Night Call (Book 2): Demon Dei

by L. J. Hayward

  “Nah. I saw Jacob today. He was wondering if you wanted to come in for a Black Books marathon.”

  I scowled. “Why couldn’t he call me himself?”

  “What am I? His secretary?”

  “No, you’re mine. And you’re not doing your job properly. How come I’ve got no work?”

  “What are you talking about? I gave you that job in The Gap.” There was a short pause. “Didn’t I?”

  “You did, and I finished it today. More imps. Lots more imps. How did you get my card to a senior citizen anyway? Have you moved out of the pubs and clubs and onto the bowling greens? RSLs?”

  Roberts was a rep for booze companies. He trawled the drunken rabble of the local watering holes with promotional gear and competitions to win, you guessed it, more alcohol. I’m not so great with crowds, so Roberts hands out my business cards whenever he overhears a conversation that might be of interest to me. It’s an agreement that works fairly well. Until now.

  “No,” he answered slowly. “I do have a life, unlike some people whom shall remain named as you. I met the old duck at the theatre.”

  I strangled back a laugh. “The theatre?”

  “Yes, Carla and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera.”

  “Hang on. Carla? What happened to Gale?”

  Roberts sighed. “Do you remember that trip you dragged me on, up to the Sunny Coast?”

  “The sprite invasion, sure.”

  “I missed Gale’s birthday.”

  The last serious relationship I had was at university with Halle, a girl with a sad Brad Pitt dependency. I’m now thirty-two. My memory might give out on me every now and then, but I still knew missing a birthday was a Big Deal.

  “Ah man, I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would never have asked you along.”

  “The sad thing was, she’d never told me it was her birthday. Apparently, I was just supposed to know.”

  I sucked in a sharp, wounded breath. “That’s tough.”

  “Yeah. But anyway, Carla’s better. Longer legs.”

  “When do I get to meet her?”

  Roberts snorted. “Never. Gale was ready to forget me an hour after meeting you.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair and good job changing the topic of conversation. Why don’t I have any work?”

  “Shit. Okay, here’s the reason. Mate, there is no work. I keep listening but no one’s talking.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “It’s the truth. Get your arse out of the house and come check it out yourself. No one’s got vampire problems, or troll issues, or ghoul troubles. I’m telling you, you must have cleaned up the town. There are no nasties out there for you to get all righteous on.”

  I sagged back in the chair. “Well, that hardly seems fair. I was just hitting my stride. And Mercy’s at a stage where I don’t have to constantly be watching her.”

  Me and my fat mouth.

  “Hawkins!” Someone began pounding on the front door.

  I lurched out of the chair. “I’ll call you back,” I snapped at the phone and hung up. Racing to the front door, I flung it open before Charles could knock it down.

  “What’s the deal, Charles?” I demanded.

  Charles was my neighbour. We didn’t get on so well. He thinks I’m weird. I don’t know where he’d get that idea.

  “That… that… girl is in your backyard.”

  Charles thinks I’m weird and he thinks Mercy’s retarded. He’s never quite come out and thought it openly, but he subconsciously believes I’m taking advantage of the poor, mentally deficient girl.

  How do I know this? Because Charles has a very open mind and I have psychic superpowers. I’ve lost count of the number of nights I’ve been woken up by his dreams. I do, however, know how many times I’ve been woken up by Charles and his wife Sue having sex. They’re both screamers, but their emotional screaming is what gets me. If I didn’t regard Charles with so much contempt, I would probably blush whenever I saw him.

  And right now, his stuttering words were matched by his stuttering mind. Flashes of Mercy in the backyard slapped me in the brain, along with Charles’ embarrassed lust.

  “Dear God,” I muttered and, leaving Charles at the door, I ran through to the back of the house and out onto the patio.

  There’s a narrow strip of grass between patio and canal. Mercy had put down a towel on the grass and was lying on it. The only thing she wore was a pair of sunglasses. The moonlight was like silk on her pale skin, caressing the curves and accentuating the peaks. She was flawless. You would never have guessed she’d almost died of severe wounds six months ago.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “Sunbathing.”

