Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Eight



She found Sera sitting on a pile of earth, clawing more up out of the ground with her bare hands. “Sera, we need shovels,” she pointed out.

Sera paused. “I know. Just passing the time. I didn’t want to leave in case I lost the right place.”

“You’re sure about this? Ewan’s going to kick our arses from here to Glasgow if we dig up his roses for nothing.”

“Oh, come on, Jilly. It’s not his roses he’s really going to mind us digging up!”

She had a point. Who but Ewan would bury a body in his garden? Jilly swallowed. “You think he shot Adam by accident?”

“Accident or design, it certainly explains his reluctance to talk about the burglary or gunshots,” Sera said grimly. “Although not my vision. This is a mess, Jilly.”

Jilly nodded, prepared to wait until her friend was ready to tell. Visions of violence and death upset Sera far more than she let on.

A quick scan had revealed a dark, square shadow that Jilly hoped was an open garden shed. “I’ll get a shovel.”

“Get two, but we shouldn’t have to dig for long. Blair’s on his way, and he can go a hell of a lot faster.”

****



Leaning against a nearby tree trunk ten minutes later, Jilly had to admit that Blair had his uses. The vampire, tall and muscled, dug in a blur without even raising a sweat and in no time at all threw down his shovel and reached down into the hole. He was horrendously strong and lifted out the dead body as if it were a child’s doll.

Show some respect, you bastard.

She didn’t want to see it, but she couldn’t stay away from the body. She dragged herself over, feeling like a zombie. Blair laid it out on the ground, then stood back, putting his arm around Sera. She leaned her head on his shoulder, which at least gave Jilly a push to look at the body instead.

He was wearing a black track suit, and there was mud all over what was left of his face. There didn’t seem to be much skin, so far as she could tell. There were insects everywhere, undulating in the dirt. Her stomach heaved.

Oh Jesus.

At least the smell wasn’t so bad. Yet…

Her torch wavered, catching a tuft of hair sticking out of the mud. It glinted in the beam of light. Jilly steadied her torch and shone it again. Her breath caught.

“Blair,” she said hoarsely. “Lie down beside the corpse.”

“What?” Sera demanded. “Jilly, for f—”

“No, look at him!” She could barely contain her excitement. It made her voice tremble. “I don’t think it’s Adam. Adam’s hair’s black, this guy’s is much lighter. And Adam’s as tall as Blair is.”

“Lie down beside the corpse,” Sera repeated, tugging at Blair’s hand. “Please?”

With a sardonic twist of his lips, Blair lay down beside the corpse, which was a good foot shorter than him. For a moment, he looked as if he was going to roll into the grave, just for a lark—or perhaps because it was his natural habitat—but Sera lunged to stop him.

“Wait,” she cried, grabbing him and hauling him to his feet. “Don’t spoil the crime scene any more than we have. How are we going to play this?”

“We’ve got to call the cops,” Jilly said. “It’s a body. That goes beyond Serafina’s discretion promise.”

“Way beyond,” Sera agreed ruefully. “Only how the hell do we explain why we were digging up the Ewans’ garden at nine o’clock in the evening?”

Only nine? It felt like the middle of the night. It was certainly cold enough.

Jilly stamped her feet to keep warm while she thought. “We could tell them the truth,” she suggested at last and flung up her hands as Sera opened her mouth to reply. “It’s all right. I realise I’ll be the first of my family ever to have knowingly told the truth to the police, but I’ll just have to live with the shame. For Serafina’s.”

“This will be good for Serafina’s?” Sera said doubtfully.

“Maybe. Think about it. You tell the police you were asked to get rid of the Ewans’ poltergeist, you chased it out here, sensed something, and dug it up to be sure. You’re now officially helping the police. Maybe they’ll send cases your way. Whatever, word is bound to get out. Dale Ewan is high profile. At the very least, it’s free publicity for Serafina’s.”

Sera cocked her head to one side, thoughtfully chewing her lip. Blair actually grinned at Jilly, which startled her. Perhaps Genesis Adam wasn’t the only man with a charming smile, if you looked closely enough. Although, technically, Blair wasn’t a man.

Technically, neither was Adam.

I kissed a computer program. Is that kinky? Perverse?

It was certainly fun, she recalled, as her body heated from the inside all over again.

“Tell you what,” Sera said, fishing her phone out of her pocket and distracting Jilly from her daydream. “I’ll call Alex McGowan. He’s in CID now.”

Blair’s dying grin broadened. He sat down cross-legged behind the body like some kind of weird guard. His shoulders shook.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Jilly said doubtfully. “I know he had his eyes opened a bit last year with all that vampire stuff, and he almost believes you talk to the dead, but—”

“Who better?” Sera interrupted, lifting the phone to her ear. “Hello, Alex? Hi, it’s Sera MacBride.”

