Page 17 of The Mermaid’s Bubble Lounge (Sam Quinn #8)

SEVENTEEN

Eww

“The wards on the house cover the garage door, right?” That was all we needed. I didn’t want a shape-shifting cat to sneak in when the garage door opened.

“They do.” Clive reached over and rubbed my knee.

I used my knuckle to tap the screen, calling Vlad. It rang once.

“Yes?” Vlad’s voice was barely audible.

“Hey. Clive is with me. We’re driving home. Fergus and I ran into the killer. He definitely appears to be fae. He can shift between human and animal, healing his wounds as he shifts. Just giving you the heads-up.”

“We wondered why Clive disappeared. I wasn’t looking forward to telling you that we’d lost him.”

“Benvair, matriarch of the local dragon clan,” Clive began, “burned him when he was in the shape of a cat. She said he ran from her, charred but fluidly shifting shapes before he disappeared. As Sam said, shifting seems to heal him. She cut off his hand, but when he shifted into the cat, he had all four feet.”

“So,” Vlad said, “he can be hurt but he also has the ability to heal at will. That should make killing him a challenge.”

“Indeed,” Clive agreed. “We also have the last five Guild Counselors not already in San Francisco arriving either tonight or tomorrow night.”

“Coincidental or planned,” I wondered aloud.

“If we didn’t know that Aldith conspired with the fae king,” Clive said, “I’d say it was coincidental. Now, though, I have no idea.”

“I have to go,” Vlad said. “Cadmael is motioning to me. If you need to get a hold of me again, text. I’m on a stakeout.” The click was loud and clear. So too was the implied eyeroll.

Clive turned up our street and then drove under the rising garage door. He parked in my usual spot, opened my door so I wouldn’t have to touch anything, and then the back door so Fergus could jump out. Clive unsnapped the pup’s leash and led us to the elevator.

He took us to the first floor, as we were waiting for a visitor. Fergus ran out, straight to his water bowl. I went to open the back door and bumped into Clive, who took care of it.

“Have a seat, darling. We don’t want you touching anything.”

I was too wound up to sit, though. I went to the window and looked out for Dave’s muscle car.

Instead, I saw a black bird smash into the ward around our house.

It dropped to the sidewalk and then stood as a cat.

It gave its fur a quick shake before sitting, his gaze trained on the window I was looking out of. Shit.

“Clive?” I called.

“I saw.” He moved in behind me, wrapping his arms around me. “Be right back.”

He was gone out the back with my axe. A moment later, I saw him streak through the yard toward the cat, who shifted back into the black bird and was high in the air when Clive leapt, swinging the axe.

When Clive landed, the axe in his gloved hand glinted in the moonlight, blood-free.

A moment later a full-throated engine roared around the corner.

Clive stepped up onto the curb as Dave parked and got out.

They spoke and then Dave and Clive were looking up into the sky.

Clive headed for the front door, Dave behind him, so I met them, opening it.

“Hey.”

Dave nodded as he walked by me. “Your new friend followed you home, huh?”

A chill ran down my spine as I noticed two eyes glowing from under a bush across the street. I closed the door and locked it, feeling sick to my stomach.

Clive returned the axe to my sheath and then pulled off the glove.

“Smart thinking,” I told him.

Slipping the glove in his pocket, he wrapped his other arm around me. “I got the idea from Vlad. I didn’t have it with me at the wharf, but I won’t make that mistake again.”

Dave was sitting in the den, so I went to close the back door. Clive pushed me toward the den and closed it himself.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I said, feeling the weight of our misses tonight dragging me down. “We know where he is, and we can’t catch him.”

He rubbed my back, leading me into the den. “Let’s see. All information is helpful.”

I sat on the couch beside Dave. He held out his hand for mine. Holding it steady, he focused on the blood under my fingernails.

“Claws,” he grumbled.

I shifted that part of my body so my claws shot out. He knew to keep my hand pointed away from him. Again, he scrutinized them.

I felt something soft and hot on the tip of my middle finger, but it was gone before I even registered it. He’d dropped my hand as his eyes closed. The fingers on his right hand moved, almost in a faint echo of a forgotten spell.

Glancing at Clive, I found him glaring at Dave, his eyes vampy black. What?

When Dave finally opened his eyes, he was glaring right back at Clive. “You think I enjoy this? You asked me.”

“That was before I knew you were going to lick my wife’s finger.” Clive was seething.

“Claw,” Dave corrected.

Eww, that was what I’d felt? “Okay. Everyone stand down,” I said mostly to Clive before turning back to Dave. “Did you learn anything?”

Dave collapsed into the cushions, resting his head on the back of the couch. He was reminding Clive that he was no threat. At least right now in this situation, he wasn’t.

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Definitely fae. I think I know what he is, but I’m not sure.” He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “He—”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Who would be calling me so late? I checked the screen. Just a number, no name.

“Hello?”

“Hello, yes, is this Sam?” The voice sounded familiar but I couldn’t place it.

“It is.”

“Oh, good. We’ve spoken on the phone before, my dear.”

Clive mouthed Bracken.

“Is this Bracken?” I asked.

“How clever you are! Yes, I’m your great-uncle Bracken. I just received a call from Arwyn. She said she had a dream about you being in trouble and thought I should call you. She wasn’t sure why. She just thought you needed my help. So, what can I do for you?”

I put it on speakerphone and glanced between the men, both of whom shrugged why not?

