‘Oh, wonderful dear, thank you.’ She turned to admire the surrounding trees. ‘Have you noticed we have a whole murder of crows living nearby?’
Robbie’s crows.
‘Um, I guess they like it here,’ I said lamely.
‘It’s an awfully small tree for them all to sit in. There must be nearly a hundred crammed in that small tree at times.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve been feeding them nuts. They do seem to enjoy it.’
‘Oh! Well, no wonder they stick around then.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, and they bring me the loveliest little gifts. Several bottle tops.’
‘Right.’ I ran my eyes pointedly over her outfit and changed the subject. ‘You look lovely. Are you doing anything nice?’
‘I’m going to feed the ducks,’ she said, holding her purse aloft, which, presumably, contained bird seed. ‘I wouldn’t want the ducks to think the crows have all of my love.’
Stifling a smile, I commented instead, ‘You’re a bit dressed up for the ducks.’
‘It’s more for Mr Jones than the ducks.’ She winked. ‘He’s a fine specimen of a man, even at seventy. It’s our third date, and you know what that means.’
I found myself grinning. ‘Please don’t shag by the ducks.’
She let out a surprisingly girlish giggle and didn’t promise anything. She gave me a jaunty wave and set off with the vigour of a woman ten years younger.
I walked up the stairs to my flat, opened the door, and gaped a bit to see Amber and Bastion already in situ.
‘I have locks,’ I protested. ‘Andwards.’
The deadly griffin assassin sent me an amused look. ‘Do you think either of those could keep me out?’
I huffed. ‘Apparently not.’
Amber’s gaze slid back to me, sharp and assessing. ‘What’s the emergency?’
‘I was attacked last night.’
‘You think it’s the Domini?’ Amber asked.
I blinked. It hadn’t crossed my mind for even a minute that the attack could have stemmed from them.
‘I … no, I hadn’t thought that. It was a vampyr.’ I tapped my lip in thought. ‘Though he did say he had orders to kill me. To be honest, I was considering that the orders might have come from the Connection.’
She didn’t so much as balk at the idea that our lawmaker, police and my actual fuckingemployermight be gunning for me. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Jude Jingo killed Ash Aspen. He’s in a new body. I’ve been told to close the case. But … the timing is off. I was told to close the case this afternoon, and officially, I have done so. Complying with my orders. The attack was last night, before I was given any orders to close the case.’
‘Officiallyyou have done so?’ Bastion queried. Trust the assassin not to miss a trick.
‘Unofficially, I’m still digging. That’s one of the reasons you’re here. The other potential cause of the vampyr attack might be that Jingo ordered it. So I need your help. I need you to scry my attacker from my mind. Then I can dig into his identity.’
‘True-dead?’ Bastion asked evenly.
‘Indeed.’
He nodded approvingly.
‘I can scry the vampyr’s image from your mind,’ Amber said, ‘but remember that this is going to hurt like a sonofabitch, and no amount of headache potions will help. Scry headaches are immune to magical healing.’
‘Yeah, I know. I’m officially signed off for the next forty-eight, so I guess it doesn’t matter if I spend a couple of hours whimpering.’
