Elspeth was scowling, her fingers walloping the computer keys with such force that they were likely to break if she didn’t calm down.
“Evening,” Sera said pleasantly. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“You’re all right,” Derek Seelie, the elder brother, said. “We were early.”
Sera cast Elspeth a quick glance of apology. “Go through to the office,” she invited her clients. “I’ll just wash my hands and be with you.”
The brothers exchanged surreptitious glances at that. Clearly, they hadn’t expected to be allowed to poke about the séance room in advance. Nevertheless, a whisper, a snort, and a quickly muffled laugh accompanied them into the inner room.
Sera wiggled her eyebrows ruefully at Elspeth. “Sorry. Everything okay?”
Tight-lipped, Elspeth said, “They think because I’m old, I’m deaf, and they can discuss anything they like in front of me—however unsuitable.”
Sera mouthed the word arseholes. She was aware they’d be recording everything that went on but had no idea of the range of whatever device they were using.
An exchange of looks told her that Jilly and Jack were already in place, so Sera merely winked, went to the bathroom, where she completed her preparations for the séance, and walked through to the inner office.
The Seelies had left the door ajar, presumably to hear any conversation between Sera and her confederates, but it was far enough over to conceal their own activity in the room. Although they were lounging at the round table when Sera entered, she was sure they’d already examined the walls and the floor, tested the locked door that led into her flat, felt under the table, and looked behind the curtains and the picture on the wall. She didn’t mind. There was nothing for them to find.
They smiled at her as she crossed the room, their eyes as blatantly mocking as they could be without being openly rude. Now it was to begin, she saw that their gloves were off. With relish, Sera rolled up her metaphorical sleeves for the fight.
She sat between the brothers, who’d thoughtfully left that chair vacant. She had no objection to being directed there. After all, each place was visible through the keyhole of the flat door.
“Okay,” Sera began briskly. “Before we start, it’s important that you’re comfortable with arrangements here. Do you prefer the door to the main office to be locked or unlocked?”
“What difference does it make?” Derek Seelie asked, and his brother sniggered.
“To me, none,” Sera replied calmly. “But some of my first-time clients prefer to be sure there’s no interference from beyond this room. My receptionist will remain in the outer office until we’re finished here. If you’re uncomfortable with that, we can lock her out.”
“Sure,” said Derek. “Lock her out.”
“The key’s in the lock,” Sera pointed out. “Turn it yourself until you’re satisfied.”
As Frankie, the younger brother, rose to do the honors, Derek said, “Aren’t you bothered about locking yourself in here with two strange men?”
“Should I be?” Sera let amusement fill her voice. “When I have all their details and their cleared credit card payment?”
Derek’s gaze slid free. He nodded at the other door to her flat. “What’s through there?”
“Private property. It’s locked. Feel free to check again. No? All right, let’s begin. Before we put out the lights, I’d like you each to begin to make the connection by naming the spirit you want us to contact tonight.”
Both brothers looked at her intently. Derek smiled. “Edward Seelie.”
She’d been right. Just in case, she and Jilly had done their research on the entire family, but Sera had known when the brothers first approached her with the story of their father passing away that they were lying. Their father’s name was James. Edward had been their stillborn brother, dead a year before either of them was born. While it probably didn’t seem right even to them to get a cheap laugh at the expense of their recently dead father, they could have little real grief for a brother they’d never known. They were just smart-arsed wankers with too much money in their pockets who thought it would be a laugh to debunk the ridiculous female psychic.
Sera was way ahead of them. Or at least, she hoped she was.
She made no comment, merely inclined her head. “Do you have something of Edward’s that I can touch to boost the connection?”
Derek gave a deliberate, taunting smile. “No.”
Sera merely nodded. “Okay. It makes it easier sometimes, but it isn’t necessary. Do you wish to tell me more about Edward?”
“Nah. You tell us,” said Frankie, lounging back into his chair. “It’s what we’re paying you for.”
“Very well,” Sera said evenly. “I’m going to put the lights out now—not, as some people believe, in order to encourage the spirits, but rather to aid my concentration and yours. At the moment, you are my only connection to the spirit we seek. And I am your only conduit. We all need to focus on the late Edward Seelie.”
She rose as she spoke, switched the pale light off, and resumed her seat between the brothers in total darkness. “Close your eyes if you want, but keep your thoughts on Edward.”
“Aren’t we meant to hold hands?” Frankie sneered.
Your funeral. “If you wish.”
They’d been reading up. If they each held her hand, she had less opportunity for manipulating events. And since her hands were so much smaller than theirs, she couldn’t even fool them by getting them to hold each other’s hands instead. Fortunately, she didn’t need to.
She didn’t care for touching them. Physically, they gave her the creeps. On the other hand, she’d pick up their emotions—and their lies—so much more easily. She gave a hand to each and, after a few moments of silence, uttered, “Edward. Edward Seelie, we seek your spirit. Derek and Frankie need to reach you. Come to us; speak with us. I am willing to receive your spirit.”
In the ensuing silence, Sera felt a sweaty finger stroking her palm. She made allowances for possible nervousness, but when it happened again, she said clearly, “If you do that again, Frankie, I’ll break your arm.”
