"Don't worry, neither do I." I collected my purse from the back of the chair, then walked across to his desk and kissed his cheek. "Don't suppose you'd like to help me out with one more thing?"
His gaze slid from my face to my breasts, which were on view thanks to the fact that the dress top had gaped forward when I bent over. "If it involves handling the beautiful ladies hanging in front of me, most definitely." I grinned and handed him the paper with Harriet Morgan's address on it. "Would you mind going to talk to this woman for me? Her car was seen leaving the beheading scene, but she reported it stolen the day before. Someone needs to talk to her and check her story."
He barely even glanced at the paper before putting it down on the desk. His big hands cupped my breasts, holding them almost reverently. "Are you sure these beauties don't need a good massage?"
I chuckled and gently pulled back. "I'm sure."
He sighed dramatically "I do miss them, you know."
"You didn't have them - or me - that often."
"I know. That's the most regrettable aspect of this whole situation."
I shook my head and grabbed my keys "You're incorrigible."
"Totally." He gave me a smile that was both cheeky and sexy. "I will get you back into my arms one day. You know that, don't you?"
"When hell freezes over, or Jack gives us the go ahead. And you know which one is more likely to happen first," I said, then waved and headed out the door and down to research.
* * *
Harvey Bastiel lived in Hampton - a beachside suburb one down from Brighton, but without Brighton's high end reputation or price tag. Which meant the properties near the beach here went for a lowly one million rather than two or more.
Bastiel's house was actually several streets back from the beach, but it was a beautiful old Californian bungalow located in what was known as the 'period precinct', so the price tag was right up there with houses that possessed a beach view.
I parked behind Cole's van and climbed out. The sea air spun around me, crisp and salty, and I breathed deep. It didn't do much to wash the tiredness from my system, but then, getting a good night's sleep was probably the only cure for that.
I swung open the picket gate and walked up a path lined with white roses. Their sweet scent spun around me, but it was laced with the aroma of fresh blood and death emanations from the open front door. There were dusted fingerprints on both the door and the frame, and Dobbs knelt several feet inside, carefully removing what looked like bits of flesh from the shiny wooden floor. He looked up as I entered and gave me a tight smile.
"The housekeeper was shot, but Bastiel was killed the same way as the others."
"Any sign of forced entry?"
He shook his head. "It looks like the housekeeper came into the house, saw what was happening, and made a run for it. She was shot in the living room."
"Why run into the living room? Why not run straight for the door?"
He shrugged. "People don't always think straight when someone is trying to kill them."
I guess that was true. And being confronted with a gunman in your workplace wasn't the same everyday occurrence for most folk that it was for us. "What time was she killed?"
"We're estimating somewhere between five and seven this morning, but we won't know for sure until we get back to the lab."
Five was awfully early for a housekeeper to arrive, I would have thought. "And Bastiel? Where was he killed?"
"In his bed." He indicated the hallway with his chin. "Cole's down there now."
I carefully stepped around the little globules, then headed down the hallway, my footsteps echoing sharply on the floorboards. The master bedroom was the third doorway along.
Cole glanced up as I stepped into the room. His craggy face showed signs of exhaustion. "I'm getting a weird sense of deja vu."
"Why?" My gaze went past him to the body in the bed. If it wasn't for the fact that the white sheets were stained crimson, it would almost be easy to believe that Bastiel was asleep rather than dead.
"Because of this." Cole waved a hand at the body on the bed. "Vampires laying still while someone hacks away at their necks. We had another case like this a few months back, remember?"
How could I forget? That case had bought me Kye, and all the inherent heartache that came with him. "But I thought you said there was nothing in the toxicology reports or the tissue samples of the other victims that suggest drugs of any kind. Wouldn't the witch dust show up in the lab?"
"That stuff would, because we've analyzed it and know its contents. But what if it's something similar, consisting of ingredients we haven't come across? If they were natural, they wouldn't necessarily be flagged."
"I guess that's possible." And it suggested that these murders had been planned well ahead of time. It wasn't easy to find a witch in this city - not one who dealt with the dark arts, anyway.
I flared my nostrils and cast aside both the rich metallic tang of blood and Cole's deeper, spicier aroma. The under notes swirling though the air ran rich with the scent of vampire, human, furniture polish and wood smoke. And there was something else - something that was little more than a nebulous foulness that tickled the back of my throat and made me want to cough.
"There is something odd here." I took a deeper breath but the scent remained annoyingly elusive and undefined. The room itself held no hints as to what it might be. My gaze fell on the light layer of dust sitting behind the bedside lamp. "You might want to get some dust samples from the room, just in case."
"I already have." He paused, picking up what looked like a piece of lint and putting it into a plastic bag. "This odd scent you mentioned - did you smell it at either of the other murders?"
I frowned, thinking back. I had smelled something odd at Gateways - something just as nebulous and out of place. But Kye had arrived not long after I'd scented it, and had basically blown any memory of it out of the water.
Until now.
"There was a similar scent at Gateway's."
"Why didn't you mention it in your report?"
"Because I couldn't be sure that it wasn't just due to the mold in the bathroom."
And if I had gone back into the bathroom, it probably wouldn't have sparked any memories anyway, because it just didn't smell the same as the other witch dust.
I glanced around the room again. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. There was a huge gold watch and a wallet filled with cash on the dresser, and several expensively framed paintings on the walls. The only link between the three - now four - beheaded men seemed to be the fact that they were all on the Melbourne council.
