Angel: Private Eye Book One (15 page)

I was so absorbed by staring at it and
trying to figure out what to do that I didn’t hear footsteps behind
me until it was too late.

“That's it. That's exactly what you should
do. There’s our only clue as it disappears down a storm drain.”

I jolted, twisting so hard and quickly to
the side, I momentarily lost balance on my heel.

I lurched, managing to grab a service poll
just in time before I could dive head first into the path of a
sedan.

Detective Cortez. He was standing behind me,
one hand loosely pushed into his pocket, the other scratching
distractedly at his chin.

He was staring at me with the exact same
barely contained frustration he’d worn last night.

He shrugged towards the goo. “When exactly
were you planning on calling us? I take it Mr Marvelous has pointed
out that you have a legal obligation to share every clue you find
with the police? And that,” he extended a white, stiff finger
towards that ever-growing puddle of what looked like iridescent
radioactive waste, “Is probably the only evidence we’re going to
get.”

“Evidence?” I should have tried to control
my voice, but couldn't. It went up with an excited kink as I
swiveled my gaze to stare at the puddle once more.

“Was evidence,” he growled. “As soon as it
hits the sewers, it's impossible to separate from the rest of the
gunk down there. Now our only clue is gone, because you had no idea
what you were staring at.” He ground his teeth as he looked at me.
“You shouldn't be out here, Lizzie, and you know that. You have
absolutely no training and no clue.”

I shrank back from his tone and the angry
look blazing in his gaze.

Just as I foolishly opened my lips to defend
myself, there was a weird noise from further down the laneway.

It was little more than a pop, as if
somebody had stepped on an insect, recorded the noise, and played
it back over a set of loudspeakers.

Then… then I heard it again.

The muttering.

The same low, eerie muttering I'd heard
caught along the wind last night.

My eyes must have drawn real wide, because
Cortez jerked his head towards me. “What's the matter?” he
demanded.

“Can't you hear that?” I asked as my brow
receded behind my hairline.

“What?” he began.

Then he stopped.

He stopped, because there was the low
mumbling of a far-off engine. Probably some motorbike, probably
driving in the opposite direction down the main road.

The effect the noise had on Cortez was
undeniable.

“Shit, that's the Gortix Gang,” he hissed
through his teeth.

“What? How can you tell that? It's just an
engine—”

“I'd know the rev of their bikes anywhere.
Stay here,” he growled. He sprinted forward, pulling the gun from
the leather holster slung around his shoulder.

Cortez darted out of sight along the alley
way before I could even catch my breath.

He left me alone.

I didn't want to be alone right now. Not
when my head was spinning and my life was tumbling out of
control.

Worse, I couldn't exactly walk away and head
back to the shop. Cortez had pretty much ordered me to stay right
here.

Which was going to prove to be a tough
ask.

Because, was it just me? Or was the goo
coming thicker now? Heck, those sparks crackling around the hole in
the air were growing brighter, too.

“What's happening?” I asked nervously.

Again, I heard the muttering. Growing
louder, coming from the left. Right up along the grass towards the
back of the apartment block.

I was not a courageous, enterprising girl. I
was exactly not the kind of girl who heard an eerie magical
muttering that nobody else could perceive and followed it to its
source.

So why exactly was I now walking around the
puddle of grot and heading out over the grass?

The muttering grew louder and louder the
closer I neared a small old metal vent sunk into the concrete.

I got down on my knee, a few old spiky twigs
and stones plucking at my already ruined nylons.

The metal vent looked innocuous enough, so I
hesitantly reached out a hand, running my fingers over it.

…
And there it was. A few
charges of magic. Practically indiscernible. Maybe they wouldn't be
for a proper practitioner like Mr Marvelous or William Benson. But
for me, I had to cram out every other thought threatening to
overcome my mind as I concentrated on them.

Driving my teeth into my bottom lip, I
realized I needed to pry back the vent.

Which shouldn’t prove to be too tough a
task, considering the thing was warped with age.

