She began to twist one of her rings, staring down at it. ‘I … I saw something, during that dream, Ash. I saw … I saw them. Vlad’s Boys. Their faces were blurry, and I couldn’t make them out. But after seeing them at the wedding, I know now – it was my parents’ wedding I was seeing in the dream. Anyway, the dream started out very pleasant. I was dancing with Greg. He was wearing Jared’s suit, just like at the real wedding.’
‘That’s why you got all weird when you saw him, when we were walking down the aisle.’
‘Yeah. That’s why. And while we were dancing, he told me how he felt, and I said it back. And it was so very, very perfect. But then someone – who I now know was Darina Berry – shot a death spell at Dylan.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘In the dream, there was no owl to come and throw an Impervium necklace over Dylan’s neck, but somehow, the spell didn’t take complete hold. He nearly died, Ash, but I was able to turn him and save him.’
‘The way you did with Greg at the real wedding,’ I gasped.
‘Exactly the way I did with Greg. I drained Dylan and fed him my blood the next day, and … and once he was healed, he refused to be turned back. Dylan became an obnoxious, irritating twat who took to being a vampire like a pro.’
‘He can be kind of obnoxious and irritating without being a vampire,’ I remarked. ‘I really don’t want to imagine him being any worse. But either way, it couldn’t have been a real prophecy. Dylan was a vampire, and he hated it, which is why the real-world Dylan did take the cure. He would never take to it the way he did in your dream.’
She lifted a brow. ‘Don’t be so sure. Real-world Dylan was a dayturner, turned with sick, feeble blood. But I’m powerful. Majorly so. And anyone I turned would be powerful too. In the dream, all of that power was like a drug to Dylan. He got off on it. He turned into a different man – a cruel, mean man who lived to taunt the people he’d once loved.’
‘Kind of like Angel in Buffy?’
Pru chuckled. She was obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite the (according to her) many factual inaccuracies. ‘Yeah, except worse, believe it or not. Anyway, Greg and I fell madly in love – the relationship moved really quickly. And Dylan … he murdered Greg, just to hurt me. I tried to fight him, but I couldn’t. Ash, Dylan was more powerful than me in this nightmare. He was able to compel me to just stand there and watch in misery, not able to do a thing to stop him while he murdered Greg in front of my eyes.’
She let go of my hand and flopped back on the bed, grabbing onto a cushion and holding it tight. ‘After that I had hundreds more dreams. It was a different friend sometimes – some accident or other would mean that Roarke got hit with the death curse, or Edward, or Brent … mostly, though, it was Dylan. Sometimes it wouldn’t be me who turned the person to save their life, it’d be Jared instead. But in every single version, Greg was murdered by the person whose life we’d saved. In every version, the person we turned was far more powerful than Jared or me, and inevitably, things went all kinds of wrong. And actually, there was no version in which Greg was the one who got hit with the ricocheting death curse but … everything else is the same. He’s going crazy on my power, Ash. And today when I tried to talk sense into him, I tested it out. I tested to see if I could compel him. I tried to control him, to make him take the cure. I even tried to compel him to simply ditch the coffins and the stupid cloak. Nothing worked. Because he is more powerful than me, just like Dylan was in all those dreams.’
I lay down beside her, grabbing a strand of her hair and coiling it between my fingers. ‘Pru, this is bad, I know that. So let me help you. Maybe my dad or my grandmother might be able to figure something out.’
A tear ran down Pru’s cheek. ‘Your dad already knows. He saw it too, in whatever weird way the older fae can see things. Like my dreams, he didn’t see this version coming either. But he’s just as frightened as I am – if Greg was murdered by Dylan or Roarke or whoever got hit with the death spell in all of my visions, then who is Greg going to murder? And your dad, he suggested I go see Cassandra. She’s the vampire who turned us, and she’s an extremely powerful seer. If anyone has some answers, your dad thinks it might be her.’
