City of Magic: The Complete Series by Helen Harper (book club recommendations TXT) 📕

I sucked on my bottom lip. ‘Whatever happened to Philip, he’s obviously not here. We should go back to the Travotel. Anna will have combed through the murder scene. If there’s any more useful information or evidence, she’ll have it.’

Monroe agreed. ‘Let’s vamoose. This place is giving me the creeps.’

Him and me both.

Chapter Eleven

‘None of the other hotel residents saw or heard anything useful,’ Anna said. Her frustration was obvious, although I thought I caught a glimmer of something else too. Horrific as Valerie’s death was, Anna was in her element. She had been a police officer before the apocalypse after all; investigating a murder probably felt like normal to her. ‘We can’t even be sure if it was your jam-sandwich eating that set off Timmons’ alarm or if it was our vampire’s actions. Timmons said the system has been faulty from the start. It could have been a delayed reaction or it could have nothing whatsoever to do with Valerie’s murder.’

I’d have been seriously concerned about any magical alarm that thought purloining a breakfast butty was worse than killing someone, but the unfortunate truth was that we were all still fumbling about in the dark where magic was concerned. Even Timmons, who was supposedly the most experienced of us all.

I told Anna what we’d discovered about Philip and his house. ‘He could have killed Valerie there and brought her back here in the middle of the night.’

She didn’t appear convinced. ‘There are all sorts of beasties out there,’ she said, ‘especially when the sun is down. I find it hard to believe that someone could drag a corpse through the streets and avoid the apocalyptic creatures that roam around at night.’

Anna had a point. Even during the day you had to keep your wits about when you were crossing areas that were unoccupied by either of our communities. Nimue was only the start; all sorts of nasties had appeared as a result of the apocalypse. Maybe they’d been created by it. If they smelled a whiff of death, they’d descend in an instant; transporting a corpse would be nigh on impossible.

‘Have you checked the cars?’ Monroe asked. ‘He could have driven her body here. It would have been the safest bet if he wanted to stay away from other magical predators.’

‘Timmons already did that. He’s confident that no new vehicles have been left in front of the hotel or nearby for weeks. Not many people drive any more, and those who do don’t tend to leave their cars here for long.’

Anna pointed at the long-since-defunct security camera. ‘There’s CCTV everywhere,’ she said irritably. ‘And none of it does us any good. None of it works – like everything else in this damned city.’ She aimed a kick at a nearby chair.

I suddenly realised that all of us were suffering under the pressure of this new life. It wasn’t just Monroe and me; we all had a lot of adjusting to do. It didn’t help that there were constant reminders everywhere of what used to be.

For a fleeting moment, I let the crushing maw of depression open up and suck me in into a spiralling pit of black despair. Then Monroe’s hand brushed against mine and I remembered to breathe again. It was okay. I had this.

I made a deliberate effort to relax my muscles and zoned in on Anna. ‘Was there anything about Valerie’s body that indicated it wasn’t a vampire who killed her?’

‘Nope. The only wound was the one on her neck. Some fangy piece of shit sank his teeth into her and drank her dry.’

I glanced at Julie who was doing a good job of looking casual but whose rigid neck betrayed her. ‘You’re adamant that’s not possible?’

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I told you before that it is possible. But it’s pointless. A couple of pints of blood will sustain a vampire – any vampire – for a week. There’s no need to take it all.’

‘No need,’ I said grimly. ‘But perhaps plenty of desire and bloodlust. You said before that if you drink too much, you become bloated and happy. Is there anything else we could be looking for? Any clue as to what our killer might do after such a meal?’

‘What happens to you when you eat too much? We’ve covered bloat. You might also be sick. Goodness, drink all the blood in one human and you’d definitely be sick.’

‘Could there have been more than one vamp?’

She shook her head. ‘There would have been more bruising. I checked and double-checked. There are only two puncture wounds. I just…’ She muttered a delicate curse. ‘I just can’t see the point in drinking all of it.’

The answer was right in front of us but it took Monroe to voice it. ‘To kill,’ he said flatly. ‘The point wasn’t to feed, it was to kill. This was no accident, much as we might want it to be.’

We were all silent. We’d been through a great deal in the last few months – that was a given. To have struggled and made a life for ourselves, despite our disparate communities, and then have someone swing along and ruin our work because they had murder on their mind was horrible to think about. It was almost impossible to fathom. It was, however, the stark truth.

‘We searched Valerie’s room,’ Anna said, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence. ‘She had a lot of cash scattered around. Given that this is a cashless society, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.’

I cleared my throat. ‘She was a gambler and old habits die hard. She kept inviting me to her poker nights.’

Everyone looked at me. ‘Did you go?’ Anna asked. ‘If Valerie had a group of regulars that she played cards with, they would be a good place to start. The other hotel residents said they joined her for a while but she abandoned them when she