The vampire women agreed to Vixley’s proposal. Vampires would agree to anything when their lives are at stake, and they'll even keep their word—as long as circumstances demand it. But afterwards, they always sought revenge. Bloody, cruel, and with a distinct touch of cynicism. As Sunset explained to me, however, the Special Squad had existed long before the vampires struck their deal with the duke, allowing them to establish nests in the city. Originally a division of the city watch, the Squad had quickly evolved into something more. After a series of reforms, it—along with other Units across the Empire—was absorbed into the police force, though it retained its proud traditions.

  Members of the Squad never forgot their own, even if those ties stretched back generations to descendants who no longer had any real connection to the group. And just like vampires, they knew how to exact bloody and ruthless vengeance. During such times, the rest of the police force would conveniently look the other way.

  This time was no different. Vixley explained it all away as a “misunderstanding.” After all, what else could you call a shootout in the middle of the city that left three vampire corpses and not a single suspect in custody? Everyone who survived was let go, and no charges were even considered. The deaths of the vampires were simply chalked up to the “rights of the mother.” That is, Nina acknowledged that her children hadn’t exactly been the most upstanding members of society and forgave the police for their deaths.

  It reminded me of how Lucas Lindemann had ‘forgiven’ me for the deaths of his children. But in the end, that still hadn’t turned out well.

  John and I left Sleepgarden as night began to fall over the city. Harry and Knuckles had departed earlier, but I stayed behind, wanting to talk privately with Sunset. I waited until we were alone in his car.

  There had been an opportunity earlier for John to ask Kate some uncomfortable questions. He could’ve asked how Lucas and Noah died or probed into my role in those events. But he hadn’t. Too many people I don’t trust already know that secret, and yet… I trust John.

  “You asked how Valentine and Lindemann died,” I began.

  “And now, out of the blue, you’ve decided to tell me?” Sunset smirked, turning the steering wheel as we reached a junction.

  “Valentine was killed by Bryce, and Lindemann by Evan.”

  “I already knew about Valentine. What about Lindemann? And don’t give me vague nonsense—I know his sins outweighed my yearly salary in pennies. Be specific.”

  “For his scheming. He kidnapped Finella Flower and set James and me against the Valentines.”

  “Hm, I see.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Since we’re having a heart-to-heart, one more question—why did you come to Farnell?”

  Now that was a question I hadn’t intended to answer. But once you start telling the truth, it’s hard to stop. It’s such a relief, really—not having to keep secrets, being able to speak honestly. I must’ve felt like a criminal spilling everything during interrogation.

  “I was looking for a traitor of the clan,” I admitted.

  “Did you find him?”

  “I did.”

  “And…?” Sunset ran his thumb across his throat in a slicing motion. “No, wait! I don’t want to know. Consider the topic closed. I don’t know who your traitor was, and I don’t care to find out. And as for the vampires, I definitely won’t be missing them!”

  “He was an assassin,” I said with a grin. “A hired one, working with Valentine. Just to ease your conscience a bit.”

  “That does help,” John admitted, perking up slightly. But then his mood soured as he sighed and muttered, “If only someone would deal with the Archmaker…”

  “I take it you figured out I wanted to talk to you about him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I won’t keep you long.”

  “I’m not driving you home. You can catch a cab at the station. Or we could grab a bite at Mo’s instead?”

  “Why not,” I agreed. I had no complaints about the Sparrow brothers’ culinary talents. I could cook, sure, but the food at Mo’s was better. Especially their black pudding and blood sausages, which I adored.

  John parked the car in front of the station. The cops’ favourite café was almost directly across the street. He flagged down a constable and sent him inside to let the duty officer know where to find him in case of anything.

  Lunch hours were long over, and even dinner time was nearing its end, so the café was nearly empty. John ordered lamb with garlic and a pint of lager, while I went for the sausages I’d just been thinking about, along with tea with milk and a rhubarb and almond pie.

  What should have been a few minutes of waiting stretched into half an hour. My sausages arrived almost immediately, but they took their time with the lamb. John didn’t mind; he just sipped his beer.

  “By the way!” the detective suddenly remembered. “Fogan called this morning. He heard back from his friends in New Freeland.”

  John paused dramatically.

  “Well?” I asked. “Don’t tell me our gallant gentleman never left the island?”

