Falling to Ash (2 page)

I hoped the questions about my home life were over and that we could now get down to business. ‘Do you think maybe we could get to the point? It’s been kind of a long night . . .’

‘I should have thanked you sooner for seeing us so early, Marie,’ Trent said. ‘I realize it must be something of a surprise, us just turning up like this.’ This was said in a no-nonsense kind of tone that made it quite clear that she didn’t care whether I minded or not.

I nodded, schooling my face into an expression of polite interest. I’d already gotten them to assure me that they weren’t here with bad news about Dad or my sisters, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t bad news of a different kind.

And I have more than one Family. Theo will never let me forget that. Two names too: the old me – Marie. And the inner me, the vampire me that Theo had named Moth.

Smith tried a tentative smile. ‘We’re hoping you can help us with an investigation.’

The cops were taking up the only two chairs at the table, so I moved to the windowsill and sat down, removing my leather jacket and laying it down as a substitute cushion first.

‘OK,’ I said.

Trent took over. ‘Do you know a boy named Richard Doyle.’

Who?
My mind raced and I searched my memory. Life since being turned was becoming more blurry as each day passed. Especially when I was anxious.

I slowly shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t
think
so?’ Trent gave me a cop stare I recognized well from my father. ‘You either know him or you don’t.’

‘Sorry,’ I replied. ‘Can you tell me anything else? Something that might help me to place him?’

‘You mean, something more than his
full name
?’ Smith’s tone dripped sarcasm.

‘I don’t have a great memory,’ I replied, smiling sweetly and fiddling with my long black curls.

He didn’t respond to my feminine charms. I was tempted to show him my fangs; perhaps
that
would get a reaction.

‘Miss O’Neal,’ he said, ‘are you on any substances at this time?’

‘What?’ I didn’t blush – couldn’t blush, at least not until I fed properly, which was a good thing considering how guilty I felt and probably looked. ‘What kind of substances?’
Like, blood? Do you mean blood?

Trent pushed Batgirl away and scowled. ‘Don’t play us for fools, Marie. We’re talking about narcotics. Do you take drugs?’

‘Of course not, Officer,’ I said sincerely.

‘Detective.’

‘Of course not, Detective.’ I cringed. This wasn’t going well. I already knew they were detectives, but I was suddenly nervous and couldn’t think straight.

Authority figures do that to me.

Trent stared at me. ‘Richard Doyle is dead, Marie. He was murdered, that’s why we’re asking you about him.’

I leaned back against the winter-chilled glass and shivered.
Murdered?

‘He attended the same art course at U/Mass that you dropped out of last year,’ Smith said. ‘Maybe that’ll help you place him.’

I resisted the urge to give him the finger. Not because I have oh-so-much self-control, but because suddenly I
did
know who they were talking about. Of course I did. It’s just that a lot can happen in a year (like, for example, being turned into a monster against your will), and those things take up a lot of space in your head and heart.

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember your own name, let alone the name of someone you only knew briefly as the skinny dude with the shock of red hair who worked at an easel on the other side of the room from you.

‘I’m sorry, Detectives, I really am. When you called him “Richard”, I got confused. I knew him as Rick.’ Which was true enough. ‘Or Red.’ Also true. ‘Some of the guys called him “Doily”.’

Trent raised blonde brows. ‘Why would they call him that?’

‘Um . . . his
surname
? Doyle? And the whole Irish thing. You know.’ I shrugged.

Smith looked at me like I was from another planet. ‘The “Irish thing”? You’re going to have to explain that one to me.’

I tried to look like I wasn’t crazy. ‘Irish lace, you know. Doilies. Doyle.’

Smith’s blandly handsome face was blank.

I sighed. ‘I guess it made sense at the time.’

His partner came to my rescue. ‘Marie, we need you to tell us everything you know about him.’

‘I don’t know much, I swear.’

Smith snorted.

I glared at him. ‘I mean it. We just took the same class for a couple months and it’s not like we stayed in touch. He had a twin sister, Erin. I talked to her once or twice, maybe. We were hardly BFFs.’

He still didn’t look convinced and I wondered what else was going on here. For some reason these two cops thought I knew more about Rick than I was telling.

‘What about others from your class? Even though you weren’t there for long, did you stay in contact with anyone else?’

‘No,’ I said. I regretted that, but it wasn’t like I’d been in a fit state to go out for coffee with friends. Not . . .
after
.
There’d been some girls I thought were actually OK; people I figured I’d have time to make friends with beyond those first weeks of getting-to-know-you. Rick’s sister, Erin, might even have been one of them. But becoming a vampire changed you right down to the bone. People became prey. That’s not a good basis for friendship.

I licked my lips. ‘How was Rick killed?’

‘I’m afraid we can’t share that information at this time. There wasn’t much evidence at the scene of the attack, and he died during emergency surgery, so we were really hoping you’d be able to give us something to go on.’

‘But why would
I
be able to do that? I keep telling you, I hardly knew the guy and haven’t even seen him for ages.’

‘Because we found this on his body.’

Detective Trent produced a small, clear plastic bag from an inside pocket. She laid it on the table and I could see a scrap of white paper inside. On the paper there was a hastily scrawled note in a rust-colored ink that, to my suddenly feverish brain, looked like it could have been dried blood.

A note that consisted of my name and address.

Well, that can’t be good, I thought.

Chapter Two

AT LEAST NOW
I knew why I was getting the attitude from Detective Smith.

Alison Trent continued to fix me with her steady gaze.

The bagged slip of paper glared at me accusingly from the center of the table. What did it mean? Why would Rick Doyle, of all people, have my name and address on him when he died? We
hadn’t
known each other well – there hadn’t been time. And where would he have gotten those details from, anyway? The university’s records department would hardly just hand them over to a fellow student.