  I blinked several times. “Okay. As long as you’re doing it sensibly.”

  Charles was still at the door when I returned.

  “Is she still out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Covered up?”

  “No.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Sunbathing sensibly.”

  He gaped at me like a fish out of water.

  “Might I suggest,” I said as I turned him around and gave him a helpful shove toward home, “that you and Sue watch a movie tonight. Or play Scrabble. Or, if you want, look out the window at the naked girl and have some fun. Whatever. Goodbye, Charles.”

  I shut the door before he could splutter a reply. Think about it. It could have been worse. He could have seen her dunking two occupied cat carriers in the water.

  Of course, I wasn’t about to just let Mercy get away with it. In the kitchen, I got a bucket and filled it with water and all the ice in the freezer. I let it cool down and then went upstairs. I never go upstairs. I have no need to. Mercy and I have bedrooms on the ground floor. I have an en suite and she has a shower stall. The only need I have of a second storey is so I can dump several litres of freezing water on the naked vampire from the balcony.

  She squealed and I’m certain I heard a muffled, female laugh from next door.

  Mercy was in the living room when I came downstairs. Dripping, but otherwise none the worse for wear. Vampires run at a much higher operating temperature than humans. It would take drowning in Antarctic waters to affect them.

  Thankfully, the phone rang. Mercy knows that’s often a sign of business (at least, it used to be), so she didn’t kill me before I could answer it.

  “Night Call,” I said.

  “Matt Hawkins?”

  The voice sounded vaguely familiar. “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Ivan Vorel. From Sol Investigations.”

  Aah. “I didn’t expect to hear from you.” Ever again. His boss didn’t exactly like me. Pity. For a while there, his boss had been very much on my ‘like a lot’ list. Time—and no contact—had lessened that feeling.

  “I know,” Ivan said. “Listen, are you able to come into the office tomorrow? I would like to talk to you.”

  “Does Erin know you’re calling me?”

  There was a long pause. “No. She won’t be in tomorrow.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in around ten. Is that all right?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  He hung up and I stared at the phone for a while. What could it mean that Ivan was willing to risk Erin’s ire by contacting me?

  “Work?” Mercy asked.

  “Could be. And it’s possible that it’s something big.”

  Again, me and my fat mouth.

  Chapter 4

  I had never been to the offices of Sol Investigations before. Which seems strange. Erin McRea, the private investigator who runs the place, had thrown herself head long into my life during that little altercation six months ago. She’d been hired to track me down so Veilchen could then steal Mercy off me. Of course, Erin hadn’t known that at the start of the investigation. Finding out about Mercy and werewolves had been a bit rough on her. At the end of the ordeal, she’d told me in no uncertain terms I scared her and she couldn’t
deal with that. I’d respected her wish to never see me again.

  It had been hard at first. Erin’s aura had been the first human one I’d ever touched. First and only. You can’t tell me that’s not significant, and for a long time, I thought I’d never forget it. Her flavour—for that’s how my brain deals with such things—had drenched my mouth every morning for weeks after our last meeting. I’d had a few dreams, too. Some nicely naughty and some terrifyingly awful. But over the last couple of months, she had drifted from my thoughts and subconscious, until I rarely thought about her at all.

  Not exactly a death defying love, huh?

  I like to think I’m a sensible person. Erin didn’t like me. She had vaguely threatened me with death. And she was married. All good points not to fall in love, or even lust. So I hadn’t. Simple.

  Tell me why, then, I stood outside the door to Sol Investigations and felt foolish.

  She wasn’t even in there. I wouldn’t be seeing her. Ivan was the one I was coming to talk to. Nothing to worry about.

  So, go in already.

  The phone rang. Thank God.

  I answered it. “Night Call.”

  “Oh great. I wasn’t sure I had the right number.” It was a man’s voice.