She patted one of the crystal balls. ‘That’s what this is about. If I’m going to fix this, I’ll have to focus my powers, and that means a medium like quartz or water or fire. I’m going to ask her to help me choose the best tools for the job, seeing as I clearly can’t be trusted anymore. Cassandra is incredibly powerful and I … I just don’t want to come across like the idiot who knew the prophecy and went against it, anyway.’ Another tear began to fall. ‘Even though I am that idiot.’
Her tears came faster and faster. ‘Because I did it, Ash. I couldn’t help myself. This morning, when I went back to see Greg alone, the words just spilled out of my mouth. I told him I love him. I was trying to appeal to him, I guess or … I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve made a great big mess even bigger.’
≈
Shortly after Pru left the Vander Inn, Dylan called me. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I had my phone off while Shane examined the body,’ he explained. ‘Want to pop over to the Wayfarer Station and get filled in? We’re in Finn Plimpton’s office.’
I didn’t need to be asked twice. This time I left the broom behind (it was snoozing on the bed with Fuzz anyway), and used my witch magic to take myself to the station.
Finn Plimpton was the head of the Major Crimes team, and his office was littered with cola cans, plates of chips, and sandwich wrappers. There was one lone bottle of water and a salad carton, and I knew that they belonged to my ever-so-healthy boyfriend. How he could resist chips was as much of a mystery to me as it is to anyone. He truly was a man of steel.
Right now, he was also a yawning man as he sat around a coffee table with Shane, Finn and Paul.
‘Ash.’ Finn nodded briefly. My grandmother was a big fan of his, and although she swore it was all to do with his strong character and excellent leadership, I had the feeling it was because he was a bit of a hottie. ‘Good to see you. Your father told us about the telekinetic energy you both witnessed in the alley. He said you both think there was a wizard involved, too?’
I shrugged. ‘Witch and wizard magic looks fairly similar. But Dad thinks it looks like concentrated magic, something a wizard was channelling, or maybe an OAP. What about the woman? Has she been identified?’
Finn nodded. ‘She has. It was easy enough to identify her, seeing as the Wayfarers arrest her every other week. Her name was Dymphna Danes. She was a Witch for Hire.’
‘A what for what?’ Was that something any witch could do? Because if so, I could do with the extra cash.
‘She worked out of whatever seedy joint on Samhain Street that would have her,’ said Finn. ‘She was sometimes seen around the human areas of Dublin City, too. She was incredibly powerful, but also had an obsession with buying up dragon eggs – and she wasn’t very good at spotting the fakes, either, hence her lack of money. She was known to perform dark magic for anyone who asked. We suspected she sold love potions, too, but she always managed to cover her tracks on that one.’
I already knew love potions were illegal, and now probably wasn’t the time to obsess over dragon eggs, so instead I asked, ‘So why was her body changing? Had she been under a doppelganger or a glamour spell or something?’
‘We found some potion in her stomach that’s generally used in doppelganger spells,’ Shane said. ‘But we have no way of telling who she was trying to become before she died. And as for how she died, it was a death spell. Well, actually, five or six death spells. The person sending them her way was not very good at them. One interesting fact though – and it goes hand-in-hand with what you and your dad think. Paul, you’ll be able to explain it a bit better.’
The Wayfarers’ highest-paid wizard was busy enjoying a cheese string, and he looked up and said, ‘Huh?’
‘Tell them what you think about the spells themselves,’ Shane p
rompted.
‘Ah.’ Paul stuffed the rest of the cheese string into his mouth, and after some laborious chewing and swallowing, he said, ‘Yeah, well I’m pretty sure that the spells were helped out by a powerful wand. Which would match with your dad’s theory of an OAP, I reckon. Still no Greg? Because I think he could really help me narrow this down some more. Me and him had been brainstorming ways of tracking OAPs back to their source, based on the magic they ejected. If he’s managed to do any work since we were talking about it, now would be the time for him to reveal it.’
At the mention of Greg, I felt a headache coming on. Maybe it was a psychic headache, sent by the all-powerful Gregariad.
Dylan, luckily, fielded the question. ‘We would love to get Greg back on board, but it’s looking less and less likely that’s going to happen anytime soon. So whatever ideas you and him were coming up with, Paul … maybe you’d be better off running with them alone for now.’
