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

‘Thank you.’ For the first time, I let myself smile. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Do you want to know so you can eliminate me from your enquiries?’ he mocked.

‘No,’ I shot. ‘I want to know because it’s polite to know who you’re talking to.’

He smirked at me. ‘In that case,’ he said with a bow, ‘I am Theo.’

‘I’m Charley.’

His smile grew. ‘I know.’ He permitted me one last flash of his fangs. ‘I’ll be seeing you around, Charley.’

‘I can’t wait.’ With slow, measured steps so as not to give away my anxiety, I walked away from the vampire barricade. Unsurprisingly, the werewolves were still waiting for me just beyond.

‘Oh, and Charley?’ Theo called out. ‘A vampire didn’t do this. Not in the way that you think, anyway. It would be far too difficult to suck dry an entire human body. Your killer is someone entirely different.’

I wasn’t convinced by that, even though Julie had already suggested the same thing. But I would keep an open mind. For now.

Chapter Eight

‘You should have gone to see all the vampires with your own eyes,’ Felicity said. ‘It’s the only way to be sure.’

‘Sure of what?’ I enquired. ‘The perpetrator could have sneaked out before I reached him. He could be living elsewhere. He could be hiding in a hole somewhere. Hell, he could already have healed. There are hundreds of vampires living there and realistically we can’t wake them all. Besides, I believe Theo when he says no one passed him with any scratches on their face. We won’t find the culprit that way.’ I waved the piece of paper in her face. ‘I’m more interested in the names of the nine vampires who haven’t returned home yet.’ And indeed whether Valerie’s murder had been carried out for no other reason than to give the vampires an even worse reputation than they already possessed.

‘They need to learn their place,’ she said. ‘If they want to be part of this community, they need to toe the line.’

I gaped at her. In that moment, I wasn’t capable of anything else.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘You’re talking about them like they’re second-class citizens.’

‘They’re not second-class citizens.’

‘Good,’ I said, ‘because—’

‘They’re undead. They don’t count as citizens.’

Good grief. I passed a hand over my face. ‘They’re not undead.’ I had been through all this with Julie and she’d explained it to me very clearly. ‘That’s propaganda put about by the sort of people who hunted their kind to near extinction.’

‘Who told you that?’ she enquired. ‘A vampire?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘They drink blood. Human blood. They killed that woman. I’m not saying we should throw them out on their ear, I’m just saying that they need to play ball.’

‘And do things the werewolf way?’

‘If it ain’t broke…’ She moved away and started muttering to the rest of the group, flicking the odd glance in my direction to suggest that I was a derisible creature who belonged with the vampires because I’d dared to suggest that they weren’t necessarily all evil.

I watched her. No wonder the vamps had shut themselves away with their own guards and their own barriers. This was not a good situation. Felicity’s beliefs were deeply embedded. I wasn’t going to change any hearts and minds on my own – I needed a werewolf to sort things out because, as far as I could tell, the only person a werewolf would listen to was another werewolf.

While the group continued to gab about what to tell Julian and how to find the nine missing vampires, I whirled round and marched away. Julian had told me I could find Monroe over to the east of the square. Somehow, I suspected I’d have more leverage with him than with Julian. Besides, it wasn’t yet noon: I reckoned there was still the teeniest tiny chance I could stumble across a vampire with the marks of Valerie’s fingernails across his face. The longer the culprit ran free, the worse things would get for the vamps.

Although I walked quickly, I still half expected Felicity and the rest of the werewolves to catch up and continue their escort. Apparently, however, they’d decided I was no longer worth the effort because I was left in peace. Relatively speaking.

I passed various people of all manner of ethnicities – and all of them stared at me. I suppose it was the blue hair that gave me away. It was an odd sensation being a minor celebrity; maybe I should have offered to hand out autographs. I wondered if this was how Julie felt, given her career as a soap actress.

There was something ego-boosting about the attention, I reflected as I trotted on. If you are treated as special, you start to believe that you are; it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wondered if the reverse could also be true: if everyone believed that vampires were stone-cold killers, would they become stone-cold killers? I pondered and then discarded the idea. As a gambler, I was well aware that the smallest, weakest players could rise up against all odds and defeat expectations to win the day. I grinned to myself. At the end of the day, gambling had an answer for everything.

I veered round a corner, suddenly aware of a loud babble of voices nearby. Where there were people, there would be vampires – and maybe even Monroe. I adjusted my course slightly until a large group, which appeared to have arranged itself into a circle, came into view. So what on earth was going on here?

I walked over to the crowd and pushed myself onto my tiptoes to peer over the tops of various heads. Unfortunately for me, I appeared to be very short in comparison to other supernatural beings and I couldn’t see much except for a flying fist somewhere deep within the circle. I edged round to get a better view but, before I could see much, a werewolf sidled up to me with glinting brown eyes.

‘Hundred to one he slams all three of them to the ground,’