Midnight Smoke (The Firebrand Series Book 3) Read online

  ‘Lady Carr!’

  She smiled.

  I inhaled deeply. ‘Just tell me what was in your safety deposit box and then get out of here.’

  She shrugged. ‘If you insist. My box contained the original Hope diamond. The one used in the Crown Jewels is a fake. A good fake,’ she added, ‘but a fake. And there’s also the only surviving copy of William Shakespeare’s play, Love’s Labours Won. The main character is a vampire. If I’m honest, it’s quite titillating.’

  ‘A vampire,’ I said slowly.

  ‘Yes.’ She leaned forward. ‘One day I might exchange it with Lord Horvath in return for something I want. Or I might not. It’s priceless, you know. Nobody else knows it exists.’

  ‘Alright,’ I said faintly. ‘Thank you.’

  She smiled again and left.

  I ran a hand through my hair. This was getting crazier by the second.

  Pralk marched in and fixed me with unhappy eyes. His skin was grey instead of the typical golden lustre of his kind, and he looked to be on the verge of collapse. ‘Are you alright?’ I asked, alarmed.

  He answered in shakily, ‘I’m fine. I just got off the phone with the board of governors. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation.’ He smiled weakly. ‘It will be fine.’

  It didn’t look as if it would be fine. It looked as if he was about to have a nervous breakdown.

  ‘The board is not made up of particularly forgiving people,’ he continued. ‘Once you find the culprits, it will not go well for them regardless of who they are and their ethnicity.’

  I liked that Pralk believed I would find the bank robbers, but I didn’t like the explicit threat. ‘I’ll do everything I can to bring them to justice,’ I said carefully. I stressed the final word. The last thing anyone needed was a vigilante bank.

  Pralk nodded then passed over a brown envelope. ‘Here. Inside are the names and addresses of all the current bank employees, mine included. I still can’t believe that anyone who works here is involved. I have full trust in my staff – they’ve all worked here for at least a decade.’

  Nothing about his tone or his expression suggested he was lying. I thanked him and took the envelope. ‘How did you get the cut on your cheek?’ I asked. ‘You said you were inside your office when the robbery occurred and that you missed it.’

  ‘I was. When I ran across the floor to check on the people who’d been shot, I trod on some broken glass. I don’t know what happened, I guess I slipped and one of the shards from the floor flew up and hit me in the face.’ He shook his head dismally. ‘I have two dead bank employees and the rest are shaken beyond belief. And the worst I have to show for it is a damned cut that I got by accident.’

  ‘None of this is your fault, you know.’

  A muscle jerked in Pralk’s cheek. ‘Tell that to the families of those who died,’ he said. He looked away. My heart went out to him and to the victims. ‘I won’t waste any more of your time, detective,’ he told me. ‘Inside the box that was stolen from us are the details of almost every supernatural creature in the country. Names, addresses, birth dates, that sort of thing.’

  I breathed out. That didn’t sound so terrible; every British supe lived in London and their names and identities were a matter of public record.

  ‘As I’m sure you are aware,’ he said, ‘not every supe lives in London, despite what the law demands.’

  I blinked.

  ‘And,’ Pralk continued, without noticing my reaction, ‘a lot of them hide from the world at large. But they all need a bank and they all bank with us.’ He glanced at me. ‘Apart from the odd supe such as yourself, of course. There are exceptions to every rule. There are also supes who don’t know they’re supes, if you take my meaning.’ He fiddled with his cufflinks. ‘So, almost every supe is a customer of the Talismanic Bank. We try to take precautions – for example, we don’t register their real identities on computers in case we’re hacked or our records are subpoenaed. If the government discovered there are supes who conceal their existence from the authorities, it would go badly for them.’

  I tried hard not to look shocked. ‘Uh…’ I licked my lips. ‘How many hidden supes are we talking about?’

  He frowned. ‘About a thousand, give or take.’

  I swallowed. Good God. ‘I can see why it would be a problem if that list fell into the wrong hands.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He looked even more defeated at the thought. ‘Do you think you can locate the culprits?’

