“Unfortunately, no,” he said, “though that would be handy. They often use the term spirit when describing a pooka because, I believe, no one is quite sure what the pooka’s natural state is. It changes depending on who or what it’s trying to devil. The odd thing is that pookas normally cause trouble. They don’t kill. Some stories even cast them as agents of good. The fact that you, presumably, have one in the human realm, killing in the guise of a vampire, is really quite outside the bounds of what they normally do.”
“Is there a special significance to killing in the style of a vampire?” Clive asked.
“Well, although he’s killing now, his raison d’etre, as it were, is to cause mischief, chaos, problems. There were, I believe, quite a few vampire deaths in San Francisco a month or so ago?—”
“How do you know that?” Clive asked.
“I have my ear to the ground, don’t I?” he responded. “I heard rumblings, was interested, and began to research. Now, from what I’ve heard, the human authorities never found any of the dead. I was told that if bodies were left behind, they were disposed of before they could be discovered. This could be the pooka deciding that vampire victims should be found, so he’ll make them himself.”
“But that makes no sense,” I interjected. “That was vampires warring with other vampires. They weren’t killing innocents.”
“We did have some in town feeding off humans,” Clive said so quietly, I had trouble hearing him. “We’d need to ask Russell if any were killed.”
“Russell?” Bracken asked.
Clive blinked, surprised he’d been overheard by a wicche.
“Yes. He’s the Mast?—”
Clive shook his head at me. Oops.
“Um, he’s a vampire,” I lamely finished.
There was more scribbling. Even I heard it that time.
“The Master of the City is a vampire named Russell,” Bracken mumbled to himself.
I cringed and mouthed Sorry to Clive.
“I wonder if he’d allow me to interview him?” Bracken continued to mutter and scribble. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?” he said in a more normal voice. “Is he choosing to kill in that style because it is the vampires who lead the city? It’s rather embarrassing, isn’t it? The vampires are in charge and yet there’s nothing they can do about one of their own who is a rogue. That’s just the sort of chaos a pooka would feed on: vampires running around, trying to find what isn’t there.”
“Benvair said?—”
“Benvair,” he interrupted me. “Benvair. How do I know that name?” He was mumbling to himself again. “Dragons!” he shouted, clearly just remembering. “She’s the head of the Drake clan. My, you do know some very important people, don’t you? Sorry. Please continue.”
One side of Clive’s mouth kicked up. My great-uncle was an interesting one.
“Benvair said when she breathed fire on it in its cat form, it was charred black but fluid. She thought it disappeared, but I’m thinking it shifted into something smaller and went between the wooden slats of the pier.”
There was the sound of tapping. Dave mimed tapping a pen on paper. I nodded. Right. That was probably it.
“I think you’re right, my dear. I’ve never heard of pookas having invisibility gifts.”
We were all quiet, lost in our own thoughts, and then I asked, “Why the wharf? The vampire nocturne—” Clive shook his head again. “I mean, their nocturne is nowhere near the wharf. Why is he hunting there? I mean, it’s a tourist spot, but there are lots of tourist spots in this city.”
“You said the nightclub was fae-owned, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Yes, but Nerissa, the club owner, is trying to stop him. He’s bad for business.”
“Tell me about the club, please?”
I did. I told him everything I knew, including that I’d fought a powerful vamp in there a few months ago. I wondered if Bracken had a wicchey gift for drawing out information. When he asked me a question, all I wanted to do was answer him in as much detail as I could. It was weird.
“Hmm. Sometimes—though they are loathe to admit it—when a large group of the fae are all together, they can inadvertently create a doorway into Faerie.”
I thought about that mirror in the Wicche Glass Tavern, the fae bar in Colma that Bracken’s sister, my great-aunt Martha had owned. It had a doorway into Faerie, one I’d used.
“If the pooka isn’t connected to anyone at the club,” he continued, “it’s possible he just happened upon the doorway and is using it to create a little chaos.”
