Angel: Private Eye Book One (9 page)

He still thought I’d murdered that vampire
in cold blood, didn’t he? And he hadn’t exactly hidden his
displeasure when I’d rejected Mr Benson’s offer.

Clearly, I was a monumental disappointment
to Detective Cortez.

Before I knew what I was doing, I found
myself trying to hide behind Mr Marvelous’ shadow, which was kind
of hard considering we were the exact same height.

“Never too early to begin, especially with a
case like this. I take it you don’t need me to show my papers?” Mr
Marvelous challenged.

Cortez shifted his jaw from left to right,
his tongue darting forward and sliding over his teeth. “No, but you
can still show me your papers,” Cortez demanded.

Mr Marvelous wasted no time in twanging open
one of his suspenders, pushing a hand past it, and grabbing
something out of whatever ethereal realm existed past that high
tension spandex. It was a piece of parchment rolled up like it was
some kind of scroll.

Instantly, it caught my attention, because I
saw several charges of an odd white blue magic spark over it and
discharge into the air.

Cortez brought both feet up and planted them
firmly into the floor, which was covered in deep scratches as if
some wild animal had tried to dig through the wood.

Cortez made a show of sucking in a deep
breath and grounding himself, almost as if he was getting ready for
a judo throw.

Finally he nodded at Mr Marvelous. At the
same time, Cortez gently parted open his lips and curled his tongue
up to the roof of his mouth.

What the heck was he doing?

I got my answer as Mr Marvelous handed over
the contract and magic discharged down Cortez’s arm, over his leg,
and into the floor where it harmlessly danced between the grooves
and scratch marks in the wood before disappearing completely.

Once all the magic had dissipated off the
contract, Cortez dropped his tongue from the roof of his mouth and
gave a shudder, stamping his feet. “Goddamn unpleasant, that. Feels
like ants under your skin.”

“I don’t really care what it feels like, Mr
Marvelous said as he crossed his arms and locked Cortez in an
unmistakably unfriendly look. “That’s a bona fides contract from
Miss Susan Smith’s family. It confirms mine and my employee’s right
to investigate this case alongside the police. You will hand on any
evidence as you find it, not as you see fit.”

Cortez finished scanning the contract,
rolled it up carefully, and handed it back to Mr Marvelous. “This
isn’t my first rodeo, unlike some.” He flashed his gaze towards me
and made no attempt to hide the dismissive judgmental look in his
gaze as he looked me down from head to foot. “You ever seen a
murder, Miss Luck?”

I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to.
Because what he just said had made this real.

For a few seconds I’d been distracted by
Cortez and Mr Marvelous’ interaction. I’d forgotten about the fact
there was a dead body in the other room.

There was a goddamn dead body in the other
room.

I crumpled my arms around my middle, feeling
the sudden and violent urge to throw up.

“No you don’t, not yet.” Mr Marvelous
suddenly darted beside me and locked a hand on my shoulder. “Hold
it together. All we have to do is go in and go out.”

“Why do I have to?” I began.

Mr Marvelous tugged me around and shoved me
down the short hallway towards the room.

The door was open a crack, a strange red
glow emanating from it. I hoped like hell that wasn’t blood
splashed over the lightbulb.

Oh god, oh god, oh god. I started to shake,
stumbling with every step.

Just as we reached the door and my fear hit
a crescendo, Cortez darted forward, grabbed the door, and closed
it. He looked right into my face. “You don’t want to go in there,
Miss Luck.”

“She’s my employee, detective. You don’t get
to dictate our access to evidence. Or do I need to remind you of
the rules governing otherworldly crimes?”

“You don’t need to remind me of any rules,”
Cortez said through a clenched jaw, “But do I need to remind you
that Miss Luck here was attacked by a vampire approximately seven
hours ago and joined your fine establishment in the wee hours of
this morning? Don’t you think this is all a little soon?” Cortez
finally flashed his gaze away from me and stared Mr Marvelous
down.

I wasn’t entirely sure if Cortez was being
kind. He was probably worried that I’d turn to putty in the bedroom
and throw up all over the crime scene.