7. Cute and Sparkly
I woke up in my bed at the Vander Inn, exhausted. I had come back here after the visit to the Wayfarer Station. I’d hoped to see Pru, so she could fill me in on what happened during her visit to the seer known as Cassandra. Jared and Nollaig hoped the same, although maybe we were a little foolish in thinking she’d be back so soon. With someone as deranged as Greg, trying to find a solution would probably take a whole lot of time.
Finally, at about three a.m., I headed to my four-poster bed to spend the night with a cat and a broom. I didn’t sleep much, despite how tired I was feeling. At one point I got up, went to the telescope and took a good long look at Dylan’s lighthouse.
I wasn’t ready to move in with him, and I wasn’t sure his fridge was ready for it, either. I’d only sully his lettuce leaves and lean chicken by making them live next to microwave lasagne and bottles of wine. But after spending the entire weekend with him at the lighthouse, I was missing him a lot.
The stream of messages he sent me through the night told me he missed me just as much. And that … well, that wasn’t quite as overwhelming as I thought it might be, to be honest. Moving in might not be on the cards just yet, but I felt like we were moving forward.
The next morning, after a breakfast of porridge and fruit (see, I’m a healthy eater sometimes), Nollaig and Jared walked with me to the Daily Riddler. We were due to meet with Grace and the others to talk strategy. Although in the absence of Pru and Greg, there’d be a whole lot less biscuits consumed at the meeting.
Chantelle was already at work, looking right at home behind Malachy’s old desk. She placed the phone down as we entered and gave me a conspiratorial wink. ‘So you’ve switched to Jared Montague again, have you? Does that mean Detective Dishy is back on the market?’
I ignored her comments about Dylan and said, ‘The phones are busy for so early in the morning. Roarke’s fans again?’
‘No, actually. I mean sure, he’s already had fifteen calls, but mostly people are calling in to ask if we have a faery on the staff. If we do, I don’t know about it, but I’ll tell you this much – the callers don’t sound happy.’ She looked pointedly at Jared and Nollaig. ‘And they’re all vampires complaining, as a matter of fact.’
My friends looked as mystified as I felt.
‘Why would they be asking about whether the paper has a faery on the staff?’ Jared wondered. ‘And more to the point, why would they be complaining about it?’
She seemed like she was about to reply, but she suddenly looked over our shoulders, giggled, and said, ‘Hi Detective Quinn. You look amazing this morning.’
Dylan frowned. ‘Um … thanks. I guess.’ He kissed me on the cheek. ‘So why are we all still down here? We’re already late to meet Grace, and you know how she gets.’
‘Chantelle was telling us that she’s been getting complaint calls from vampires all morning,’ I said. ‘She was about to tell us what’s brought about this sudden onslaught, but she got a bit distracted by your arrival. Chantelle, why have vampires started complaining about us possibly having someone sióga on the staff?’
‘Because of yesterday’s Wyrd News in the Afternoon.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Obviously. So Detective Quinn, how do you like your coffee?’
≈
Up in Grace’s apartment, we watched yesterday’s episode of Wyrd News in the Afternoon. As always, I shuddered at the sight of the presenter. He was called Ted Shiftless, and he wore slick suits, and had shiny black hair that looked like it had more product than I could use in a year let alone a day.
He also had an irritating habit of winking at the camera, winking at female guests, winking at anyone who had a pulse, basically. When he wasn’t winking at women, he was undermining them in the slimiest manner. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been informing a female guest (the stunning-looking werewolf supermodel, Julie Rayne) that if she only followed his diet, she could shed a pound or two.
As I went through a secondary phase in my shuddering, Jared chuckled. ‘You should have seen the last guy. Ted Shiftless has nothing on Gabriel Godbody.’
‘Stop yammering and shuddering.’ Grace gave us a look of admonishment. ‘I want to listen to what this idiot is saying.’
‘That’s right,’ said the presenter. ‘We’ve all heard the rumours that the nosey and irritating reporter from the Daily Riddler is, in fact, half-fae. Now those rumours have been confirmed, by a source close to her incarcerated grandfather. A source who I just happen to have in the studio with me today.’ There was some dramatic music, and the lights went down and came up again, revealing Ted’s guest.