  ‘I’ll do everything that I can,’ I promised, still reeling from his revelations.

  Pralk’s head drooped. ‘Please do,’ he whispered as he left.

  I pressed the base of my palms into my temples. If I hadn’t been feeling out of my depth before, I certainly was now. I sighed deeply and closed my eyes. Then, when the aroma of cooked food wafted up to my nostrils, I opened them again. Sitting on the table in front of me was a large burger and chips.

  ‘It’s vegetarian,’ Lukas said, gazing down at me with a crooked smile. ‘I thought you might be hungry.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be,’ I told him. ‘Those are dead bodies downstairs.’

  ‘The bodies have all gone. The world doesn’t stop turning and your physical needs don’t disappear even in the face of tragedy. You’re allowed to eat, Emma.’ He paused. ‘Sorry. D’Artagnan.’

  I smiled faintly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘For the burger?’ he enquired. ‘Or for using your nickname?’

  ‘Both.’

  His black eyes crinkled. ‘Eat it up before it gets cold.’

  I needed no further encouragement. I flipped open the box and heaved out the burger. It looked delicious. I took a large bite and murmured happily to myself. Lukas grinned and settled down in the chair. I noted, however, that this time his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you how serious this is,’ he said. ‘This bank robbery is a personal attack on every supe in London.’

  Not just London. I nodded.

  ‘You have to find the bastards who did it. I won’t stand for these deaths or for the robbery.’ His voice hardened. ‘I won’t stand for any of this.’

  I swallowed a mouthful. ‘You know I’ll do whatever I can to find them.’

  ‘I know.’ He held my gaze. ‘And you know that I’ll help you in any way possible. Where will you begin?’

  ‘The key to all this is the safety deposit boxes. Gaining hold of them was the robbers’ ultimate motive and we need to know why. If the gang were merely after money, they’d have taken the bank’s cash and run. That would have been far easier than going through the rigmarole of selling the contents of your boxes. The people who did this want to sow chaos.’ I grimaced. ‘And they’re prepared to take considerable risks to do so.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Lukas leaned forward, his inky dark hair falling artlessly across his forehead. He was still wearing the ridiculous frilly shirt, and it still looked ridiculously good on him. I kept my eyes trained on his face, rather than glancing at his exposed chest. Go me. Self-control in spades.

  ‘What was in your boxes, Lukas?’ I questioned.

  ‘The first contained details of all the assets we own around the world. There are many of them, including several which we don’t want to advertise.’

  ‘Such as?’

  He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say we possess the deeds to some famous landmarks.’

  At my look, Lukas smiled slightly. ‘We’ve been around for a long time and we live for twice as long as the average human. That gives us considerable opportunity to amass land and wealth.’

  And then some. Lukas, and indeed all the vamps, were as careful as the werewolves about the face they presented to the world. They acted like hedonistic partygoers. This was concrete proof that there was far more to them than that.

  ‘The second box,’ Lukas continued, ‘held a range of priceless jewels. Specifically, the Florentine Diamond, that went missing about a hundred years ago, and which we acquired rather than see it cut up
into smaller stones by the original thieves. There is also Llywelyn’s coronet, the crown belonging to an old Welsh ruler that was supposedly destroyed by Thomas Cromwell in the seventeenth century, and a small dagger called Carnwennan that belonged to King Arthur.’

  My mouth dropped. ‘The real King Arthur?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Okay dokey. I swallowed. ‘And the third box?’ I reached for the burger again and prepared to take another large bite.

  ‘I only opened it with the bank recently. It contains all the information I’ve uncovered so far about the existence of the supposedly mythical phoenix.’

  I froze, then slowly returned the burger to its box. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I don’t. The only person that information is relevant to is me. Are you searching for my weaknesses? Planning to blackmail me with what you know? Control me?’

  Lukas’s eyes glittered. ‘None of the above, D’Artagnan. You know me better than that.’