  "That would’ve been ideal, but no, he did. He’s got massive financial problems."

  "How can we use that?"

  "And why would a man with financial problems adopt two dependents?"

  "Guardianship, not adoption," I corrected. "He won’t get access to their assets. So, how do we use it?"

  "Well, theoretically, whether it’s adoption or guardianship, it has to be reviewed by a commission. They assess risks and rule out unsuitable candidates."

  If the commission is made up of orphanage staff, it’s a dead end. Moody checked—total solidarity. They cover each other’s arses better than the Royal Bank protects its money.

  “They’re working with the Fairburns?”

  I nodded. John took a sip of his beer, and we both fell silent for a moment, thinking.

  “But surely he’ll try to settle it in court?” John suggested. “Any case, no matter who’s handling it, will end up going through Chapman.”

  “Who doesn’t think much of us either.”

  “It’s not you he doesn’t like,” John corrected.

  “It’s me his father doesn’t like,” I said. “Got any ideas why?”

  Sunset shook his head, drained his pint, and signalled the waiter for another.

  “The day isn’t over yet,” I reminded him.

  “But my shift is,” John countered, “and this day is already irreparably ruined.”

  As often happens in rotten situations, John was wrong. The waiter had barely poured his second pint when an unfamiliar constable burst into the café.

  “Inspector, sir!”

  “What is it, Watkins?” John asked, already resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be finishing his beer in peace.

  “Special Squad called—they asked me to let you know: Baronet Kettle has been attacked.”

  “By whom?” Sunset asked, though without much enthusiasm.

  “An Archmaker, sir. They’ve requested you to come to Sleepgarden.”

  John’s expression shifted immediately. He rolled up his sleeve and checked his watch. I really should get one myself—my pocket watch make me feel like I’ve stepped out of the last century. No, focus! I already knew where this was headed. Time to finish the sausages.

  “Are you sure?” the detective asked while I hurriedly stuffed my food into my mouth. “It’s a bit early for him, still more than two hours till midnight.”

  “That’s what they said,” the constable shrugged. His job was to deliver the message, and that’s where his responsibility ended.

  “Are you done?” John asked, watching as I finished off the last sausage with impressive speed.

  “Mm-hmm,” I nodded, washing it down with tea to make swallowing easier.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Then you’re driving,” the detective said, grabbing his plate of lamb. “I’ll return this,” he told the waiter. “Put it all on my tab.”

  And so we drove off: I was behind the wheel while John ate. By the end of the drive, he’d even taken off his tie and used it as a napkin.

  Outside Kettle’s house, the scene was different this time. A new perimeter had been set up, and alongside the police vehicles were bright red fire trucks, an ambulance, and the coroner’s van. For a fleeting moment, I allowed myself to hope that maybe, just maybe, the Archmaker had been taken down. But I immediately crushed that thought—it would’ve been too much of a win.

  A young constable, completely unfamiliar, tried to stop us, but John shoved his badge in the lad’s face. The boy looked like he wanted to bolt, but the detective stopped him.

  “Where to?”

  “The back yard, sir. There’s a barn, but it’s not exactly…”

  “I know,” John waved him off.

  As soon as we walked through the house and opened the door to the back yard, we were greeted by quite the scene. In just the few hours we’d been gone, plenty had changed at Kettle’s.

  First of all, there was the body, lying under a white sheet, right on the path leading to the barn. A bloodstain had spread across the sheet in the chest area.

  The damage extended further—a shattered window in the house, a burned-down apple tree, shrubs cut down to the roots, and the barn itself with charred beams instead of a roof and massive, head-sized holes burned through the walls. It was as if this wasn’t a clash between Kettle and the Archmaker, but rather a full-scale dispute between Flower and Harry. Though in that case, I’d be surprised if the barn had survived at all.

  John walked straight over to the body and pulled back the sheet. It was the butler. Guilt pricked at me instantly for that punch to his face earlier. I hadn’t even had the chance to apologise, though what could I have said? Sorry, I’ve got serious issues, and any hypnosis knocks me flat?

  The old man’s chest had several closely grouped bullet wounds.

  “John!” Commander Vixley of the Special Squad called out to the detective.

