug up the Prince of Swords’s address back when I was seventeen, and I was glad I’d finally get to use it for something other than saving Patrick’s annoying arse. I really hate begging favours from vampires, but it didn’t look like I had much choice. And he had asked to be kept informed. Okay, so there’s a bit of a difference between “informed” and “involved,” but maybe he wouldn’t mind. He seemed like a pretty hands-on kind of guy.

  Fifteen years ago, Aeglica had lived in this spooky, walled-off mansion just up from Holland Park, and he hadn’t moved since. So it was back on the Tube and halfway across London. I felt like a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Oyster card.

  The mansion hadn’t changed in a decade and a half. It was still straight out of Beauty and the Beast, complete with overgrown rose garden. No talking clocks, though. I scrambled over the wall, which did not look at all suspicious at three o’ clock on a Friday afternoon, landing on the other side in a tangle of tall grass and weeds. I made for the front door, which was unlocked, just like last time, and slipped inside. The entrance hall would have been majestic, but two hundred years of neglect had turned it into the set of a Christopher Lee film. Thick shadows spilled down the stairways and cobwebs smothered the chandeliers. Dust clung to the rotten curtains, covered the floors, and gathered on the gigantic skull that sat on a plinth in the middle of the hall. The last time I’d, uh, visited, Aeglica had told me it had belonged to one of the last dragons in Mercia.

  I wandered through dark and empty rooms until, finally, I found Aeglica. He was sitting on a low wooden stool, his hand resting on the pommel of an impractically large sword.

  “Um, hi,” I said.

  He nodded. “Miss Kane.”

  “I need to talk to—” Suddenly I noticed that hanging on the wall behind him was an enormous portrait of a naked chick, like the picture Leonardo DiCaprio does of Kate Winslet in Titanic. It was the only thing in the whole place not covered in dust. “Whoa. I did not see that last time.”

  Aeglica came to his feet and turned slowly. “It is a portrait of the most beautiful woman in Venice, painted by a great master.”

  She was definitely a hottie, milk-pale skin, and fire-red hair, and dark eyes that seemed to look right through you. “It’s very nice. And you have it . . . why?”

  “I admire her. Can I help you, Miss Kane?”

  “Maybe. There are some loose ends I’d like to tie up. I’m pretty sure I’ve got one of the people responsible for the attacks on Julian, but I think there might be more to it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t think the two attacks were connected, and I’d like to eliminate the Prince of Coins as a suspect, but he’s not making it easy.”

  Aeglica’s head moved very slightly. “He would not. He is young and fears for his position.”

  “Do you think you could get me an appointment?”

  “Yes. Come with me.” He laid his sword on a bench that seemed to have been designed for the purpose, and I saw that there was a shard of brownish pottery set into the hilt instead of a jewel. I filed that little detail away under Weird Vampire Shit.

  “You could just phone.” I offered him my mobile.

  “I am more persuasive in person.”

  Well, fuck. I had a feeling this was going to end badly for someone, probably me.

  I’d been following Aeglica for about ten minutes when I realised he was actually intending to walk to Lime Street.

  “We could get a cab,” I suggested.

  “That will not be necessary.” He didn’t slow down.

  “There’s a Tube station two minutes that way.”

  “That will not be necessary.”

  “Bus? They’re bendy now.”

  “I do not like buses.”

  He had a point. But I bet he never had to put up with creepy guys standing next to him.

  Two hours later, the sun was setting, and we had just arrived. Aeglica strode through the front doors of PCM Capital Fund Management, with me trailing behind him like a school kid whose mum was determined to speak to the headmaster.

  He went up to the reception desk. “Tell the Prince of Coins I am coming.”

  “M-M-Mr. Pryce is in a meeting,” replied the clearly suicidal receptionist.

  Aeglica ignored him and made for the stairs, breaking through a series of security doors that slammed into his path.

  Well, if the Prince of Coins didn’t hate me before . . .

  There were guys with guns on the stairwell.

  There was a brief explosion of gunfire.

  Then there weren’t guys with guns on the stairwell.

  Then there were more guys with guns on the stairwell.

  Holy shit. I ducked back into the corridor and kept my head down. I had an invulnerable escort but, once again, I’d brought knives to a gunfight, and getting caught in the crossfire would seriously ruin my day. When I was very very certain that nobody was shooting at anything anymore, I crept after Aeglica. The staircase was littered with crumpled bodies and spent shell casings, the walls were pitted with bullet marks, and the air was white with plaster dust.

  Looking back on it, Plan B had been pretty fucking stupid. But, to be fair, the security guards in most city firms don’t have actual guns on account of how it’s massively illegal. I guess you can get away with a lot when you’re immortal and richer than most countries.

  The chaos continued up twenty-five flights of stairs and, at the top, I caught up with Aeglica. His clothes were in tatters, but he seemed otherwise entirely unfazed. I, on the other hand, felt really quite fazed. We stepped out into a corridor. There were two large boardrooms on either side of us, fronted by smoky glass windows
etched with the name of the company, and, at the very end, an office door marked “Thomas Pryce – Chief Executive.”

  I half expected Aeglica to kick the door down, but he just pushed it gently open and went in. I followed cautiously. Thomas Pryce’s office was an expensive mixture of the vintage and the cutting-edge. He had a hardwood desk covered in papers, with an hourglass and an actual quill pen resting next to a sleek, ultra-thin laptop. One wall was entirely taken up by a bank of flat-panel monitors, flicking endlessly and apparently randomly through footage, figures, and those wiggly stock market charts like you get in cartoons. The other walls were hung with glass-fronted cases, containing a metric crap tonne of what I thought were probably antique coins. Not exactly subtle, Mr. Pryce. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over a city scattered like a child’s Lego set.

  The Prince of Coins was sitting at his desk in a well-tailored black suit. He was in his early forties, with curling black hair, heavy brows, and a closed, wary face.

  “Ah,” he said. “It seems I need to review my security arrangements.”

  Aeglica’s shoulder lifted fractionally in something that might have been a shrug. “You place too much faith in firearms.”

  “They performed adequately in testing.” Pryce frowned.

  There was a heavy pause. “There has been an attack on the Prince of Cups.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Miss Kane wishes to ask some questions.”

  The Prince of Coins went back to his paperwork. “I do not wish to answer them.”

  I had a feeling Aeglica wasn’t going to come back with “Okay, fine, we’ll go then.”

  “This matter falls within my domain,” he said instead. “You will answer.”

  “Your duty is to protect the Council as a whole, not to involve yourself in disagreements between its members. If I was responsible for the attack on Miss Saint-Germain, then it would be outside your jurisdiction. And if I was not, then you are simply wasting your time. You may see yourself out.”