  I wasn’t sure that I did. I folded my arms.

  ‘If you hadn’t been avoiding me for so long, this wouldn’t have been in question,’ Lukas murmured. He reached into his pocket and drew out a bunch of keys, selected a small golden one and held it up. A number was etched onto it, a number that corresponded to one of the plundered safety deposit lockers.

  ‘You are named as the second holder of the box,’ he went on. ‘The key is useless now, but I’d been planning to give it to you so you could keep track of everything I’d found and access it yourself. If you don’t believe me, you can check with Pralk. All the paperwork is there. It’s signed and dated.’ He gazed at me for a long time. ‘I’m not your enemy. That couldn’t be further from the truth.’ Something in his pupils flared. ‘I promise.’

  I looked away. ‘What have you found so far?’

  ‘There is no limit to the number of times a phoenix can die and be reborn. Only old age and death through fire can halt the cycle, or so the old stories say. With every death, a phoenix grows stronger and more powerful. And there is only ever one. You are unique, Emma.’ He smiled. ‘But I already knew that.’

  ‘Have you found anything to explain who becomes a phoenix? Is it hereditary? Does it happen by accident or design?’ I lifted my eyes to his. ‘In other words, why me?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have no information on that.’

  That figured. I sighed. It was tempting to forget everything else and focus on myself but that wasn’t why I was there. There had been a serious robbery with several vicious homicides. I’d deal with Lukas and his investigations into my ethnicity later.

  He spoke again. ‘I’m sorry about your parents.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘I knew they were dead,’ he said. ‘You told me that much yourself. But I didn’t know how they’d died, or that you were so young when it happened.’

  ‘So it’s not just facts about the phoenix that you’ve been investigating,’ I said flatly. ‘It’s facts about me.’

  ‘Not for the reasons that you think.’ He reached across for me but I pulled back.

  ‘What reasons?’

  Lukas opened his mouth but before he could speak there was a knock at the door. It opened and Fred appeared, his expression grim and forbidding. ‘You’d better finish up quickly,’ he said. ‘CID is here already. And they’re causing problems.’

  I raised my eyes heavenward. That was all we needed.

  Chapter Seven

  There were more CID officers than I’d anticipated – there had to be at least a baker’s dozen. My gaze swept around the ground floor and the numerous police officers who’d taken up their positions and I felt my stomach tighten. This was supposed to be my turf; it felt as if they were invading. Then I spotted Molly, my old friend from the Academy. She gave me a bright smile and I relaxed slightly. That was one friendly face, at least.

  One of the detectives, a muscled chap with a bald patch and a shiny suit, had cornered Mosburn Pralk. I watched for a moment as the bank manager wrung his hands and shook his head in vehement denial at something the detective had said. When the detective gestured to two others, who immediately marched over and started to lead Pralk away, I interrupted. ‘I’m DC Bellamy,’ I said briskly. ‘Can you tell me who you are and what you’re doing?’

  The muscle-man glanced at me. I noted his heavy-set eyebrows and overly tanned skin, not to mention the strong waft of aftershave that he’d applied far too liberally. In turn, he gave me a similarly disparaging look. I knew my petite body and grubby clothes didn’t exactly proclaim authority but I couldn’t do anything about the former and the latter was because I’d been running around London and climbing up giant observation wheels.

  ‘Detective Inspector Collier,’ he grunted finally in a strong London accent. ‘As I believe DSI Barnes has already communicated to you and your … team, I’m taking over this crime scene. We’ll dust it for prints, question the witnesses and find the perps who thought they could bring my city to a standstill.’

  I raised an eyebrow. His city? ‘The thieves wore gloves,’ I said. Yes, it was important to check for prints but at this stage it wasn’t a priority. ‘And we’ve taken witness statements already.’

  ‘My team has skills and expertise that someone like you won’t yet have acquired, DC Bellamy. It’s not a criticism, I merely want to ensure that things are done properly. Time is of the essence and it’s imperative that we move quickly to find these lads. We have a better chance of finding and arresting them in the first twenty-four hours after the crime.’

