Faerie's Killer: Kit Melbourne, #4

By Kater Cheek

He's looking for redemption. She's living her nightmares. Can they trust each other long enough to stay alive?

 

Morales is desperate to earn his way back into the Vampire Guild. After blowing a mission, he's forced to work alongside a dewy-eyed sorcerer he's convinced is incompetent. And when the assignment involves solving a double homicide of a fellow vamp and their human host, he can't afford to let the inept witch bungle the job.

 

Kit Melbourne spends restless nights haunted by her upcoming wedding and the disturbing goddess in her dreams. Determined to pull her weight on this murder case, she discovers that faeries may be hiding in the mortal realm. But she's left with little proof when her memory is mysteriously wiped.

 

With the clock ticking on the killer's next victim, Morales struggles to convince his sire the investigation is under control. And as Kit begins to reconstruct the clues, she puts herself squarely in the murderer's sights.

 

Can the mismatched duo catch a paranormal predator before someone else loses their head?

 

Faerie's Killer  is the fourth book in the enthralling Kit Melbourne urban fantasy series. If you like broody vampires, strong heroines, and whodunit stories with a mystical twist, then you'll love Kater Cheek's suspenseful tale.

 

Buy Faerie's Killer  to bring a supernatural slayer to justice today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kater Cheek
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393130130

Book preview

Chapter One

Morales was hungry. He was hungry for blood, and he was hungry for food, and he was hungry for the money that would get him both. As he pushed open the door to the Guild Leader’s office, he remembered the words that his sire had told him, in her sweet little-girl voice, when she said she’d pulled strings to get him one last job with the Guild.

Don’t fuck this up, Rick.

Morales smiled politely at the Guild Leader. He didn’t like being polite, and he didn’t like kissing ass, but he liked them better than being broke and pissing off his sire.

Chronologically, Morales was in his forties, and though he’d been a vampire for eight years, he might as well have been aging the whole time. His hair wasn’t as thick as he would like, and his skin looked wan because he could never afford as much blood as he needed. Live Forever sounded a lot better when you had a retirement account long enough to cover forever. Vampiric Strength sounded better when he was still with Fain’s squad, chasing down the enemies of the Guild under cover of darkness. Eternal Youth sounded better when he had a nice tan and a physique bolstered by outdoor sports.

Holzhausen beckoned him in and motioned for him to shut the door. Morales hadn’t seen Holzhausen for a long time, and he’d forgotten how ugly the Guild Leader was. His face was pockmarked by acne scars, his dark hair touched with gray.

Siang said that the Guild Leader was only thirty when he was turned, but he didn’t look thirty. He looked fifty at the youngest, a hard fifty, a fifty years spent in war-torn country, or working in the fields without enough food or sleep.

Holzhausen didn’t waste a smile. Your sire tells me you’ve done investigations before.

Yeah. When I was human.

I need you to investigate a murder. Can you do that?

Yes, sir, he said. Not exactly a lie. He’d done plenty of investigations, mostly car accidents, some theft, but never a murder. For the paycheck, and for the opportunity to work for the Guild again, Morales would do just about anything.

Holzhausen’s calloused hands, crisscrossed with faint white scars, cradled a manila folder on the polished wooden desk that took up half the room. Dark wood paneling lined the walls, some of it concealing cabinets and drawers. Tolstoy, one of Holzhausen’s bodyguards, stood behind him and to the left. He had pale skin, a barrel chest, and a bushy, curled moustache, as if he had stepped off a poster advertising a travelling circus from the nineteenth century. He stared straight through Morales as if he weren’t there, which was the best Morales could hope for.

Holzhausen’s new Dayrunner, standing quietly in the corner, was a lot easier on the eyes. He remembered Melbourne from the theater incident, when she and her boyfriend helped rescue Damien Norwicki from some gang members who mistakenly thought it would be profitable to kidnap a vampire. She was in her early twenties, with fair skin and shoulder-length hair. She had a nice face, but her hips were too wide and her shoulders too muscular to be pretty, in Morales’ opinion. Holzhausen seemed to disagree, which is probably why Melbourne literally stood at Holzhausen’s right side and Morales had to get his sire to beg for crap jobs that no one else wanted.

