Chapter 4
Felix
There was no doubt about it: I was being stalked.
It started small. A prickle at the back of my neck on the walk home from Killigrew Street, that feeling of being watched that made my pace quicken without thinking. Made my shoulders tense up near my ears, my fingers curl around my phone in my pocket.
Must be going mad, I told myself. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep. The usual Felix cocktail of poor life choices.
But it kept happening. Even on weekends.
I’d pop out to the corner shop for supplies—Oreos, instant ramyun, the occasional banana when guilt got the better of me—and there it was. That crawling itch between my shoulder blades. The absolute certainty that someone was watching.
I started taking different routes. Ducking down side streets, doubling back on myself like some sort of paranoid spy from a terrible film. Still nothing. Just me, my headphones, and apparently my overactive imagination.
The logical part of my brain—the part with the Masters in Cybersecurity and a mild obsession with digital forensics—pointed out that I had no proof. I’d never actually seen anyone. I had nothing but gut instinct and a growing collection of sleepless nights.
But the thing about working for Killigrew Street was that we’d made ourselves a right proper rogues’ gallery of enemies.
Being London’s unofficial supernatural crime task force came with its challenges.
Supernatural crime bosses with grudges, rogue Gifted who didn’t appreciate having their money laundering schemes exposed, a growing collection of vampires who took our interference rather personally.
Not to mention GREY—Greywatch Reconnaissance and Elimination Unit—the shadowy entity that had left Kit with nightmares, and very recently, snatched up shifters from our city streets.
The list went on, and frankly, it wasn’t getting any shorter.
Which meant I needed to tell Seb.
Sebastián Salazar. Centuries old vampire, and fearless leader of Killigrew Street.
The thought of telling him made me nauseous. Our boss didn’t exactly do touchy-feely emotional support, and turning up in his office with nothing but paranoid feelings seemed like a brilliant excuse for him to laugh at me.
I still remembered all too well the first time I had the pleasure of being in his office—that rainy day he’d popped up in front of me on the street and demanded I come with him.
Two years ago, I’d been wandering around London, laptop bag slung over my shoulder, putting off sending job applications for the third day running.
My mother kept texting asking if I’d heard back from QuByte’s graduate programme, and I kept finding increasingly creative ways to avoid answering.
The last thing I wanted was to work for her company, brilliant as it was.
I needed to prove I could make it on my own.
I’d been working on this portfolio project—documenting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in small London businesses. War-driving, really, but with good intentions. Academic curiosity mixed with a healthy dose of procrastination.
That’s when I’d walked past the old hotel on Killigrew Street.
The app I’d built on my phone had gone mental.
Signal strength readings that made no sense, encrypted data bursts that had no business coming from an abandoned Victorian building, and security protocols that looked like someone had bolted military-grade encryption onto a home router.
It was like finding a cardboard box with a Bank of England vault lock.
I’d whipped my laptop out and sat on a bench across the street with a coffee from the nearby cafe. I told myself I’d just document the anomaly for my portfolio. One quick scan, maybe a gentle probe to see what kind of setup they were running.
Six hours later, I was deep inside what turned out to be one of the most sophisticated surveillance networks I’d ever encountered.
That’s when Sebastián Salazar had materialised beside my bench like some sort of extremely well-dressed nightmare, rain dripping off his coat, and said, “Mr Ch?ng, I believe we need to have a conversation.”
I’d nearly passed out from the anxiety, shaking all the way into the hotel, nine-nine-nine typed into my phone, finger hovering over the call button.
An hour later, I walked out of his office with a job.
And a great deal of trauma.
It was safe to say Seb’s office was not my favourite place.
That was exactly why I found myself rehearsing what I needed to say to him with Dolly. She was a great conversationalist, after all. Really listened without judgment.
“I’m so sorry to bother you, Sebastián. I know how busy you are,” I said, perching on the edge of the reception desk.
Dolly—the life-sized porcelain doll that Rory had apparently installed as our “receptionist” years ago—stared straight ahead with her painted glass eyes, that permanent smile never wavering.