To be honest, I didn’t care. I wanted to go
home. Not to Mr Marvelous’ shop – to my flat.

God, I wanted all of this to go away.

I brought a hand up and crumpled it over my
lips, crushing them between my fingers as I gagged into my
palm.

“Not here,” Cortez growled as he locked a
hand on my shoulder and pushed me through a door to my side.

Just as my mind began to spin and my gut
spun faster, I saw a sink.

I threw myself towards it and then I
promptly threw up. I wasn’t quick enough to hook all my hair behind
my ears and grimaced as several strands splashed in front of my
face.

When I was done emptying the contents of my
stomach, I clamped the back of my hand over my lips as if I was
trying to cork my own gullet.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

It took me a heck of a long time to open
them.

I washed my mouth. With a shaky palm full of
water, I scrubbed my fringe.

When I turned around, Cortez was standing in
the doorway, arms crossed, back pressed against the wall.

He had exactly the kind of stony unreadable
expression you wouldn’t have if you’d just seen somebody throw up
violently into a sink.

His nose wasn’t even creased at the
smell.

When I finally dropped the back of my hand
from my mouth and tried to stand up straight, he shook his head.
“You can leave any time.”

“I wish I could,” I admitted in a moment of
weakness, “But Mr Marvelous wants me to go through this. But I
really don’t want to go into that room,” I kept spilling my heart
out to Cortez, even though he was exactly the kind of judgmental
asshole who would take your heart and chuck it in the trash.

“That’s not what I mean. You can end this
any time. Go to Benson and accept his deal.”

I actually took a bodily step back. “Aren’t
you with the police?”

Cortez gave a low, barely amused chuckle. He
gestured to himself and then pointed a thumb behind him down the
bustling hallway. “Yes, I’m with the police. What’s your
point?”

“That you shouldn’t be pressuring random
citizens into signing away their souls to vampire kings.”

Cortez now openly chuckled, his large
shoulders pressing back and forth against his tight white shirt.
“Vampire king? Benson is no king.”

“You know what I mean.” This conversation,
and how wrong it was, was the only thing that could make me forget
that I’d just thrown up in front of this guy.

“Sure, Benson is powerful, but you need
powerful right now. I don’t know if you remember, but you killed a
vampire last night. There’s only one reason the other vampires in
the city aren’t going after you in retribution. And that’s Benson.
Mr Marvelous may be able to offer you $11 an hour and a dingy room
in his dingy shop, but that isn’t going to be able to keep you safe
forever.”

“Listen to yourself,” I spat in
exasperation, “You’re meant to be an officer of the law. And I did
not murder a man last night. He attacked me. He was going to kill
me.”

“Self-defense is still a kind of murder,
just watered down,” Cortez shot right back. “If you hadn’t been so
lazy and negligent, and you’d tried to find out what race you
belong to earlier, that guy wouldn’t have had to die.”

I staggered back, hip bumping the sink as I
stared at Cortez in disbelief. “I had no idea my blood would do
that to the vampire. You know what, Mr Cortez?” I pressed my teeth
together and spat my words through them, “That doesn’t make this
manslaughter. It makes it an accident.”

Cortez snorted again. He hadn’t moved from
the doorway, and he crossed his arms around his middle, his
forearms bulging over his rolled up sleeves. “You a lawyer now as
well as incompetent, green-eared private eye?”

“No, I’m not a lawyer. And you know what?
Neither are you. You’re a bully. You know full well I didn’t kill
that man. Mr Marvelous is right, isn’t he? You are Benson’s
lapdog.”

Cortez bristled. He also unhooked his arms
from around his middle, one suddenly clenched fist banging hard
into the door frame. “I wouldn’t talk about stuff you don’t
understand. This world that doesn’t abide ignorance and innocence.
If I were you, I’d walk right out that door,” he punched a stiff
finger in the direction of the front of the apartment, “And drive
yourself to Benson before it’s too late.”

“And if I were you,” I said through clenched
teeth, “I’d get the hell out of my way.” I stalked past him.

He barely shifted from the doorway, and our
arms brushed up against one another.

