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

clipboard in a perfunctory manner. ‘Eighteen souls have gone out. Fifteen souls have come in. Nothing else has happened.’

Theo smiled. ‘Now that’s not true,’ he chided. ‘We witnessed a highly entertaining argument between your friend Julie and the barman at the Blood and Bones. What’s his name? Carter?’

I stiffened. Julie had a tempestuous relationship with the other vampires stemming from her pre-apocalyptic career as a TV soap actress. I’d thought all that was over and things had calmed down, but with Julie you could never be entirely sure. What I did know was that her drinking had been growing out of control lately. She was more likely to be half cut on booze than not these days. Whether that was because of her guilt about what she’d done in the past or simply that her years of downing gin without consequence were catching up on her I couldn’t say for sure. Either way, her behaviour was growing more and more unpredictable.

My worried expression must have registered with Theo because his grin widened. ‘Apparently she thinks that he should be stocking sloe gin now that supplies of normal gin are starting to run out. He says that sloe gin is devil’s work, it’s his bar and he’ll stock what the hell he wants to.’

I breathed out. It was nothing serious then. That was good.

Felicity stared at me. ‘Your body is bulging rather dramatically, Charley. And what the hell is that smell?’

Monroe tutted. ‘Smell, indeed. She’s taken it upon to herself to become a monster rescuer. She’s crazy.’

‘She,’ I said pointedly, ‘is standing right here.’

This time it was Theo and Felicity’s turn to look wary. ‘You have a monster inside your jacket?’ Theo asked. ‘Charley, you know I respect you but we can’t let you come in if you’re harbouring a beastie.’

Felicity crossed her arms. ‘What he said.’

‘It’s just a baby,’ I said. ‘We killed its mother and now it’s all alone. I’m only looking after it until we can come up with a better alternative. It’s too small to hurt anyone.’

‘It hurt me,’ Monroe muttered.

I punched him lightly on the arm. ‘You’re fine. Besides, it was only a little nibble.’

‘I’ll give you a little nibble,’ he growled.

Mmm. ‘Go on then.’

Monroe’s eyes darkened with sudden desire and he leaned forward, seemingly forgetting that we were in company.

Theo cleared his throat. ‘Uh, guys?’

I let my eyes linger on Monroe for one more second, the unspoken, heady promise of later hanging between us, before I returned my attention to Theo and Felicity. ‘It’s not going to hurt anyone,’ I repeated.

‘What kind of monster is it?’ Felicity asked.

‘Shadow beast.’

She recoiled. ‘And you’ve brought it here? Fucking hell, Charley. You definitely can’t bring it in. You need to get rid of it now.’

Just then, the shadow beast in question began to wriggle. Seemingly sensing that it was the topic of conversation, it burrowed upwards until its head appeared at the top of my zipped-up jacket. Its questing nose twitched and it blinked sleepily at the pair of them.

Felicity gasped. ‘Oh. My. God.’

‘Have you ever seen anything so cute?’ Theo breathed.

I threw Monroe a triumphant look and scooped Lucy out. Felicity immediately reached forward. ‘Can I stroke him? Or is it a her?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve called it Lucy, which is short for Lucifer. It covers all bases.’

Theo cocked his head. ‘Definitely a her.’

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘Look at those eyelashes. It has to be a girl.’

Felicity was unable to contain herself any longer. She gently took Lucy from me and held her in both hands, raising her up to look at her properly. ‘She’s so precious. And she feels so strange. Soft and squidgy and … adorable.’

Lucy, who was clearly growing more and more relaxed by the second, let out a little burble and rubbed her head against Felicity’s fingers.

Monroe remained unimpressed. ‘What happened to “you need to get rid of it now”?’

‘She’s a baby,’ Theo chided. ‘Lucy needs our help.’

‘Lucifer,’ Monroe said flatly, ‘will grow to the size of a five-storey house and will try to eat us.’

‘We can train her,’ I said confidently.

Felicity reluctantly passed her back. ‘You are going to have to be careful.’

I nodded. ‘We’ll keep her caged at night time. She won’t be roaming free around the streets. And as soon as she’s big enough to look after herself, I’ll release her back into the wilds of the city.’

‘We’ll have to report her to the others,’ Theo added. ‘Now that I’ve met her though, I don’t see how she can be a problem.’

Monroe grunted. ‘Wait until you’ve been swallowed whole. It’ll be a problem then.’

‘Twenty to one,’ I said happily. ‘Twenty to one that there are no problems with Lucy ever.’ I was lying through my teeth. The odds were more like two to one but I wasn’t about to say that to Monroe. I wasn’t a complete idiot.

‘So where is the beast now?’ Julian asked, looking even less impressed than Monroe.

‘I got a cage from Jodie,’ I told him. ‘She had it hanging around from the time when she was looking after that litter of hell-hound puppies we found out by Old Trafford. She’s babysitting Lucy as we speak.’ She was also feeding her tinned meat from my own meagre rations. Neither Julian nor Monroe needed to know that.

Julian rubbed his chin. ‘It might be a good thing,’ he eventually said aloud. ‘If we can tame one of the shadow beasts, we might have less trouble with the others in future.’

I brightened. ‘Exactly! Good thinking!’

‘It’s too much of a risk though, Charley. We have enough on our plates as it is.’ He grimaced. ‘Actually, we don’t have enough on our plates. That’s the problem. We can’t feed her as well as everyone else. I expect this Lucy creature to be gone by the end of the week. We can’t put others in danger, no matter how cute she might happen to be.’

‘She’s pretty cute,’ I said. He looked at me and I sighed. ‘Fine,’ I