The Darkest Kiss (Riley Jenson Guardian 6)

"It keeps the day from getting boring," I said lightly, and tossed the file back onto the desk. "Some of the Trollops are going to be at a fancy fund-raising shindig tonight. I'm going to head there and see what I can sniff out."

"You want company?"

"At five hundred dollars a ticket, she can go alone," Jack said, as he came into the room. His bald head positively gleamed under the light of the fluorescents. It looked for all the world like he'd been polishing it. "Besides, you're going to help to round up the other Trollops."

"I get all the fun jobs," Kade muttered.

"Dia gave me a list of their names," I said helpfully, and swallowed my smile as he gave me a dark look. I glanced at Jack and added, "And she assures me the fund-raiser is one of the cheaper ones, boss."

"Dia runs a multimillion-dollar empire. We scratch by on government funds. How's the shoulder?"

"Survivable."

"Good." He handed me a folder. "The report on Vinny Castillo. Thought you might like to see it."

I didn't, because I really wanted to have as little to do with her as possible. But that wasn't an option in my job - I dealt with vampires on a daily basis, and I had a feeling Vinny was going to feature in my life for a while yet.

And God, how I hated those little "feelings" of mine. Especially when they refused to provide any further information.

"We keeping an eye on her?"

"Yep. She's empire-building, no doubt about it." He poured himself a coffee and took a sip. Unlike Kade or me, he made no face. Maybe he preferred the nasty-tasting stuff. "Watch yourself around her. She has a taste for women, and I'm not entirely sure your shields will work against her sort of magnetism."

If our first meeting was anything to go by, he could be right. "Did you find any information on invisible vampires?"

"Not yet, but it's a big database, and unfortunately, not all the early stuff has been transcribed to computer."

"What about the police report on the BDSM murder?"

"I went one better. I sent a forensic crew over to examine the body. The slashes on his body matched those Ivan Lang received before his death."

"Did they say what type of weapon was involved?"

"Something sharp, but not a knife. They didn't think it was animal claws, either."

"Nothing else?"

"Not yet." He glanced at Kade. "What's the status on the murders?"

As Kade updated him, I walked over to my desk and sat down. After the eye scan and signing in, I checked the results of the Aron Young search. Two were still listed as missing, which was interesting. The third one was married, had three kids, and had been working steadily as a chef for the last thirty years. Somehow, I doubted he was our guy, but I flagged his file anyway. Someone could go out and talk to him, just in case I was wrong. After all, it wouldn't be the first time.

I tapped my fingers on the desk for a moment, then pulled up the birth certificates for the two others.

One Aron Young was in his seventies and still listed as human, which meant he probably wasn't our man. The Young I'd chased certainly hadn't looked that old, though vampires did tend to retain whatever age it was when they'd undertaken the ceremony. Both Quinn and Jack had obviously been fairly old - for their times - when they'd undertaken it.

The other Young was in his forties, which put him in the right age bracket. Given he was listed as missing, I did a search instead on his parents.

His father, Jonathon Young, had died a month ago. According to the death certificate, the cause was a heart attack, so nothing obviously sinister there. Though why I was expecting something sinister I couldn't actually say.

His mother was still alive, however, and living in Yuroke, a community of small farms on the northern edges of Melbourne. I glanced at my watch and decided there was plenty of time to get out there and back before I had to get ready for the function tonight. I wrote down her address, then signed out of the computer and stood up.>She grinned. "No one said the future was easy to understand."

"And you make a living out of this mumbo jumbo?"

"A very good living," she said solemnly, then chuckled. "I'm just glad most of my clients aren't as skeptical as you."

"I'm not skeptical of your talent - just what it's saying about my future." I took a sip of coffee, and licked away the froth from my lips. "Besides Alana, was there any other Trollop who might be on Cherry's hit list?"

Dia frowned. "For all Cherry's faults, she doesn't seem like the murdering kind."