  I was perfectly aware of that; I wouldn’t, however, have described a gang who’d murdered eight people in cold blood as lads. ‘Where are you taking Pralk?’

  His brow creased. ‘Who?’

  I pointed behind me. He was being taken out of the building and he looked none too happy about it. ‘Mosburn Pralk,’ I said. ‘The bank manager.’

  ‘You mean the goblin with the weird skin?’

  ‘I mean the bank manager.’

  Collier gave me a long look. ‘Are you questioning my authority, detective?’

  What? ‘No. I’m asking where you’re taking a supernatural person. I’m sure you’re aware that the law states that supe law is separate to human law. Your usual tactics don’t apply here.’

  He regarded me coolly. ‘We’ve had two terrorist incidents to deal with today – three, if you include the bank robbery. Those incidents involved humans, which means that I have free rein to take the investigation where it needs to go. I’m not going to pussyfoot around a damned goblin. It’s perfectly likely that this was an inside job. And he is a goblin, after all.’

  I didn’t move a muscle. Whether Collier was right about the inside job theory or not, his methods were totally wrong. ‘Are you racially profiling a crime victim, DI Collier?’

  ‘Don’t be moronic.’ He turned away, dismissing me.

  ‘Those two incidents you’ve mentioned were not terrorist related. They were diversions to get the supe leaders away from here so the robbery could be carried out without them interfering.’

  ‘I’ll be judge of that,’ Collier growled. He looked over his shoulder at me. ‘I’ve been a detective for twenty years. You’ve barely managed twenty days.’

  Three months, more like. Not that it would make much difference to Collier. In terms of longevity he had a point, but my knowledge about supes and supe law was better than his. I’d not been sitting on my arse since I came to Supe Squad.

  ‘I’m assigning you to questioning the local businesses in the vicinity,’ Collier continued. ‘We need to know what they saw. As a member of Supe Squad, the people around here will be more inclined to talk to you. I expect you to canvass the whole street.’

  He walked away, leaving me staring after him. I hadn’t even had the chance to argue that my skills could be put to better use. From across the room, I saw Lukas watching me, his eyes narrowed, then he put his hands in his pockets and headed for the
door.

  He was halted in his tracks by two uniformed police officers. ‘We need you to stay here, sir.’

  ‘You have no reason to hold me here,’ he said.

  ‘We need you to remain for questioning.’

  ‘Questioning?’ Lukas’s face darkened. ‘Am I a suspect now? I’ve already spoken at length to DC Bellamy. I wasn’t here when the robbery took place. I arrived afterwards.’

  I saw both officers blanch, but they held their ground. They probably thought that DI Collier was scarier than Lukas. They had a lot to learn.

  ‘We understand you’re a vampire,’ one of them said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you’re above the law.’

  ‘Actually it does,’ Lukas snapped. ‘Human law doesn’t apply to my kind.’

  ‘It does here.’

  I was starting to get the feeling that this wouldn’t end well. DI Collier was definitely not the right detective to lead this investigation, and things could get very ugly very quickly. Lukas already despised the police and the human authorities, and right now I couldn’t blame him, but that didn’t mean I could simply stand back.

  I marched over. ‘Lord Horvath.’ I inclined my head with far more respect than I normally showed him. The two policemen stepped back. I pretended not to notice. ‘Thank you very much for your cooperation earlier. Can I suggest that you do as these officers request and stay until they’ve completed their work? It would be very much appreciated.’

  Lukas’s black eyes glittered. He wasn’t stupid and he knew I’d intervened to ensure that all the police officers were aware of his identity. He knew I was trying to avoid matters degenerating – but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.

  ‘One hour,’ he bit out. ‘No longer.’

  I breathed out. That was more than I’d hoped for. ‘Thank you.’

  The nearest policeman looked as if he were about to start arguing but his colleague nudged him hard in the ribs. ‘I didn’t realise you were Lord Horvath,’ he said with considerably more politeness than before.