  He was standing near the barn wall, with a soot-streaked but alive Kettle seated in front of him. A medic was busy bandaging the baronet’s arm, while Simon sat there silently, staring at the butler’s body with tears streaming down his face. He didn’t make a sound.

  We walked over, waiting until the medic finished wrapping Kettle’s arm and stepped away. The baronet reeked of alcohol and burnt hair. His hairstyle had a noticeable gap where it had been singed, and his shirt bore clear traces of soot and blood.

  “He’s not himself,” Bertram said. “Could be shock, could be the booze. One word every half hour at most.”

  “The Archmaker?” John asked.

  Vixley nodded.

  I glanced between the corpse and Kettle. Who was the old man to him? I remembered how he’d forced Kettle to eat oatmeal when he was hungover, and Kettle had listened. Ordinary servants don’t get to order their masters around like that. And people don’t cry over mere staff members—not unless you’re a weepy lady, and Kettle didn’t strike me as that type.

  “My condolences,” I said before John could open his mouth.

  Kettle stirred, as if surprised to hear a dog start speaking in human tongue, and looked up at me.

  “You don’t even like me,” he muttered, shaking his head.

  “To hell with that,” I replied deliberately roughly, adding a sharper edge to my tone. “Whatever you might think of me, I’ve lost people close to me too… My condolences,” I said again, this time much softer.

  Simon met my gaze, clearly torn between snapping at me and thanking me. In the end, he just nodded and dropped his head.

  “You’re not going to try and get revenge?” I asked.

  Kettle lifted his head again.

  “How do you take revenge on the dead?”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, pointing at the corpse. “Are you saying he was the Archmaker?”

  “No, you idiot! That’s Gregor!”

  What did my grandfather have to do with this?

  “Your half-brother?” Sunset asked.

  Right! The guy’s name was the same as my grandfather’s. Either Simon had drunk too much, or his brother had risen from the dead. Which wasn’t impossible, considering the kinds of things that visit me. Speaking of which—it’s night now.

  I reached for my anti-ghost ring, just in case.

  “You saw a ghost?”

  “You could put it that way,” Kettle chuckled drunkenly.

  “Not a trace of ether in the air,” Bertram commented. “Fire, ice, death. And gunpowder! .45 calibre casings everywhere. Most likely a Thompson. Anyone ever see a ghost firing a submachine gun?” he joked, and I suddenly remembered Simon grabbing Knuckles by the arms while holding an automatic weapon.

  “I have,” I said. “But that’s clearly not the case here. Sir Bertram, would you kindly stand him up and hold him steady?”

  With a sharp tug, Vixley hauled Kettle to his feet while I pulled a detox potion from my satchel. Bertram raised an eyebrow but grabbed Kettle firmly by the nose and jaw.

  The baronet retaliated with a weak burst of lightning. Vixley grimaced, then slapped him hard enough—with the strength of a shifter—to disorient him just long enough for me to pour the potion’s contents down his throat.

  “Now we’d best step back,” I warned.

  They let go of Kettle, and he slid down the wall, cursing under his breath. For a few minutes, we watched as he started to shake, then politely turned away when the retching began. We only returned once the sounds of vomiting and garbled swearing gave way to coherent speech.

  “You’re a bloody bastard, Kinkaid!” were the baronet’s first clear words.

  “Says the pot to the kettle,” I retorted. “Instead of helping us catch the bastard who killed someone close to you, you went and got drunk out of your mind.”

  “I got drunk earlier,” Kettle shot back.

  “So who was it?” John asked.

  “I already told you—it was Gregor bloody Chapman.”

  “Yes, yes, a ghost…” Vixley added sceptically.

  “In the flesh.” Kettle turned to glare at me. “Damn it, Kinkaid, how much longer is this going to keep shaking me up?”

  “Another two hours, but you’ll feel better in a couple of minutes. Now focus.”

  “He showed up right after you left. At first, I thought it was a hallucination—that I’d drunk myself silly—but Carver saw him too.”

  Kettle paused to suppress another wave of nausea, but John, like a hound picking up a scent again, prodded him along.

  “Go on.”

  “He offered me a drink.”

  “What do you mean?” We were confused.

  “Am I speaking Martian?” Kettle snapped. “He pulled a bottle of whisky out of his rucksack and offered me a drink.”

  “A big, black one?” I asked.

