Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series #2) Read Free Page B

victims you see?”
    “I don’t know,” I told her with a shake of my head.
    “Where are these bodies that you see?” she pushed.
    “I don’t know that, either,” I said.
    “What about the planes? The ones you see falling from the sky?”
    “What about them?” I asked.
    “Why are they falling from the sky? Are these catastrophes that have happened or yet to take place?”
    “I don’t know!” I insisted.
    “What causes them to crash?” she pushed harder, the gap between her questions getting less, and reminding me of being cross-examined in court.
    I felt I knew the answer to her last question, but I just couldn’t say it.
    “Well? Who is responsible for these atrocities?” she came at me again.
    All I wanted to scream was: The vampires did it! The vampires made the planes fall out of the sky. It was the vampires that brought those buildings to the ground and it was the vampires that killed all of those people! But I couldn’t say any of that to her – because I didn’t know if that were true myself.
    With my world seeming to fall apart all around me, I knew that I needed to occupy my mind. It had to be kept busy. I needed a mental challenge – some stimulus, a puzzle to solve to take my mind off what was happening to me. I needed to be back at work where I belonged – but I didn’t know when or if ever that was going to happen. So I placed a small add in the local paper, which read:
    Got a problem that needs investigating?
    I’ll solve anything!
    Email: [email protected]
    I soon realised that I should have been more specific in my advert, as the first email I received was from a guy who thought he was paying too much for his electricity and wanted me to find out why. The second was from a woman who had lost her cat and the third was from an old gentleman who…well lets just say it was more of a medical matter. The fourth was not a great deal more interesting, it was from an old woman who had misplaced her wedding ring. Mrs. Lovelace was seventy-eight-years-old and had been married for sixty of them. Her husband had died in the last six months. She looked frail and vulnerable so I agreed to help. During one long Sunday afternoon and over several cups of watery tea, I got her to work backwards in her mind exactly what she had done and where she had been on the day that she had misplaced it. Eventually she remembered taking it off and placing it on the kitchen windowsill the previous Thursday morning.
    “My fingers are thinner than they used to be,” she smiled. “I always take the ring off when I’m washing the dishes. Don’t want it to slip off and lose it down the plug-hole, you see. But I get so forgetful these days and don’t always remember to put it back on again. Frank was forever reminding me.”
    “Frank?” I asked.
    “My late husband – his memory was sharper than mine,” she said, a sadness overcoming her face as she thought of him.
    “May I take a look in the kitchen?” I asked her, placing my teacup on the table that sat between us.
    “Of course you can, my dear,” she said, struggling out of her chair.
    Taking her by the arm, I led her into the kitchen, and she pointed to the spot on the windowsill where she had last seen her wedding ring. The window was open and a breeze blew in and cooled the stuffy kitchen. I lent forward and inspected the area where she said she had left her wedding ring.
    “Mrs. Lovelace, can you remember if the window was open last Thursday?” I asked her.
    “Now let me see,” she said, and scratched her grey wispy hair with her gnarled fingers. “Yes, it would have been. I always have the window open in the warm weather.”
    “Can I take a look outside?” I asked her.
    “Outside?” she said, eyeing me with curiosity. “What ever for?”
    “Oh, I don’t know,” I smiled at her. “I’m just nosey like that.”
    “Go right ahead, my dear,” she said, and shuffled behind me to the kitchen door.
    Stepping into the small garden, I