Dylan grasped my hand, while Grace and Jared stared in horror at the TV. It was Gunnar Lucien, a member of Vlad’s Boys who had been imprisoned for hate crimes.
‘Did you know he was getting out?’ I asked.
Dylan shook his head. ‘There was talk of early release for good behaviour, but I didn’t think it had actually happened. It was only yesterday afternoon when I heard it mentioned. I meant to tell you about it, but there was so much going on that it slipped my mind.’
‘Good behaviour?’ I spat. ‘He’s a member of Vlad’s Boys. He might not have actually murdered anyone, but he was happy to cover up for the ones who did.’
Dylan gritted his teeth. ‘You don’t need to tell me, Ash. I hate the guy as much as you do. But let’s listen to what he has to say.’
‘Gunnar,’ said the presenter. ‘While you were in Witchfield, you had one or two altercations with Arnold Albright, the grandfather of the annoying reporter known as Aisling Smith. Is that right?’
Gunnar nodded miserably. ‘The old man used to bully me something awful. He’s dying, according to the staff there, so I tried not to get too riled up by him. But any time he saw me he’d try to trip me up, and he called me vampire scum. He told me that his granddaughter was the one who’s been curing the dayturners. He …’ Gunnar paused for a dramatic shiver. ‘He told me something worse, too. He said that the dayturner virus wasn’t the only thing this new cure could get rid of. He said that his granddaughter and the rest of the fae intend to use it to wipe out all of vampire kind.’
The presenter shook his head, tutted a bit and said, ‘Terrible. Just tragic. To think that all this time, the fae have been trying to make us believe they’re our friends.’
Gunnar nodded. ‘But they’re not. They’re the filthiest vermin to walk the earth, that’s what they are. The fae are something to be feared. They wormed their way in with this miracle cure, and now … now they’re going to get rid of every vampire around.’
Ted Shiftless looked into the camera. ‘If this is true, then maybe Vlad’s Boys do have a point. Maybe the sióga are something to be feared. They could wipe out vampires in a heartbeat. And when they’ve achieved that, what supernatural race will they come for next? I don’t know about you, but I sure won’t be considering the fae to be quite so cute and sparkly anymore.’
I threw a cushion at the TV. ‘Cute and sparkly? Cute and sparkly?! I hate that guy.’
‘Don’t
worry, Ash.’ Dylan patted my back. ‘No one would ever accuse you of being sparkly.’
I thought that Jared would be the first to agree, but he was staring at the TV. ‘Grace, could you play that back, please?’
Grace nodded, playing the segment over again. Jared stood closer to the TV, blocking it from our view as he studied every single frame.
‘They’ve been compelled,’ he said. ‘Both of them. And I’d be willing to bet that the judge who set Gunnar free has been compelled too. And if Vlad’s Boys have enough power to do that, what’s the bets that every other incarcerated member of the gang will also be getting early release?’
‘That’s a terrifying thought,’ said Grace. ‘But on an even darker note, Aisling, I think it might be time you finally paid your grandfather a visit.’
8. Poor Old Arnold
When I sat face to face with my grandfather, my mother sat by my side. The second we showed her the Wyrd News segment, she’d been enraged, and insisted on joining me – which was lucky, because I didn’t think I could have stayed calm if I went there on my own.
‘My two girls!’ he cried. ‘I knew you wouldn’t abandon a poor old man like me.’
My mother tensed her jaw. ‘You’re hardly poor.’
‘Oh, but I am poor if I don’t have the love of my family around me. Or my health, come to think of it. I’m dying, as you know.’
‘The Queen thought you’d already be dead by now,’ said my mother. ‘I thought the next time I’d see you was at your funeral. But seeing as you’ve been using your time in prison to put the fae in danger, my daughter and I – you know, the one you kept me locked away from for decades – decided we’d better pay you a visit and ask you … have you gone completely off your rocker?’
A Little Bit Vampy Page 5
