Suzanne McLeod - The Cold Kiss of Death

My stomach did an anxious little jump at seeing it again. I hooked one leg under me and settled into the leather chair, reaching for the nearest keyboard—

‘Tavish says to remember the bracelets and the gloves,’ Finn said quietly from behind me.

I stopped, hand in mid-air. ‘Thanks,’ I said and snagged a pair of the extra-thick surgical gloves from the box under the desk. I snapped them on and pulled them up over my wrists, then gingerly picked up two silver cuffs from the tray next to the box. They were half an inch wide and peppered with industrial-grade diamond chips. I clasped them round my wrists on top of the gloves so the silver didn’t burn my skin. The cuffs and gloves were probably overkill—seeing as each computer had its own individual Buffer spell glowing away—but I wasn’t going to take the chance of frying their hard drives by not wearing the magical inhibitors. Tavish might like me, but not that much.

‘Are you okay?’ Finn’s voice held concern.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, still simmering with annoyance over the fight between him and Tavish.

‘You don’t look fine, Gen.’

I glanced down at the baggy T-shirt that was all I was wearing—Joseph’s boxers had been too large for me, and none of the fetish underwear in the mirrored wardrobes had appealed. Tavish’s Clean-Up spell had dried and de-sanded the T-shirt, but that was it. I sighed. Okay, I didn’t look so good, but hey, what did he expect after all I’d been through? Explosion and deep sea swimming anyone?

I turned to look at Finn. He was leaning against the wall next to the monitors, his arms loosely crossed. His horns had shortened to a couple of inches above his dark blond hair and his sharp feral features were Glamoured back to his more usual clean-cut human handsome. There were no signs of his recent fight; his black chinos and black dress shirt with its thin electric-blue stripes and—I checked—highly polished black boots looked like he’d just taken them from his wardrobe, which he probably had, using magic.

I shrugged. ‘Not all of us have the ability to call fresh clothes whenever we want to.’

‘I’m not talking about the clothes, Gen.’ He came over to crouch by the side of my chair. ‘I’m talking about this.’ He gently touched a pink patch of skin on my forearm. A tingle slipped inside me before the cuffs glowed and shut it down. ‘You’ve been injured.’ Anxiety shaded the moss-green of his eyes.

‘I’ll heal good as new in a few days,’ I said firmly, still furious that he hadn’t thought to check I was okay before he’d started chucking Stun spells around. I narrowed my eyes. ‘What are you doing here, anyway, besides your little spat with Tavish out there?’

‘Hell’s thorns, Gen,’ he said, exasperated. ‘What do you think I’m doing here? You’ve been missing since Tuesday morning; I’ve been worried about you.’

‘And now I’m not missing any more.’ I tilted my head enquiringly. ‘Are you here to help, or is there some other reason?’

A puzzled line creased between his brows. ‘Of course I’m here to help, why else?’

‘Oh, maybe so you can tell Detective Inspector Helen Crane, your ex-witch wife, where I am so she can come and arrest me?’ I said, not keeping the suspicion out of my voice.

‘Helen’s a police officer, Gen.’ He straightened, his face closing up. ‘She has to go by the evidence.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Disappointment twisted through me. Of course he’d take her side; it didn’t seem to matter that she might be looking at the evidence through blinkered eyes gone green with jealousy. I turned back to the monitors, clicked on the play button and started the CCTV footage rolling. The monitor-me stuck her hands on her hips outside the bakery and looked around.

‘She doesn’t need to arrest me anyway,’ I said after a moment. ‘I’ve got an alibi, someone who can prove I wasn’t with Tomas when he was killed.’

‘Who?’ Finn’s reflection appeared in the screen. I blinked as another reflection, Cosette’s, shadowed his. I swivelled the chair round to look and my knees bumped into Finn’s legs he was so close, but she wasn’t there. Damn, it was bad enough being haunted by a ghost without letting my imagination run away with me.

‘Who’s your alibi?’ Finn asked again.

I frowned up at him, then opened my mouth to say Malik—Then I didn’t as my mind hit a snag I hadn’t considered before. Not only was Malik laid out with his injuries right now, but naming a vamp as my alibi was going to be like waving a bloody flag in the face of the Witches’ Council. It was one of those ‘damned if I do and damned if I don’t’ things. Shit.

‘It’s a sucker, isn’t it?’ Accusation sharpened Finn’s voice. ‘Gods, Gen, why ?’

I sighed. ‘I wasn’t with him, Finn, he was following me. But it does mean he can vouch for my movements after I got home.’

He pushed his fingers through his hair, a worried line creasing between his brows. ‘You weren’t actually with him in person when the human was killed?’

‘No,’ I said, turning back to watch the screens. ‘I was running. ’

On the monitor the florist’s boy came out of the shop and I picked my way past his flower buckets to talk to him.

‘The problem, Gen,’ Finn said, ‘is that even if you’d been with this vampire, I’m not sure how it would work as an alibi now. There’s been a lot of speculation in the newspapers, and quite a lot of the anti-fae prejudices have resurfaced.’ He paused. ‘Even the barrister I spoke to isn’t hopeful. He said that because you’re fae, he’d be happier if you’d been in a room with half a dozen goblins watching you, to testify you didn’t use any magic. He thinks that all it would need is the prosecution to suggest you could kill like that without physically being there ...’ He trailed off.

On the recording I stripped off my sweatshirt and dunked it in a bucket, then disappeared inside the bakery—walking into the trap.

‘So unless the real murderer puts in an appearance, I’m already tried, judged and convicted,’ I finished for him. ‘Looks like your ex has done a bang-up job,’ I added bitterly.

‘You disappearing didn’t help, Gen,’ he returned angrily.

‘Finn,’ I snapped, ‘Helen’s got it in for me because of you. You might think your relationship with her is over, but she doesn’t, and I’m the one that’s getting the short end of a very vindictive stick.’ I clenched my fists, my fingers sweating inside the plastic gloves. ‘You need to sort it out with her.’

He swung the chair round again and leaned down, dismay flickering in his eyes. ‘It is over between Helen and me, Gen, but it’s complicated. I didn’t realise it would affect you as it has.’ He dipped his head. ‘My apologies, my Lady.’

I stared at him, incredulous. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing with all this “my Lady” crap, but you can forget it.’ I turned back to watch the monitors. ‘And just for the record, “complicated” is not an excuse, it’s a way of life.’

The screen in front of me looked down on an empty, rain-blurred street. The stack of cardboard boxes outside the florist’s was doing a precarious Tower of Pisa lean to one side. The door to the baker’s stood open. The shop window was a blur of white. As I listened to Finn’s quiet breathing behind me I watched the empty street, wishing something would appear on the screen that would solve everything—the murder, Finn, the vamps, and all the other problems screwing up my life—so my own life could stop being so damn complicated. I almost laughed out loud. No way was that ever going to happen! In reality my life had never been that normal anyway.