“Oh no,” said the constable’s voice clearly.

Sera grinned. “You on duty?”

“Yes,” McGowan said suspiciously. “Why?”

“I’ve found a body for you. You might want to get over here. I’m at the home of Dale Ewan—you know the guy? Owns Genesis Gaming.” She took the phone away from her ear for a moment. Even Jilly was surprised by the length of the constable’s string of expletives. “You’re welcome, Alex. See you here.”

She broke the connection and glanced from Blair to Jilly. “I suppose we’d better phone the Ewans too.”

“Give it five,” Jilly advised. “It would be better if the police got here first.”

****



“Why does my heart sink into my boots whenever I see you guys?” Detective Constable Alex McGowan strode toward where they still stood over the body in the garden.

“Because you know your life will be unbearably dull again when we’ve gone?” Sera suggested.

“You’re going?” Alex said hopefully. He came to a halt beside Jilly and gazed down at the body. Behind him came an older, larger colleague whose attention was all on those who’d made the discovery.

“‘Course not,” Sera said. “How you doing, Constable?”

Alex glanced up at her with a slightly rueful smile. But whatever he’d been about to say was lost when Blair chose to loom out of the shadows and offer his hand. Alex swallowed, then shook hands.

Watching, Jilly observed, “Cold night.” And heard Alex swallow back a choke of laughter. He knew what Blair was, and if by some chance he’d forgotten or talked himself out of the knowledge, the chill of the undead fingers would certainly have reminded him. How could Sera bear those cold if elegant hands on her body? Adam’s hands were warm…

And not real.

She needed to get back on the computer. She had to tell him the body wasn’t his. And stop imagining his hands all over her. Stupid. One VR kiss and she turned into a mass of raging hormones—like a teenager, probably, although she’d largely missed out that stage. She’d been more channelled toward aggression.

“This is my colleague, DC Vernon,” Alex was saying. “Sera MacBride, Blair, and Jilly Kerr.”

Vernon gave Jilly an extra-sharp look. Benefit of the famous Kerr name.

“So let’s see this body,” Alex said, kneeling down. “Know him?”

They all shook their heads; then Sera glanced sharply at Blair, as if he’d spoken to her telepathically. These days she was better at hiding that, so she didn’t talk to herself so obviously.

“We phoned the Ewans,” Sera said. “I think that might be their car.”

Alex only grunted. “Shine your torch on the body,” he ordered. Jilly obeyed with reluctance, and the beam slid off Alex’s bright, ginger head to the pale, grisly figure of the body. “The neck,” Alec added, taking something from his pocket that looked like tweezers.

He reached out with the tweezers and tugged gently at something. A chain which had been tucked into the tracksuit top. He drew it out until it hung outside the jacket. A gold rectangular pendant. Not a style Jilly admired, but not cheap. Worse, it forced his personality on to her. This had been a real man with a family and friends, ambitions, projects. He was more than just “not Adam.” Her throat closed up.

****



The car Blair had heard before anyone else turned out to be the pathologist. While she examined the body, the detectives accompanied Sera, Jilly, and Blair back to the warmth of the house and demanded a blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened.

They sat on the sofas in the big entrance hall in front of the glass wall and tried to explain, leaving out Jilly’s expedition to the secret lab. What would they make of her trip to Paris in 1942?

“So this poltergeist led you to the body?” DC Vernon said to Sera with blatant disbelief.

“No, not really,” Sera replied patiently. “I was chasing it round the house until I got fed up and sat on the floor for a rest. Then I felt that the body had been dragged that way.”

“You felt it,” Vernon repeated.

“Yep. I’m afraid I do. I see things like that. So I followed the ‘feeling,’ tracked it to the garden. And then we dug it up.”

“What else did you see?” Alex asked curiously.

Sera’s gaze turned to him. “I saw someone being strangled.”

Jilly stared at her. Strangled? Not shot?

“Was it this guy?” Alex asked, jerking his head toward the back of the house.

“I think so,” Sera answered. “It feels like him, but he’s pretty unrecognisable. I can’t be sure.”

“Really?” said Vernon without troubling to veil his sarcasm.

Maybe the poor bugger was strangled first and then shot to finish him off.

“Do you know who he was?” Jilly asked. They’d left it to the police to go through his pockets.

“Nothing to identify him. Yet.”

When the front door burst open, Jilly jumped with the shock. White-faced, bewildered, Ewan and Petra all but fell into the house.

“Sera? There’s police all over the place,” Dale exclaimed. “What the hell’s going on?”