  “As long as you’re after Night Call, you have the right number,” I assured him. “How can I help you?”

  “Um, well, I was wondering if you dealt with ghosts.”

  I swallowed my excitement. “I haven’t had a great deal to do with ghosts.” None at all, actually. “But I’m more than willing to hear you out. If I don’t think I can help I can at least point you in the right direction.”

  “Oh, okay. So, next question. Do you do interstate jobs?”

  A second first in the same conversation. Roberts didn’t work outside of Brisbane, let alone outside of Queensland. Subsequently, neither did I.

  “I haven’t yet. Where are you?”

  “Adelaide.”

  I sucked in a breath. “That’s a long way to go. Tell me your problem and we’ll see what I can do.”

  “My name’s Nick Carson. Have you heard of me?”

  Ploughing through my memory banks scored me zilch. “No. Should I have?”

  “Probably not.” He sounded resigned. “Unless you’re a marine biologist or shark fancier.”

  “Sorry. I’m neither of those. I’m a biochemist and or paramedic by training. I get seasick.”

  “You have a science background.” Nick perked up. “Wow. That’s cool.”

  “I guess. So, you got shark ghosts or something?”

  “No.” And all the excitement fled him. “It’s my girlfriend.”

  That hit hard. “Jeez, man. I’m sorry. And now she’s haunting you?”

  “Sort of. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try me.”

  He sighed. “A week ago, my expedition ship, the Renata Rose was anchored off the Neptune Islands, off the coast of South Australia. We were doing a great white shark expedition for eighteen guest divers. Amaya, my girlfriend, is the cook for the trips. Anyway, for one reason or another, Amaya was doing the shark baiting. She always does it from the rack, not the deck.”

  “The rack?”

  “The diving platform on the back of the ship. Where the divers get into and out of the floating cages. The people who aren’t diving can stand on it and get closer to the sharks as well.”

  “Okay. So, she was on this rack, doing what? Baiting sharks?”

  “We lure them in close to the ship with tuna carcasses. We do it so we can tag them or read existing tags and keep a database of shark movements. Having paying guests to help us watch the sharks is just a side bonus. And we don’t let them get the bait. The sharks that is, not the guests.”

  “I figured. So what happened?”

  “No one knows exactly. They say she was talking with a couple of people, and then for no reason, she just fell over and into the water.”

  I winced. “And there were sharks around?”

  “Yes, but that’s the strangest part. They didn’t get her.”

  “She survived?”

  “Well, no. At least, I don’t think so. The guys on the rack said she fell off and hit the water, but then she disappeared. There were divers in the cage. They didn’t see her sink. Of course, it’s most likely they just missed it. It’s cold down there so she was wearing a heavy coat. I think she just sank very fast.”

  Old Nick seemed a bit dry in his retelling. I wondered how close he and his girlfriend really were.

  “And why do you say that the sharks didn’t get her?”

  “No blood in the water,” he answered pragmatically. “Even if they got her on the bottom, the water’s not so deep we wouldn’t have seen some evidence. We put the bottom cage down and found nothing, as well.”

  I scratched my chin, thinking. “Now she’s haunting you?” Don’t know that I would blame her. He didn’t seem particularly cut up about it.

  “That depends. How solid can ghosts get?”

  Whoa. “Solid?”

  “She hit me. Broke my nose.”

  “Hang on. Back up. Fill in the blanks between her falling off the ship and breaking your nose.”

  “Well, we did all we could at the site, then called it in. The authorities told us we’d done sufficient, and to come in. We all had to give statements and it was deemed an accident. I went home then. And she was there.”

  “How long in between?”

  “Two days.” And finally, Nick showed some emotion. He got scared. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought it was a ghost. I mean, it must have been, right? She’d drowned in the middle of the ocean. No way she could have got back to the mainland without the ship.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, she tried to hug me. I ran away. She chased me but I kept running. All the time, she’s yelling at me that it was all my fault she was there. I didn’t really listen. Too busy being really scared. Finally, she went away and I went home again. And she was there. That’s when she broke my nose. She was waiting by the door. I came in and wham.”

