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I grimaced.How did he know I was here?Determined to catch up, and feeling rushed, I still couldn’t help but stop to get the barman’s attention.

Dark-haired and short, he appeared to be as tired as I was. “What can I get you?”

I shook my head. More alcohol was the opposite of what I needed after last night. “Those guys that just left—” I glanced at the door. “Do they come in here a lot?”

“Pretty boys?” He paused in wiping down a glass, his lip curling. “First time I’ve seen the blonde dude.” The glass clinked against the counter as he set it down harder than necessary. “The other guy’s been in here maybe three, four times in the last week or so. Takes a different girl home every time, love, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He leaned closer across the bar, voice dropping to an undertone as he resumed polishing glasses. “One time he left with another guy.”

I nodded, his words confirming what I’d already suspected – this was a feeding ground. I threw a fiver onto the bar in thanks and hurried out after them.

On the main road, I finally recognised where I was. Icy patches of snow glittered on the pavement as I headed away from the busier street, thrusting my hands deep into my pockets. There was an icy wind blowing, getting into all the gaps in my clothing. It was bloody freezing.

I gave a cursive glance to each side street out of habit, checking for signs of activity as I cast out my senses, determined to find them. My feet were going numb in my boots when, atlast, a familiar shivery sensation came over me. Without thinking, I shifted closer to the wall, pulling my body against the brickwork, and leaned around to look down into the alley I’d been about to walk past.

The streetlamp above was broken – recently, judging by the smashed glass littering the ground beneath it – leaving the path in utter darkness. I blinked a few times, trying to get my eyes to adjust.

I could make out Adam’s blonde head and leonine shape leaning against the wall, arms folded and watching a recessed area further along. He wasn’t fidgeting, but I got the impression he was resisting tapping his foot. In the alcove, nearly impossible to make out, were Murray and the woman from the bar. I took a few silent steps closer, my mouth filling with the metallic flavour of vampire presence that I’d never experienced with this particular vamp before. Adam didn’t react, but he must have sensed my movement from his position.

Nicholas’s fingers dug into the woman’s upper arms, deep enough to leave bruises that would bloom by morning. She looked up at him with a vacant, blank gaze as he bent his face toward her throat, his body trembling with what I could only assume was barely contained hunger. From this distance, it might be possible to mistake what I was seeing for intimacy, but I flinched along with her as his teeth broke the skin at her neck like tissue paper. His throat worked as he swallowed deeply, maintaining just enough control to keep from draining her completely. Throughout it all, her face never changed, eyes focused dead ahead under his thrall. I was unsure if her mindwas even present as he fed, and I held my breath, unable to move.

You knew what he was.Nicholas was a killer, and this was the way he sustained his life. But on some level, I felt disappointed in him. Which was perhaps why, though I had to turn away from the scene before me – I didn’t stop him. My heart had been wrong to trust him.

As I walked away, some small semblance of the clarity I’d been hoping the evening would bring finally settled over me. He was one of them, after all. Whether he was behind Jon and Maggie’s murders was inconsequential – and things were as black-and-white as they had always been. It didn’t matter how I felt about it: Nicholas Murray must die.

PART TWO

13: Bloody, Bruised and Kinda Biased

After collapsing into bed well after two in the morning, I slept straight through my alarm and awoke just before ten. A glance at my phone told me I had several messages from Tom. Without bothering to read them or get out of bed, I called him.

“About time!” Tom’s voice carried over the café’s background clatter.

I dragged myself upright, head pounding. “Sorry. Late night again.”

“I figured after the tenth missed call. Were you, you know – hunting?” He asked, lowering his voice. He was probably serving a customer while we spoke. One of his – and my – least favourite things to do at work, besides taking fiddly drink orders and negotiating with the bakery.

“I literally just woke up. Let me get dressed and I’ll be there in maybe half an hour? I’ll explain everything then.”

“Alright,” he replied, pausing. “But I hate this. I need to know what’s going on, what you’re thinking. That’s how we’re supposed to work, remember? As a team.”

I sighed as I hung up, padding into the bathroom to jump in the shower. I didn’t want to keep things from him, but he wasn’t exactly being fair. It wasn’t like I hadn’ttriedto talk to him, but he still didn’t seem in a good headspace, and I could only be patient for so long before it got someone else killed. Not to mention, when and if he heard the whole truth, there’d be some questions that I wasn’t sure I was ready to answer – if I had the answers at all.

Jolt was absolutely rammed when I arrived, and I was surprised to see Tom had hung festive holiday lights in the windows and even put a little Yule log display out on the counter. The last traces of the Diwali lanterns had finally been packed away, replaced by winter greenery along the shelves. Not that we didn’t decorate usually, but I hadn’t realised we were almost mid-way through December already. I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to miss so much.

It took until after the lunch rush before we could grab hasty sandwiches in the back room, and it was clear Tom was still tense from a morning of explaining to disappointed students that we’d run out of orange brownies.

His laptop sat on the table between us, surrounded by research notes. At the sight of it, I fled back into the café, pissed at my own cowardice. But time has a funny way of speeding up when you’re dreading something, and closing time came around with uncanny swiftness.

“That was a day.” Tom slumped in his chair, the warm brown of his skin ashen with exhaustion as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

He wasn’t wrong. “If I have to make one more extra hot triple shot half oat caramel whatever, I might fucking scream.”

“Better than the guy last week who wanted his coffee ‘as black as his soul,’” Tom replied. “I gave him the usual roast. I doubt his soul was that dark.”

I half laughed, but I remembered the guy. He was becoming a regular.

“Fancy a drink?”

Don’t, Tom. I swallowed. “You don’t need to get me drunk to talk to you, you know.”