“Maybe,” the young vampire replied just a little too quickly. “What else can you tell me?”
“Not much that will be of any great help, or that you will not be able to find out for yourself after a few moments on the internet, but there are a couple of things.”
“Go on,” said Amanda, already getting irritated at the deputy for not getting to the point right away, a tendency she knew the man possessed from her time at the school.
“Well, the first thing is I happened to come across the possibility that we had ourselves a new member of our community when going through my usual trawl through the local papers last week. Hello, I said to myself, this looks like it really could be something.”
“And, what was the information?” said Amanda, only half-heartedly trying to hide the irritation in her voice.
“I read in the Radcliff Visitor that a boy had been killed while walking home from school. Obviously, this would not in itself pique my interest; the gruesome – that’s how they described it – details of the killing did. Indeed, they said that apart from a few odd footprints that disappeared into a field near the site of the killing, the only thing the police hoped could help track down the killer was the boy’s blood. And this is the point I was getting to: this was because the boy had been found on the side of the road with almost nothing in his veins. If they could find the blood, they’d have their killer. Obviously, the police considered it possible that some crazed loon had collected the blood to conduct some odd sort of ritual or to create a trophy. I had other ideas, of course. I dispatched one of the school’s collector teams on the night after the burial. Luckily, the fellow was not down for cremation. I just hope that he still has all his organs after the autopsy. But I suppose they knew the cause of death well enough, so there’s a chance. Still, he’s been a bit quiet since he arrived, but he seems alert enough. Anyway, I digress.”
“Were there any other details?” said Amanda in an exasperated voice, wondering why the deputy had given her such a long-winded and oblique account to essentially inform her that the attack had been carried out by a vampire.
“As I said, I wasn’t sure if the information would be of any great help.”
Amanda put her phone down on her coffee table for a moment to take a breath.
“Amanda,” said the tinny voice of the deputy. “Are you still there?”
“Yes, Mr Chester, I am still here.”
“So, what do you say? Are you interested in giving us a hand in trying to find some information on the attacker?”
“Look, Mr Chester, I’m always willing to help the school, especially after it helped me, but you don’t really seem to have much to go on at all. And for all we know, the individual you’re sending me out to look for might be in Australia by now!”
“Yes, of course, of course. But, I would still like someone to have a look to see if they can find something, whatever little thing that might happen to be. I’d send someone from the school if I could, but we’ve lost a few good people recently - especially with all these jobs our community can get online these days – and we’re in need of an extra hand. Now, if you are otherwise indisposed at the moment, I could always see if there would be someone else willing to look into the situation. Though, I think I should say before you make up your mind that if you do decide to help us out, the school would be more than happy to allow you to use some of its supplies while you are on the case. You know, to ensure that you can carry out the work.”
Amanda walked back over to her fridge and looked at the two remaining packs of blood she had left. The packs were not cheap and these were the last of the supplies that the school had given her in her supposed transition to life in the real world. She had nothing saved up in terms of money and despite looking for some time, she had found nothing in terms of work. Who would employ an 18-year-old or so looking girl, especially one with no National Insurance record and no work experience? 18 or so, she thought; the description of herself she had heard several times, even though she had actually been killed when she had already completed her university degree at the age of 22. Suddenly, it became apparent to her that it was no coincidence that the deputy was calling just as her supplies were about to run dry.
“Look, Mr Chester, I don’t need your charity.”
“Amanda, please. Whether you need charity or not is not my concern anymore, now that you’ve left the school. However, it is the case that I do need someone to have a look into this situation and I am genuinely short of staff – or at least the sort that I can actually send out into the world of the living. If I were you, I would just be glad that the Fates had taken it upon themselves to send a little kindness my way and accept that an opportunity had arisen at the same time as a need.”
Amanda said nothing in reply at first, but the deputy did not push her for an answer. Instead, he calmly waited so long that he even let his mind drift off to consider the vague possibility that he should tidy up his office.
“Okay, what’s the boy’s name?”
“Ah, good,” said the deputy. “His name is Brenden Wilson. That’s Brenden with an ‘e’. I tell you what, though I think