‘Considering you hadn’t seen the victim in so many months,’ Trent said, ‘do you have any idea why he would have this in his wallet?’

I really didn’t. I could count the number of people
who
had my full address on one hand: Holly (obviously), Theo, Dad and my two sisters. That was it, apart from school. Theo didn’t know I’d given the university my change of address when I officially moved in with Holly. He wouldn’t like it, but I’d wanted to have those lines of communication open – just in case I could go back to the course. One day. When I got my bloodlust under control.
If
I got my bloodlust under control . . .

But there was nothing that would explain why a note of my home address had been found on Rick’s body after he’d been murdered.

‘Any romance between the two of you?’ That question from Smith.

I shook my head. ‘Rick’s gay.
Was
, I mean.’

Trent and Smith exchanged a look. It was Detective Trent who spoke up. ‘You’re certain of that?’

‘That he was gay?’ I shrugged, trying desperately to make sense of this. Not for the police, I didn’t care about them. But for an innocent kid who’d been murdered. ‘Sure. From what I remember, he didn’t run around announcing it but he didn’t hide it either. It just . . . was what it was. You know?’

Trent tucked a stray strand of blonde hair behind her right ear, exposing even more of the side of her neck. My gums throbbed as my fangs tried to slide out. I saw her pulse jump and quickly looked away. Vampire fangs only fully extend when we need to feed or when a vampire’s
emotions
are running high – both of which applied to me right now.

Being a vampire is about living in a constant gray area: the blurred space between human and monster. Between civilized and wild. It was like walking a tightrope between the two sides of my nature, and I wondered if I would ever learn to reconcile them.

Somebody’s phone buzzed, making me jump.

Way to look guilty, Moth
.

Smith pulled a sleek handset out of his seemingly wrinkle-resistant jacket and excused himself, taking the call in the hallway.

Out the corner of my eye, I watched Trent remove something from between the pages of her notebook. ‘This is a picture of the victim, kindly provided by his family.’

She slid the photograph of Rick Doyle toward me and I was about to take a proper look when I heard Detective Smith’s lowered voice talking from beyond the kitchen doorway. Adjusting to un-life as a vampire is hard in so many ways, but there are some benefits. I’m not going to pretend that’s not true: increased strength, speed and agility, as well as enhanced senses – such as smell and hearing. Which meant that I could eavesdrop on Smith’s phone call and hear every word he said. My natural abilities didn’t extend to the person on the other end of the phone, but that didn’t matter. What I heard
from
the detective in my hallway was more than enough to set alarm bells ringing.

‘
A . . . what?
’

There was a pause as he listened, and I fiddled with the picture of Rick to buy myself some time.

‘
You’re telling me that a wild animal tore out his throat and is, potentially, on the loose in the city?
’ There was a brief pause as he listened. Then: ‘
Exactly how much blood did he lose?
’

Holy crap! His throat was torn out by . . . a
wild animal
? Why did I think it unlikely that an
animal
was responsible for Rick’s death? What kind of predators – capable of that sort of damage, causing that much blood loss – actually existed in a city like Boston? I imagined a giant red arrow pointing over my head: vampire! I wanted to leap off the windowsill and grab the phone from Smith, find out more from whoever he was talking to, but I forced myself to stay where I was. Had a vampire done this? I felt twitchy, wishing the detectives would leave so I could think about it properly. The note on Rick’s body was bad enough, but now this . . .

It could hardly be a coincidence. But what did it have to do with
me
?

‘
Let us know when the body can be moved from MGH
.’ Smith wrapped up the call with a few technical details that I didn’t understand, but I’d gotten enough. MGH is
Massachusetts
General Hospital – or Mass Gen, as most people called it.

I thought: This is bad. This is really bad. This is
worse
than really bad. And while my mind kept up this super-intelligent monologue, I forced myself to stare at the photograph in front of me. I pretended not to notice when Detective Smith returned and told Trent he’d been speaking to the ME who had briefly attended the murder scene and then made an initial examination of ‘the victim’s’ body after his death on the operating table.

‘The victim’s’ photograph made me remember him all over again. Rick Doyle’s bright hair was like a red flag against the summer sky and he had his arms around a girl and another boy. They were all wearing graduation robes. The ridiculous mortarboard that he should have been wearing was long gone, thrown into the air and trampled in the excitement of the last day of high school – the last day of being a kid.

But he had still been a kid when he died. He must have been my age – my true age, I mean. Around nineteen. I’d stopped ageing at eighteen, thanks to my Maker. I bit the inside of my cheek and studied the picture, wondering what Rick had been doing the day he was murdered. He would have been planning for a future filled with hopes and dreams. All gone in an instant, his life snuffed out like the candle flames Theo was so fond of.

‘Yes, I remember Rick,’ I said, my voice thick with sudden emotion. ‘But I honestly can’t tell you anything. I haven’t the slightest idea why he’d have my address on him – I wish I did.’

Detective Trent glanced at Smith and nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘Thank you for your time, Marie. If you think of anything that could help us, anything at all – anyone who might have had a reason to hurt Rick, the name of someone he was friends with that we might not know about; boyfriends . . .
anything
. Please call us.’ She produced a business card from somewhere and pressed it into my cold hand.

There was no way the police would drop their interest in me or my possible link to the case. If I was one of their only leads, they would surely be keeping tabs on me. I wouldn’t dare tell Theo – anything that brought our hidden world into the light made him angry. Perhaps I could find out more without having to tell him anything? Maybe he didn’t even have to find out that Trent and Smith had paid me a visit? I was sick of playing by his rules anyway. I stared at the flimsy piece of cardboard without seeing it. All I could see was Rick Doyle’s joyful face in that photograph. All I could hear were Smith’s words during the phone call I wasn’t supposed to have heard.