An ant was crawling up the frame of the open kitchen window. The corpse smell of the dead snake had dissipated long ago but part of Fros could still smell it and she kept the window open most of the time.
She focused her eyes on the ant and concentrated. The heat flowed. The ant dropped to the floor. Fros grinned. It was getting easier to direct the flow of heat where she wanted it after two hours of exercise on random objects. The ant was the first live one. Before it, Fros had tried to kill a pan, the bottle of liquid soap by the sink and a fork.
She had nothing to do until two in the afternoon when Peter had said their new business cards would be ready. Fros now lived in a world featuring business cards and refused to dwell on it. He’d gone out early in the morning to meet Tina for the latest on the rogue vampire and had said he may have to leave town for a while.
“She said there were reports of bitten children in Wales. I want to go and check it out.”
“And I can’t come because Tina has a crush on you and she hates my guts.”
Peter had stared at her then, gaping.
“Tina? No way. She’s a friend. But yes, she did say I should come alone. We don’t feel comfortable discussing community business with outsiders, sorry. Besides, her smell makes you sick.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Fros said. “But she does have a crush on you. I smelled it on her.” She could smell nothing beyond the stink of a walking corpse when it came to vampires but Peter’s discomfort was too amusing to stop.
He cocked an eyebrow.
“Really? I’d have thought the vampire smell was too strong for anything else to get through.”
Sadly, he was also smart.
“All right, I lied. It is too strong.”
Peter grinned.
“So, I go to Wales and you go pick up the cards. Okay?”
“Okay. It’s not like we can start work in the office right now,” Fros had said and had yawned. “I’ll pick up the cards.”
The cards were supposed to be ready by two and it was eleven-thirty now. Since the morning, Fros had changed the bed linen, done the laundry, and arranged the contents of her cupboards. She mulled over arranging her portfolio as well but found the thought provoked only boredom. She was done with the food photography. If she never took another picture of a tart, she’d be a happy woman. Basilisk. Monster.
A nightmare had woken her up in the middle of the night. Luckily, it hadn’t woken up Peter who slept so deeply he wasn’t breathing but it had scared the daylights out of Fros. Scared her and depressed her.
She dreamed she was eighteen again and her mother had gone missing. Fros had called the police and they were questioning her about her mother. The woman doing the questioning had frosty blue eyes and thin lips. In reality, Fros had been interviewed by a young male officer who had been blunt enough to tell her they may never find her mother alive. That was in the very early 90s, police weren’t always polite. In the dream, the woman asked her a series of odd questions.
“When was the last time you smelled your mother?”
“Did she smell like she had plans to leave?”
“Did you argue before she disappeared? For example, about who’s the queen of snakes?”
“Did you know she could fly?”
“Did anyone else know you and your mother were monsters?”
Fros had woken up gasping and sobbing after that, her heart racing like one of the cars Peter sold, her whole body trembling. In the morning, she’d attributed the nightmare to the shock of finding a dead body in their brand new office. It couldn’t be a coincidence, that much was clear. But who had done it and why was going to take a lot of work to discover. Fros put out her cigarette, closed the window and went upstairs to change. She could go out for a walk. It had been ages since she’d gone for a long, lazy walk in the city.
Her feet hurt and she felt old by the time she reached the printers. In the past, she could walk for hours and she had only recently walked for hours, after she left that dead drug dealer behind Belushis. She had been fine then. Now, the couple of hours of walking had tired her. It could be the nightmare. Nightmares were exhausting.
“Fros?”
She spun around at the familiar voice.
“Rory? What are you doing here?”
Rory’s grin widened lighting up his narrow face.
“Picking up invitations. My father and my stepmum are celebrating their fifth anniversary on Saturday. They wanted paper invitations. Can you believe it?”
Fros laughed obligingly.
“What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re picking wedding invitations.”
“No. Business cards.”
“Oh? You’re growing the food photography business? Sounds fancy.”
“It’s not. I’ve moved to a detective agency,” she said, feeling stupid. It sounded ridiculous, said out loud. What had she been thinking? She didn’t know the first thing about detective work. All she could do was smell things and maybe put two and two together if they were both in front of her eyes.
Rory did not laugh, however. Rory went quiet and held the door for her. When they were out, each with their respective packages, Rory studied the simple business card Fros had given him, “fresh out of the oven.” It had nothing but the name of the company and a phone number Fros was seeing for the first time, in a plain, blocky font.
“Fros, do you have time for a cup of coffee or maybe a beer?” Rory said. His smell had changed but Fros only registered the change now that they were out on the street. It was the sickly sweet smell of uncertainty mixed with the slightly acrid scent of embarrassment. Good old Rory was about to ask Fros a favour.
“Sure,” she said. There was no office to go to. No actual business to go to. “It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, since that party when you disappeared with that guy I’d never seen before in my life. Did it end well?” The smell of embarrassment weakened.