  “No, just regular whisky.”

  “I meant the rucksack!”

  “No, just a normal camping bag.”

  “And how was he dressed?”

  “Same as usual—grey hat, jacket, trousers, brown coat, old shoes. Nothing remarkable. If you passed him in a crowd, you wouldn’t give him a second look… except maybe for the limp in his left leg.”

  “Then why are you so sure he’s the Archmaker?”

  “Because he bloody well told me so! Maybe if you stop interrupting, I can actually explain what happened?”

  “We’re all ears, sir!” Sunset interjected before I could respond.

  “He came in and said, ‘Long time no see, brother. Fancy a drink?’ By that point, I’d already started drinking, so I didn’t see the point in refusing. The world was going to hell anyway—I figured Judgment Day was just around the corner, and it was too late to play the righteous man. So we drank… Sat down…” Kettle gestured toward the shattered window. “Three shots back to back. He was laughing…”

  The baronet’s gaze landed on the body under the sheet again, and his eyes filled with angry tears.

  “That bastard,” he hissed. “He said it was time for a family reunion…” Kettle’s voice grew hoarse and raspy, likely a side effect of my potion. It dried the throat worse than whisky ever could. “Give me a drink,” he croaked.

  Vixley signalled to a constable loitering near the house.

  “Water!” he barked.

  A minute later, Kettle took a few gulps and cleared his throat before continuing.

  “I was completely plastered—more than ever before—but my mind stayed sharp, like my body and brain had split in two.”

  “The bottle—still in the house?” John asked.

  “Think it might’ve been poisoned?” Kettle asked in return. “Maybe. Yeah, it’s in the house.”

  “You drank without gloves?”

  “What kind of question is that? Of course I—oh… Gregor was wearing gloves.”

  “Then we can’t count on fingerprints,” Sunset sighed. “Still…” He called the constable over and gave him instructions to collect specific evidence. “Carry on.”

  “I asked him what he’d been doing all this time since his death. He said he’d been searching for power... and he found it. Then he started talking about how he’d always envied my gift, saying I never deserved it. Somehow, the conversation shifted to how I stole his childhood, his father, and destroyed his mother. Me! As if I was the one who sent her to the grave!” Kettle lifted his head and looked at me. “You may not like me, but him… He hates me. He said he’d wanted to end it back then, in the club, but he wasn’t ready yet. So, instead, he took it out on the vampire bitch. He said he absorbed her power easily, though not without consequences—whatever that means.”

  “Vampirism or a transformation akin to it,” I explained.

  “He didn’t have fangs, and his eyes looked normal. Still, his strength and speed were beyond anything human.” Kettle paused. “When Gregor started raising his voice, Carver asked him to leave the house.”

  I glanced at the shattered window and the body on the path, already piecing together what must have happened next. And, as it turned out, I was right. Gregor—the Archmaker—had thrown the old butler through the window. But Carver wasn’t exactly helpless. After today’s earlier incidents, he’d wisely armed himself with a rod from his master’s collection. The old man hadn’t hesitated to use it, and Gregor responded with a burst of fire from his submachine gun. He’d kept the Thompson hidden under his coat and used a flat magazine to keep it concealed. Seemed he’d taken a liking to the same machine Knuckles had used earlier.

  “So the old man caused all this?” I asked, pointing at the scorched barn.

  “No,” Bertram replied. “That was the police unit the old man called. The officers heard the window shatter just as they were arriving. The call had come in much earlier—he must have sensed trouble coming and called ahead.”

  “But it didn’t save him…” Kettle said bitterly.

  “It saved you,” Bertram pointed out.

  “And who cares?” Simon laughed darkly.

  “Make it matter!” I snapped. “Otherwise, his death really will be meaningless.”

  “And what can I do? Announce that my ‘dear brother’ is the Archmaker? My father and granddad would have me locked in an asylum faster than I could blink. Their precious boy, the son they’ve mourned for years, couldn’t possibly be a bad person!”

  “They won’t believe you,” John agreed.

  “Do we believe him?” Vixley interjected. “Alcoholics are highly susceptible to illusions and suggestion.”

  “The grandfather…” I said, turning to John. “Remember how aggressively he reacted to me?”

  “What about it?” John frowned, not following.

  “It was the day after the Archmaker tried to kill me.”