When I’d first started at Killigrew Street, I’d thought having a Victorian doll manning reception was deeply weird.
Now? Honestly, she was one of the more comforting presences in the building.
“The thing is… I think… I think someone’s been following me. Watching me.”
Dolly’s face remained perfectly composed. Professional, even.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I continued, twisting the drawstring on my hoodie. “Felix, you’re being paranoid. You’ve been working too hard, alone in your lair all the time, without enough actual human contact.”
I paused, waiting for her response. Helpfully, she gave me that look—the one Seb did when he was processing information. Calculating.
“But, like, have you ever just known something is true, without concrete evidence?”
Dolly’s blonde ringlets caught the overhead light. She was definitely considering my argument.
“Look, I’m not asking you to assign a protection detail or anything like that. I just… wanted to let you know. Obviously, I’m the least important member of the team, so if I’m being stalked, then maybe so are the others.”
A gust of wind rattled the old hotel’s windows, and I flinched.
“See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. I’m jumpy as anything, and for what? Because I feel like someone’s—”
A hand landed on my shoulder.
I launched into the air like a rocket, my heart hammering almost painfully as I spun around. Priya, one perfectly arched eyebrow raised, was standing behind me, while Flynn hovered nearby looking like he was trying very hard not to laugh.
“Having a productive strategy meeting, Felix?” Priya’s voice carried that particular blend of amusement and concern that meant I was about to get thoroughly mothered.
“Hey, now!” said Flynn. “There’s nothing wrong with talking to Dolly. I do it myself. We have the best chats.”
“Is everything alright?” Priya asked.
How much had she heard? My mental replay of the last minute was a blur of rambling about stalkers and feelings and being the least important team member.
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
These were my colleagues. My friends, if I were being generous with the term. If I couldn’t tell them about feeling watched, about the crawling sensation that followed me home every night, then who could I tell?
But suddenly, the words stuck in my throat like congealed porridge.
“Uh… sure. Just… heading downstairs for the meeting,” I mumbled, then immediately lurched away from them, towards the basement door.
To calm my racing heart, I focused on the corridor wallpaper—great strips of faded Victorian roses curling away from the wall like dead skin—then punched in the code for the thick metal security door as quickly as possible.
I marched downstairs, my trainers echoing on each stone step.
For some reason indecipherable to me, the rest of them had decided that the basement of Killigrew Street Hotel was the perfect place to spend the majority of our time.
Which was mental, honestly. The place was freezing, with concrete floors that sucked all the warmth from your body, almost zero natural light, and if you wanted a cup of tea or something to eat, you had to trek all the way back upstairs to the kitchen.
There were numerous other rooms we could have chosen. Hundreds, in fact—we were in a bloody hotel!
But who was I to reason with them all? They were all batshit crazy, after all.
At least they’d made one corner somewhat habitable.
A collection of mismatched sofas and armchairs formed a rough circle around a low coffee table, the whole arrangement sitting on a patchwork of rugs that Priya had acquired.
Fairy lights were strung between the exposed ceiling beams, casting everything in a warm glow that almost made you forget you were in the basement of a haunted hotel.
The broken coffee machine still sat on the sidebar, that note taped to it reading “OUT OF ORDER (Kit, stop trying to fix it, nobody wants you to)” with several angry faces drawn underneath.
Rory’s handiwork. Kit thought the prices at Fat Cat’s cafe were extortionate and kept trying to resurrect the machine rather than accept our daily coffee shop runs.
Priya kept threatening to put the whole machine in the garbage, saying it was ruining the basement’s aesthetic.
Priya had a talent for making spaces liveable—one of her few useful gifts, she’d joke.
Well, that and her ability to move teaspoons without touching them, though as she was the first to admit, telekinesis wasn’t particularly helpful when it only worked on objects lighter than a biscuit.
Being a Gifted practitioner wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, especially when your grandmother could levitate entire tea services and here you were, struggling with cutlery.
Her phone buzzed constantly with WhatsApp messages from her extended family back in Manchester—all begging her to come back home and help run the family’s alternative medicine shop. Or worse, trying to set her up with family friends.