Fros laughed and led the way down the street. She’d seen a pub on the way here.
“That depends on the perspective, I guess. We’ve gone into business together.”
Rory stopped.
“You and that… What was his name again?”
“Peter.”
“Right.” He started walking again. “All I remember is that he was tall, dark and handsome.”
“True enough.”
“So, tell me more about Peter.”
“Well, besides what you said he’s also rich and bored,” Fros said. Talking to Rory was always so easy. You could tell him anything without worrying he would tell it to the whole world. Almost anything. She wasn’t about to tell him about Colby’s corpse. Not yet, at least.
“What do you mean bored?”
“Bored enough to set up a detective agency and give me a job in it just because I got lucky with the murder of my neighbour. Long story. How have you been doing?”
Rory looked at her and shook his head.
“Murdered neighbours and detective agencies. You live an interesting life, Fros. Me, I’m helping big shot executives hide their money from the tax authorities.”
The pub was in sight and blissfully empty. The sky was almost clear and the air was pleasantly warm. Fros could use some of both.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Rory. I’m sure you do a bit more than that,” she said. “Sit outside?”
“Sure.” He pointed to a table. Fros headed there and he followed. “Corporate law is anything but interesting most of the time. But when it gets interesting it gets very interesting. What are you having?”
“Whatever they have on tap.”
Rory disappeared into the pub. There was a hint of sadness in his voice when he spoke about his work. He tried to make it sound funny but the sadness was there. Poor Rory. And still single by the smell of it. Fros could never understand why sometimes lovely people like Rory ended up alone while obnoxious ones jumped from one relationship into another with zero effort. Life was unfair – something she herself had recently demonstrated to Jules, costing her a job. Fros shifted on the bench. This wasn’t a welcome thought in her head.
“There you go.” Rory reappeared and set a pint in front of her. “Cheers.”
Fros touched her glass to his, drank and waited. Rory was ready to burst and he wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer.
“Do you know, meeting you at those printers is the most amazing coincidence in the history of coincidences.”
“And you’re going to tell me why.”
Rory leaned in.
“I was thinking of hiring private detectives to find something out for me. And now I can hire you.”
“Rory, I don’t have any experience,” Fros said. “We’re just starting.”
Rory shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. If that Peter thinks you’re good enough to be a PI, that’s enough for me. Besides I know you. I know you’re good at whatever you do.”
“That’s very sweet, but…”
The air around Fros thickened with the cocktail of Rory’s emotions, so many and so intense she had to work to discern any individual ones. A whiff of anger, perhaps, and a hint of despair wrapped in urgency.
“I need you to find out what happened to my mother,” he said, lowering his voice as if sharing a state secret.
“Your mother?”
Rory nodded. The anger grew more potent and so did his hope. It smelled like fresh seaweed.
“Okay.” Fros made a decision. “Tell me about her and I’ll see if we can help you.”
Rory took a long sip from his beer and set the half empty glass on the table.
“My mum died when I was fifteen. The doctors said it was a heart attack. My dad said it was a heart attack.” He paused and licked his lips. “But I don’t believe it was.”
“Did they do an autopsy?”
“Yeah, yeah, they did,” Rory said with a nod and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Of course they did. And it might have been a heart attack, really, but I don’t believe it was a natural one, you know? I read up on poisons after that happened and I know there are things that can cause a heart attack.”
“Why would anyone want to kill your mother?” Fros asked quietly. This sounded bad. It sounded like Rory had a fixation on how his mother had died. And it sounded like whatever Fros managed to find out, which she suspected wouldn’t be a lot, not after fifteen years, would do nothing to kill that fixation.
Rory was silent for a while, staring into her eyes. Then he looked down.
“Because he was having an affair. She was there, the other woman, when my mother died.”
A cold chill tried to shake Fros but she resisted. The peppery smell of pain, old pain, which has had years to mature, burned her nose. It had a sour edge that was vaguely familiar but there was no time to dwell on it now. It wasn’t a good smell or emotion, that was for sure. Fros raised her glass and pretended to drink while she sniffed the golden aroma of brew. Childhood trauma. The absolute worst. If she couldn’t help Rory find out whatever truth he thought had been hidden about his mother, she could listen to him. It might help.
“Tell me everything, Rory, from the beginning.”
“I was early from rugby practice one day,” Rory began. “I walked home and when I got there I saw my mum and dad in the living room. It had those French windows at the back and I was coming in from the back yard.” He sipped from his beer and kept his hands on the glass when he set it on the table. “There was also another woman, a stranger. My mum was talking – well, shouting, more like – and I remember how I thought it was their fault. They must have upset her. And then she fell.”
“She fell?”
Rory nodded.
