Blue Moon Rising (The Patroness) (13 page)

“He didn’t pay you? But you were just doing your job, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know and the money didn’t matter. But what really pissed me off was the following. Turned out he was a police officer and he’d put me right on top of his shit list. He did everything to take over as much nights shifts as possible and every time we meet he likes to put me into a holding cell for whatever reasons, mostly for suspicion of gun possession. So now, once a month or so, I spend a night in prison.”

Kylian was quiet, too quiet. I looked up from my camera and saw the beast in his icy blue eyes. He began to bulge, getting bigger and I suddenly realized he was about to change.

“Hey, hey, calm down, Kylian! Look at me, look at me! I’m fine, you see? I’m here beside you and I’m fine. Calm down.”

I obviously got through to him since he turned his head and caress
ed my cheek with his fingertips.
“Sorry for that. I just didn’t like imagining you in a cell.”

Touched, I couldn’t resist and took his head into my hands, placing a small and gentle kiss on his lips.

My cell went off. I pulled away, clearing my throat and answered it, “Maiwenn Cadic, Saints Investigation. Bonjour!”

A male voice said, “I’m in front of your office and saw the sign. I don’t know if that qualifies as an emergency but a friend of mine is missing and I need your help to find her.”

“What’s your name?”

“Romaric L’Enragé.”

“Listen, I won’t be back in my office before half an hour.” Not only was it true, but it would also show me whether he was serious about this or not.

“That’s fine with me, I can wait.”

“Okay, see you later then.” I hung up and tugged my cell away. “Did you listen in?” I asked and, when Kylian nodded, continued, “Bon, so let’s wrap this up. What are our adulterers up to?”

Kylian looked over his shoulders, watching the couple. “Nothing good it seems.”

I lifted my camera up, adjusted the zoom one last time and started taking pictures, first of them eating and feeding each other and then finally kissing. The shot, I had it. Case was closed.

Since there were some problems with the bus due to heavy traffic we decided to walk back to the office. Metro just wasn’t an option for me. I hated it and couldn’t understand why people would do something like this to themselves. It was like being buried alive. The metro was crowded, stuffy and stressful. To see only blackness out of the window, just thinking of it had a shiver running down my spine, not the pleasant kind. I much preferred to take the bus. It needed counting in a little more time but at least I could enjoy the beautiful sight of the city I was born to protect.

A teenager was waiting outside my office. His voice had been strong and deep at the phone so I was a little surprised. He leaned with his back against the wall beside the entrance, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and wore flip flops, dark jeans, a shirt claiming he was schizophrenic and a black hat.

We approached and he noticed us. “You’re Maiwenn Cadic?”

“Yes.” As I moved to open the door, he detached himself from the wall, straightened up and flicked the cigarette butt away.

The bo
y gave Kylian a suspicious look. “Who’s the sidekick?
I thought you work alone.”

I looked to the side and caught Kylian’s dark glaze, and I had to check myself to keep from laughing at the idea. “I do. He’s just helping out with another case.”

We got into my office, where with an ease as if he were at home Kylian took one of the two chairs standing in front of my desk for clients to plant it directly beside mine – behind the desk. With a killing glance, I promised payback, but for now, we all sat down.

Romaric took his hat off, revealing not only dark hair - that was anything but tamed in a modern and a little asymmetric haircut - but also two smooth, black horns, crowning each side of his forehead. A demon? I looked into his eyes. They were jet black, and I couldn’t distinguish the pupil from the iris. Yep, demon. With deep emotions their horns would grow and their eyes would be literally swallowed with black, not even leaving traces of white in the corners of the eye.

Hmm, this might...no, I was pretty sure that he was the first demon ever to ask for my help. Normally they took care of whatever problems came up themselves. How intriguing.

“Okay, Romaric. You said it’s about a missing person?”

“Yes, my girlfriend. She’s a vampire.”

His left leg bounced nervously up and down, as if he would like nothing more as to run out and look after her. But there was something else, something strange, I could sense it.

“If she’s a vampire why didn’t you go to the Queen instead? Why ask me for help?”

“I heard you can kick ass like hell, I didn’t want to bother the others.”

Bother the others? Okay, there was definitely something wrong here. I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair, giving him my best don’t-fuck-with-me-stare. “Thanks, but come on, let’s cut the crap! Why are you here?”

Romaric looked at his feet, biting his lip. His horns twitched, giving away how troubled he was. Then he looked up, taking a deep breath as if preparing for a long dive. “I’m not allowed to have a girlfriend, that’s why.”

I frowned.
“Care to elaborate?”

He grimaced.
“I’m promised to Lilith.”

Oh, come on. Was it let’s-drive-Maiwenn-crazy-week? I leaned forward, nearly begging, “Are you kidding? Please, tell me you’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

Dammit. Lilith, a succubus demon, was the Queen of the Undead of France. And she didn’t like me. I killed too much of her children, as she’d put it. She united all vampires and demons of the country. Their biggest branch of the family lived underground in Paris, in the Den, since food was plenty here.

Once in a while Lilith chose a new companion from her subjects to ensure nice free-time pleasures. She’d pick them while they were still young, and from that moment on they would be off the market, unavailable and untouchable for everyone, till they turned eighteen – then they belonged to Lilith.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen, but I’ll turn eighteen in a few months.”

Would someone be so kind to put me out of my misery?

I sighed, “And your girlfriend? Tell me about her. What’s her name?”

“Her name is Josi, Josianne Bellemort. We meet in secret, places where no one can find us, you know. Yesterday she didn’t show and that’s just not her, really. We’ve never missed a date. We can rarely see and meet each other, so what little time we have together is really sacred for us. Besides, I haven’t seen her in the Den, either.” He was worried, his puppy-dog eyes begging me to help him. But I needed some answers first.

