“Fine,” he said, getting into the car.
She got into the back seat beside him and the cowboy started driving. Finch hoped that he wasn’t about to regret the choice he had just made.
Diana didn’t bother to put her seatbelt on, and turned sideways to face him. Her long very pale hair was flapping about in the wind but it didn’t seem to bother her, and she had fixed him with big over-bright eyes that were the oddest color he had ever seen. Midnight blue or purple or black at turns, and so shiny and lustrous that they made him stare.
Realizing that he was staring, he quickly looked away.
“Tell me what you know about Zezi Shahidi,” she said abruptly, making no attempt at small talk.
Her quick concise voice was at complete odds with the way she looked. Everything about her was jarring, and those eyes… Those eyes. For some reason that he couldn’t quite put his finger on they made him feel deeply, deeply uneasy inside. It reminded Finch of the way he had felt before once as a very young child, in the presence of a being that most people didn’t believe existed. The mere memory made him break out into a light sweat. He knew this is making him seem suspicious, but he couldn’t help it.
“So… erm… how can I help you?” he said, trying to gather his thoughts.
“Zezi Shahidi,” she repeated, her voice clipped.
“Zezi was a friend of mine,” he said. Which was true. “Why? What happened to her?”
“I’m asking the questions,” she retorted. “Tell me about your friendship. And don’t even think about lying. I’ll know.”
And so Finch told her. He and Zezi had been best friends through high school. He had liked her a lot, far more than she had liked him. Zezi had been like the sunshine. Everyone had loved her. He’d had hopes of something more between them, but then her mother had found out through the rumor mill that Finch was half-goblin.
It hadn’t mattered to Mrs Shahidi that she had known Finch for years and should have been able to trust him. She had freaked out. She had refused to let Zezi see him any more, and gone to the extent of making trouble at school for him. Everyone had found out he was a goblin. The parents of the other kids had been angry and Finch had been forced to move schools. Zezi had listened to her mother and everyone else. She had refused to take his calls. She had refused to see him again. Their friendship that had meant so much to him had been snuffed out as if it had meant nothing to her.
“Then why did she write you these letters?” Diana showed him the diary.
She even let him read a little before pulling it away from him. Seeing Zezi’s words made him hurt inside. She had missed him. She had wanted him back in her life. There was even a tone of longing. It made him angry. Why had she pushed him away then? And now suddenly, fiercely, all Finch wanted was to see her again. To feel the sunshine of being in her presence. All these years trying to forget her, and it turned out he was still in love with her after all.
“I don’t know,” he said. His voice emerged husky and raw. “What happened to her?” This time he looked Diana right in the eyes, difficult as that was for him to do.
“She went missing two years ago,” Diana told him.
He knew she was watching for his reaction. Finch could feel his face contorting, his mouth opening and closing but no words emerging while his brain tried to catch up with this fact.
“What do you mean missing?” he asked in confusion.
For three years he’d been imagining what it would be like if he bumped into Zezi in the street. That she’d see him as a mature man know, twenty years old, not seventeen, and she’d maybe marvel at how much he’d changed.
And Finch had changed. He had done things that neither he nor Zezi would have thought he was capable of back then. He was not the same guy that she had known, and he had hopes that maybe she would sense that and be intrigued. Because no way could he tell her what he had done. But it turned out that in all this time that he had been daydreaming of her, she had been gone.
“What do you mean missing?” he asked again, his voice gone steely.
“Missing, presumed dead,” she replied, giving him no mercy.
“But you don’t think she’s dead?” he said urgently. “You wouldn’t be looking for her if she was dead. You never said you were looking for a murderer.”
“Why do you think she’s been murdered?” Diana asked sharply.
“Because… because why else are you here?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Dead or alive, I need to close this case,” she said.
But he could tell that really she did care. She wanted to find Zezi alive, and that was all Finch needed to know about her.
She was looking at him as if she still hadn’t decided whether she trusted him or not. She reached out and touched the back of his hand, which startled him. Quickly, he pulled it away. She grabbed hold of it again, and said, “What do you know about the Petrichor Club?”
“Nothing!” He yanked his hand away and put it behind him where she couldn’t get it again. He really, really did not want this Diana girl touch him. Clearly she had done it on purpose. What had she been doing? Taking his pulse? Or was she using some magic to be able to tell if he was lying? Some magic that might tell her more about him than he wanted her to know?
She seemed satisfied with his answer because she didn’t try to grab hold of him again.
“What is this Petrichor Club?” he asked.
She shrugged noncommittally. “A friend of Zezi’s mentioned she had hung out there.”
The cowboy suddenly spoke up in a slow drawl. “Boss’s sister-in-law goes there at times,” he said.
This immediately got Diana’s attention because she leaned forward to listen to him over the sound of the wind and his overly loud music. “Steffane Ronin’s sister in law?”