Why did Melbourne get all the breaks? He’d seen Melbourne crying in panic and fear when her boyfriend got shot, and he doubted she had the guts to kill a man when the situation called for it. Someone ought to warn her that Holzhausen didn’t have patience for weakness, that her little gravy train would come to the end when the Guild Leader found out she didn’t have what it took. But maybe you got a free pass if you were a pretty girl.

Rosenkranz is dead. Holzhausen flipped open the manila folder to reveal a photograph of a woman lying in a pool of blood. I need to find out who did it.

Rosenkranz’s dark, curly hair partially obscured her face, but he recognized the arm flung up beside it. Or, more to the point, he recognized the tattoo on her forearm, a teapot, the steam rising from the spout in the shape of three notes. He’d seen it at a Guild soiree one year and asked her about it. She said the notes were the three notes of a song that she used to sing to her little sister when she was a human, and the teapot was because teapots were cozy and happy. She had a throaty voice, and you could hear her smile in it when she explained her tattoo. If you had asked him, he would have said she was the vampire least likely to die by violence.

Melbourne leaned forward, peering over her boss’s shoulder, but she straightened again as if she’d already seen that photo. He glared at her. He didn’t like humans in general, and her in particular, and the fact that she felt cocky enough to butt into his investigation made him want to find out firsthand how well she could take a punch. Tolstoy would probably shoot him just for thinking about it. Tolstoy was sweet on Melbourne. Too much of the Guild was sweet on Melbourne these days. Holzhausen liked her, Siang liked her, and even that asshole Fain had dated her for a while. It was too bad Fain hadn’t succeeded in accidentally draining her. Holzhausen would have had Fain executed for hurting his pretty new Dayrunner. The world would be a better place without Leonard Fain in it, and then maybe Holzhausen could hire a new Dayrunner who didn’t look like she still played with dolls.

How did she die, sir? Are you sure it was murder? Morales asked. Vampires could die several different ways, but the most common cause was carelessness. You stayed out too late and couldn’t find shelter at dawn. You didn’t drink enough blood and frenzied, killing people until they shot you like the mad dog you’d become. Or, you pissed off the wrong person, who used high powered ammunition and a garotte to do what stakes and silver never could.

In answer, Holzhausen flipped the photo over to reveal another photograph, shot from a second angle. In this one, you could clearly see the gap between her neck and her shoulders.

Vampires don’t get decapitated by accident.

Holzhausen moved the photo aside. The third photo showed the entire room, a basement apartment with foil over the windows and bookshelves lining the walls. The bookshelves were crammed with antiques, mostly machinery of some kind: cameras, radios, mechanical toys with lead-painted monkeys and grinning clowns that dropped coins into a hopper. A worktable held more machinery, gears and springs and tweezers. A lamp on a swivel arm had been turned to illuminate the room.

He almost missed it, but he’d been trained to look for details, back when he was an investigator, back in his human life. Rosenkranz’s apartment was cluttered, but not messy. The shelves had been crammed with stuff, but everything was in its place, and nothing lay on the floor. He looked again. A piece of cloth, a shirt maybe, lay just out of sight behind the table. It covered a foot-shaped lump.

Who’s that? he asked.

Her host, Holzhausen said, but he looked pleased, as if he hadn’t believed Siang when she told him that Morales was qualified to investigate.

He flipped over the next photograph. This one showed a very tall, very thin woman with pale hair. She sat up against a wall, head bowed forward. A pool of red covered the front of her chest, like a bib. Slit throat?

Holzhausen nodded, and flipped to the last photograph. This showed Rosenkranz again, with her head laid next to her body at the morgue. Her body lay on its back, and her head had fallen to the side. The expression on her face was one of disappointment and sadness, like a dog-loving woman who had just seen photos from a puppy mill.

The expression on Holzhausen’s face looked similar. Rosenkranz was a friend of mine.

Are the police looking into it?

I want you to find the murderer first, Holzhausen said. I want you to find him, and bring him proper justice.

Morales wasn’t surprised by the sentiment. Most vampires felt that the death of a vampire required punishment more medieval that the American justice system could mete out, and anyone who would murder a kindly woman like Rosenkranz deserved something especially draconian.

What did surprise him was that Holzhausen would state these intentions in front of his Dayrunner. A human. A human. Morales wouldn’t have trusted any human woman to keep her mouth shut. Melbourne, he wouldn’t have trusted to fetch a cup of coffee. They said she was friends with Councilman Albers, who’d been trying to oust Holzhausen for at least thirty years. Melbourne had also been chatty with Holzhausen’s last Dayrunner, Mr. Hall, who had disappeared following a failed assassination attempt on the Guild Leader. Morales heard from a reputable source that Melbourne had something to do with that, but Holzhausen either didn’t know, or he knew and didn’t care.

