Possibly even squamous.

  That was it for the body. I went through his pockets and assembled the usual jigsaw of personal effects. There wasn’t much: a bank card, a money clip holding two crisp twenties, a single Yale key, a condom (Kimono MicroThin Ultra lubricated), a small quantity of recreational drugs, and an iPhone. He probably couldn’t have carried any more without ruining the line of his jeans.

  I flipped over the bank card—the familiar green of Coutts of London, in the name of Mr. Andrew J. H. Vane-Tempest.

  Well, fuck.

  That was a corpse of a different colour.

  The Vane-Tempests were the biggest werewolf family in the Southeast. And they probably wouldn’t be too thrilled about one of their own turning up dead on a vampire’s doorstep. This was worse than murder. It was politics.

  And it meant I was going to have to voluntarily talk to Patrick.

  I called his name, and he stepped out of the shadows. The alley was gloomy, but it didn’t take much to make Patrick’s skin shine like a pearlescent light bulb. I knew his oh-so-sexy roofie bite was a mark of his bloodline, but the stupid glittering was all his own.

  “Bad news.” I stood up. “You’ve got yourself a dead woofle.”

  “That is unfortunate.” His eyes flicked to the corpse. He didn’t exactly sneer, but he added dismissively, “A mere cousin.”

  Lycanthropy is sex-linked, like haemophilia, so unless he had an extra X chromosome, Andrew Vane-Tempest could only have been a partial shifter, able to sprout a few fangs or claws or maybe even do the full wolf-man deal, but not transform completely. Though, since there wasn’t much sign of a struggle, he probably wasn’t even that.

  “I don’t think that’s going to be much consolation to his family.”

  Werewolves protected their own. Vampires protected their own. Mages protected their own. Faeries were just bat-shit crazy and dumped their kids on people’s doorsteps. It was a funny old world.

  Cousins were technically the lowest rank of the werewolf hierarchy, but if you asked me, it was probably the best deal going. No responsibilities whatsoever, but a lifelong allowance. If it wasn’t for werewolf cousins, there’d be far fewer fashion interns, It boys, graphic novelists, bespoke shoe boutiques, and sushi-haggis fusion restaurants in the world. And what a loss that would be. Or perhaps I was just jealous.

  “I will take care of this.” Patrick paused. “If,” he added with what was clearly a tremendous effort, “you are done.”

  Sometimes he tried. It would have been endearing if he wasn’t such an arse.

  “I’m done.”

  “Katharine . . .” He stared at me.

  “Oh, not now.”

  “Katharine, this could be dangerous, especially for a mortal. You should not be involved.”

  I sighed. Here we were again. “Not your problem.”

  “I love you. That makes it my problem.”

  “Always the romantic.”

  “I will not allow you to do this.”

  We’d had this argument. We’d been having it for ten years. And breaking up with him made no damn difference. At this stage, it was either punch him or ignore him. Punching him would be more satisfying, but ignoring him would be more effective. Decisions, decisions.

  I turned to go back into the Velvet. I was so Zen.

  “And you should stay away from Julian Saint-Germain,” he added. “She is dangerous.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “I mean it, Katharine. You cannot begin to imagine the acts she has committed or the secrets she holds.”

  “Now you’re just trying to turn me on.”

  “Katharine!” His hand closed round my upper arm.

  I turned into his grip and pulled myself free. “Don’t touch me, Patrick. Don’t ever touch me.”

  He looked deeply pained. Or faintly constipated. “You should listen to me. I warned you about that witch. And I warned you about Eve—”

  I hit him.

  My mother’s strength roared out of me, unintended and uncontrolled. Patrick’s head snapped back and he toppled over, landing in a pool of stale vomit. I heard his skull crack against the concrete.

  I wondered how bad I should feel. But he was a vampire. He’d be fine.

  Inside the Velvet, I unlocked Andrew’s iPhone and looked through the contents. I should probably have been grateful for social networking. Those Sam Spade days of creeping through someone’s apartment looking for clues were over. All you needed was their smartphone. And, wow, this was a man who liked his apps. Grindr, huh? I looked at his Facebook page and his Twitter feed and dug through his favourites. Party party party party. Real Made in Chelsea stuff.

