Killer Moon (Psychic For Hire 2)

And I will. But first I have an errand to run.

I scan my Oyster card at the ticket barriers in the tube station and take an escalator down to the Jubilee line platform. I need to make a quick stop at my place to pick up some supplies. God I hate travel. It’s the most tedious part of my day. Well, apart from all the reading I’ve been forced to partake of lately. If only I had a car. But nobody in London does cars. Especially not on my shitty wages.

Not that I have time to do anything fun with a car. I’ve been keeping my head down. It’s been all work and no play, and it’s made me a dull girl. I am done with being dull. Payday is coming. No more work. No more being cranky. I’ll be free as an eagle.

Twenty five minutes later I am nearly at my pad. I emerge from the underground to find the roads packed with a traffic jam, and it isn’t even the evening rush-hour yet. Another one to add on my London-sucks list.

Despite the urgency of my task, I make a stop at a kebab shop. I buy myself a juicy takeaway donner kebab in a naan bread, with plenty of hot sauce and lashings of mayonnaise. I haven’t had lunch, and I can’t be killing people on an empty stomach.

I walk down the street munching my kebab.

“Oh you hot meaty goodness,” I sweet talk it. “You juicy hunka flesh. I have missed you.”

Some guy walking by gives me an odd look. I snap my jaws at him, and he swiftly hurries on. Probably thinks I’m a werewolf. Aha. At least I have people’s terror of the Wolf-Claw Killer to make life interesting.

I’ve finished the kebab by the time I reach my apartment. I let myself in. My first stop is my wardrobe. I’m hyper paranoid about CCTV these days. London is full of it. It’s the most spied-on city in the world. More than fifty thousand of those cameras are run by the police says the wisdom of the internet, not to mention the ones belonging to businesses and private residents.

I can’t afford for any of them to catch my face. Not with what I am about to do next. Gotta to be careful. Life is long, and I plan on living the heck out of it.

All of this skulking around would be tedious if it wasn’t for the dullness of my current existence

. I change into an over-sized black hooded jumper and dark jeans. I put a pair of over-sized sunglasses on my face. I head out into the hallway of my building and take the stairs all the way down to the basement. It’s where the cleaner keeps a broom cupboard full of supplies.

I pick the lock and enter. There is no lightbulb, but that makes it all the better. It makes this a handy place to store the shit I can’t risk keeping in my apartment.

I go to the rack of shelves at the back of the cupboard and reach up to the top for the bag of stuff that I had left there. I have to go out into the hallway to catch some light so that I can rifle through it. I select a black wig. It’s not exactly like real hair, but it’s enough to fool any CCTV cameras. I grab a couple of other things too.

I stop by the cleaner’s bathroom to put the wig carefully onto my head, covering up all of my own hair. I turn from side to side to make sure it looks decent enough. I put my hood up, making sure to let all of the long black hair spill out of it around my face. A couple of my neighbors have long black hair. That’s an added bonus. Anyone who decides to look at any CCTV footage will think I am them. They might be able to guess that it’s me if that is what they wanted to see, but they would never actually be able to prove it.

Too bad there’s no back entrance to my house that I can slip out of. I debate whether there’s a need for me to leave by one of the top windows that isn’t covered by someone’s CCTV camera. But that would involve a bunch of acrobatics, and my job hasn’t been the best for honing my body to peak physical perfection. I don’t want to injure my sweet self.

I slouch as I leave the house, taking care to ensure my body language doesn’t look like me. I walk around the block and through a park and down some other streets before even thinking of making my way to my destination. Finally I am banging on the door of the house that India lives in. I press every single buzzer too, except the top one belonging to the owner.

Someone answers the intercom and a rather meek female voice says, “Hello, can I help you?”

“Pizza delivery for number ten,” I say. “The guy’s not answering. Can you let me in please?”

She buzzes me in without asking any questions.

The inside of the house is a shit hole. Cheap brown carpet. Interior doors with numbers on them because every room has been turned into an apartment. A staircase leading up all the way to the top. I bounce up the stairs two at a time. If the lazy ass landlord isn’t in then I am going to be pissed. But a girl’s got to try.

There is only one door on the top floor. India’s landlord has a pad up here all to himself. The whole top floor is his own personal apartment, unlike his tenants who are all crammed into one room each.

I knock on his door politely, calling, “Pizza delivery.”

He doesn’t take long to come. I hear him stomping along on the other side of the door before it opens. He is scowling already. “I didn’t order no pizza,” he says angrily.

I jab my stun gun under his jaw and fry him as I step in and shut the door behind me. He drops to the floor with a satisfying thunk. The tenants probably feel it shaking their ceiling below. I kick him in the crotch before stepping over him. If the bastard has been the naughty boy I think he has, aching balls are soon going to be the least of his worries.

I quietly walk into every room of his apartment, making sure nobody else is in here. Luckily the apartment is empty. Lucky for them, not for me.

I put my stun gun back into my bag. I’d had to pay a premium for it given it is illegal, but in the absence of getting my hands on Agency weaponry it is the next best thing. Skeezy electronics stores where you can get anything definitely belong on my London-rocks list.

I go back into the hallway where the landlord is laying, and drag him by his scuzzy brown hair for a couple of inches. But the joy of dragging him by his hair turns out to not be worth it. The guy’s a lump. I end up having to yank him by his arms, not giving a toss about the fact that he’ll probably wake up in severe pain. Things are about to get worse for him.

Once I’ve dragged him into his kitchen, I tape up his arms and legs and play slap-a-face until he wakes up. He finds me sitting on his chest, my face inches from his. He can feel me breathing, but he can’t see me given the tape over his eyes. Oh so scary is the darkness. I can almost smell his fear. I like it.

“Huh whut?” he says blearily, through the tape I have stuck on his mouth.