“What about her parents? If she’s missing maybe they already asked the Queen for help?”

Romaric got a little angry, his horns thickening, growing. His voice dripping with disgust, he snarled, “I don’t know. It’s an old vampire family, you know. Purebreds. They don’t want her to be together with the likes of me.”

Ladies and gentlemen I proudly present ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the demonic version.

Since I’ve already booked a seat on Lilith’s shit list, I couldn’t care less if I got her panties in a bunch again over this. My job was it to keep the city safe. If people disappeared, I had to take care of the problem.

We were all part of the magical community, so why should I refuse to help this young and lovestruck demon of all people?

“Okay, listen I need a photo or picture of her if possible and you have to show us all your hideouts, love nests, you name it.”

Romaric pulled out a paper, folded into a small square. I took it from his hand, unfolding the paper. It was a colored drawing, a very good and detailed one, showing a young girl with straight, dark blond hair and delicate features.

I looked at him.
“Did you draw this?” When he nodded, I added, “Wow, you’re good. May I keep it?”

He nodded again.

I folded it and stuffed it to Judith’s picture under my wristband. Then I pulled open one of my drawers, t
aking out a note pad and pencil.
“I have some questions I need you to answer honestly. When and where did you see Josianne for the last time?”

“Four days ago, so last Friday. Around three in the morning in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle.”

I pulled up one of my eyebrow
s, while jotting down the facts.
“A museum?”

He nodded.
“We choose only places where no one would go at night, especially the Undead, you know. Museums, La Menagerie and even churches, stuff like that.”

Wow, that girl really loved him if she went into a church for him. Churches had the same effect on vampires as silver had on shapeshifters, which meant they got violently sick. Every undead steered well clear of these sacred places. So, yes, it was a perfect meeting place.

“Not bad. And where were you to meet yesterday?”

“Inside of the church Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, at midnight.”

“Do you have any idea what Josianne did between Friday and yesterday? Did she have any plans? To go somewhere, to do something?”

He shook his head and expelled a long breath full of tense desperation. “During the summer months the vampires like to sleep in, you know. All day, from eight in the morning till eight in the evening. Then she goes to school, which starts at nine. Depending on her schedule, she stays three to six hours.”

“Where’s the school? And why don’t you meet there?”

He gave me an are-you-off-your-rocker-look, and then explained very calm as if speaking to a child. “I can’t tell you. Look, I’m Lilith’s Chosen, I’m not allowed to go to school. I have to follow private lessons. And even if we went to the same school, we couldn’t meet there. ‘Cause, you know, with all the gossip going around, Lilith would have known about us long before we even would have been aware of our feelings for one another.”

Romaric had a point there.

“Okay, let’s try something else then. Do you have something with you or on you right now that belongs to Josianne? Something personal?”

He thought about it for a while, and then he pulled a necklace from underneath his shirt. It was an oval locket on a simple chain, both were gold. I reached out and Romaric let the necklace drop in my hand.

“Will that do?”

The small locket was beautiful, and simple with only the letter ‘J’ on its back. I opened it, discovering a dark blond strand of hair and a tooth. A very pointy one.

It was an old tradition, the most powerful and ultimate proof of love. But since these gifts gave the companion power over you, only a few couples still followed it.

“Yes, it would do. If it’s okay with you, I would like to take a bit of her hair and ask the pendulum.”

He looked
relieved and held up his hands.
“Totally fine with me. Anything to find Josi.”

I nodded and went over to my cupboard to get out a big shrink-wrapped map of Paris and surroundings, a small copper cauldron, four candles out of beeswax and my pendulum. I put the map on my desk, which fortunately faced north, and arranged the candles corresponding with the cardinal points around it.

First
the black candle in the North, representing the dark midnight; followed by the white one in the East, replacing the rising sun. The third candle in the South was yellow, and in the West, red like an evening sky, the fourth and last candle found its spot. The cauldro
n, wherein I placed my spirally coiled,
brazen pendulum and a little of Josi’s hair, became their centre.

After gesturing for Kylian and Romaric to stay silent for concentration’s sake, I tapped the magic within me. In my mind I’d always imagined it as a calm, blue-green cloud. I leaned forward and lightened the candles with my own breath. Beginning again with the one in the north, I blew carefully atop it. First a little smoke, then a teal colored flame came to life. East, South and West followed. After that, I did the same with the cauldron. Blowing over it, the hair got up in flames, which were instantly swallowed by the pendulum.

The hair was gone and I set the cauldron aside to take the warm pendulum in my hand, positioning the thread so it was hanging from between my thumb and forefinger. I sat down in my chair, sitting up straight but still relaxed, one elbow resting on the desk. I held the pendulum over the center of the map and concentrated on it, imagining it swinging from north to south, pushing it with my thoughts. Slowly the pendulum began to follow the movements I asked it for. When I was satisfied with the swing I added an east-west swing, soon changing the motion into a clockwise circle.

Conjuring up the picture of Josianne in my mind I felt the pendulum, filled with her magic, connecting fully with me. Tell me...where is Josianne Bellemort? The pendulum made two more circles, and then I felt a familiar tug. I wanted to follow it, but my mind bumped into some kind of bubble. Except its wall was made out of bricks. Ow.

I tried again. Bump! Wall. Interesting, but I wouldn’t give up so easily. For the boys this looked like a typical witch ritual, so from the outside they wouldn’t notice if I added a little extra to it. Without fearing my true origins to be discovered I pushed a little of my other magic into the pendulum, making it glow, and dropped it. It never touched the map; instead the pendulum bounced off an invisible wall. The one I’ve felt in my mind.