Sera stood up and went to them, touched both their arms at once. “I’m sorry. We found a body and had to call the police.”

Petra flung herself against Dale, hiding her face in his shoulder. Dale’s arm went around her at once, and Sera stepped discreetly back.

“A body?” Dale said in stunned tones. “A human body? In our garden? Who?”

“I think he was your poltergeist,” Sera said.

Petra turned her head enough to reveal one eye. “Is it gone, then?”

“Not necessarily,” Sera said with caution, “but I would hope so.”

****



It was midnight before Jilly got home. Tossing the Dave-maligned coat on the sofa, and kicking off her filthy high-heeled shoes, she immediately crouched down on her usual cushion on the floor and got out the laptop. She opened it and switched it on, drumming her fingers impatiently while it booted up. She clicked on chat and invited Exodus.

JK: It isn’t you. The body was someone else.

She waited, but there was no response. And yet, according to the program, Exodus was online. Where the hell was he? Back in Paris?

She supposed he might as well be. What else could he do to pass the time when he only existed in a program? Shit, how was that even possible?

She got up, made herself a cup of tea and some scrambled egg on toast—it was too late for anything heavier, and besides, she’d no energy and less interest in cooking right now. She returned to the computer, but there was still no response from Exodus. While she ate, she stared aggressively at the screen. After a while, she peeled the tape off the webcam. Still, he didn’t reply.

She typed, “Where are you?” Then, “Speak to me, you bastard.”

Nothing happened. Slowly, Jilly pulled herself up onto the sofa. Maybe he was just a different kind of wanker. Maybe her kiss had disappointed him. Maybe he just hadn’t liked it. Or her. Though he’d certainly seemed to at the time…so far as she could tell. And there was the rub—she didn’t exactly have much experience at this sort of thing.

So not the point!

Why didn’t he answer?

Jilly dragged her hand through her hair—and froze halfway.

What if he’d gone after all? Somehow, he had to be connected to the poltergeist, even if it wasn’t actually him. What if the discovery of the body had got rid of him as well as it?

Although Sera hadn’t been convinced discovering the body was enough. According to her, the poltergeist seemed to want retribution. But then, according to Sera, poltergeists were pretty mindless forms made up only of negative emotion. What if this one was more? What if this one wasn’t Adam at all? What if it was the angry dead man taking on the VR appearance of Adam from the database? Was that even possible?

And why would he do such a thing? What was Jilly to the dead man?

The sister of the people who’d killed him?

“Oh f*ck,” Jilly whispered.

****



Sera fell back on Blair’s pillow, purring. Blair licked the puncture wounds in her neck, ensuring they’d heal by morning, and trailed his mouth lazily down toward her breast.

Sera flopped her arms around his neck, stroking his head. After a moment, because the conversation they’d interrupted with sex came back to her, she said, “That was a good thing you did, with Jason. I think it might work very well.”

Blair’s shoulders rippled, perhaps in a shrug. Of course, he didn’t need her approval for whatever he chose to do, but she really did think it was a stroke of genius that would help Jason adjust at last to being undead and unemployed instead of the whiz-kid banker he’d been before last year’s bit of vampire trouble. He’d be good at keeping the other fledglings in line. Besides, it would free Blair up for more time with her…if that was what either of them wanted.

Vaguely dissatisfied with the direction of her thoughts, she turned them elsewhere. “I think it’s still there, you know.”

Blair teased her nipple and spoke in her mind. “The poltergeist?”

“I promised I’d find its killer. But…”

“It frightens you,” Blair observed, wrapping his lips around the nipple and gently tugging.

“I told the Ewans I was stronger than it. I don’t think I am.”

Blair eased himself back inside her body, and she gasped, half with pleasure and half with annoyance.

“Damn it, are you even listening to me?”

“I can listen to you and f*ck you at the same time. You’re afraid it won’t go away even when its killer is found, because it’s developed a taste for causing havoc and it’s stronger than you.”

Sated as she already was, Sera’s body began to move without permission, distracting her from less pleasant thoughts. “Blair, I’m serious.”

“So am I,” he said huskily, arching and moving with more emphasis. “I’ll catch it for you.”

“Catch it?” she repeated, grabbing at his head to keep him focused. “How?”

“Vampires scare the crap out of all spirits. Didn’t you know?”

She closed her wide-open mouth. “No,” she managed before Blair opened it again with his. She couldn’t not kiss Blair. It was physically impossible. Although, when her lips were free once more, she did remember to gasp out, “And what’s with Jilly and this Adam program? She talks about him as if he’s still alive—Adam is dark, Adam is as tall as Blair. I’m worried about her.”