  For some reason, that struck me as funny. I repressed the laugh, though. Hardly a professional attitude. “Then what?”

  “Well, she’s just stuck around. Sits in the living room watching TV all day. At least she doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

  Hands down, the weirdest story I’d ever heard. I was almost willing to get on a plane to Adelaide just to see this corporeal ghost watching daytime TV.

  “How did you hear about Night Call?” I asked while trying to sort out if I could help this guy. Or his poor girlfriend.

  “Well, after Amaya set up her un-dead camp on my couch, I started looking up stuff about it on the internet. A couple of times Night Call was mentioned in relation to, you know, strange stuff. I left some messages around the place and this woman in Brisbane emailed me your number.”

  “Fair enough. What about your friends and family? What do they think about it?”

  He spluttered a laugh. “You think I’m going to tell them? They’ll cart me off to the mental ward.”

  “No one’s seen her apart from you?”

  “The postman saw her. He didn’t freak out, though. He doesn’t know she’s supposed to be dead.” The last was said loudly and significantly.

  I got a funny feeling. “Is she listening to this call?”

  “Yes,” a terse female voice said. “I am.”

  “She’s on the other handset,” Nick admitted guiltily.

  “Oh shit,” I muttered. “Amaya?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you or are you not dead?”

  She snorted. “I’m obviously very much alive.”

  “No you’re not,” Nick shouted. “You’re dead.”

  “Can you tell him from me,” Amaya said, presumably to me, “that he’s a –”

  The line went dead. I looked at the phone. No number. Damn. I was really intrigued now. I hoped nothing bad had happened to cause the cut off, like Nick try
ing to kill her all over again. I had Nick’s name at least, and his occupation. I should be able to track him down. I couldn’t pass this up. It was just too fascinating.

  “Hi.”

  I jumped about six feet and came down having a heart attack. Ivan—presumably—stood in the open door to Sol Investigations. He was a young man, about Mercy’s age, if you added on her years as a vampire. Slender without looking too thin, with dark, spiked hair. He wore business casual, dark pants and a white shirt open at the throat.

  “Ivan?” Had to make absolutely sure.

  “Yeah. Matt Hawkins. Come in.” He stepped back and ushered me in. “I saw you through the door.” Which was frosted glass with the business name stencilled over an Open/Closed sign. “When you didn’t come in, I began to wonder what you were doing.”

  I wandered in, waving the phone around. “Phone call. Business.”

  Ivan nodded and closed the door. “Thank you for coming.”

  “No problem.”

  I looked around. It was a spacious office, with Ivan’s desk to one side, a couch and table with coffee machine and bar fridge on the other. There was the requisite ficus in the corner and a wall of glass between us and what must be Erin’s office. It was the same size as the outer office, with big desk complete with a leather blotter, sideboard at one end, bigger, comfier couch at the other and more floor to ceiling windows looking out over Brisbane CBD. It was funny, but I couldn’t see Erin sitting at that desk doing paperwork. She seemed so at home with a gun in her hand, facing down a werewolf, or stabbing a Primal in the back with a knife coated in Holy water.

  “Coffee?” Ivan asked, going to the machine.

  “No thanks. I’m hyper enough as it is. How have you been?”

  Ivan got himself a cup and sat down on the couch. He nodded to the seat beside him. I sat and waited. He sipped his drink, staring through the partially drawn blinds on the windows to the world beyond.

  My previous experience with Ivan had been a single phone conversation. I’d never met him during Erin’s investigation. He’d been drawn into Veilchen’s clutches all the same, though. She’d tortured him to get information about me. Kinda makes a guy feel something for him, even if it is only guilt. And that’s why Erin had threatened me, oh so subtly. She knew it hadn’t been my fault, but I’d been the reason, and that had almost been enough for her.