“No, I’m the queen. Who the bloody hell do you think I am?”
I tried a friendly smile. “Mr. Latham, may we come in? We’d like to ask you a few questions that would help us complete our assignment.”
He shook his head. “Women. Always needing more. I knew I should’ve hired a knight from a regular banner, but they were more expensive.” He yanked open the door. “Come in, but wipe your feet. If you’ve been traipsing through the park, you’ll bring the mud with you.”
Kami and I exchanged glances and each took a turn wiping our feet on the doormat.
Well, this would be fun.
Despite the interior changes, the house managed to retain its charm. There were gleaming wooden floors and a set of curved windows at the front that filled my heart with the kind of joy usually reserved for animals and chocolate.
“Grade II Listed?” I asked.
Gerald looked at me with keen interest. “Heard of that, have you?”
“My mother was a history teacher.”
“Usually I’d moan about vampires changing everything, but I’m glad they got rid of them listings or else I wouldn’t be able to live in a place like this.” He glanced upward, presumably to admire the cornices on the ceiling since that was the only detail worth ogling. “The landlord is rotten in plenty of ways, but he keeps this building looking spiffy.”
“We need to know about the creatures,” Kami said. “We did a brief survey of the park, but all we saw were rats.”
Gerald tugged his earlobe. “Exactly.”
I peered at him. “Exactly what?”
“Rats. They’re infesting the whole area. Any minute we’re going to get a new plague and you’ll know where it originated.” He jabbed an angry finger in the direction of the park.
“Mr. Latham, you don’t hire a knight because of rats,” Kami explained. “They’re a regular feature of city life.”
“But they’ve been digging in my rubbish bins,” he objected.
Kami sighed. “They’re rats. That’s what they do.”
“They haven’t bothered with the bins until recently. They’re growing bolder every day, the bastards.” Gerald folded his arms and scowled. “I should enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy. I can’t do that if I have to worry about rats invading my space.”
“If you’ve thrown something away in the bin, doesn’t that mean you no longer want it?” Kami asked. “Why would you expect any privacy in something you don’t own anymore?”
He scoffed. “What do they teach knights nowadays? You two know nothing about the law.”
“We’re not adjudicators,” I reminded him.
“Get rid of them rats. That’s what I’m paying you for.”
Kami blew stray hairs out of her eye. “Technically you haven’t paid us anything yet.”
“And I won’t if you don’t take care of them rats. I’m tired of finding my bins knocked over and dragged halfway down the street. Mrs. Lundy found a letter I’d discarded and she’s four houses down. Read it from start to finish, too, the nosy thing. It’s not just the rubbish either. My upstairs neighbor has a baby and she’s afraid to take the boy out in the pram.”
One of his comments stayed with me. “You mentioned they only started digging in the bins recently. Did anything change, like maybe you’re using a new type of bin?”
His scowl intensified. “Blame the victim, is that it?”
“No, Mr. Latham. I’m only trying to help. There’ve always been rats in the park and if they haven’t been this much of a nuisance before, there has to be a reason why that’s changed, right?”
He hesitated. “I suppose.”
Look at me making sense notwithstanding my lady parts. Gold star.
“If you can think of anything that’s different…” I began.
He ran his tongue along the front of his teeth, a habit I detested. “There’s a new family moved in next door a couple weeks ago. Maybe they’re drawing the rats closer to the neighborhood.”
“Why would a new family attract rats?” Kami asked. “This street is full of flats. You must have people moving in and out all the time.”
His face hardened. “Because they’re vampires, that’s why.”
Ah. I was beginning to grasp the true reason for Gerald Latham’s complaint.
“Mr. Latham, I can understand why you’re not overjoyed having vampires as neighbors, but last I checked, vampires don’t attract vermin,” I said.
Kami’s face grew flushed as the realization hit her, too. “What did you think would happen? We’d march next door and rough them up for you? Scare them out of the neighborhood? That’s not what we do.”
“You knights have a certain reputation. I only want you to make it clear what will happen if they make trouble for the rest of us.”
I blew out a breath. “They have every right to live here, same as you.”
He balled his hands into fists. “Not the same as me. They occupy most of the city. This street may be owned by one, but the rest of us are good people who don’t need the threat of vampires in our own backyards. My other neighbors upstairs—their girl Kari even ran off after the vamps moved in. I guarantee it was because of the son. That boy has trouble written all over him.”
In Gerald’s mind, it wasn’t really that his expectation of privacy had been violated. It was that his sense of security was under threat. His home was his castle and that castle now had a moat filled with alligators.
“Have the rats really been attacking the bins?” I asked.
“Yes,” he bellowed. “And if you’re not going to do anything about them, you can take your leave.” He ushered us toward the door. “Next time I’ll gather the extra coin and hire a real knight.” He glared at us for good measure before slamming the door.
Kami and I stood on the doorstep in a stupor.
“Which reputation of ours do you think he was referring to?” she finally asked.
“Not the violent one. If we were as violent as everyone claims, we’d be thrilled to blow up a bunch of rats and rough up a vampire family.” I glanced down the quiet street. “To be fair, I feel like most people feel that way, even the ones without violent tendencies.”
There was no love lost between me and rats. I’d endured more than my share of them as a teenager. Even so, I had no interest in wasting valuable time and resources protecting Mr. Latham’s garbage and pushing his bigoted agenda.
“Why don’t we at least take a look at the bins while we’re here?” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll notice something unusual.”
“Good idea. He did say the issues only started recently, so it could be down to something he’s overlooked.”
I eyed the house next door. “Because he’s been too busy looking at the neighbors as the cause.”
We ambled around the corner to the alley between the two houses where the bins were located. There were three sets of green bins on one side and only one bin on the other. I wondered whether Dansker displaced any human tenants to make room for one vampire family.