And even if she had been completely trustworthy, Morales couldn’t forgive the fact that Melbourne was just a dumb kid, not more than twenty-five years old at the most, who had been pulling shots at a coffee shop before Holzhausen had plucked her like Cinderella from her old life and made her his Dayrunner. Holzhausen wasn’t the only man to let a pretty young girl cloud his judgment, but he was the Vampire Guild Leader, and Morales expected better. The Guild Leader was supposed to put the needs of the Guild above the needs of his cock. Holzhausen was supposed to give Guild jobs to people who deserved it, not dewy-eyed baristas with long legs and daddy issues.

He forced himself to smile. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut long enough to get out of this room, and he’d never have to speak to or deal with Melbourne again.

I’ll get started right away, sir. He leaned forward to gather the folder, but Holzhausen placed his palm flat to stop him.

Melbourne hasn’t had a chance to look at these yet, Holzhausen said. She’ll give you the file when she’s done.

Done? Done doing what, making copies?

Holzhausen gave him a cold glare. Your sire was supposed to explain this to you. Melbourne will be investigating Rosenkranz’s death. You will be her assistant.

You want me to work with her?

Unless you think she can handle this alone? Holzhausen’s voice rose at the end, making it a delicate threat.

Unless you’d like to blow off the very last chance you had of a Guild job, and with it, your last ounce of respect from your sire, who pulled strings to get you this.

Don’t fuck this up, Rick, his sire had told him.

The only sound in the room was the squeak of Morales’ teeth grinding together. He forced himself to smile. No, sir. I’ll be happy to help your Dayrunner with her murder investigation.

Chapter Two

Kit pulled herself invisible as she carried the bundle of sheets to the laundry room, tiptoeing quietly so that Chris wouldn’t hear. She shoved them in the laundry basket, then thought better of it and shoved them behind the ironing board instead. Closing the laundry room door quietly behind herself, she slipped back into the house. She let the invisibility slip as she went back into the house.

She took some clean sheets out of the linen closet. The sheets belonged to Chris; he’d rented her the room as furnished. In exchange for her rent, she got to use his sheets and towels, cook with his pots and pans. He had even shared his friends, which is how she met Jackie. She put the new sheets on her bed and messed it up to look like it normally did when she woke up in the morning. She’d wash the old sheets after Chris went to work.

Yawning, she walked into the kitchen. Chris leaned against the counter, brewing coffee and brushing his teeth at the same time.

You up for work already? Chris was wearing his giant fuzzy purple bathrobe. He took the toothbrush out of his mouth and spat into the sink. Didn’t you get in after midnight last night?

Yeah, she said.

Getting a jump start on your honeymoon? He stuck the toothbrush back in his mouth and used his free hand to butter some toast.

She slipped past him to put the kettle on. I wish.

Yeah, right, where else would you be out to until two am on a weeknight?

Work, she said.

Chris made a disbelieving grunt around his toothpaste. He spat into the kitchen sink, rinsed his mouth, and continued in a falsetto. Work. Yeah, right. You weren’t at Fenwick’s house, getting it on?

No, I was at work.

Chris clasped his hands under his chin as if he were tying an imaginary bonnet. Just a few more weeks until you’re married. He’s gonna sweep you up and carry you over the threshold. He’s gonna unbutton all those little buttons...and then he will claim your maidenhead! Oh, darlin! Aren’t you afeared?

Kit snorted, blushing. She tried to come up with a sarcastic rejoinder, but she heard her phone ring and ran to answer it. She dug through her purse on the side table in the front hall and just barely fished out the phone before it went to voicemail.

Hi Fenwick, I tried to call you earlier. she said. Did you get my message?

Yeah, her fiancé said. Background noise came over the line, a crowd of people, and traffic. A car door slammed. I meant to call you back sooner, but my flight got changed.

Flight?

You didn’t get my message?

No, I haven’t checked my messages. What’s going on?

Something came up, he said. I’m going to be out of town for a while. Two weeks in Atlanta, then a weekend in Galveston, then two weeks in Chicago. It’s the first stage of that project we’ve been planning.