“Don’t be. Think of something else.”

“You?” she suggested, and he reared up, reaching impossibly far inside her.

“Me,” he agreed.

Sera smiled and stroked his powerful thighs. “All right,” she agreed. “Just for tonight…”

****



In a quiet cottage near Loch Lomond, Melanie Merrow had her face in a book. Literally. She woke up to find her cheek resting on the pages of the ancient and valuable tome she’d managed to borrow from a suspicious witch only with promises of exceptional care. Dribbling on its pristine pages could certainly count as exceptional.

She lifted her head, and, with the white gloves she’d promised to wear while handling the book, she guiltily swiped at the tiny marks of moisture. It would dry out. Zoe would never know, and the book would still be there.

Damn, she hadn’t meant to fall asleep. Her watch told her it was nearly three o’clock in the morning, so she must have been out for at least an hour.

I need to get my life back, Melanie thought ruefully, and stop chasing shadows. It was all Sera’s fault, of course, not just encountering vampires, of all illusive and mysterious paranormal beings, but having a relationship with one. Blair was certainly a fascinating being—and damned sexy—but his importance to Melanie went beyond whatever happiness or unhappiness he brought to Sera. He had knowledge, knowledge that had pointed her to the road she was now on.

Snoring on a priceless book was hardly an auspicious road. But at least, before she’d fallen asleep looking for further references, she’d discovered a direct mention of the Founder.

And when the men captured the vampire and laid him in a grave, preparing to drive the stake through his heart, the Founder appeared and the vampire vanished with him. The village knew no further assaults from the unnatural world.

Smiling, Melanie marked her page with a strip of acid-free paper, closed the book, and stroked it. So the Founder, the once mortal human from whom all vampires were descended, even the mass-produced and inferior survivors of last year’s battle, had been in Bulgaria around 1620. Whether his intention had been to save the village from a marauding killer vampire or to save that vampire from execution, he’d been there. A tiny discovery that felt like a massive breakthrough to Melanie.

She stood up, yawning, and stumbled out of her sitting room in the general direction of the bathroom. Since the hall was in darkness, she reached for the light switch, and some deeper darkness surged in front of her eyes.

Her heart swooped in sudden alarm. All the protective spells she’d ever learned vanished from her mind.

I’m mince, she thought with resignation.

Nothing happened.

Melanie let out her breath and flicked the light switch. There was nothing there. No shadow, no creature, no feeling of malevolence. Had the surging shadow been malevolent? It hadn’t hung around long enough for her to find out.

But then, she was knackered. She’d already been asleep and wasn’t exactly at her sharpest. The shadow could easily have been imagination. She relaxed and crossed the hall to the bathroom, reminding herself that the whole house was protected by the strongest of spells. Anything evil—or even anything very unevil that hadn’t been invited—would have a bloody hard job getting through her protection. She was a strong witch.

Still, it left her uneasy. She’d phone Sera in the morning, get her to come up here and check the place for any uninvited presences.

****



“Andy, wake up, you lazy arse.”

Unwilling to touch any of the dirty clothes lying on the floor this time, Jilly resorted to manual and merely shook her brother awake until he sat bolt upright in bed yelling, “F*ck off!”

“Trust me I will. Did you kill some poor bastard when you broke into the Ewans’ house?”

“Shite, not this again,” Andy groaned. “Have I not got enough on my plate? I told you, we didn’t have a gun. The shot came from someone else, and we ran away.”

“I didn’t ask if you shot him. Did you strangle him?”

Andy stared, blinked, and opened his mouth.

“Think carefully,” Jilly warned, “because if I even suspect you’re not telling the truth I’ll bring Sera MacBride here to find out.”

“Jillian, for f—”

“Did you or George strangle someone?”

“Of course we bloody didn’t!”

Huffily, he threw himself back down on the pillow and dragged the quilt up over his ears.

After a moment, Jilly said reluctantly, “So what’s piled so high on your plate, then?”

“Aw, nothing,” Andy said, his voice muffled by the covers. “Just some big psycho bastard got wind of the night I slept with his girlfriend. Word is, he isn’t pleased.”

“Better start grovelling, then,” Jilly advised.

“Don’t think that works on Axel.”

“Axel?” Jilly repeated with disbelief.

“Aye, it’s the axe you have to worry about.”

Jilly scowled at the huddle of quilt. “So what are you going to do?”

“Pray,” Andy said, dragging the quilt down as far as one ear. “At the moment, he doesn’t know it was me. So as long as no one grasses me up, I’m fine.”

Jilly saw no reason to encourage that line of insane optimism. “You’re dead, then,” she observed, and turned and left.