Suzanne McLeod - The Cold Kiss of Death

‘Yeah well, I’d sort of come to that conclusion myself.’ I grimaced. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell if there’s a witch or anyone else hiding around here somewhere, can you?’

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘There has been no witch here, in this part of the shop, for a day, possibly more, and no one now other than us and the dead man.’

Okay, so Tomas’ ex wasn’t around, and the barrels held only flour. Then another thought clicked. Malik had been following me; had he overheard the boy talking? ‘The lad outside said he’d seen a woman come in and heard some sort of fight?’ I narrowed my eyes in question.

‘He lied.’

‘Ri-ight.’ I pursed my lips. Good old vamp super-senses, better at spotting a fib at fifty paces than any polygraph machine ever would be. ‘He’s part of the set-up then?’

‘Not necessarily; there was some confusion in his mind.’ He pushed back the fall of dark hair from his forehead. ‘As I said, Genevieve, it was unwise of you to enter.’

Confusion? Caused by some sort of spell? Still, back to being the trapped rat and now with a scary vampire in tow. So not the way I wanted to start my day. Still. I looked sadly at Tomas; his day had started a hell of a lot worse than mine, so I really was the better off. Until the police got here, at least.

I frowned at Malik. Why had he followed me in? ‘You do realise that there are Wards stopping us getting out, and that the police will be here any minute, don’t you?’

‘I informed the boy that the police would not be required.’ He turned his head as if listening, giving me the sculptured line of his profile. ‘He believes you will deal with any problems and has put it from his thoughts.’

My pulse sped up. He’d mind-locked the boy, given him instructions. The vamp trick isn’t illegal—just as any other form of hypnotism isn’t—so long as no crime results. It meant there were no police rushing to arrest me. Or to rescue me. One of those good news, bad news things. Still, at least it bought me some time. Tomas was dead. Someone had used him to frame me and—I clenched my fists—I was going to find out who it was, and why. My eyes moved suspiciously to the vampire standing like a beautiful statue not three feet away.

‘Is this anything to do with you?’ I indicated the dead body.

He treated me to his usual impassive expression, then started walking with graceful purpose around the body. I held my place as he rounded the feet and closed on me, refusing to allow him to intimidate me. Finally he stopped, his coat brushing against my bare legs. Dark spice mixed with the scent of leather curled through me, shimmering lust in my belly. I ignored it; with the 3V in my blood, it was nothing more than a chemical reaction to his nearness. You just keep telling yourself that , whispered a mocking voice in my mind. I ignored that too.

‘This looks more like your handiwork, Genevieve,’ he murmured, looking down at me, his breath disturbing my hair.

‘Yeah,’ I lifted my chin to meet his eyes, ‘like I couldn’t work that one out, except of course I didn’t kill him.’

‘Which is always the standard response of both the innocent’—he wrapped cool fingers round my left wrist; the bruises there heated to his touch—‘and the guilty.’

‘I’m fae, Malik.’ I jerked out of his hold. ‘The fae can’t lie.’

‘That is true.’ His voice licked over me like hot flames. ‘As far as the truth goes.’

‘Fine!’ I glared up at him. ‘If we’re doing the pedantic stuff; yes it’s impossible for the fae to lie outright, but they’—I paused to correct myself; I was fae, after all, even if I hadn’t been brought up amongst them—‘we fae can usually skirt around the edges of the truth and misdirect. And of course the same holds for vampires.’

He shifted away, so quickly that I almost swayed. Then he bent over Tomas’ heavily muscled chest and, eyes closed, inhaled deeply.

I frowned in consternation. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

He lifted his eyes to mine; incandescent pinpricks of power flared red in his pupils. ‘The scent could be yours.’ His expression turned predatory. ‘It is almost indistinguishable.’

Apprehension fluttered under my ribs at the intensity of his gaze and I forced myself to stand my ground. ‘Yeah, he smells of honeysuckle, I know. But he’s been dead at least a couple of hours, so truth or not, I’ve been with others all night.’ Grace, then Hannah—okay, she and Darius weren’t the most reliable of alibis, but hey, I had something she wanted. And before she turned up I’d been on the ghost job with Finn.

‘No.’ A fine line creased between Malik’s brows as he stared down at the body. ‘It is only recently that this human has been killed, maybe half an hour at the most.’

‘But he’s all stiff!’ I had a sudden visual of just how stiff a particular part of Tomas’ body was and stopped. The double entendre seemed wrong with him lying dead and unable to defend himself. I pushed the thoughts away and carried on. ‘I thought rigor didn’t set in until two to three hours after death?’

‘The body has not reached the stage of rigor mortis yet.’ He moved back a couple of paces to study the body. ‘This is an example of cadaveric spasm: should death occur at a moment of high emotion and extreme exertion, the body’s muscles seize in position. It can happen where the human has drowned or suffered a heart attack whilst fleeing, or as the result of an overload of sexual stimulation as here.’

I almost asked him if he’d taken a course or something, then thought better of it. Vampires don’t just see a lot of death, they cause a lot of death, never mind the current bat-shit PR propaganda the public has swallowed bloody hook, line and sinker. Of course, vamps were considered dead themselves up until the court case back in the seventies; then a disinherited widow decided she’d be better off as a divorcée after her rich husband accepted the Gift and left his millions to his new master. She got her medical experts to prove that daytime vampires still produced brainwaves, ergo no clinical death there then. And wasn’t it a handy coincidence that the judge’s decision removed yet another nail from the coffin in which the vampire’s human rights had been buried in?

‘If you look here—’ Malik crouched and pointed to where the body’s back ribcage met the stainless-steel table; a faint bluish-red line discoloured the skin like a thin bruise. ‘It is only now that the blood begins to settle. Death occurred within the last hour, probably not long before you entered the shop.’

I worked it out. Tomas had been killed while I was out running, a time I had no alibi for.

‘And I would not have been able to sense the body,’ Malik carried on calmly as he straightened up, ‘if it had been less fresh.’

Nice image! ‘So what,’ I said, ‘you just happened to be following me and decided to drop in and give me the benefit of your expertise in determining the time of death?’

He gave me another impassive look, like this time my question was so stupid that it wasn’t worth answering.

‘Didn’t think so,’ I said drily. ‘And I suppose you’ve only been following me for my own protection?’

He inclined his head with a wry twitch of his mouth. ‘If that’s what you wish to believe.’

‘More like you’re concerned about losing what you consider to be your property,’ I snorted, ‘and just want to chase off any other vamps that might be getting ideas.’

‘Genevieve.’ A hint of impatience laced his voice. ‘If you were my property there would be none that would risk my displeasure, save one. But after the last challenge meeting, in the eyes of all other vampires you do not belong to me, you belong to Rosa.’