“We could use your help. Thank you.” I went through what had been happening and Dave’s certainty that the killer was fae.

Bracken was silent. I glanced at Clive, who motioned handwriting back to me. I had excellent hearing, but Clive’s was better. He could hear Bracken writing through the phone.

Bracken muttered quietly to himself. “Yes, yes. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Well, given what you’ve told me, I think you might have a pooka on your hands.”

Dave blew out a gust of breath and nodded. “That’s the fucker’s name. I couldn’t come up with it.”

Bracken paused.

“Oh, sorry! I forgot to tell you that both Clive and Dave are with me.”

“Ah. I see. I remember Dave’s voice now. It’s good to speak with you again and I would still like to interview you. At your convenience, of course.”

Dave rolled his eyes. “I’m kinda busy.”

“Of course you are.” Bracken responded, not the least bit put off by a snarly demon. “I’d be happy to go to you. I just purchased a new vehicle and would enjoy the drive.”

“Yeah. Fine. Whatever,” Dave rumbled.

“Splendid.” Bracken cleared his throat. “Samantha, if this is a pooka in the human realm, I’m afraid we’re in quite a lot of trouble.”

I looked between Dave and the phone. “Okay, but what is a pooka?”

“Quite right,” Bracken said. “I’m getting ahead of myself. A pooka is a malevolent fae spirit. He’s a chaos agent.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “A spirit? As in something ghosty that I could influence?”

“Unfortunately, no,” he said, “though that would be handy. They often use the term spirit when describing a pooka because, I believe, no one is quite sure what the pooka’s natural state is.

It changes depending on who or what it’s trying to devil.

The odd thing is that pookas normally cause trouble.

They don’t kill. Some stories even cast them as agents of good.

The fact that you, presumably, have one in the human realm, killing in the guise of a vampire, is really quite outside the bounds of what they normally do. ”

“Is there a special significance to killing in the style of a vampire?” Clive asked.

“Well, although he’s killing now, his raison d’etre, as it were, is to cause mischief, chaos, problems. There were, I believe, quite a few vampire deaths in San Francisco a month or so ago—”

“How do you know that?” Clive asked.

“I have my ear to the ground, don’t I?” he responded.

“I heard rumblings, was interested, and began to research. Now, from what I’ve heard, the human authorities never found any of the dead.

I was told that if bodies were left behind, they were disposed of before they could be discovered.

This could be the pooka deciding that vampire victims should be found, so he’ll make them himself. ”

“But that makes no sense,” I interjected. “That was vampires warring with other vampires. They weren’t killing innocents.”

“We did have some in town feeding off humans,” Clive said so quietly, I had trouble hearing him. “We’d need to ask Russell if any were killed.”

“Russell?” Bracken asked.

Clive blinked, surprised he’d been overheard by a wicche.

“Yes. He’s the Mast—”

Clive shook his head at me. Oops.

“Um, he’s a vampire,” I lamely finished.

There was more scribbling. Even I heard it that time.

“The Master of the City is a vampire named Russell,” Bracken mumbled to himself.

I cringed and mouthed Sorry to Clive.

“I wonder if he’d allow me to interview him?

” Bracken continued to mutter and scribble.

“That’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said in a more normal voice.

“Is he choosing to kill in that style because it is the vampires who lead the city? It’s rather embarrassing, isn’t it?

The vampires are in charge and yet there’s nothing they can do about one of their own who is a rogue.

That’s just the sort of chaos a pooka would feed on: vampires running around, trying to find what isn’t there. ”

“Benvair said—”

“Benvair,” he interrupted me. “Benvair. How do I know that name?” He was mumbling to himself again. “Dragons!” he shouted, clearly just remembering. “She’s the head of the Drake clan. My, you do know some very important people, don’t you? Sorry. Please continue.”

One side of Clive’s mouth kicked up. My great-uncle was an interesting one.

“Benvair said when she breathed fire on it in its cat form, it was charred black but fluid. She thought it disappeared, but I’m thinking it shifted into something smaller and went between the wooden slats of the pier.”

There was the sound of tapping. Dave mimed tapping a pen on paper. I nodded. Right. That was probably it.

“I think you’re right, my dear. I’ve never heard of pookas having invisibility gifts.”

We were all quiet, lost in our own thoughts, and then I asked, “Why the wharf? The vampire nocturne—” Clive shook his head again. “I mean, their nocturne is nowhere near the wharf. Why is he hunting there? I mean, it’s a tourist spot, but there are lots of tourist spots in this city.”

“You said the nightclub was fae-owned, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, but Nerissa, the club owner, is trying to stop him. He’s bad for business.”

“Tell me about the club, please?”

I did. I told him everything I knew, including that I’d fought a powerful vamp in there a few months ago. I wondered if Bracken had a wicchey gift for drawing out information. When he asked me a question, all I wanted to do was answer him in as much detail as I could. It was weird.

“Hmm. Sometimes—though they are loathe to admit it—when a large group of the fae are all together, they can inadvertently create a doorway into Faerie.”

I thought about that mirror in the Wicche Glass Tavern, the fae bar in Colma that Bracken’s sister, my great-aunt Martha had owned. It had a doorway into Faerie, one I’d used.

“If the pooka isn’t connected to anyone at the club,” he continued, “it’s possible he just happened upon the doorway and is using it to create a little chaos.”

Great.