The cowboy nodded. “Marielle Zamas Ronin. She’s married to Rodrigge, boss’s brother.”
“The older brother, right?” Diana asked.
The names rang a bell. Finch had heard them before. He leaned forward to join in the conversation. “Are you talking about the vampire Ronins?”
The cowboy nodded.
“I met Marielle Zamas already,” Diana said. “She said she’d keep an ear out at the club in case anyone had remembered seeing Zezi there.”
“But she’s a vampire!” Finch burst out. “You can’t trust a vampire!”
“Like you can’t trust a goblin?” said Diana with her eyebrows raised.
“That’s different!” Finch insisted. “Vampires are… worse.”
“And anyway,” said Diana. “Zezi said in her letters that she was working for your kind of people. So it’s not vampires that I’m interested in when it comes to Zezi.”
“Did she say goblin specifically?” Finch demanded.
“No. But that’s what she must’ve meant. She knew you were a goblin, right?”
“She could have meant anything. To her, and to any human, when they say my kind of people they just mean otherkind in general. Which includes vampires.”
Diana looked thoughtful. She nodded her head as if this might be something of interest, but there was no sense of urgency in her reaction which frustrated Finch.
“So are you going to question this Marielle woman about Zezi or not?” he demanded. “Are you going there now? To see these Ronins?”
“None of your business.”
“Zezi is my business. I’m coming with you.”
Diana scoffed. She insisted that Finch needed to stay out of her business. Finch refused to back down. What the hell did she think he was going to do now? Go home and watch TV while this girl who looked far too young to work for the Agency was the only person in the world searching for Zezi? His Zezi. He did not think so!
He reasoned that there was no way she was going to be able to go into a vampire’s nest by herself. She smirked and told him that she had her means. In the end, when the car pulled up outside of the Ronin house, Finch simply followed her up the drive to the front door.
It wasn’t like she could stop him.
Finally, she turn to him and scowled. “What do you think you’re playing at? This isn’t a game. I’m here investigating a case that has nothing to do with Zezi. And vampires are dangerous if you hadn’t noticed. So scoot off, little man. I don’t want you here.”
“I know exactly how dangerous vampires are,” he retorted. “It looks to me like you’re the one who doesn’t. And you’ll need my help if anything goes wrong in there. Trust me.”
There was no time to resolve their spat. The front door opened, and a forbidding looking woman glowered out at them. She was tall and broad and dressed in a prim uniform that screamed housekeeper, and clearly she was a human given that she wasn’t flinching away from the daylight.
“How dare you disturb the sanctum of my mistress?” the woman demanded. “Be gone!”
Diana look unimpressed. She took out her badge and flashed it at the woman. “I’m here on official business, and don’t bother to tell me that your employers are not home, given that it’s daylight outside.”
She charged in, before the astonished housekeeper could stop her. Finch darted in after her with his customary swiftness. The housekeeper’s face went red. She looked immensely irate, as if she was about to grab Diana and Finch by the scruffs of their necks and throw them bodily outside. She was big enough to do it too.
But then a sonorous voice emerged seemingly from the bowels of the house. “Bring them here, servant. At once!”
It was a male voice, languorous and commanding, and incredibly rude given that he hadn’t bothered to address his servant by name. Finch hated the owner of the voice already and he hadn’t even seen him.
The housekeeper obeyed immediately, leading Finch and Diana deep into the darkened interior of the house and down several flights of steps to a richly furnished sub-basement. The art adorning the walls looked like old master paintings, and were framed in what looked like real gold rather than mere gilt.
The servant led Finch and Diana to a lavish sitting room, furnished in a style that looked like it belonged in the mansion of a billionaire who came from old money. The owner of the commanding voice was a thin, tall, and sallow-faced man with greasy slicked-back dark hair. He was sitting on a couch with his legs propped up on a pouffe and was puffing a cigar. The smell of it was incredibly strong, as if it was not only tobacco in the mix.
Finch was very careful to immediately lower his eyes, but he noticed that Diana did not do the same. She was striding straight towards the vampire as if he was a normal human. Finch grabbed the back of her jacket and tugged it in warning, but Diana shrugged his hand off with irritation.
“Hello,” she said cheerily to the vampire, and plonked herself down onto the couch opposite him.
At least she hadn’t tried to shake his hand. Finch warily took a seat beside her. He hated sitting in the presence of a vampire. It made him feel vulnerable.
“Thanks for inviting us in,” she continued. “I’m Diana. This is my… associate.” She gestured at Finch but did not mention his name, for which he was grateful.
Though Finch was resolutely avoiding the vampire’s gazes, from the corners of his eyes he could see that the vampire appeared to be responding to Diana with some degree of confusion.
“Diana,” drawled the vampire. “Such a lovely name for such a lovely young woman.”
