Vampire Campfire (Damned Girl Book 5)

by Clare Kauter

  “You – you guys go on ahead,” he said. “I just, uh, need a moment to collect my thoughts first.”

  We nodded and walked outside, trundling down the garden path, brushing past my overgrown sage and rosemary plants on the way to the gate. In the distance, I could see a band of yellow energy snaking around the perimeter of the crime scene – the magical equivalent of crime scene tape. We were still too far away to see the details of the dump site, though.

  “That was a bit rude, leaving me in the forest like that,” said Henry as we made our way towards the cemetery.

  “It was a bit rude of you to ignore my warnings about the ghost,” I replied.

  He nodded. “Won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Good. Glad you learned your lesson.”

  We’d reached the cemetery now, so we followed the winding path between the tombstones, some of which were old and crumbling, covered in moss and so weathered you could no longer read who they belonged to, and others that were still new and shiny. The graveyard was perched on a hill overlooking the beach, and way out in the distance I could see some tall black dorsal fins breaking the water. Wereorcas. They must have been here for the full moon celebrations.

  “Why did Hecate assign this case to us?” I asked as we continued towards the crime scene, which was in a hard-to-access part of the cemetery. “I know that there are higher ranking officers than us.”

  “What, you think she should have put Maude and Lavinia on the case?”

  I rolled my eyes at the mere mention of their names. Maude was an unbearable witch who for some reason thought she was descended from fae, despite her total lack of magical aptitude. I didn’t know how she’d ever been promoted out of cafe duty and onto the police force. Lavinia was ancient and as blind as a bat. Blinder, actually.

  “Maybe not them,” I conceded, “but surely there are others. There are at least a couple of other witches who can see ghosts.”

  “Most of them are working on those missing persons cases,” said Henry. “Hecate wants to get those wrapped up as quickly as possible, especially with the full moon coming up. There’ll be more people in town, and more risk of them being taken by who or whatever is responsible.”

  “What if it’s grabbers?” I asked. “The other cops aren’t going to be much good against them. They’d be better off working this case while we look for the missing persons.”

  Grabbers, the scourge of the magical underworld, made their money by kidnapping and selling magicals. They were inordinately strong, with powers fortified by the kinds of rituals that even Satan described as ‘yucky.’ Your best chance of beating grabbers in a fight was to outrun them. Unless you were, say, King of the Damned and you’d accidentally killed your first grabber at age fourteen. The other witches didn’t stand a chance if grabbers were responsible for the disappearances.

  I’d wanted to be put on the missing persons cases from the start, just in case they were somehow connected to Honey’s disappearance. Maybe Pierre was responsible for these other people going missing too. It was unlikely, but it was possible, and I was the best equipped to deal with him if he was involved.

  Even if it wasn’t anything to do with Pierre, whoever had been abducting these magicals had to be pretty strong. They’d managed to capture all manner of magicals with all kinds of different strengths. Usually people are good at one or two types of magic and average at the rest, but whoever was doing this had to be skilled in a bunch of different areas. To me it sounded like the work of grabbers. If I was right, I was the best person to look into it. Otherwise the investigating officers were going to end up dead, if they didn’t get kidnapped and sold into slavery instead.

  “There’s no evidence of grabbers in the area,” said Henry. “We’d have heard rumours if there were grabbers operating in any of the neighbouring towns, and we would have felt them if they were anywhere nearby. Whatever the reason for the people going missing, the other witches can handle it. We need to focus on this murder.”

  I crossed my arms but said nothing.

  As we walked through the graveyard, I was reminded of the last time I’d come into the cemetery to solve a ghost’s murder. It had ended with me being chased home by zombies, and while I now knew that those particular animated corpses hadn’t been dangerous (and were, in fact, raised by the coven I now called my own), the memory of the rotten chunks of flesh sliding off their faces still caused a shudder to rake down my spine.

  “I don’t like this,” I said. “This whole case is reminding me way too much of Ed. Are we sure Ravi didn’t kill himself?”

  Henry raised his eyebrows and gave me a silent, judgmental look. He was annoyed at me for still talking to Ed, and seemed to be affronted by any mention of his name.

  By now, we’d reached the crime scene. We ducked under the energy stream blocking it off from the outside world and began to study the area.

  “Seems unlikely that he killed himself,” said Henry as we looked over the patch of grass where Ravi’s corpse had been found. Well, I should say ‘the pieces of Ravi’s corpse,’ seeing as he was completely torn apart. The pictures really hadn’t done it justice. While the bits of body were now gone, having been taken to the medical examiner’s office to be autopsied, thanks to the earlier police officers’ spells we could see holographic replicas of the bits of limb and intestine that had previously been spread all over the grass and sand.

  “I’m inclined to agree,” I admitted.

  Frowning, I studied the scene. What was wrong with this picture? Something seemed off about it, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I thought for a moment, imagining ripping Ravi apart myself. (I know it sounds messed up, but it was for a good cause. Don’t knock my methods.) How would I do it? What would it look like? Well, there’d be blood all over me, for starters…

  Bingo. There wasn’t enough blood for this to have been the place he was murdered, which meant he’d been killed somewhere else and his remains had been dumped here. Either that or he’d been exsanguinated first, but I figured the preliminary medical report would have mentioned that.