Derek sniggered. Of course, they doubted her ability to break his arm—wrongly, as it happened—but having paid up already, they certainly weren’t willing for her to end the séance at this point. Especially since it would be on tape.
“Was that our Edward talking?” Derek sneered.
“Oh no. That was me. Trust me, you’d know the difference. Shall we continue?”
Since no one said anything to that but sat perfectly still, she repeated her invitation to Edward to join them. After a few moments, she increased the speed of her breathing, let a little more excitement and pleading into her voice as she begged for Edward’s presence.
So quietly that no one could have been sure they were hearing anything at all, a faint tinkle of music passed through the room. The brothers’ fingers tensed. They knew something was happening and were preparing to expose it.
“Speak,” Sera breathed.
The music got a little louder as Jack, with Sera’s stereo speaker facedown in her living room above, kindly turned up the volume a notch. It was recognizable now as children’s toy music, the kind you got on cot mobiles or musical spinning tops.
“Fuck,” Frankie breathed. They were taken by surprise. They’d assumed she’d make the obvious mistake and pretend to summon the spirit of their father.
“Where’s it coming from?” Derek demanded.
“Sh-sh,” Sera whispered. “I don’t know. Listen…”
As the music continued, Sera could hear her own deliberately increased breath along with the brothers’ uneasy inhalations and exhalations. And then there seemed to be another breath, louder, echoing, almost filling the room. That would be Jilly, breathing through a child’s voice changer into the keyhole from Sera’s flat. She even made the kind of tiny sound that generally only comes from sleeping babies.
Nice touch.
“Edward. Edward
, are you there? Will you speak to your family?”
The breathing stopped. The music got louder. Beside Sera, the men were tense as coiled springs, staring into the darkness. Frankie jumped.
“What?” Derek demanded. “What is it?”
“Something brushed against my face!”
“He’s coming,” Sera breathed. “He’s coming. Edward…”
She jerked forward over the table as if she’d been shot, thus activating the little smoke machine Tam had acquired for the Bells’ party, now taped inside Sera’s jeans. The effect, even in the darkness was fantastic. Although the white smoke belched outward as she threw herself back in her chair, when she breathed in as if she were absorbing it, it appeared that the smoke was entering her body rather than leaving it.
Sera breathed deeply several times. She smiled so that it would be heard in her voice. “The spirit that was once Edward Seelie will speak through me. What do you wish to ask him?”
With more than a hint of nervousness in his clowning, Frankie said, “How’s it going, son?”
Sera left a pause, then: “He says he’s not content.”
“Why not?” Derek asked, leaning forward as if he expected the spirit to ask for more money for Sera.
“He doesn’t wish to be summoned for frivolous reasons.”
“Frivolous?” Derek sneered. “That’s a big word for a baby.”
After another pause, Sera said, “Any word is big for a newborn in your world. To a spirit, words are merely an interface.”
The brothers seemed slightly flummoxed by this. As if they’d been so sure of catching her out over their father that they hadn’t bothered thinking of things to ask Edward himself. Eventually, Derek plucked a few questions out of the air, asking things he imagined only his family could possibly know. Sera answered but made no other move to lead the conversation. If they’d done their homework on fake mediums—as she presumed they had—they’d know all about the leading questions asked for purposes of fishing. In this day and age, especially with a computer wiz like Jilly on the staff, there was no need to fish from your clients. At least, not when you had a bit of warning.
She could tell the brothers were baffled because none of this was going how they’d imagined. It wasn’t any fun after all. Sera made it worse by bringing up Frankie’s police record—an assault charge when he was sixteen that she’d guessed he and Derek had covered up from their parents, since neither of the older Seelies had been present in court when he was fined.
“He was only a kid,” Derek defended him.
“Has he confessed?” Sera asked.
“We’re not Catholic!”
She let a pause go by. Then, shooting in the dark for once, she said: “The spirit says confession should be made to the one who pays him.”
“My employer?” said Frankie. “Oh aye. That’s done. Declared it. It’s finished.”
Lying little bastard. “The spirit is displeased.” Sera decided it was time to end it with a bit of genuine suffering. “The spirit is bored here and disappointed in the ones who would have been his brothers.” She let the silence grow, took some satisfaction in her clients’ obvious unease. “He is ashamed of your disrespect for his mother’s suffering. And his father’s. He bids you leave him in peace. He won’t come again.”
She folded herself up, squeezing the last of the smoke from the tiny machine as she exhaled, and again the white tendrils floated into the air and vanished. The brothers dropped her hands at last, as if they stung.
Sera laid her head on the table and breathed deeply.
“What’s happening now?” Frankie asked, his voice too high. “What’s she doing? Is it finished?”
“How the fuck should I know? I’ve had enough. Put the lights back on.”
Sera let herself stir with the light and straightened, shuddering slightly. Frankie already had the door unlocked, and, without troubling to see if she was all right, Derek followed him with alacrity.
Hiding a grin, Sera rose and walked after them into the outer office—and came face-to-face with Blair.
“Jesus Christ!”
