The Cold Kiss of Death

But I couldn’t not return the greeting; it was a mark of respect offered to me as sidhe fae, and not something to be taken lightly. Holding my breath, I slid my own finger down my nose, trying to make it look more like I was scratching an itch.

He stamped his foot, making his trainer flash red. I waited for him to give a howl of discovery, but it didn’t come. Instead he snatched up a crumpled paper cup and tucked it carefully away in the pink sequinned beach bag hitched over his shoulder.

I let out my breath, relieved.

He was still following his normal work contract.

‘Are you a member of our congregation, miss?’ the Souler asked, waving a leaflet in my line of vision.

‘What?’ I looked up to find her smiling curiously at me.

‘It’s just Samuel seems to recognise you; he greeted you as one of us.’ She waggled her fingers at Samuel, the goblin. He tapped his hand against his own Souler Red Cross badge, pinned next to his London Underground one.

‘Although they can’t see well,’ she carried on, ‘they’ve got very good memories for people, so I wondered if you were an acolyte?’ Her smile turned questioning.

‘Um, no, I’m not.’ I gave her a wary look. ‘I was just watching him, thinking about the great job they do clearing up the rubbish.’

‘Ah yes, goblins have proven themselves amongst God’s creatures: they see no shame in servile tasks, much as our Lord Jesus took it upon himself to wash his disciples’ feet.’ Her eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘He is an example to us all, with his help and guidance we can shed our sins, and our souls can be cleansed of the darkness and evil that abounds in our earthly life and we can join Him in all his Glory.’

Inwardly I sighed, resigned. I just had to speak to her, didn’t I? Still, ignoring her probably wouldn’t have made much difference: all the Soulers were fervent zealots. She’d sensed an opening and was closing in for the kill—sorry, conversion.

‘Goblins aren’t really creatures, you know,’ I said, matter-of-fact, trying to put her off. ‘They’re more a different species.’

‘We are all God’s creatures,’ she jumped in cheerfully. ‘All of us, human, goblin, troll, fae and Other. God does not deny any among us his help or discriminate in his care.’ I stared at her, bemused. Since when had the Soulers changed their sermon tune? They didn’t usually include everyone in their salvation message, just humans, trolls and goblins. The rest of us could rot in hell for all they usually cared.

She gave a closed-lip smile to Samuel—at least she knew not to show a goblin her teeth—as he scraped industriously at a glob of chewing gum stuck to the floor, then carried on, ‘Samuel, like most of the goblin race, may not enjoy the same legal rights as humans’—she tilted her head to one side, jiggling her poodle-perm—‘but that does not stop God or his acolytes from offering aid where it is needed.’

Okay, now she was really starting to creep me out.

‘That’s great!’ I looked up at the map above the windows. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but my stop’s coming up ...’ I edged to the side to stress my point.

‘No problem.’ She took my hand and pressed the leaflet firmly into it. ‘Please, do call us.’ She smiled again, a knowing look that raised the hairs at the back of my neck. Turning to retrace her steps, she added, ‘Remember, when you need us, we can help.’

Was she trying to give me some sort of personal message, or was this just her normal spiel? If so, she was weirder than most of the Soulers I’d come across. Frowning, I skimmed the leaflet; it looked like the usual come-and-be-saved stuff. I dismissed it and handed it to the waiting Samuel.

‘Ta, miss.’ He took it gently between knobbly forefinger and thumb, then, trainers flashing, he clomped along the carriage to give it back to the poodle-perm Souler.

Recycling at its best.

I watched her from the corner of my eye until the train pulled into the next station. The doors hissed open and as I got out a flash made me turn: she had her phone aimed at me and I blinked as it flashed again. She smiled and I watched her with a sense of mounting frustration as the train accelerated away.

Fuck. She had twigged who I was, or maybe Samuel had given her the nod when she’d asked. Question was, who was she going to send the photo to—the police? Her boss? Someone else? And what was all that we want to help stuff about? Still, there was nothing I could do about it right now, other than maybe ditching the Glamour spell soon—it wasn’t much of a disguise if everyone knew what I looked like.

I raced through the streets to HOPE, with the growing feeling I was being followed. I checked behind me a couple of times, expecting to see Cosette again now I’d escaped the dryads. But she didn’t put in an appearance, and neither did anyone else, despite my jitters. Nervous adrenalin fuelled me and it wasn’t long before I reached the welcome lights of the clinic.

The doors swished open and I rushed in. Hari, the night receptionist, stared out from behind his glass screen and gave me the full force of his trademark you better not give me any trouble expression. It almost made my nervousness disappear: a yellow—and brown-streaked eight-foot-tall troll with fists the size of boulders doesn’t have to do much more than frown to cow most patients, but underneath, Hari was a big softie.

‘Yes, miss?’ he asked in his deep rumble.

Hari wasn’t in on the little plan Grace and I had come up with, so I leaned against the chest-high reception counter, still catching my breath, and aiming for desperate, panted, ‘I’ve got to see Dr Hartwell; I’ve run out of gear.’ At least the gasping would give my venom-junkie play-acting an edge of realism. Trouble was, with all the chasing and running and adrenalin speeding my sidhe metabolism, it wasn’t going to be play-acting for much longer—like I really needed something else to worry about.

‘What’s the name?’ he rumbled.

‘Debby, with a y,’ I said, giving the name Grace had told me to use.

‘Well, Debby-with-a-y, you just go and sit yourself down in the waiting area. Dr Hartwell is a very busy lady’—he treated me to another deep-fissure frown—‘but I’ll let her know you’re here.’

I walked past the bank of lifts and the fire-exit stairwell door, trying not to give in to the urge to push through it and run straight up to the fourth floor where the clinic was. Instead I played my part, letting my eyes glaze over while staring at the stippled peach wallpaper, the gold-framed botanical prints and the beige vinyl wipe-clean floor tiles. I wrinkled my nose at the strong smell of pine disinfectant, which didn’t quite cover the underlying scent of liquorice and even fainter trace of blood. Two rows of pumpkin-orange chairs lined either side of the waiting area, along with a slightly battered vending machine and the token magazine table with its collection of out-of-date glossies. As I approached, my steps faltered and my heart thudded in my chest. One of the chairs was occupied. Damn. I’d forgotten about him. I thought about turning back, but I couldn’t think where else to go—and I wanted to see Grace.

How much trouble could one vamp be anyway?

Chapter Thirteen

Vamps were always trouble, so okay, that was a stupid question. But Bobby, the vamp sitting in HOPE’s waiting area next to the soft drinks machine, was just a youngster; he’d only taken the Gift three years ago. And he was supposed to be on his best behaviour.

I stood opposite him, leaning against the wall, hands stuck in my pockets.

He lifted his head and looked me over, his lips quirked in a sulky, sexy way, his grey eyes shadowed and moody. The expression was one he’d perfected for the camera as Mr October, one of London’s hot celebrity calendar vamps. The hair in its French plait, the ankle-length leather coat, jeans and silk T-shirt, all of them black, completed the look—a look that had teenage girls and not-so-teenage woman swooning with desire and queuing out the door of the Blue Heart Vampire Club in a desperate effort to Get Fanged by the month’s star attraction. Of course, his recent arrest for the murder of his human girlfriend and the subsequent, very public clearing of all charges had done nothing to hurt his popularity. If I didn’t know better—having been instrumental in the ‘clearing’