“Well, it’s about fucking time.” His voice sounded tinny as it echoed from the small speaker near the camera. The shimmer flared briefly, then died. “I’ve been bored as hell lately.”
“What?” I said, as I ran for the rear stairs. “The black market business isn’t going so well at the moment?”
He appeared at the landing and gave me a wide smile. “It’s going very well. But I’ve grown addicted to the challenges you give me. A little subversive hacking into government databases is good for the soul.”
Despite the urgency of the situation, I laughed and kissed his cheek. Stane rather looked like his building—a slender, unholy mess. With his somewhat long and scruffy brown hair, his wrinkled blue shirt, and loose, ill-fitting shorts, he certainly didn’t look like someone who was in any way dangerous—until you actually gazed into his honey-colored eyes. Stane was smarter and harder than he looked.
“So what is it this time?” he said, stepping to one side and waving us through.
“We have a life to save, and precisely eighteen minutes to do it in.”
“Fuck!” He scraped a hand across his bristly chin, then reclaimed his seat at the computer system that dominated his living area. He shoved a second chair in my direction. “You really are pushing it this time. How can I help?”
“I need you to work up an image of the woman I have to find, and then I need you to find her address.”
He swore again, then stretched out his fingers and cracked his knuckles. “Okay, hit me with the details.”
I gave him everything I could remember, and within a couple of minutes we had an image of the woman I’d seen on the planes. He flicked it across to another screen, and the search began.
And all I could do was wait.
I pushed to my feet and began pacing. Stane watched me for a moment, then said, “Anything else?”
I inhaled deeply, then slowly released it. It didn’t do much to ease the tension growing inside me. “Well, I also have the names of Nadler’s heirs.”
“How the hell did you manage that?”
I grimaced. “I had a conversation with a ghost.”
He eyed me for a moment, then said, “I won’t even ask. What are their names?”
“Harry Bulter, Jim O’Reilly, and Genevieve Sands.”
“A woman?” Stane frowned. “I can understand naming a number of men, because as a face-shifter, he could step into their lives anytime he wished. But a male face-shifter cannot take the form of a female, and vice versa.”
A fact that I knew, since I was a face-shifter myself. “He obviously has a reason for doing it, but it’s not like the man we’ve been calling Nadler is working on any logical playing field, anyway.”
“True.” Stane typed the names into his system, then swished them across to a separate light screen. “You want a coffee or Coke while we wait?”
“Coke, thanks.”
Stane glanced at Azriel, eyebrow raised in question. Azriel shook his head and I continued pacing, pausing only long enough to accept a can of Coke with a grunt of thanks. The time continued to tick away and it seemed to be taking forever to get our answer.
Stane reclaimed his seat and watched the screens, his expression intent, as if willing a prompt response. But another five minutes passed before the screen closest to him beeped. He put his coffee down and scooted forward.
“About time,” I grumbled, stopping to peer over his shoulder.
“Believe it or not, that was actually fast.” He ran a finger across the screen to highlight some lines, then enlarged them. “The woman you’re looking for is Dorothy Hendricks, from Craigieburn.”
I frowned. Craigieburn was a suburb on the northern edges of Melbourne, developed before the no-larger-than-a-postage-stamp housing plots of today, and popular with families thanks to its decent enough schools and leafy environs. It wasn’t the sort of place I’d expected last night’s woman to live. Given where I’d found her on the astral plane, I’d been expecting a suburb far grimmer. Grimier.
“What address? And what other information have you got on her?”
“Seventeen Crockett Avenue.” He paused, and quickly scanned the screen. “There doesn’t appear to be anything remarkable about her. Her parents are dead, and she has no siblings. According to her tax records, she works the night shift at the Nestlé factory in Campbellfield.”That raised my eyebrows. She hadn’t looked like a factory worker, but then, what was a factory worker supposed to look like?
“Anything else?”
“No record of marriage or kids, no fines of any kind, good credit history, owns her home.” He paused. “She’s a vampire.”
I blinked. That was something I hadn’t expected. “When did she turn?”
He glanced at me. “About thirty years ago, according to the records. No history of trouble after her rebirth, and she was released from the care of her maker about twelve years ago.”
