Angel: Private Eye Book One (8 page)

With nothing else to do, I reluctantly
turned on my heel and followed Mr Marvelous. He walked quickly, a
lot quicker than his tubby form accounted for. Those arms and legs
were scrawny, but he was clearly powerful, and right now,
determined.

Before I had a chance to catch my breath, we
darted out the back of the shop into an alleyway.

I frowned at the alleyway, immediately
realizing it shouldn’t be here. Mr Marvelous’ shop was pressed
right up against a magical supply store on one side and a
Vietnamese restaurant on the other.

He saw me frowning as I looked confusedly
from one brick wall to the other. “How is this alleyway here?”

“It’s a magical car park,” Mr Marvelous
muttered offhand as he brought a set of keys from his pocket and
clicked an immobilizer lock.

Immediately something appeared in front of
me. It was so quick and unexpected that I jerked back, shrieking in
surprise.

It was a car. After flickering lines of
magic settled, it revealed a sleek black vehicle that looked
exactly like something a 14-year-old kid would dream up. It wasn’t
exactly the Batmobile, but it was close. Slung low, with bright
shiny rims that had actual blue streaks of lightning painted across
them, it was exactly not the kind of car I had ever driven
before.

I tended to stick with hatchbacks and small
sedans easy to park in cramped streets.

“Ah, what the hell is this?” I asked in a
shaking voice.

“Hell? You think this comes from hell?
You’ve seen the kind of sports car trash those vampires and demons
drive. This,” Mr Marvelous leaned over and fondly patted a hand
down the front of the car, his fingers gliding off the
well-polished metal. “This is a work of art. It took me 15 years to
scrounge enough spells to create this masterpiece.” He swung his
arms wide and gestured like an excited politician promising the
brightest future the city had ever seen.

“You mean you’re a mechanic?”

Mr Marvelous rolled his eyes and chuckled.
“You really know nothing about this world, do you? This isn’t a
standard vehicle.” He patted the door lovingly as he opened it.
“It’s magically enhanced. At the beginning of my career, I faced a
little… ah, competition.” Mr Marvelous was usually as direct as a
shot between the eyes, but here he was being coy.

“What do you mean?”

He ignored me as he kept fondly patting the
door. He opened it and practically sighed as if he was slipping
inside a warm bath. “Doesn’t matter. Point is, I found myself
needing a car that could get me out of any situation. And that type
of thing costs. I scrounged every cent I could, spending it on the
most ludicrous magical enchantments you could imagine, until I’d
built this.” He brought his hands up wide again and gestured like
an extremely keen host on one of those game shows that can’t even
make it to the prime-time slot.

“But you don’t have a license,” I said as I
brought a hand up and scratched my suddenly itchy neck. “Why didn’t
you sell it?”

Mr Marvelous slowly turned to face me. His
expression had grown just as dark and shadowy and unwelcome as a
crypt in the middle of the night. “Because it’s my baby,” he said
flatly. “Why would I sell it? You can drive. Now get in the front
seat.” He motioned towards it and pointed with a stiff hand. “You
want to be careful on the clutch. And also, the accelerator can
respond a bit heavy.” He chuckled. “Growls like a tiger poked with
a stick of lightning,”

Growls like a tiger poked with lightning…? I
was careful not to roll my eyes at that.

Reluctantly I walked around the side of the
car, making a grimace that I hid expertly behind my hair.

Carefully, as if I was about to plunge my
hand into a pit of snakes, I opened the door. Though I wasn’t
exactly a witch, I could feel the magic as the door swung next to
my leg. It buffeted off me as if I’d washed in a magical
solution.

Shivering as unwelcome tingles danced over
my spine and my hair stood on end, I sat down in the driver’s
seat.

Mr Marvelous reverently handed me the
keys.

I took them and placed them carefully in the
ignition.

I felt exactly like someone tasked with
disarming a bomb. Someone with absolutely no training and an
extremely shaky hand.

What exactly had I gotten myself into here?
If I’d been smart and stayed at home last night, I would never have
met that vampire, and I wouldn’t be in this situation now.