  A lot of his recent photos had been taken here. Just your usual drunken club shots of people getting hammered or getting off with each other. He had a whole collection of blurry arm’s-length self-portraits, grinning like an idiot, his head resting against the electric-purple wig of a truly fabulous drag queen. She looked oddly familiar, but I could count how many truly fabulous drag queens I knew on the fingers of no hands.

  Huh.

  I swiped through the photographs, trying to make the connection click into place.

  And then I recognised her. She was only on the walls of the damn club. I must have been getting rusty. Miss Parma Violet, compere of the Velvet’s Friday burlesque club, Cabaret Baudelaire, and Saturday’s rather more direct Dragaganza. I made a mental note to follow up that lead later, then looked through Andrew’s recent calls. He’d made eight on the night he’d been killed, between two and four, to someone called Kauri.

  Time for an awkward telephone call.

  I pulled out my own phone and dialled the number. It’s received wisdom that you do this sort of thing from the victim’s phone because you might get A Clue from the way the person reacts, but since I’ve never yet had anyone answer with, “Hey, didn’t I just murder you in the billiard room with the candlestick?” it just seemed an unnecessarily shitty thing to do to someone who might genuinely care for the victim.

  I’m cynical, not a complete dick.

  It took a while for someone to pick up, but eventually a sleepy voice said, “Uh-huh?”

  “My name’s Kate Kane, I’m a private investigator. Are you acquainted with a Mr. Andrew Vane-Tempest?”

  There was a moment of silence. This was probably going to be complicated. As far as either of us knew, the other could have been any sort of psychopath, an assassin, an inland revue inspector, anyone.

  And then, less sleepily, with a trace of a New Zealand accent: “What’s this about?”

  “What’s your relationship to Mr. Vane-Tempest?”

  Another measuring silence. At this stage, it had come down to a game of arsehole chicken over who was going to hold out longest. Kauri lost.

  “He’s my boyfriend. Now what’s this about?”

  Oh dear. I was sorry for his loss, but most people are murdered by their nearest and dearest.

  “I’m afraid I have some bad news. Would you like to meet, or would you rather talk over the phone?”

  “I’ll be there. Where should I come to?”

  “I’m at the Velvet on Brewer Street. Have you been there?”

  He gave a huff of laughter. “You could say that.” And hung up.

  Huh.

  I looked again at the posters on the wall. You didn’t keep that many photos of someone on your phone unless you really liked them. Or you really liked stalking them. As far as I knew, I was still Patrick’s wallpaper.

  Ashriel was waiting by the bar. “What’s the deal with this dame?” I asked, jerking my thumb at Miss Parma Violet.

  “Professionally, personally, or supernaturally?” His voice rolled over me again, warm and sweet as an Irish coffee, without too much of the coffee.

  “Supernaturally?” This could be bad, very bad.

  “When she isn’t working, his name’s Kauri. He’s one of Julian’s descendants. His philetor is Jasper Glyde, who is Julian’s third parastatheis.”

  My eyes glazed over. Vampire family trees were practically fractal, and I always got the terminology muddled up. It didn’t help that no two bloodlines seemed to have the same name for anything. “Wait, rewind. Kauri’s a vampire?”

  “A fairly young one. I think he’s dating one of the Vane-Tempests.”

  “Was dating.”

  Ashriel’s brow twitched upwards.

  You’d think vampires and werewolves would hate each other, but, assuming nobody gets murdered on anyone else’s doorstep, they’re actually on fairly cordial terms. That said, werewolves think they have this sacred mandate to police the other supernatural races, which meant that even if Andrew didn’t have enemies, his family probably did.

  “Anyone here have a problem with the Vane-Tempests?”

  “Not as far as I know.” He shrugged. “And besides, why would anyone waste hate on werewolves when there are so many mages running around summoning things that shouldn’t be summoned?”