  “Wow,” said a soft voice from behind us. I turned around to find Ravi looking very green. Of course, he was a ghost, so that was probably just the reflection of the grass or something.

  “Are you OK?” Henry asked.

  “Why do you look so shocked?” I asked. “It’s not as if you haven’t seen your dead body already. And anyway, this isn’t your body. It’s just a magical rendering of it.”

  I’d thought what I was saying was reasonable, but judging by the expression on Henry’s face, I was being insensitive again. I felt like rolling my eyes, but held myself back. It wasn’t Ravi’s fault I was stuck investigating his dumb murder instead of looking for Honey or the other people who were missing. He didn’t ask to be murdered. At least as far as we knew.

  Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded taking this case, but one murder of a normal paled in comparison to all the magicals who’d gone missing in the past month. We were in double digits now. This was probably just a rogue ork attack or something. (I made a mental note to question Steven about it.) Whatever was taking the magicals was far more dangerous, and it needed to be stopped.

  Finally, Ravi answered my question. “I… I don’t actually remember waking up. I don’t remember anything before Death dropping me off at the Afterlife Services offices to fill out my death forms and report my murder. This is the first time I’ve seen…”

  He trailed off, and it didn’t seem like he was going to keep going, so I decided to jump in. “Do you remember who brought your body to the graveyard?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” Ravi replied. “I have no memory of coming here.”

  As much as I wanted to say something snarky, I held my tongue. I didn’t think Henry would react well if I was mean to Ravi again. That didn’t stop me from thinking it, though.

  Fat lot of good you are, ghosty.

  Chapter 7

  Henry and I walked Ravi back throu
gh the forest on our way to the meeting of the coven, parting ways when we reached the small church where the witches convened nightly. We hadn’t made much of a start on the case yet, but Henry and I had to get to the church early since we were on patrol duty tonight. Because it was close to the full moon, and because of the disappearances lately, there was going to be a police presence in the Black Forest this evening.

  I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it – I knew we were far more likely to come across teens with illicit potions and people paying vamps to bite them (yeah, paying to be bitten – not turned, just turned into a snack) than we were to find out who was responsible for the disappearances. Not to mention that it was freezing and there was bound to be a thin crust of ice covering the ground by midnight. Despite my boots, jeans, jumper, robes and thermal underwear, I knew I was going to freeze tonight.

  Ordinarily at these meetings, Daisy and Hecate stood up the front and conducted the ceremonies. They announced what spells we’d be performing as a circle, brewed potions, assigned cases, handed out rosters and just generally kept the coven running. I didn’t know how tonight was going to go without them here.

  Henry was back in gorilla form for the meeting. We walked into the little church, ready to start performing our witchy duties. The church was old and dusty, illuminated by candlelight and the last few slivers of afternoon sun peeking in through the high windows. Shelves lined the walls, piled high with spell books and jars of herbs and decades’ worth of spiderwebs. I turned to my left and headed straight for the snack table, Henry right beside me. I wanted to eat, whereas Henry wanted to size up the competition. He was an enthusiastic baker, and he liked picking holes in the witches’ recipes on the nights when he didn’t provide food. I usually didn’t understand his complaints, but I agreed that his baking was better than any of the other stuff at the meetings. Plus I enjoyed listening to him being bitchy. He was usually so appropriate, which made it extra hilarious when he bagged people out.

  ‘Hummingbird muffins? More like Humming-burnt muffins. Good grief, Jacinta.’

  ‘I suspect the secret ingredient in her mud cake is actual mud.’

  ‘This biscuit is so soggy it’s making my tea wetter.’

  (Of course, he only ever said these things to me – never to the bakers themselves. To them he oohed and aahhed and told them they should open up a cake store. Duplicitous, I know. He was a shifty shifter, what can I say?)

  We stood at the food table, Henry muttering criticisms while I stuffed my face for a few minutes while the other witches bustled about, setting up for the night. I suppose we could have helped, but Henry wasn’t really a witch and I was still kind of bitter about being tricked into binding myself to the coven with a blood pact, so we let the others do the work. Eventually they were all ready and after wiping my hands on my jeans, Henry and I walked to the front of the church to join the circle.

  The person who’d been left in charge was named Trixie, and she was about the only person in the world who could get away with having a name like that. I could sense that she was a magical, but she wasn’t a type I was familiar with. I was pretty sure she was some kind of fae, which was probably why she’d been left in charge. Faeries naturally had very strong magical abilities.

  Trixie grinned and welcomed us all to the meeting, handing out cases and rosters and checking in with everyone. Once that was out of the way, we got to the agenda for the night: forming a circle to give energy to the contained spells sold out of the book shop on a prescription basis. (Remember how I told you about the coven raising zombies earlier? Yeah, that apparently counted as therapy for the bereaved. How seeing the reanimated corpse of your loved one climb out of their grave could possibly help your mental health I had no idea, but I guess some people were into that.)