“Start her up,” Mr Marvelous said as he
leaned forward and slapped a hand on the dash. Discovering a mark I
couldn’t even see, he carefully wiped it off with his finger.

Grimacing as if I was about to be struck in
the gut, I started the ignition, and the car growled. No, that was
an understatement. It suddenly sounded like a choir of lions and
tigers and bears jumped up around the engine and sang at the top of
their lungs.

“Jesus,” I spluttered, turning the ignition
off in a snapped, desperate move.

Mr Marvelous laughed. “It’s a beautiful
sound, isn’t it? Now start the ignition and back her up. Lizzie,
we’ve got a case to get to.” Suddenly his demeanor changed
completely. The smile that spread over his lips at the sound of his
car roaring like a dragon was replaced by a thin
lipped-grimace.

It distracted me enough to start the car and
ease it into first. Though the car kicked and bucked like a wild
horse, I didn’t shift my attention off Mr Marvelous. As we drove
out of the alleyway, there was a pop around me as the mysterious
laneway disappeared and I suddenly found myself on the pavement.
“Oh, shit,” I spat as I jerked off it and join the street, swerving
in front of two vampires on bikes.

Mr Marvelous slapped his legs with his open
palms. “That’s it. I like the way you drive, kid.” He chuckled as
the two vampires swore and flipped us off.

I cringed, immediately slowing down to a
respectable speed.

When we paused at the first set of lights, I
shifted my full attention back to Mr Marvelous. “Where exactly are
we going?”

That look passed over his face again. I
suddenly realized something. I swallowed. Uncomfortably. “What
crimes do you deal with? I mean, you’re a PI – does that mean you
just investigate people who are cheating on each other or
something?”

He shifted in his seat, bringing up a hand
and scratching his chin distractedly. “We are heading to a
murder.”

I stopped. If the car hadn’t already been
paused at a set of lights, I would have slammed the brakes on.
“Sorry?” I said through a shuddering breath.

He kept scratching his chin. “It’s a murder.
We’re going in to help the family, do our own investigation.”

“I’m sorry? Aren’t the police meant to do
that?” my voice was shaking so badly it sounded like ticker tape in
a hurricane.

“The police, ha? Of course they’re going to
investigate it. But we can investigate it, too.”

“I’m pretty sure you can’t do that. Private
investigators don’t investigate crime.”

Mr Marvelous sighed. “Could you keep up? I
know you don’t know much about the otherworld, but even you have to
know that us otherworlders have the right to hire
coinvestigators.”

“Coinvestigators?”

“The police will do their investigation, and
we’ll do ours.”

“Why would you hire two people to do the
same thing?”

He switched his attention to me, looking at
me from underneath his eyebrows, making his gaze as dark and
shadowy as a grave stone cast into gloom. “Because we’ll get them
the answers they really want.”

I balked at that, switching my gaze back to
the road as a massive unmarked van beeped at me wildly. I shifted
off and promptly stalled. Swearing, I started the car again and
inched forward.

“You’ll have to drive faster than that. Come
on, show me it wasn’t a complete mistake hiring you.”

“You hired me to find out what Mr Benson
wants and to piss him off,” I said. It was exactly the kind of
comment I would always keep to myself. Blame it on the fact I just
found out I’d become a homicide detective, but my tongue was a heck
of a lot looser and freer than it should be.

Mr Marvelous grunted. “Not as stupid as you
look, are you? But those aren’t the only reasons I hired you.
Believe it or not, I see something in you, kid. Something I can
mold and shape until you’re exactly like me.” He grinned.

I didn’t. I tried to sink my attention back
into driving this beast in the hopes it would distract me from what
would come next.

It didn’t. Nothing could.

Sooner rather than later, Mr Marvelous
pointed to the side of the street and told me to stop.

I pulled up to the curb, body already a
shaking, sweaty mess. My gaze jerked to the side and locked on a
small apartment block. It was cordoned off with police tape, and
the fell wind that had been chasing through the city streets since
this morning batted it like an invisible army.

Several strands had come completely loose
and whipped through the air in a manic dance.

By the time I scrounged the courage to open
the door and pour my shaking form out onto the pavement, the wind
was so wild it sounded like 1000 wolves howling into a PA
system.

