Copycat Killer (Psychic For Hire 1)

“They’re like police who investigate crimes that affect the otherkind community?” I clarify.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” she says. She is beginning to look suspiciously at me. “Why don’t you go and enquire at the local police station?”

“Isn’t there a reference section here about otherkind?”

“Not at this library,” she says disapprovingly.

“Maybe I can search for it on the Internet?”

Sniffing, she directs me to a bank of computers.

Fifteen minutes of google searching later I still have not found what I am looking for. I am surprised. I had not thought it would be so difficult. No amount of searching on Constantine Storm tells me anything about his work. Same for Remi and Leo. In fact, there is no sign of Remi on the internet at all. Leo, it turns out, has led a rather interesting life, but I merely scan it, not finding what I am looking for.

I had been fired from the Agency before my scheduled induction, which means I never even got to go into the office. I have no idea where it is. And it seems that you cannot just go on the Internet and look up the phone number for the Agency of Otherkind Investigations. I wanted to leave an anonymous tip, but the only tip line is one for local human police. I have a feeling they would filter out my call rather than pass it on to the Agency.

I have to look through numerous forums and chat threads before finally I find a reference to a place in Westminster. I use a map website to find a photo. It is a grand enormous building, the sort that you would get arrested for even trying to walk into without permission.

I scribble the address down in my notebook. No phone number damn it. It looks like an anonymous tip is going to be out of the question. And after my last experience with the Agency, I doubt they will take my word about my dream.

I sigh. I need more believable information. I close my eyes, walking my way through the dream. I know the door number of the house was 23. That part was easy. I saw it when the killer knocked on the door. But where was it?

I had been so sure from the look of the houses in the street that it had been in London somewhere. A rich neighborhood, with houses far larger than where I lived. It had been leafy and green. There had been a front garden. Like in a suburb.

Suddenly a road sign flashes in my mind. The killer had seen it on the way to the house. Excited, I type it into the map. My heart leaps when the address comes up. It is in St John’s Wood, London.

A quickening of my heart beat tells me that this has to be the right place, even before the street view photo confirms it. The house in the photograph is the one I saw in my dreams. And St John’s Wood is a walkable distance from my apartment.

Feeling excited I stare at the house in the photo. Right now I have to get home and get ready for a shift at the restaurant. But I am free during the daytime tomorrow. I can walk by in the morning. The occupants might be home having a lazy Sunday breakfast. What harm would it do to knock on the door? And if I chicken out, I can just leave a note. I can actually save them!

You can be a hero, says the little voice snidely. If they believe you.

Chapter 5

ST JOHN’S WOOD

It is early Sunday morning, not yet dawn, when a car pulls up outside a large house in St John’s Wood, North West London. The driver’s side window rolls down and the driver, Jared Everett, Hollywood hunk, presses a button on his key fob impatiently, and waits for the driveway gate to slide open.

“Bloody England,” he mutters under his breath.

Jared is American, and finds everything in England too slow for his liking. He has been stuck here for eight years now, filming a series of vampire-hunter movies set in London that have made him famous. He had been grateful for it then, but now he is convinced he should never have taken the part.

Jared is a California boy, and while he loves the fame London has brought him, he does not consider life away from the sunshine and the waves to be much worth living. These days the gold of his skin and the fair streaks in his tussled hair are the product of a salon rather than a gift from the sun.

A demon hunter TV show – with stakes and axes and all – is not what Jared wants to be doing with his life, especially after his recent trip to Ireland where one of his director buddies is filming an epic historical saga. The experience has left Jared’s own work feeling trite. Aged thirty-five, he has begun to feel like life is running away from him. He wants to be the lead in a movie. Something more mature, more solemn. Damn it — more Oscar worthy!

Jared is also not happy about having had to drive to North London this morning. Greenery and a garden be damned. He misses his modern apartment in Chelsea, but Lynesse had insisted on St John’s Wood.

The only thing that had made London bearable had been meeting Lynesse. Jared had met succubae before of course. You couldn’t avoid them in Hollywood, but he’d never actually tried one before Lynesse. And once he had had her, he’d been hooked.

Five weeks ago he had put a big fat diamond on Lynesse’s finger and flaunted her in front of the world’s media. That had been a good time.

The gate finally crawls open and Jared drives his cherry-red Maserati up the driveway and parks up near the front doors to the house. He does not notice that none of the lights within are switched on. It is Kris Caprio, Jared’s best friend and long-suffering assistant, who says, “Lynesse must be out.”

“Nah,” says Jared, confident that Lynesse must be in.

His angel Lynesse, with her gleaming mahogany hair and her crystal blue eyes and her youthful vigor. Lynesse is a night owl. She probably hasn’t even gone to bed yet. She knew exactly when he would be getting back from Ireland, and despite the fight they’d had before he had left over a week ago, he is confident that she will be waiting for him, all dressed up in sexy lingerie on his bed. Heck, she might even be wearing nothing.

The thought excites Jared. Lynesse liked to do that sometimes. Flaunt herself until he begged before she let him near her. Suddenly Jared can’t wait to see her.