According to Uncle Quinn, fledglings could be in the care of their creators for anywhere between ten and fifty years—it just depended on how quickly the newly fledged vampire learned to cope with all the sensations and needs that came with the state of being undead. That Dorothy had been released after eighteen years suggested she’d been a reasonably fast learner. “Does it list her creator on the certificate?”
It had been law for a few decades now that everyone who underwent the ceremony to become a vampire registered their details with the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Bureau. Once they had turned, their creator then had to register their “birth.” There were still vamps who were turned illegally, of course, but the Directorate and the vampire council—both the high council and the local council—took a dim view of this and came down hard on the turnee and the turner.
Stane glanced briefly at the screen. “Bloke by the name of Martin Cresswell. You want me to do a search on him?”
“That would be great.” I dumped the empty Coke can into the bin, then said, “Let me know if you find anything else.”
He nodded, his expression concerned. “Good luck.”
“We’re going to need it.” Especially when there were only eight and a half minutes left. I glanced at Azriel. “Can you take us to Dorothy’s house?”
He didn’t say anything, just wrapped his arms around me again. In an instant, we’d zipped through the gray fields, reappearing on the other side so quickly that my head spun and the bitter taste of bile rose up my throat again.
“You,” he said, his voice severe as he stepped back but didn’t quite release me, “need to eat.”
“Like I’ve got the fucking time right now.”
“I did not mean right now.”
“Good.” I scanned the home in front of us. It was nothing remarkable—just an ordinary brick house in a street filled with similar buildings. I pushed open a picket gate that had seen better days and ran for the front steps. There was a doorbell to the left of the door, so I leaned on it heavily, then rapped impatiently on the door itself. Inside, the chime and knocks echoed, but there was no response. If there was anyone inside, he or she was either deaf or dead.
“There is neither life, death, nor undead inside. The house is empty.”
I glanced at my watch. Eight minutes left. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I closed my eyes and tried to remain calm. Tried to think. “Even if she’s not there, there may be some clue—”
I didn’t get to finish the sentence. He just caught me in his arms again and whisked us inside. I drew in a deep breath the second we re-formed, ignoring another rush of dizziness as I sorted through the various scents in the air. Lavender and furniture polish vied for prominence with the aroma of coffee. Underneath that lay the scent of femininity, though it was far more vague than it should have been if she spent the majority of her time here. Certainly in the apartment I shared with Ilianna and Tao, the dominating scents were horse and wolf, with the tang of females coming in a close third. The masculine, incandescent scent that was Tao was a distant fourth.
But there was no male scent here. Nothing to indicate she ever had any visitors, human or otherwise.
I growled in frustration and waved a hand at the first couple of rooms. “I’ll search these; you search the ones at the back of the house.”
He nodded and disappeared. I moved into the nearest room—a living room that was comfortably furnished and neat as a pin. I did a quick walk around, shifting various bits and pieces, but I couldn’t find anything that jumped up and screamed clue.
Conscious that we were running out of time, I dashed into the room opposite. It was a bedroom—the main one, if the shoes lined up neatly along the end of the bed were any indication. I scanned the nearest bedside table, seeing nothing but change, then opened the drawers. Knickers and socks. I cursed, ran around the other side, and repeated the process. Nothing. Fuck!
“Risa,” Azriel called. “Here!”
I spun and ran down the hall. Azriel stood near the phone at the end of the kitchen counter, and as I entered, he pushed a notepad toward me. On it was a series of K-shaped doodles, some with snakelike tails, some without. And in one corner, an address—Amcor, main entrance, Alphington—and a time: midnight last night.
I glanced at him. “We have four minutes left.”
He didn’t answer, just caught me in his arms again and swept us across the fields. This time, when we re-formed, I staggered and would have fallen if not for the fierceness of his grip on me.
He didn’t say anything—he knew me well enough by now to know the futility of it—but his disapproval swept around me as sharply as any rebuke.
We’d reappeared in the middle of an old parking lot. I swung around, searching the old buildings, seeing the grime and the many shadows that haunted the place, even in the midmorning sunlight. The air was ripe with disuse, rubbish, and rats, and the wind whistled through the many broken windows. It was very similar to what I’d seen on the fields.