Though I wanted to say Mr Marvelous walked
confidently towards the apartment block, that would be denying the
exact ashen quality of his skin. His face had lost all its color,
and he instantly looked at least 20 years older.

He strode right through a section a police
tape, but his body didn’t break it. It shifted through the tape as
it suddenly became lines of magical light that hissed and sizzled
along his pot belly.

Me, I stopped right outside of the tape,
stomach suddenly a knot of nerves and bubbling, gagging, churning
fear.

My head jerked up towards the apartment
block as if someone had attached a string around the top of my
neck. Beyond the tape I could hear several hushed murmured
whispers. I assumed they were police officers, but as I tipped my
head from left to right, I couldn’t see anyone.

“Who’s muttering?” I asked as I finally
gathered the courage to throw myself through the tape.

It was a truly nasty feeling to have the
tape turning to magical lines of light that flickered and groped
around the exposed skin of my wrists and fingers.

Immediately I brought my hands up and rubbed
them together as I ran to catch up to Mr Marvelous.

“No one is muttering, kid. Now get your mind
on the game. You stay right behind me and you don’t touch anything.
You don’t say anything. And if you feel the need to throw up, you
hold on and you do it outside. You understand?” He flashed me a
look as he threw himself up the front steps and barreled through
the door. He was like a boulder gathering speed to ensure it had
the momentum to roll all the way down the hill.

I had no momentum. I was flat, and there was
absolutely no chance whatsoever that I was going to get through
this without throwing up and crying.

“Hurry up,” Mr Marvelous grumbled from
inside the apartment door, his voice echoing out like a clap of
thunder.

I had no choice but to follow.

Some humans fancied they had extrasensory
abilities – a dash of clairvoyance, a touch of the ability to
channel.

Me, I’d never been one of those people. I’ve
never been able to read the future, and God knows I haven’t been
able to feel a spirit in some haunted house.

So as I walked through the low archway of
the apartment door, I told myself the cold shiver that instantly
raced down my back and sunk deep into the base of my spine was
nothing more than a reaction to the cold wind.

It was not me suddenly tapping into the evil
magical vibe that wound around this place like rope.

For some reason my teeth were chattering,
jumping about in my skull and sending pulses of intense sharp pain
snaking down into my neck.

I followed Mr Marvelous, several steps
behind him. Somehow he appeared to grow the further behind I got.
Hey, maybe I was shrinking, pulling into myself as I realized just
how much I didn’t want to see what was inside that apartment.

We finally reached it. The right door. It
wasn’t just cordoned off with magical police tape, but there was a
magical circle made of hastily scattered baking soda mixed with
chalk specifically from the Isle of Wight and a handful of
watercolor pigment from some cheap craft store.

The pigment was bright and red, there to
make sure nobody accidentally scuffed the edge of the magical
circle with their boot.

The chalk from the Isle of Wight was a
warning sign to ghosts and other magical creatures. The baking soda
was apparently to lift bloodstains.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” I started to
mutter to myself under my breath, so quiet it sounded like nothing
more than several hasty breaths.

The uniformed officer on duty outside the
door nodded and stepped away.

We pushed our way into the room.

I saw several detectives hard at work. They
all looked up as one, like a band of meerkats who’d just seen a
distraction prance across the prairie.

Okay, that didn’t sum up their expressions
at all. As soon as they saw Mr Marvelous, their faces hardened as
if someone smeared starch over their cheeks and baked them dry.

Though I could have melted under the
combined intensity of their unwelcome stares, I found my neck
tugging to the left. Before I knew what my eyes were doing, they
locked on a door through a short hallway into what looked like
someone’s bedroom.

Instantly a wave of nausea struck me. I
heard footfall, and soon a man walked out of the bedroom.

Not just any man. Detective Cortez. He
flicked his gaze from Mr Marvelous to me. “Isn’t it a little early
for her first case?” he asked directly as he shoved a hand into his
pocket and pulled out a latex glove. He crammed it on his hand in a
smooth, practiced move. The latex glove snapped with an elastic
twang. Which was about the same move his lips made as he gave me
what could only be termed a sour and suspicious smile.