Nine Shillings

Broken Threads

London - 1842

Goodington's house was empty.

According to the papers Mrs Goodington and the children had retreated to their house in the country in their time of grief. I couldn't blame them; no doubt people had come to gawp at the staircase and ask ghoulish questions. I wondered if that was a dubious description having met an actual ghoul.

I squatted in the entrance hall near the front door and frowned at the carpet. The glow of the streetlights through the windows was enough to see the intricate swirling pattern. I had no idea what I was looking for but it felt... odd.

'You're not listening.' Josef stopped beside me.

'You were worrying that you'd ruined things with Bran and I was listening to every word.' I smiled at the carpet. 'I always am.'

He sighed.

'You asked the woman with the magically enhanced memory if she knew what you said.' I slapped his thigh lightly with the back of my hand. 'You walked into it.'

His jaw flexed.

I straightened. 'Seven hundred years you've been together, Josef. You made a mistake, not a disaster.' I touched the back of his hand and his power warmed me, he curled his fingers around mine and squeezed, jaw tight.

He dropped my hand and moved away. 'So, this is where the girl died.' He tugged his trousers and crouched at the bottom of the stairs with his cane across his knees. 'Poor girl.'

I was tempted to apologise for assuming he was a dick when I first met him. Only tempted. He could be overprotective, secretive, and domineering... I considered that thought.

We were both dicks.

He looked over his shoulder at me. 'What can you smell?'

'Hm?'

The house groaned as if it was in mourning, I hoped it wasn't mourning its master. I glanced towards the ceiling although my senses told me there was no one else in the house. Perhaps, it was chiding me for my lack of attention.

Josef cleared his throat, bringing me back to the moment. 'Consider it a challenge.' He gestured for me to join him. 'Tell me what you smell.'

I stayed where I was and sniffed. Before I became a vampire living in London was like being near a sewer, now I was in it. 'People and shit.'

He smiled. 'More specific.'

I inhaled deeply. 'Perfumes. Tobacco. Beeswax. Dust.' I paused. 'Older scents...' I knelt beside him. 'Sweat, blood, fright.' It lingered as if the carpet didn't want to let it go, as if it wanted me to find it.

Josef shifted, the floorboards creaked.

'There's magic, I think,' I murmured and bent closer to the carpet. 'It smells wrong... metallic, not like cinnamon. Bitter.' It made my skin prickle like pins.

Josef put his hand on my shoulder and drew me away from the carpet. 'That's magic of rage. What can you smell beneath it? Who cast it?'

I drew the scents in and held them. There were people; human people, their scent soaked into the house itself. One of the first things Josef had taught me was every supernatural smelt distinct from humans, magic seeped in all the way to their bones.

'I only smell humans,' I said.

'So do I.' he shifted to his knees and lay down his cane. 'I thought, perhaps, they'd cast an illusion to hide their scent if someone came looking. But...' He looked at me and shifted his shoulders in the slightest of shrugs.

Illusions didn't work on me, it cost me the ability to make any myself, a small price.

'Maybe I haven't had enough practice to pick it out.' I sat down on the bottom step.

He made a vague sound of acknowledgement, staring at the space between my feet, deep in thought.

I concentrated and the threads of energy appeared, running through everything in shades of purple, from reddish to bluish and everything between. Josef's bright light made me shy away, it throbbed like a heartbeat and cast no shadows.

There were breaks in the room's weave, loose threads dangled, shifting in an absent breeze, it reminded me of footprints in the snow slowly filling with fresh fall. The remains of the prints began at the front door and lingered at the bottom then stepped over Sarah and left. I gritted my teeth. They couldn't go around, they had to step over, as if it wasn't bad enough to kill her.

I glanced behind me at the tears on each step. I stood and dusted myself off, hopefully not too fast.

'I don't know what did this,' Josef said.

Hearing a two millennia old vampire say 'I don't know what did this' was like hearing a train driver say, 'Ooops.'