Chapter 7
NOW.
After Natalie’s mom left Tween police station, Clare sat alone in the interview room chewing on her lip.
She couldn’t possibly investigate Natalie’s disappearance from here. Sure, she could ask for information and updates, and Saul would relay whatever details he had, but she needed to be in Motham to pursue this.
Saul’s offer rang in her head. We’ve got a vacancy for a senior detective.
That’s what she was now. She’d done her time, three years in Tween, earned her stripes. Not that she really believed she was a better detective these days than when she’d been a rookie investigator in Motham.
At least she’d learned never to succumb to another guy’s charms.
He was no ordinary guy.
Dead right. He was a morally depraved vampire.
Clare swallowed down the sour taste of shame. Whenever she thought of Oliver Hale, it felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. He’d duped her, humiliated her for gods only knew what warped reason, probably some power trip over a young human who’d made her crush on him all too clear.
Leaving her alone in that bed, waiting for him to return, had been the most hideously awful experience of her life.
The bullying at school was nothing in comparison.
She’d given him her body, let him finger fuck her on some poor soul’s grave without even a second thought, and howled like a banshee as she came.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and screwed up her face.
Oliver Hale was long gone from Motham, she reminded herself.
And she was a professional senior staff member. A transfer to Motham wouldn’t be hard to arrange—there was nothing much for her to do here, as proven by the last three years of crushing boredom.
Poodle parlors versus missing persons cases. She let out a snort; it was a no-brainer.
And on top of that, the most recent missing person was her former best friend.
She couldn’t leave it like that, pretend that the old times with Natalie didn’t mean anything.
They’d been each other’s support team at school.
Besides, the reason Natalie had wanted to work in Motham in the first place was niggling like a needle in Clare’s brain.
Natalie had always had a morbid fear of monsters. Why would that have changed? It didn’t make sense—it couldn’t be because Clare had gotten work in Motham. That seemed too simple somehow.
Lips pursed, she got up from the table, walked out of the interview room and into the open-plan office.
Ron was still sitting where she’d left him, slurping down another mug of coffee and reading a magazine, his feet on the desk. It was nearly midday, and she doubted he’d done a stroke of work since she left.
Probably because there was none to do.
The one job of any import was Mabel setting her own pooch parlor on fire. It was clear as the nose on Clare’s face that there were no other suspects. Writing that up would barely keep her occupied for a day, and then…
And then?
She stared at the phone on the desk. She knew the Motham PD’s number off by heart, she could just call Saul now. Tell him she’d take the job on a transfer.
Stop it. Get on with that fucking report.
Her brother and his wife and her little niece Poppy were coming to tea tonight. She’d let her heels cool, not make a rash decision. (Gods had she learned that from her one trip into spontaneity!)
She sat down at her desk. But instead of pulling up the incident report form, she pulled up Motham City online news.
She read the headlines avidly.
Twenty-eight-year-old human, Natalie Spriggs, a secretary at Viper and Skink accountants’ firm, is the latest suspected victim in the missing humans case.
Reportedly she was last seen buying lunch at Bellamy’s baked goods, and left there at 1.
10 pm. She took a call from her mother at 1.
12 when the call was abruptly cut off. There has been no sighting since.
Details have left police and security services baffled.
The only common link in these cases is that there are no clues, no eyewitnesses—these humans are literally disappearing into thin air.
If you have any information, please call the Motham Police hotline on 0303.
Try as she might, Clare couldn’t deny the buzz of excitement in her veins. This case was the kind of investigation she’d always dreamed of working on.
What’s more, she’d just promised Jo that she would do everything she could to find Natalie. She had to fulfil that promise.
Her chair scraped hard against the office floor as she jumped up. Ron looked up and popped his pale blue eyes at her.
“Something bite you, did it?”
She gave him a withering look. “I have to make an urgent call,” she muttered, grabbing her cell from her bag and striding out of the room to call Saul.
“I’m going back to work with Motham Police.”
Clare grasped her fork tightly as she uttered these words, staring down at her dinner plate, knowing that her mom, her dad, her brother Adam and his wife Trina were all eyeballing her.
Adam and Trina’s baby girl, Polly, was the only one who let out a little crow of delight. Totally unrelated, but still, it made Clare smile.
“I thought you hated working in Motham,” Adam said.
