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

‘Felicity, make sure the vampires do what you need. Tell them that if they don’t cooperate, there will be serious consequences.’ There was something worryingly ominous about the way Julian said that. The werewolf nodded grimly.

‘I don’t want to cause trouble with the vampires,’ I said hastily. ‘One bad apple doesn’t mean the barrel is rotten.’

‘Oh, it’s rotten enough,’ I heard another werewolf mutter.

Julian’s eyes narrowed and the snarky wolf subsided. ‘Caution is advised,’ he said, although I wasn’t sure whether that statement was directed at me or at his wolves. He inclined his head and strode away. I watched him for a moment; he certainly acted more like the part of absolute leader than Monroe did.

I turned away. It wasn’t my problem.

It was something of a struggle to keep up with my new buddies because they marched at a tremendous pace. It was just as well that we only had to travel a few streets or I’d have started to feel seriously embarrassed by my short legs and comparatively slow movements. I was out of breath by the time we arrived at what appeared to be another barricade made out of water barrels and steel panels. The werewolves looked like they were merely out for a Sunday stroll.

‘Who do these idiots think they’re kidding?’ muttered the female werewolf who’d led the way. ‘This shit wouldn’t stop a toddler.’ She kicked at the nearest steel panel, causing a loud clang to reverberate around the now nearly empty street.

A moment later a hooded figure appeared and peered over the makeshift barrier. The hood wasn’t merely a trendy sweatshirt of the sort favoured by teenagers, it was a proper cloak fashioned out of what looked like dark velvet. It all but covered the figure’s face. This, then, would be a vampire, hiding from the sun’s rays and looking for all the world like he was about to attend a Halloween party. I squinted at him. When I concentrated, I could see the blue aura surrounding his body that set him apart as a magical creature. It gave me a headache to do it too often, though, suggesting that looking directly at magic was bad for my eyesight.

‘We’ve been through this,’ the vampire said, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. ‘Do not bother us until dusk.’ He disappeared behind the barricade as if that were the end of the matter.

The werewolf rolled her eyes and kicked the barrier again. Then, without waiting for an answer, she leapt over it. The others behind her followed suit. I stood there for a moment, not sure what I should do. A moment later there was the sound of a brief scuffle and a large section of the barrier tumbled forward.

‘Enchantress,’ said one of my new werewolf buddies. ‘Please, come on through.’

‘Charley,’ I told him. ‘Please.’

He grinned suddenly. ‘I’m Billy.’

I declined Billy’s offer of a hand and gingerly stepped through the gap in the barricade. At one side, two of the other werewolves were holding the hooded vampire in place.

‘That’s Kate and Sal,’ Billy said. They nodded in unison. ‘Then Steven, Guy and Felicity.’

Each werewolf waved at me in turn. I did my best to memorise their names but it was difficult to focus, given the angry vampire they’d grabbed hold of. ‘You can’t do this,’ he spat. ‘The terms of our agreement state that you can’t! Get your grubby paws off of me!’

‘This issue is time sensitive,’ Kate said. Or maybe it was Felicity. ‘Every vampire needs to get out here now.’

‘We are sleeping! When will you stupid animals get it through your thick skull that we are nocturnal? It’s not fucking rocket science. Sun bad. Night good. Jeez.’

Uneasiness slid through me. It was clear that, despite the orderly scenes I’d witnessed, things were not all rosy in Monroe’s north. Taking a deep breath, I stepped forward. This was my doing; maybe I could smooth things over and still get the answers I needed. ‘Don’t blame them,’ I said. ‘Coming here was my call.’

The shadowed face of the vampire turned towards me. ‘Yeah?’ he sneered. ‘Who are you?’

‘Idiot,’ hissed the nearest werewolf. ‘She’s the enchantress.’

‘She doesn’t look like the enchantress.’

‘She’s got blue hair, hasn’t she?’

The vampire shrugged. ‘It’s so cold out here that I’ve got blue balls. It doesn’t make me an all-powerful magical being.’

I gritted my teeth. This wasn’t helping. I cleared my throat. I most definitely did not have time to deal with vamp-versus-wolf fisticuffs. ‘A human has been murdered at the Travotel.’

‘The one run by the faery?’

There was only one hotel open in the whole of Manchester. Yes, it was the one run by the damned faery. I smiled. ‘Yes.’

The vampire tutted. He jerked his arms against the werewolves’ grasp. ‘Let me go,’ he said. ‘Your restraint is completely unnecessary.’

‘We’re not…’

‘Let him go,’ I said.

The werewolves released him. Nice. At least some people did what I said.

The vampire inclined his head and stepped back into the shaded part of the street before finally drawing back his hood.

Despite his squeaky voice, he looked younger than I expected. I still couldn’t always separate a vampire’s appearance from their actual age. Julie, for instance, looked like she was in her forties when she was more like two or three hundred years old. That meant this guy was probably … seventy or eighty? His hair was slicked back, as if he’d just come out of the shower, and he had a pencil-thin dark moustache that added to the effect of a young teenager trying to look older than his years. I gave up judging him by his looks and met his eyes.

‘It was a vampire who killed her,’ I said. ‘By all accounts.’

‘How did she die?’ His question was casually worded but there was no denying the serious intent in his gaze.

‘Her death is still fresh,’ I told him. ‘And we’ve only done a cursory examination of her body. She put up a fight. Her fingernails are broken. I didn’t notice any bruising but there could