She felt her face fall. Chris met her eye and shrugged his shoulders as if asking her what was going on, but she shook her head. I thought that wasn’t until September.

I’m sorry. Fenwick cursed under his breath, and it sounded like he dropped something heavy onto a cart. The guy who was going to do this for June is in the hospital with a broken leg, so I had to take over for him.

Shit.

I’m sorry, Kit. It will only be a few weeks. I can call you every night.

It’s not that, it’s that Holzhausen gave me an extra assignment. It’s going to be a huge time sink. I won’t have any time to finalize the wedding arrangements. I was hoping you could take over.

How much do you have left to do? Would your mom be willing to help you?

Oh, she’d love to help. Kit rolled her eyes. She’s been begging to help.

Can you ask her?

Kit sighed and rubbed her face with her free hand. I guess I’m going to have to. When are you going to be done with the project?

My flight gets in at midnight the day of our wedding, so we’re going to have to skip the rehearsal, Fenwick said. Kit, I’m so sorry. There’s no way I can easily get out of this.

No, that’s okay. It’s just bad luck that it happened now. My mom would love to help. Asking her will make her day. And anyway, it doesn’t matter that much. I’m not going to be bridezilla.

It’s your wedding. It should be perfect.

It’s our wedding, Fenwick. And the wedding’s not the marriage, it’s just a party. An expensive party. A very expensive party. A very expensive party that they’d been planning for months. And she still didn’t have a wedding dress. I’ve already outlined what I want, and she knows my taste, and we have the venue reserved. It will be fine. Most of it’s already planned. Even my mom can’t mess it up.

I’ll call you every night, he said. Kit, I’m sorry.

I’ll manage, sweetheart. It’ll be okay.

As soon as she and Fenwick said their goodbyes, Chris lit into her. He narrowed his eyes. What kind of project is so important that you can’t plan your own wedding? Spill. It’s for the Guild, isn’t it? Is it something dangerous? Are you going to shoot someone?

It’s secret, I can’t, yes, probably not, and not if I can help it.

Chris noticed too much. When she’d moved in, she had hoped that she could keep the supernatural elements of her life private, but Chris was too astute, and too relentless. He’d figured out that she worked for the vampires. He figured out that she’d been to the Realm of the Faerie. He’d figured out that she had inadvertent bouts of telekinesis (and he’d forgiven her for all the broken plates.) He even knew about the little bindi she wore on her forehead, about how it let her see through glamours and spot lycanthropes. If she wasn’t careful, he’d find out about the dirty sheets, and how could she explain that?

After he left for work, she went to the laundry room to gather up the dirty sheets. She opened the back door and shook the sheets out. Twigs and leaves and dirt went flying. As she wadded them back up again, she caught sight of a bare human footprint in the mud near the stoop. She’d have to cover that with leaves or something.

Kaa cawed at her and then flew down from a nearby tree to land on her head. She’d read on a forum that you weren’t supposed to let your bird perch higher than your head, because it made them think they were dominant. Kit let him. Her familiar had given up so much when he bonded with her, the least she could do is let him perch wherever he wanted.

Sometimes she could even see through his eyes, watching the treetops coast underneath her. She could sense enough of his feelings to infer what was happening in his life. She felt his frustration when he lost the female he had his eye on to another crow that was a year younger. Kaa wanted a family. He wanted to court some pretty black crow and make a nest of eggs with her. By his age, most crows were on their second clutch of eggs, but having to arrange his life around a human had held him back.

The mage casts the spell, and the familiar appears, Elaina had said. If he hadn’t wanted to be a familiar, he wouldn’t have come. Besides, it’s not like he doesn’t get anything out of it. His life is bound to yours. He’ll live longer as a familiar than as a wild crow. Or he would, if you’d stop feeding him junk food.

As if he were listening, Kaa cawed from his perch on her head. Ukkat.

Nugget, she said, smiling.

Kaa tried again. Nukkat.

Better. She scratched his neck feathers. But I don’t have any chicken nuggets for you right now. Would you like to come inside?

Kaa flew back up to the tree. He wasn’t a pet; he was a wild animal. He didn’t like to be indoors (except in bad weather) and he hated to ride in a car. He would obey, if she asked him, but she didn’t want him to come along with her on her errands as much as she wanted him to enjoy this nice June weather. They’d had two full days of warm sunshine, and it looked like it might not rain that day either.