So what I need to find out was who, exactly, the council had pissed off lately. And I very much doubted that it was going to be an easy task. I had no idea who the members were - besides Dante, that is, and I really didn't want to go talk to that man again - and Jack had showed no inclination to share information about the rest of them. Maybe he figured I didn't need to know any more than I already did, or maybe it was just the simple fact that he wasn't allowed to tell me. He was an advisor, after all. Maybe he had to get permission from the greater council before he could reveal that sort of information. After all, ruling bodies the world over never made it easy for anyone to get to them.
Although killers never seemed to have a problem.
My only real option was talking to Quinn. He might not have told me much about the councils, but he'd said a whole lot more than Jack, so he just might be persuaded to give me another name. If I could talk to someone - someone who wasn't sex on legs - I might just have a real chance of cracking this damn case.
I returned my attention to Cole. "Any indication on how our killer got into the house?"
"Back door was jimmied. The killer must have moved extraordinarily fast, because it appeared Bastiel had gotten no further than flipping the sheet off his face."
I frowned. "The only race who can move that fast is another vampire."
"There are several shifters who can move almost as quickly as a vampire, and almost would be fast enough in this case. A vampire's reactions tend to be slightly slower when they're waking from daytime slumber."
Which was why, throughout human history, those suspected of being vampires were staked during the daylight hours. If the staker was human, it gave them a fighting chance. Of course, opening any younger vamp's den to sunlight would have done just as good a job, but humans seemed to prefer the one-two punch, just to be sure.
"It doesn't explain how the other two were caught, though. They both awake and aware."
Cole grimaced. "You've seen the witch dust in action, so you tell me - does it act fast enough to stop a vampire reacting against an attack?"
I wrinkled my nose, remembering the zombie throwing the dust in my face and just how quickly it sucked away resistance. I'd been lucky - that lot of dust had been targeted towards vamps, not dhampires, and my werewolf blood had saved me. "Yeah, it does."
"Then that's your answer. We just have to pin down the ingredients for future reference." He gave me a weary smile. "If you could remember to grab a sample when you catch the killer, that would be of great help."
I snorted softly, and waved a hand at the body. "I guess the murderer has to be non-human. It can't be easy to hack someone's head off like that."
"A nonhuman would definitely manage it more easily than a human, no matter how strong that human was."
"So, basically, I'm looking for a nonhuman with a grudge against the vampire council. That should be easy to pin down."
Cole raised his eyebrows. "All the victims are Melbourne Council members?"
"Yes. And Jack thinks the vampire who was incinerated before the first beheading was also a council member." I paused. "Why wouldn't he tell you that?"
Cole snorted. "The councils are a secretive bunch of bastards, that's why. I doubt Jack would be able to even hint he knows who's who without seeking their permission first."
Which was basically what I'd figured. "It doesn't make our job any easier, though."
"I would hazard a guess that it wouldn't be a major concern for them." He sniffed - a disdainful sound. "They might pay lip service to the Directorate and human rules in general, but I dare say they have their own methods of dealing with situations like this."
Yeah, and they used to be called cazadors. What they were called now was anyone's guess.
"But as it's us dealing with the bodies and the press and the public, you'd think they'd be a little more helpful - especially given that they want this killer caught as much as we do."
"When have vampires ever been overly helpful if it doesn't suit them?" Cole snorted softly. "Director Hunter, Jack, and Quinn are the exceptions, not the rule."
I studied him keenly for a moment, then said, "That's a pretty fierce attitude, considering who we work for and with."
He shrugged. "Just because I think the majority are arrogant sods doesn't belittle what we do at the Directorate. We make a difference, and we stand between what are basically predators and their prey. That more than makes up for any quibbles I might have about who I have to work with at times."
"So the attitude you gave me when I first started working as a guardian was because I'm just as much a vampire as a werewolf?"
He grinned. It wiped the weariness from his face and sparkled in his bright eyes. "It certainly was. But you're actually not half bad, considering you've got two lots of bad blood."
I clapped a hand to my chest. "Be still my heart - that almost sounded like a compliment."
"As if." His smile faded a little, but the remnants still warmed the corners of his eyes, and some of the tension in him seemed to have faded. "Now, if you don't mind, I have work to do, so move those distractingly long legs of yours into another room."
"Now, that sounds more like the Cole I know and love." I gave him a sketchy salute goodbye and obeyed.
The rest of the house didn't reveal much. Bastiel might have been on the council, but his study to didn't hold any clues as to when or where they met. Maybe all such information was sent via a general telepathic broadcast to the appropriate members. I broke open a locked drawer in his desk, but it didn't hold much more than several check books and a netbook. The latter had fingerprint locks installed, so while it might have held the information I was looking for, it was more Cole's field than mine. The kitchen and dining area at the back of the house didn't hold anything in the way of revelations, either - other than the fact Bastiel was something of a neat freak. Everything gleamed, and there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere.
I was walking back up the hall to the study when the air suddenly became chilled.
It was a sensation I was all too familiar with. There was a soul here, and it wanted to speak.
Goosebumps crawled across my skin as I walked forward slowly. Dusty knelt near the body of the woman, carefully plucking a hair from her blue woolen cardigan. He glanced up as I walked into the living room, then his gaze intensified and he straightened abruptly. "You sense something?"
"Her soul is here."
"You want me to leave?"
"No." I paused, trying to pinpoint where the chill seemed to be coming from. Surprisingly, it wasn't near her body but rather over near the big bay window. "What was the housekeeper's name?"
"Helen Hills."