I didn’t feel a prickle of warmth or even a
tight scattering of nerves twisting through my gut at being so
close to such a handsome man.

I felt nothing, because he was a creep. How
dare he judge me. How dare he pretend I knowingly killed that
vampire. And how dare he try to push me into the arms of
Benson.

That – the anger curling through my gut –
was the only thing that allowed me to walk the short distance
towards the bedroom.

With only the slightest moment of
indecision, I pushed out a hand, spread my fingers over the wood,
and shoved the door out of the way.

I walked into a murder scene.

…
And I didn’t see a dead
body.

I don’t know what I was expecting. A scene
like out of those grisly TV shows you get so much these days. A
body on the bed, surrounded by bloodied sheets. Maybe something
written across the wall. Maybe a knife buried in the
floorboards.

But there was nothing. At least nothing
ordinary.

The second I entered the room was the second
my jaw locked together. It was as if somebody reached into my
skull, clutched hold of the bone, and soldered it in place.

My skin started to crawl, the sensation so
exquisitely acute, it felt like my dermis had come to life and was
wriggling and writhing about like a snake trying to escape its own
skin.

Mr Marvelous was over by the window,
frowning at something etched into the chipped wood.

There was another detective knee deep in a
pile of messy clothes by the open walk-in wardrobe.

And Cortez was right behind me.

Yet somehow… somehow I felt like I was
completely alone.

In that moment, it was as if the floor gave
way, the ceiling, too, and the walls… the walls pressed in. I felt
like I was falling through some enormous tunnel on a direct path
down to Hell.

I saw it first. Right out of the corner of
my vision. A spark like someone hitting a flint in the deepest
cave.

I jerked my head to the side just as the
strangest sensation roared through my stomach and charged hard into
my heart.

Before I knew what I was doing, I staggered
over to the wall. The plain white wall.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Cortez said right
from my side as he reached up a hand and locked it on my
shoulder.

Before he could jerk me back, I pushed a
hand forward, expecting to feel the rough plaster of the wall.

Except I didn’t.

My fingers pushed right through it. The wall
suddenly became liquid. The white, chipped plaster rippling around
my fingernails and oozing up the creases in my skin.

I screamed at the horrid sensation and
staggered back.

“What the hell?” Cortez snapped. “It's a
fake wall! Christ, how did we miss that?” Cortez and the other
detective rudely shoved me out of the way, and Mr Marvelous was hot
on their heels.

As all three men faced the wall and
inspected it, Cortez jerked his head to the side and snarled
through the open door. “Get Charles in here.”

“No time for your on-call warlock,” Mr
Marvelous snapped as he shoved a hand past his suspenders and drew
something out.

I was in such a daze, but I knew what it
was. A sacred dagger with a triple insulated sheath. It was used to
break magical spells.

Wiping his thumb over his top lip to
dislodge the sweat, Mr Marvelous shoved forward, gripped the dagger
hard in his right hand, and stabbed the wall.

Instantly the shining silver runes carved
along the tip of the blade sank through the rippling plaster.
Sparks started to charge out in every direction, and I yelped as
several struck my hand and burnt my skin.

I staggered back, knees catching the side of
the bed. I fell on it before I knew what was happening.

Then… then the wall crumbled. It was like it
suddenly aged on fast forward, becoming dust in seconds.

As it did, the room changed. The pile of
crumpled clothes the other detective had been searching through by
the wardrobe turned into lengths of hair. And the paint Mr
Marvelous had been looking at by the windowsill turned out to be
dried flecks of blood.

And the bed – the bed—

I tipped my head to the side and saw a pale
grey hand right beside me.

I shrieked, screaming so loudly I could have
taken down the ceiling.

I jerked up, scrabbling so wildly, I
tripped.

Cortez lurched forward and caught me,
swinging me to the side as he took a bodily step away from the
bed.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The
dead woman amongst the sheets.

There was no blood. Nothing smeared across
the bed. Just a body. A dead body.

Cortez held onto me for a little longer than
was necessary, but then straightened up, locked an arm around my
shoulders, and bodily walked me towards the door.