Glancing back at her plate, she played with her fork.
“I didn’t hate all of it.” She’d never told them why she’d been so vehement about leaving Motham.
Instead, she’d just told her family she couldn’t hack the lack of morals in the place.
The lack of morals of one particular individual, at least. She cleared her throat.
“I’ve just found out that Natalie Spriggs was one of the missing humans. ”
“Natalie?” Her father’s brows ruffled. “Your old buddy?”
Clare nodded.
“Oh, the poor girl!” her mom burst out, horrified.
“What was Natalie doing in Motham?” her dad asked. “She got pretty upset when you took a job there, didn’t she?”
“Yep, that’s kind of why we lost touch.”
“What has happened to her?” her mom asked.
Clare shrugged. “She was working as a secretary for a firm of nagas and she went to lunch and—just disappeared.”
“Kidnapped maybe?” her father said, cutting into his lamb chop.
“Perhaps someone thought her family were wealthy, being from Tween,” Adam reasoned.
Clare shook her head. “Monsters don’t do that kind of thing. If they attack, it’s right there and then, usually out of poverty and desperation. It’s not planned or premeditated.”
“I guess there’s always a first time,” her mom said.
Clare heaved a sigh. Her family were one of the few in Tween who were quietly pro-monster, perhaps because dealing with sadness and suffering and real things like death meant they were less judgmental. Death was a great leveler. But even so, Mom didn’t always think before she spoke.
Exasperated, Clare said, “Mom, seriously, how many humans have Doyles buried that were murdered by monsters?”
“None,” her dad agreed.
“Exactly my point.”
“Well, hopefully these young humans haven’t been murdered,” Adam said, hugging Polly close.
Trina shuddered. “I sincerely hope not.”
“I just want you to be safe,” her mom said softly. “Here in Tween, we know you are.”
“I’m safe in Motham too, Mom.” Now that her vampire boss was no longer there to lead her astray. And in a graveyard, of all places.
Dad and Mom would be shocked if they knew about her debauched behavior. Even Adam, probably. Now that he was working in the family business he’d become more respectful than in his youth, when he’d occasionally been caught jumping graves on his quad bike.
Clare sighed. “Truth is, I’m bored here. Rarely anything happens in Tween, it’s just petty crime or trumped-up charges against monsters to get their work permits cancelled.”
Trina, who loved gossip, chimed in. “I heard Mabel’s pooch parlor burned down, could that have been a monster?”
“Trina, please.” Clare frowned at her sister-in-law.
“I don’t mean the civilized ones, like Marvin,” Trina prevaricated. Marvin was the centaur who managed the funeral parlor’s grounds. “But some of those feral species have wings…”
“Only the wyverns, and they’re not even close to full-sized dragons.
And they’re very undernourished. They wouldn’t have the strength to get all the way to Tween.
Besides, Tween’s security system would zap them as soon as they got within five miles of the township,” Clare said.
She’d never heard of a feral wyvern getting further than Motham Hill, and they were always arrested.
With Tween’s security system, there was no chance a feral species would get anywhere near the place.
It remained a fear, though, for the genteel residents of the town.
Her mom sighed. “Oh, darling, do you have to do this?”
Her dad patted her mom’s hand. “Clare will be fine, Motham is nothing like it used to be.”
“I know,” his wife sighed, then turned her gaze on Clare. “It’s just, you’re my baby girl.”
Clare laughed. “I’m twenty-eight years old, Mom, can you stop this nonsense?”
“Well,” Adam said, bouncing a gurgling Polly on his knee, “I for one think it’s a good idea, Clare-bear. You’re not happy here, I can tell. It’s like you need more edginess in your life.”
“I think you’re right.” She gave him a grateful look.
“It’s only a three-month contract,” she placated, looking at her mom’s still-worried face. Yet even as she said it, a pit yawned in her stomach at the idea of ever coming back to work in Tween.
Living here, working here for the rest of her life, even with her beloved family close by, would surely make her feel more dead than the folks buried in the graveyard next door.
“I think it will be good for you.” Her dad smiled, his eyes so many shades of green and gold, just like her own. “I agree with Adam: you need more excitement in your life.”
“As long as you come back at the end of it,” Mom warned, getting up to clear the plates.
“Of course I’ll come back,” Clare said, but even as the words left her lips, she wondered if she ever would.