Kaa ruffled his feathers and sidestepped on a branch until he perched in the sunlight. Some of the other crows joined him, cawing and jostling with one another. A few of them had the paler plumage of juveniles, but some others were adults who, like Kaa, had missed out on the dating game and had to spend another summer single. So, he wasn’t the only crow who hadn’t hooked up. And, like Elaina said, since he was the familiar of a mage, he had a few extra years to try.

She glanced at her watch. Nearly seven a.m. Late enough for Morales to have gotten home, but not late enough that he’d be sleeping. She’d better get going. Unlike Morales, she had to fit this investigation around a day job.

When she got to his apartment, she found Morales had left the door unlocked for her. Some vampires had a second door past the entry door, serving as a light-shield, but Morales had a heavy curtain instead. She shut the door behind her and pushed through the curtain to find him in the kitchen.

Morales was sitting at his kitchen table, wearing sweatpants and a tee shirt so old that the image had faded off of it. His face had a thick layer of stubble on it, and his eyes were red like he’d been up all day as well as the night. When he saw her, his mouth flattened into a line. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to piss him off. Maybe he didn’t need a reason. Some vampires were just assholes.

The kitchen table was beautiful, a heavy, carved oaken antique with an aged finish and polished nicks on the edge. It stood out in the kitchen like a blooded Arabian stallion in a corral of swaybacked trail ponies. The linoleum was cracked and rippled in the middle or the room, with a large burn mark in the shape of a frying pan. The cabinet doors had been removed and leaned up against the far wall, as if they were going to be repainted or refinished, but a layer of dust indicated they’d been waiting for a while. Two molded plastic chairs sat at the table. Morales sat in the unbroken one, and kicked the second one with his foot to push it towards her.

She lowered herself into it gingerly. Only three of the legs were sound, so she couldn’t lean. She cleared her throat and laid the folder on the table.

How about I start by telling you what I know, and you tell me if you know anything different, she said. Morales said nothing, so she continued. "Rosenkranz was twenty-three years of the blood, sixty-four years old, chronologically. She wasn’t made in Seabingen. She was originally from some small Guild town on the east coast. Got exchanged with Castillo about ten years ago. Castillo arranged it. He’d burned some bridges and needed a change of scene. Rosenkranz fit in better than Castillo did.

Politically, she was strongest allied to Morinaga and Evans. Holzhausen wants to avenge her quickly in part because he wants to solidify his alliance with them.

Morales’ face remained stony. I’m going to give you a little piece of free advice, Melbourne. You shouldn’t stick your nose in vampire politics.

She flattened her mouth into a line. The hell she shouldn’t. Her life hinged on knowing and being able to manipulate Guild politics. She was Holzhausen’s Dayrunner. If he got ousted, she wasn’t likely to live long enough to cash her last paycheck. She continued.

Rosenkranz worked as a stripper at a club downtown. She tithed to the Guild regularly, and on time. She had a small coterie of hosts, and she didn’t poach anyone else’s. She also had a small business on the side, something to do with antiques. I wasn’t able to find out anything about that yet. I also haven’t been able to find out much about her non-Guild connections, who she was friends with, if she had enemies, that sort of thing.

You’re not going to find that out.

"My boss asked me to—

Let’s get one thing straight, Melbourne, you don’t have an investigator’s license, so don’t go messing around where you have no business being.

She laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. She meant to look aloof, but the chair wobbled under her and almost gave out underneath her. What do you propose I do, then?

You’re going to investigate the human. Her host.

That’s pointless busywork. Rosenkranz was decapitated. She was obviously the target. Her host was nothing more than collateral damage.

A good investigator explores every angle, Morales said. You can find out who she is, where she works, how she knew Rosenkranz. Find anything that looks interesting, especially if you discover the names of her other hosts. Someone might know something. Report back to me in a week with what you’ve figured out.

She could have protested that Holzhausen had put her in charge of this investigation, which was true. But she also knew that the reason Holzhausen put her in charge had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with competence. She’d never conducted an investigation, Morales had.

For the sake of the investigation, she’d swallow her pride and play nice. For now. If Holzhausen avenged Rosenkranz before the police put the culprit away, he’d make the Guild look good, which would make Holzhausen look good. Morales may not give a rat’s ass if Holzhausen looked good or not, but Kit did.

I’ll get right on that, she said, giving him a smile