Locking a hand in the grass, I picked up a
smattering of mud along the cuff of my jacket as I angled my foot
back. And kicked. At a vent, inside an apartment building. An
apartment building I didn't own, and hardly had any right to go
around kicking. But did that stop me? Nope.

Because little by little, clearly Lizzie
Luck was losing her mind.

Blame it on the left-over adrenaline from
last night, but I didn't stop kicking until I dented the vent
enough to rest back, pry my fingers into the gap, and pull it
off.

I really had no idea what I expected to
find.

But one thing was for sure – as I kicked
open the vent, that muttering grew louder, and so too did that hint
of magic. It was darting over my tongue now, tasting a heck of a
lot like sugar mixed with salt.

“Oh God, Lizzie, what the hell are you
doing?” I chided myself as I let the vent fall on the grass beside
me.

I went to shove a finger in my mouth to
nervously chew my nail. Fortunately I stopped in time when I smelt
a nasty musty smell caught along my nails from where I'd touched
the drain.

Scrunching up my nose, I tried to pull
myself away.

I should have left. A smart, intelligent
girl who wanted to live into the night, would have turned, tucked
her tail between her legs, and run all the way home.

I was rapidly starting to learn I was
anything but smart.

The vent was large enough, and I was more
than small enough, to fit through.

There were 1 trillion reasons why I
shouldn't crawl into the vent space, but did that stop me?
Nope.

Before I really appreciated the stupidity of
what I was doing, I pushed down on all fours and started to shuffle
forward.

My back absolutely prickled with nerves.
Except they weren't just nerves. They were this undeniable sense
that strong magic was in the air. Magic strong enough to send my
teeth chattering in my skull and my eyes practically rolling back
into my head.

If I paid attention, I would have realized
the muttering had stopped.

Because the muttering had done what it had
set out to do – get me in here.

I heard the scattering of claws on metal,
and caught the unmistakable whiff of vermin. I saw plenty of
roaches, too, evidencing just how clean this apartment wasn't.

Before my stomach could churn like butter,
I… heard something.

The strangest, faintest hissing sound I'd
ever perceived.

It was right on the edge of hearing. It was
as if my ears suddenly became as perceptive as a dog’s. I started
to hear in a range I shouldn't be able to pick up. And just there –
right on the edge of my perception – I heard someone breathing.

Wheezing, taking their last breath.

Fear crumpled through my gut and I froze on
the spot. My hair stood on end as an electric charge of shock
vaulted down my spine.

I finally caught hold of my reason, realized
I was a fricking nutter to have come down here alone, and
turned.

Not in time.

I felt an ethereal hand push out from some
realm that existed between time and space.

The hand – made out of nothing more than
pure, crackling energy – rested on my elbow and locked me in
place.

Instantly my teeth jittered in my skull as
if I'd swallowed a jackhammer.

A ghost started to appear before me.

A real ghost.

I'd seen plenty of things since the world
had woken up to otherworlders. I'd never seen a ghost. I was smart
enough to stay away from their usual haunts. No pun intended.

But this ghost, it formed right in front of
my face.

Its appearance wasn't static. It shifted in
and out, blinking or flickering like a candle being assaulted by a
violent wind.

It was trying to speak to me. In the snapped
occasions I could see its mouth, I watched its pressured, white
lips open wide and desperately try to communicate with me.

It was that desperation alone that could cut
through my fear.

Though my body told me to run, my heart
locked me in place.

I… I reached out a hand and tried to lock it
on the ghost’s elbow.

Maybe it was my gesture – maybe it was
something more – but my move seemed to lock the ghost in place.

Her shifting, vibrating form solidified.

And I saw the gaunt, obviously dead, grave
features of Susan Smith.

Mr Marvelous had showed me a picture of her
before I'd left that morning.

I froze.

Maybe I'd felt locked in my body before.
Ground to the spot by fear.

It was nothing, nothing at all compared to
this.

