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“Are we arriving close to your point any time soon? Because I haven’t got all day.”

He glared at me. “The point is, she’sold. She must have been around since the early fifteen-hundreds at least. I mean, that’s back with bloody Henry the Eighth for crying out loud. This is big.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Vampires never live that long. It’s part of the myth, remember?”

“I think we were wrong.” He shook his head, and I wondered what it was about this woman that he found so fascinating. “Her history is… well, the usual vague stuff to start with – nothing solid. But it doesn’t seem like she’s ever been out of action for longer than thirty, maybe forty years. She’s a survivor.”

It was odd, there was no doubt about it. The oldest vamps we’d ever met had spent time underground, sleeping to escape the mobs when the death count got too high. But even the most resilient of them had been human before 1900.

“She’d be what, five hundred?” It was hard to get my head around. Sure, vampires were immortal. But half a millennium was a bloody long time. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Tom was wide-eyed. “And it all seems to fit.”

I indicated he should go on, but part of me hoped he’d put two and two together and made five. It was plausible that this woman existed. But he was as desperate for answers as I was.

“So far you haven’t said anything that connects her though.”

“You know how I usually need six coffees before I’ll consider a conspiracy theory?”

I nodded warily.

“Well, I’m undercaffeinated and still convinced. But… I don’t know if you really want to hear the rest.” He looked as unsure as I felt. “I managed to get the details, and it’s… it’s not good.”

“Just get it over with.” I needed to know.

“He was in the hotel for four days.” Tom’s voice was carefully neutral. “Barely ate or slept. Just paced and stood by the window for hours, unresponsive.” He trailed off, staring into his coffee. “The coroner ruled it suicide, but…”

I tried to reconcile this with the Jon I knew – so steady, so grounded. It was like someone had been determined to break him first or something.

“They linked Wyatt to similar deaths in the 1720s,” Tom continued. “They were pretty distinctive.” He hesitated. “He was hanged, Erin. With wire, not rope.”

I blanched and closed my eyes, massaging my temples with my fingers as it played out behind my eyelids. The wire would have cut deep into his neck from the force of the drop. Jon was a huge guy. Tall. Muscled. His body weight alone would have been enough.Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Tom was still talking. They’d found him in his hotel room, suspended from an old Victorian roof beam. He’d probably have been conscious as he bled out.

I felt sick. It was so much worse than I’d imagined.

“Keep going,” I mumbled, opening my eyes.

Tom nodded. “There was a witness to the Wyatt deaths – there’s almost no doubt it was her, even though they were considered suicides at first. And at every scene, there were flowers and two silver coins.”

I didn’t want to be convinced, but I could see why Tom thought he’d made a breakthrough. “Why now? Where’s her motive?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know she’s here,” hesaid, gathering the papers he’d spread across the table. “She has a huge following online—”

“She’s not a fucking influencer, Tom.”

“Look, it’s not a perfect answer. But there are these groups of believers who try to track her – I’ve never seen anything like it.” He pushed a printout of an old newspaper at me, jabbing a finger at the headline. “Cologne after the war. Then Frankfurt. Then sodding Nuremberg for crying out loud.”

I scanned the articles. Most of them were published in the years following the Second World War. “These are from almost a century ago. And they’re pretty damn far from Yorkshire.”

It didn’t faze him. “If she’s survived this long, I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility.” Tom shrugged and spun the laptop back to face him, clicking away. “She has accomplices. Companions. There could be someone we’ve – well,you’ve– dealt with, linked to her.”

I sighed. I could feel a headache coming on. “But what’s her connection to Jon?” I asked. “Is there a link to Edinburgh?”

“Since you mention it, yeah. There was one guy… a vamp she was with in the 1800s, for almost a century. The forums don’t have much on him, but he was Scottish, I think. Nicholas something – there wasn’t a picture…” He was scrolling through the page again.

“Alright,” I stood up, pulled the tie from the end of my plait and ran my fingers through the waves. It was getting late, and I didn’t want to argue. “There’s enough to dig a bit deeper, I guess.”