Chapter Six
The exclamation sprang to her lips before she could stop it. Worse, it spilled with an obvious start, and she grabbed at her throat in a betraying gesture of fright. Blair’s lips curved in almost predatory amusement.
Sera, after a wild glance to make sure Elspeth was still upright at her desk, recovered quickly, saying with a laugh, “What are you doing here? Never creep up on a girl after a séance!”
But the damage was done. She’d betrayed just enough weakness for bullies like the Seelies to flex their muscles once more. Besides, in the bright, mundane office, away from the darkness and the carefully manufactured atmosphere of the séance, they needed to recover their skepticism in self-defense.
“That was a total rip-off,” Derek said. “We want our money back.”
“But why?” Sera asked innocently. “Didn’t you like what you heard?”
“No! What’s more, no way was that the spirit of my dead baby brother.”
“That’s not for me to say. We signed a contract, gentlemen. You agreed to pay, and I agreed to act as a medium for you this hour of this day. I can’t and didn’t guarantee any spirit would speak to you, let alone the one you wanted. You were lucky. You spoke to the dead.”
“Lucky? It was pure shite!”
“Look, Mr. Seelie, you didn’t pay for an evening of fun and frolics. Nor was that what I offered you. I’m sorry it wasn’t an enjoyable experience for you, but that doesn’t invalidate our contract. Good evening.”
Throughout the exchange, Elspeth had watched anxiously from her desk. Blair, still lounging outside the inner office, one shoulder against the wall, looked on in silence. In the one glance she spared him, she could read nothing in his closed face or his dark, unnatural eyes.
Frankie stepped closer, crowding her between his body and Derek’s. “You repeat a word of what you said in there, and I’ll—”
“Frankie!” said Derek sharply.
It was his gaze she chose to meet. “Good evening, gentlemen,” she said firmly. For a moment, it hung in the balance. Sera knew she’d won and was quite capable of coping if she was wrong. But Blair chose to stroll past the huddle and perch on Elspeth’s desk, well within both Seelies’ line of vision. Their eyes flickered to him, widened, and then they backed off. They were out the front door in three seconds flat, although Frankie flung over his shoulder, “This is shite!”
Sera glared at Blair. “What did you do?”
Blair shrugged. “They’d forgotten I was there. I merely reminded them.”
“Thank you so much,” Elspeth twittered. “Such uncivil young men! And threatening too!”
“Elspeth, they’re just wankers,” Sera said irritably. “We were in no danger whatsoever!” She swung on Blair, snapping, “What do you want?”
Blair eased his denim-clad hip off Elspeth’s desk and gestured toward the door. “Walk with me,” he suggested.
Walk with me, die with me… Oh no. Sera had opened her mouth to reply in blistering terms before it came to her that Elspeth would think she was talking to herself. It must already seem a rather one-sided conversation, but since Elspeth hadn’t clocked her visitor as the murderous vampire from the C & H car park, Sera had no intention of freaking her out by introducing him.
“All right,” she muttered. She threw her flat key to Elspeth. “Lock up after Jilly and Jack, will you? Jack’ll drive you home. Thanks for staying late.”
“Glad I did,” said Elspeth with a shudder. “Awful young men.”
Not half as awful as the one you’re so happy to leave me with now, Sera thought wryly, snatching her jacket off the coat hook.
“Where are we going?” she asked as soon as the door of Serafina’s closed behind them.
“You tell me.”
She glanced at him with amusement. “You think I’m going to lead you straight across the city to the vampires’ lair, don
’t you?”
“You’ve had all day to touch and feel and track.”
“All day? This isn’t my only case, you know.”
He smiled, apparently at the memory of the case he’d interrupted. “I like your style. Simple and effective.”
“Self-absorbed, self-satisfied pricks,” Sera said with some relish.
“You like to punish people for messing with the dead, don’t you?”
Her gaze flew to his. The light from a car’s headlights flashed into his face and vanished, leaving it dark and shadowed. He walked on at her side, lithe, predatory, and silent.
“Sometimes I play God,” she confessed. “And the Lord bites me in the ass.”
“Like Jason?”
She said nothing, and he seemed content to walk in silence. Sera, one hand on the cufflink and the piece of black silk in her pocket, let her feet lead the way.
Abruptly, she said, “Can he change back?”
“Jason? Of course not. He’s dead.”
She closed her eyes for an instant, but if anything, she walked faster. “And if I stab him with my sharp little stick, will he turn to instant dust like those—creatures in the car park?”
Blair nodded.
“And his spirit?”
“Goes wherever it is spirits go.”
“Is he…?” She broke off, suddenly unable to speak the words aloud to whatever this being was. But it seemed he read her mind anyhow—or at least understood.
“Damned?” he suggested. “Why should he be? He isn’t Jason anymore, not really. He didn’t ask for this.”
“You mean being undead is a curse he’d welcome being released from?”
“Of course, he would,” Blair said bracingly, and in spite of the grim, bizarre nature of the conversation, she found herself smiling.
“You’re a liar. You wouldn’t, would you?”
Blair only shook his head.
“Then why would he?”
Serafina and the Silent Vampire Page 8