  “There’s genuinely nobody who would object to one of Julian’s, uh, grandkids getting it on with a woof?”

  “Not that I would know about. I try to keep away from other people’s sex lives.”

  “What about Kauri, then?”

  “His too.”

  “Ha-ha. No, I meant what sort of person is he?”

  “Oh, you mean did he randomly murder his boyfriend in a fit of crazy vampire bloodlust?” Ashriel looked thoughtful. “In my estimation, no. Julian’s very careful about who she turns and who she lets people turn. And if something had gone wrong, he’d probably have come to us directly.”

  And who in their right mind would kill their lover on their boss’s turf and then leave the body right outside?

  At that moment, someone came running in. He was wearing black jeans and a black vest and the traces of last night’s makeup. Even without the glitter and glamour, he was striking, hard muscles standing out on his bare arms. Cultivated stubble framed the red smear of his lips, and there were dark smudges beneath his gold- and blue-painted eyes. This was probably Kauri.

  He glanced between Ashriel and me. “What’s happened to Andy?”

  “Take a seat.” I hated this part.

  “People only ever tell you to sit down when it’s really fucking bad.” But he slipped onto a barstool.

  “It’s Mr. Vane-Tempest.” I tried to pause in a sensitive sort of way. “I’m afraid he was killed last night.”

  Kauri’s eyelashes swept across his eyes, but his expression didn’t change. I wasn’t really telling him anything he hadn’t already guessed.

  “Was killed?” he repeated softly.

  “That’s what I’m investigating. We think you were the last person he spoke to before he died.”

  “Yeah . . .” Kauri looked bleak. “I was telling him to fuck right off.” I gave him a moment or two, and he went on. “We’d had this fight. One of his jealous freak-outs. And, hello, he hasn’t even deleted Grindr. Oh fuck, he’s dead.”

  I gave him another moment or two. But this time he was silent, looking down at his painted nails.

  “Any idea what he might have been doing in the alley?” I asked.

  “He waits for me after the show. But I left him hanging for being a dickhead.”

  He probably felt fifty shades of shit. I wanted to say something comforting, but I’m crap at that. “Did he have any enemies?”

  “No way. He was a complete fluff-bucket.”

  “Do you have any enemies?”

  He pulled back his drooping shoulders and indicated himself with a sweep of his finger. “Who’d have a problem with this?”

  Unexpectedly, I remembered Julian grinning at me. I’m a motherfucking vampire prince. I guess it ran in the family.

  “Good point, well made.” That won a wan smile from him. Vampires tend to be pretty proud of their enemies, so I didn’t have any particular reason to disbelieve him. I guess not everybody shared my talent for pissing people off.

  Everything about this murder said opportunistic. Unless the killer knew that Andrew would have a fight with his boyfriend, and that this would make him wait in an alley until four in the morning. I wasn’t ruling anything out, but that’s a lot of fuss for somebody completely unimportant. As much as I hated to admit it, Julian was right. It probably was all about her.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Kauri asked.

  Ashriel answered for me. “The body will be returned to the family. What happens next is up to them.”

  When I was a teenager, I’d hung out with this posh girl called Heather from the private school up the road. A little while after Patrick had shown up, I’d found out she was a werewolf. And a little while after that, I’d found out she had a crush on me, which I hadn’t really known how to handle. When her granddad had died, she’d had to go on some kind of sacred hunt thing to protect the body, but I was vague on the details. I didn’t think saying to Kauri, “Well, actually, I think something nasty might come out of the woods and eat him,” would help with his grieving process.

  I’d learned just about everything I could here. Andrew had no enemies of his own and a boyfriend who didn’t look good for it, which meant it was either vampire stuff or werewolf stuff. Time to talk to Julian and let her know the score. My body remembered her in a flare of heat that travelled all across my skin.

  Plan B.

  “Ashriel,” I said, “tell Julian what’s going on. I’m going to speak to the werewolves.”