It was as if every vital process suddenly
shut down, and I was cast out of stone.

The ghost gradually gained more and more
form, until I saw a dead body. Honestly, I could see the exact same
sickly grey hue of her skin as if a corpse had come to life.

I would have jerked back, repulsed, were it
not for one thing. The fear in her eyes. It was palpable.
Undeniable. It reached right inside me and wrapped itself around my
heart as if it were looking for a warm place to die.

“They stole my everafter,” the ghost finally
spoke.

Her voice was almost indescribable.

The voice was human, recognizable, yet at
the same time, it sounded extended. As if somebody had grasped hold
of the notes and smeared them across space and time.

It set the fine bones along my jaw and up
into my ears on edge.

“They stole a part of my everafter. Took it.
Now I am all alone,” the ghost said in a haunting, far off tone
like a lonely, melancholy wind chasing across some barren
plain.

A part of me realized I had to pull myself
together, push back my fear, cram it out of the way and ask the
woman what had happened. Because here she was. Susan Smith. Not
entirely in the flesh, but close enough.

Grabbing hold of some unknown source of
courage, I shifted further forward, knees grating against the metal
floor of the vent shaft. “Who killed you? What happened?”

A pulse of pure fear shot through the
woman's dead eyes.

Though the rest of her body was unmistakably
grey and rotting, her eyes hadn't glazed over yet. They were eerily
human as they darted around, searching for something.

Though I doubted she needed to breathe in
her current form, she kept panting and gasping for air. She kept
trying to clutch at her back, too, as if something were there.

I turned over her shoulder, coming closer to
a ghost than I ever thought I'd be capable of. My hair stood on
end, and pulses and waves of nerves crippled my body like
continuous electric shocks.

But I still shifted past far enough to see
red glowing writing visible through the torn scraps of her
ghost-like clothes.

I jerked back. “What's that?” I hissed.

At first my touch had been enough to anchor
the ghost, make her real, pull her disheveled form out from the
wriggling smoke that surrounded her and threatened, at any moment,
to drag her back into the realm of unreality. Now the effect of my
touch seemed to be waning.

I knew instinctively that I had seconds,
maybe a minute to find out everything I could from Susan Smith
before she disappeared entirely.

I jolted forward, now bringing both hands up
and wrapping them over her hands.

It was easily the most ghastly experience
I'd ever had. At the same time, I could feel her stiff fingers and
her rotting flesh. And yet, just beyond that, I caught an
impression of warmth, of the way she'd been before she'd been
brutally murdered.

“Susan Smith, who killed you. What
happened?”

“I… don't remember. Vampires, vampires,” she
stuttered in a far off tone. She brought a hand up and tried to
grab at her neck. It was an impossible task. Her neck kept
appearing and disappearing, and her prying fingers slipped right
through.

I shifted even further forward on my knees,
my nylons well and truly torn.

I gripped her rapidly-disappearing form with
all my might. And, though, I wasn't aware of it at the time, all my
magic, too. “Susan, please, just hold on. You have to tell me who
killed you. I promise to bring them to justice,” my voice rang on
the word promise. Heck, it did more than ring, it hit a note that
shouldn't be possible for a weak little mouse like me. In that
moment, I spoke with an almost divine sense of justice dwelling in
my heart.

That – that was enough to see her solidify
for just a few seconds longer.

She looked earnestly into my gaze. “He'll
know. It was one of his clans. I went home with a vampire last
night. I can't remember who it was. But he'll know. He'll know,”
she promised as she began to fade.

True, gut-wrenching nerves gouged through my
stomach with such force it felt as if they would drive me
backwards. I thought only of one man. Benson. Could Benson be
responsible for the murder after all? Was his promise of helping
nothing more than another ploy?

I shouldn't feel sick at that prospect.
Shouldn't feel betrayed. But goddammit, I did.

“I’ll find him,” I said through bared teeth.
“I’ll find Benson and make him pay for what he did to you.”