  Once we’d channelled energy into those spells, we scried Daisy and Hecate and chatted to them briefly. They told us they were having a great time, they’d accepted their medals, the weather was great, blah blah blah. I was still annoyed they hadn’t assigned me to the missing persons cases, even though I’d specifically asked. At least they’d put Trixie on that job – I knew she was more capable than most of the other witches.

  I wasn’t really listening to them talking. They weren’t discussing the case or anything I was interested in, so I zoned out and started thinking through my own case. Not Ravi’s murder – we didn’t know anything about that, and there was nothing more we were going to be able to do until tomorrow. We’d organised to meet up with Ravi the next morning and retrace his steps on the last day of his life to try and jog his memory. That would surely point us in the right direction to figure out what had happened to him.

  The harder case right now was Honey and the other magicals who had gone missing. Were they connected? What had happened? Were the missing people OK? I know it sounds callous, but Ravi was already dead. It wasn’t like he was going to get any deader. I wanted to help the others while I still could – if I still could.

  * * *

  Cloak wrapped tight around me and hands wedged in my armpits, I trudged through the forest in what can only be described as a bit of a shit mood. I’d been done with this patrol shift before it even started.

  “I don’t know why you’re so cranky,” said Henry. “You’ve got a chance to search for clues about the disappearances you’re so obsessed with. You should cast out a net and see if you can find anything.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And what exactly am I meant to be looking for, Henry? We don’t know what happened to them. We don’t have any idea, because I’m not allowed to investigate. Instead, we’ve been assigned to a pissy little murder.”

  He crossed his arms. “Are you worried this has something to do with you?”

  “What?”

  “Do you think someone’s sacrificing magicals to try and call you again?”

  I turned away from him, not wanting to make eye contact. He’d caught me out.

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

  “Is it?” I demanded, rounding on him. “Is it really? Because it’s not like it’s the first time people will have been murdered in my name.”

  “Have you felt anything?” he asked. “A surge of magic? Have your powers grown stronger?”

  “No, but –”

  “Exactly!”

  “But that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they’re just not doing the rituals right. It wouldn’t be the first time for that, either. Maybe that’s why they keep kidnapping people – because they keep messing up the sacrifice. Or maybe they’re planning on doing a mass sacrifice. How should I know?”

  Henry shook his head at me. “This has nothing to do with you,” he said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “And you don’t know that it does!” he said. “Stop stressing so much about it. Whatever’s happening, it’s not on your head.”

  “But –”

  “But nothing. Forget about that theory. There’s no reason to think it has anything to do with you. Right now, we’re just two cops patrolling the forest, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Now,” he said, shifting into a wolf and sniffing the air, “I’m going to see if I can sense anything abnormal and you should do the same. If this is the work of a wild pack of orks, or grabbers, or Pierre, we should be able to sense them. Let’s do our job.”

  There was no point in arguing, so I simply closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and cast my mind outwards, sending my magical feelers through the forest. It was crawling with beings, and sifting through them was taking a little while, but I couldn’t sense anything obviously malicious out there.

  Most of the people who came to the forest around the time of the full moon were light dwellers, and even those that were creatures of the night didn’t necessarily have bad intentions. I couldn’t feel any armies of orks moving through the forest, there wasn’t so much as a hint of a grabber, and Pierre’s magical vortex which seemed to suck in all the light around him was nowhere to be found. I opened my eyes and saw tha
t Henry was watching me. Apparently he’d finished his sniff test.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I answered. “You?”

  He shook his head. “I guess we’d better get back to patrolling, then.”

  I nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Since we hadn’t clocked anything suspicious, we decided just to head through the forest in whatever direction we felt like and canvass the trees around us on the way. Henry suggested we head downhill towards the beach, and I obliged. It didn’t occur to me until we were already on our way to question why he would want to go there.

  “Why exactly is it that you want to head down to the beach, Henry?” I asked. He avoided eye contact when he answered.

  “No reason.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Because I thought you might have sensed something down there that drew you towards the water.”

  “No,” he said.

  “So you didn’t happen to want to head down there because you smelt that there were wereorcas in the Bay?”

  Henry stopped, sighed and turned to me. “Fine,” he said. “I know you have this weird obsession with wereorcas, but they are creatures of the night. There are several pods that are wanted for crimes against normals, and we should check it out.”

  “Really, Henry? Just because they’re creatures of the night you think we should be suspicious of them?”

  “No. Like I said, we don’t know what they’re doing here. I know you have this weird obsession with wereorcas, but that’s no reason not to check them out. They’ve only arrived in the area recently, and they could be connected to the disappearances.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You and I both know that wereorcas only attack people who try to capture them,” I said. “And if all those magicals were trying to capture orcas, then frankly they deserve whatever happened to them.”

  “Look, I am against animals in captivity as much as you are,” said Henry. “Probably even more so, given that there are plenty of people who would like to put me in a zoo, but that’s no reason to ignore a lead.”