It was safe to look at Diana, so that’s where Finch looked. She was giving the vampire look of mild disgust. Finch was astonished. She was looking the vampire right in the eyes while the vampire was clearly trying to mesmerize her, and clearly the mesmerism was not working!
“How can I help you, Diana?” the vampire continued, his voice still a drawl, but there was an undercurrent in it that made Finch suspect his eyes were narrowed.
Before Diana could respond, a female voice called in a ringing tone, “Darling!”
The door flew open and a simply stunning woman walked into the room. Her skin was like marble carved by a master artiste, her curling silken locks so alluring that Finch immediately wanted to run his hands through them. Her eyes were dark lodestars, her sensual lips the color of blood… Finch wrenched his head away and focused entirely on his hands. Dammit. She’d made him look.
The beautiful woman kept coming, her heels clicking on the stone underfoot and then coming to a sudden halt. Finch could tell that she had recognized Diana. Which must mean she was Marielle .
“What are you doing here?” Marielle said accusingly.
Finch found himself gritting his teeth. He wanted to confront this damned Marielle beast and and demand to know what had happened to Zezi. She had to have something to do with it. It was a wild conclusion, but Finch seemed unable to make his mind think logically. He wanted to tear the vampire apart until she told him everything she knew.
Finch forced himself to stay sat where he was. She was a goddamn vampire. She would be the one tearing him apart, and probably Diana too if Finch did anything stupid. Finch clenched his fists and sat on them, and everybody else in the room continued to pay him no attention at all.
Diana had risen from her seat to greet Marielle with a naturally smile, but Marielle’s tone had made her eyebrows rise enquiringly. Finch didn’t look at Marielle’s face directly but he could tell from her body language that she was glaring at Diana, trying to mesmerize her, and growing angry when Diana seemed completely unaffected.
Marielle’s stance was that of a predator’s, her legs slightly spread apart as if she was about to pounce forward. Finch was sure that if she had been a big cat with a tail, it would be slashing back and forth.
She had called the male vampire ‘darling’, which meant he had to be her husband Rodrigge.
Diana smiled and looked Rodrigge and Marielle right in the eyes as if taunting them with her immunity to their mesmerism. She watched them carefully as she said, “I’m here because Steffane ask me to come. He wanted me to look into his case. He insists that he is innocent, and he’s got me convinced. I thought the best place to start was by talking with his family, naturally.”
“Steffane?” said Roddrigge in a quiet angry voice.
The vampire rose swiftly to his feet. His anger seemed to radiate off him and for a moment Finch thought that the vampire was going to attack Diana. Finch moved forward swiftly, intending to put himself between Diana and the vampire, almost without thinking because otherwise he probably would not have risked his life for a stranger. But Diana flung out an arm and stopped him. She glowered at him in a way that made it clear that he was to stay out of this.
Just then a maid arrived in the room carefully carrying with a tray loaded with beverages. The glasses trembled and tinkled against the tray as she approached. “Be gone!” Marielle snarled at her.
The maid hesitated, looking to Rodrigge for confirmation. Marielle slashed her face too fast for anyone to stop her, leaving deep bleeding claw gouges on the maid’s cheek. By some miracle the tray remained upright. Sobbing, the maid rushed from the room.
“There was no need for that!” Diana snapped, looking as outraged as Finch felt.
“Steffane? Innocent? Ha!” said Marielle in a ringing voice. “Don’t tell me he has you fooled?”
“I’m not easy to fool,” said Diana calmly.
Her equanimity astonished Finch. Why wasn’t the girl shaking in her boots? There was no way she thought she would be able to take on to vampires, and yet she seemed intent on goading them. Finch had seen a lot of things in his life, but he had never seen anything like this. He wasn’t sure if it was madness or something else. Perhaps the girl Diana had strong magic. Perhaps there was more to her than met the eye. There had better be, because otherwise she was likely to get them both killed.
Fuming, Finch sat back down. When the hell was Diana going to get around to asking about Zezi?
“I think,” Diana continued, “that if Steffane really did not kill Leonie Ashbeck, it had to be one of you. One of his family.” She watched the two vampires intensely as she spok
e, as if trying to catch something in the minute details of their expressions.
The vampires had taken a swift glance at each other. When they did not respond, Diana continued. “I mean, he’s a dhampir. And you vampires hate dhampirs. So maybe someone in this family conspired to set him up? Is it true? Do you hate dhampirs?”
“How dare you!” Marielle said, her voice gone quiet and cold and deadly. “How dare you speak of this family, outsider? How dare you presume to know us? How dare you come to our home and demand answers of us?”
Finch’s whole body stiffened. The way Marielle was staring at Diana told him that Marielle was furious and maybe even a little afraid. Finch wasn’t sure quite what happened next. It happened so fast and so unexpectedly that he had no time to react. One moment Marielle had been standing several meters away from the couch, and the next moment she had shoved Finch aside to get to Diana.
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