“She raised her hand to her chest and fell. It was kind of comical, like a caricature of someone having a heart attack, you know? But I’ve read up on heart attacks, Fros, I’ve read up on a lot of things since then and this is not how you have a heart attack. You don’t clutch at your heart.”
“Maybe some do, Rory,” she said softly. Here was a classic case of a grownup child who wanted to chase away the demons that haunted him, not realising he was the one who put them there in the first place. What Rory had told her sounded like bad luck and nothing more. Yet he wanted it to be more.
“Not my mum, Fros. She was only forty and she had no history of heart disease. She was fit. And yes, I know fit people get heart attacks but…” He sighed. “I know what you’re thinking, that I’ve fixated on this idea that she was murdered because I can’t accept the fact that people sometimes just die. Maybe you’re right. But would you still try to find out if that’s what happened?”
“Tell me about your father and the other woman.”
Rory took another sip of beer.
“The woman disappeared by the time I came in running that day. She was just gone. My dad looked appropriately shocked, calling an ambulance and everything. I asked him about the woman after the funeral and he told me she was a business partner. A business partner, can you believe it?” Rory snorted laughter. “I told him this was crap and he admitted they’d been seeing each other. Said it had been serious. Said he’s sorry. They’d been on their way out when my mum had come back from her shopping. It must have been awkward. He’d brought this woman to our home, can you believe it?” Rory shook his head. “Remember how you wondered why I asked you to play my girlfriend at that dinner party when I was starting at the firm? You said I could get a real girlfriend.”
Fros smiled.
“I remember.”
“I can’t have real girlfriends, Fros. I’ve never trusted anyone since the day my mother died.”
“Rory, there is help for this. You don’t have to spend your life alone and not trusting anyone. Have you considered it?”
“Oh, I trust you. A couple of blokes I’ve known since high school. But love? No. Not for me.” He saluted her with his glass and drank. “So, will you help me?”
Fros spun her own glass slowly, staring into the bubbles. Here was a friend who had been hurting for years and she hadn’t noticed because she had been taught not to get too close to anyone. Because it was dangerous to get close to anyone. Rory had learned the same thing, only in a different way. She couldn’t help him unlearn it but she could try and chase those demons away for him. After all, she had his trust.
“I will need to talk to your father,” she said. “Could you set up a meeting?”
“Oh, sure. Maybe after the anniversary? It’s this Saturday.”
“Okay, after the anniversary. Is there anything you can tell me now?”
He shrugged.
“The other woman was blond. My mum was a brunette but that other woman was blond. Alex, her name was Alex. My dad told me. And you know what’s funny? His second wife, Alice, is also blond. She even looks a bit like that Alex, tall and pretty.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s all right. She’s not trying too hard to be a replacement mother and I respect her for that. Excuse me a second.” He pulled out his phone and peered at the screen. His mouth twitched, a hint of a smile or a sneer, while he typed a text. A streak of wild joy joined the emotion cocktail party he exuded. “Done.” He looked up. “Sorry, business stuff.”
“That’s all right.”
“Now, about your fee. What is your fee?”
Fros almost flushed and almost looked around to see if anyone had noticed her impersonating a professional detective.
“I don’t really now, Rory. We just opened the agency. Actually, I’m not even sure we’re open for business yet.”
“No problem. You find whatever you can and send me the bill.”
“What do you expect me to find?” she found herself asking, which surprised her.
“I don’t know. For a long time I thought they’d poisoned her, slipped something into her tea or water, something with a delayed effect. Now… maybe it was the shock from learning the truth, you know? Maybe seeing them at the house was enough. It’s not murder in the legal sense but for me, it is.”
Fros walked home in no hurry. She had no work waiting for her or people that needed her. Peter was in Wales and the police were looking into the murder of Jason Colby, hopefully. And Fros was growing wings. Perhaps Rory could have helped her prioritise her problems in the right way. Colby’s murder looked more urgently important but maybe her growing wings had greater implications for the world than the death of an ad salesman. And that rogue vampire Peter was chasing – that was one more unpleasant thing to think about along with all the children that could end up like Bethany.
By the time she turned onto her street Fros had come to the conclusion that everything was pointless and some alien civilisation should do the merciful thing and do way with the Earth. The blinking red and blue lights in front of her house changed that mood in an instant.
“What is going on here?” she called to the couple of policemen standing guard at the foot of the short path that led from the street to her door. There were dark stains on the concrete gleaming in the dusk and they reeked of blood. Fros’s stomach turned.
“Euphrosyne Kirova?” one of the policemen said.
“Yes. This is my house. What is going on?”
“Wait here,” the other policeman said and rushed into the house.
“Could you please tell me what is happening?”
“The detective will be here shortly,” the man said. He kept a somber professional face but that was only to mask the excitement he exuded like bad breath. There was a body in her house. Nothing but murder could excite a young police officer that much.
You can buy Fang in Fang — The Agency as e-book here.