  Back at the office, I made several unsuccessful attempts to get an appointment with Tara Vane-Tempest, the local alpha woofle. She must have had a lot of fans who rang her publicist claiming to be private investigators, because they kept me on hold for three hours. So I hung up and read her Twitter feed instead: Tallyho darlings, getting ready for La Perla at The Dorchester tomoz. So busy. See you at the launch partay #mwah

  Oh, dear God.

  I spent that evening and the next morning getting my ducks in a row. I needed to do some fairly basic grunt work on everyone involved, and that meant making appointments, ordering files from records offices, poking around the internet because it’s amazing what people will put in the public domain, and doing a lot of other banal shit. After lunch, by which I mean a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a glass of whiskey, I took my camera and my fake press pass and headed for the Dorchester.

  The Mayfair-situated, inherently British, five-star Dorchester hotel combines 1930s glamour with a contemporary edge. I know because the website told me. It also currently contained a crazy powerful werewolf doing a lingerie shoot. And she was about to learn that a member of her family had been offed outside a vampire’s nightclub.

  It wasn’t the sort of place where I was likely to fit in, but the trick to getting anywhere you’re not supposed to be is Just Go For It. I strode through the main doors and was halfway across the lobby before someone finally plucked up the courage to try and stop me.

  “Excuse me, Madam . . .”

  I flashed the pass. “I’m here for the shoot.” And kept moving.

  Nobody dared chase me down. Tally-fucking-ho.

  It’s usually fairly straightforward to locate the big events at these sorts of places. Edging out of the Bar Mitzvah in the Crystal Suite, I followed the bustle and the air of excitement all the way to the penthouse on the eighth floor. They were still mid-shoot, so I was able to stuff myself discreetly into the small crowd.

  I was in the sort of room that had a statue of a naked dude over the fireplace. Full-length mirrors decorated with green swirly shit took up one whole wall, and the other walls were hung with red floor-to-ceiling curtains. And they say red and green should never be seen. I guess if you spend enough money, it doesn’t matter. Enormous French windows opened onto a balcony bigger than my flat.

  A balcony with a fountain on it.

  A fountain with a statue of a naked woman and a swan.

  I shit you not.

  The room had been cleared to make way for lights, cameras, and those big umbrella things. There was a mound of bright silk cushions on the floor. And on the cushions sprawled Tara Vane-Tempest, wearing a red basque, matching knickers, and a pair of shiny black riding boots. The boots were climbing a pair of supple golden legs that went on forever and ever. I knew because I checked. Thoroughly.

  I stood there dazed as they finished the shoot, Tara obligingly adopting a series of interesting positions.

  She was rather flexible.

  When they were done, she shook out her long blonde mane and slipped into a silk dressing gown that came all the way down to her ankles and covered precisely nothing.

  My professionalism was hanging by a thread.

  She was immediately surrounded by a gaggle of flunkies and flatterers, and I stepped forwards, looking for a way to draw her aside.

  Her eyes lit up when she saw the press pass stuck in the band of my hat. “Oh, marvellous,” she cried. I’d expected her to have one of those terrible cut-glass accents that came directly out of the nose, but instead her voice was rich, dark, and smooth like a perfect cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain. “You’re from Horse & Hound, yah?”

  Well, never look a gift horse (or hound) in the mouth. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”

  She wafted her dressing gown vaguely around her limbs. Ngh. “Let’s go onto the terrace, yah, so we can have some privacy. I adore horses and hounds. In fact, the thrill of the hunt inspired this whole collection. You hunt, of course, Miss . . .?”

  “Kane. Kate Kane.”

  “How charming. It makes you sound like a private investigator.”

  We stepped onto the balcony, and I closed the doors behind us. “That’s because I am a private investigator.”

  Suddenly I noticed that Tara Vane-Tempest was taller than me. It had been too swift and subtle a transformation for me to really track, but I’d come outside with a lingerie model, and now I was face-to-face with an alpha werewolf. She stared at me with bright amber eyes, distant and predatory. And it took all my willpower not to flinch.

  She leaned in and inhaled deeply. “You smell like death. Which of them sent you?”

  “I’m working for Julian Saint-Germain.”