Jin walked into the Dunloe police station with an irritated scowl etched on his face.
Returning to work was the last thing he wanted to do. The concept of a normal life in the twenty-first century was a tedious and overwhelming prospect.
All this time, he’d pretended to be fine with his predicament—having missed one hundred and seventy years while the world moved on—but he was only fooling himself. Technology was one thing and society was another, but it was more than that.
He couldn’t quite reconcile who he was and what he’d been through with the modern world.
And Hazel was gone for good, the trapped spirits set free…and he was meant to be okay with that, too. He knew he’d never loved the real Hazel, but it didn’t make his feelings any less real.
Jin had made his peace with his past relationship and found true contentment with Holly. So why did everything feel so wrong?
There was nothing left to fight, he realised. His entire human and vampire life had been a constant struggle, and now he was just meant to what…? Be normal? What the hell was normal supposed to look like, anyway?
“Think quick!”
Jin caught the red football with ease, his vampire senses doing most of the work.
“Nice catch, Xu,” Sergeant Brent Waters exclaimed, leaning back in his chair. “Maybe we should get you to join the local footy team. Maybe we’ll actually make the finals.”
The male police officers hooted and hollered, while the few females rolled their eyes.
“How was the funeral? They bury the witch yet?”
Jin turned. “Excuse me?”
“With Samantha Dunne in the ground, it’s one less posh busybody on the department’s back,” the sergeant drawled. “The way she acted, it was like she thought she was the bloody mayor.”
“I don’t care what you thought of her. The woman is dead,” he snapped. “Have a little respect.”
Waters held up his hands in defence. “Fair enough. But I’m not the only one talking.”
Jin sat at his desk and sighed. He was annoyed he had to look at the sergeant all day long as it was, but now he had to listen to the stupidity of the human race, too.
“There’s a lot of nasty rumours going around,” Waters went on. “Some of it has merit.”
“There is no living family to contest the coroner’s report,” Jin said matter-of-factly. “The case is closed.”
“I reckon the mayor will want to push for an investigation.”
“Why?” He scowled, not wanting the hassle of compelling the entire town to forget whatever nonsense they were bandying about as fact.
“Three pillars of the community died in the span of a week, and all under questionable circumstances,” Waters said, raising his eyebrows. “The coroner’s report can say all it wants, mate. People will always find their own conclusions. Dunloe is one of the most community-oriented towns I’ve worked in, an investigation is—”
“A show,” Jin interrupted.
“Six deaths in a few months—seven if you count Hannah Burke dropping dead on her front porch—and a whole slew of families just upped and moved out at the same time. If news gets around, Dunloe’s reputation will be in the toilet, and all those tourism dollars will follow. The council loves tourists, mate. Have you seen the amount of festivals and shit we have around here? They chuck a parade for just about anything.”
Jin curled his lip as the sergeant began tossing the football into the air and catching it. The last thing Holly and Fiona needed was for people to start looking into what really happened to Samantha. One loose thread, and it was a slippery slope that ended in a pit of supernatural chaos. The questions had to stop.
“What are the rumours, then?” He kicked Waters’ chair, making him miss the footy. The ball bounced on the floor and ricocheted erratically across the office.
“Everything and anything,” the sergeant replied. “Serial killer, suicide, aliens.” He rolled his eyes. “Crackpots, the lot of them.”
“Aliens?” Jin scoffed.
“There’s been reports of strange lights in the diggings for as long as I can remember. Unsubstantiated reports of satanic worshiping doesn’t help matters, either. No one’s ever found evidence, of course, but it doesn’t stop the tinfoil hat brigade from spreading their conspiracy theories around town.”
“Lights in the diggings?” Jin asked. He made a mental note to talk to Holly about it—the lights had likely been spirit activity linked to the vortex. “Why haven’t I heard about this bullshit before?”
“You haven’t been here long enough,” was Waters’ reply.
And he’d been so obsessed with revenge against the Trine that anything else was negligible. He hadn’t cared one bit about a bunch of ghosts; he’d only cared about settling a score.
Jin snorted and thumped his hand on the keyboard of his computer, bringing the screen to life. “Samantha Dunne died of broken heart syndrome. It wasn’t aliens; it was a cardiac event brought on by severe stress and trauma.” He typed in his password. “Case closed.”
“Detective Xu?” A female constable waved at him from the front desk.
“What?” he snapped, seeing the growing list of new emails being downloaded onto his screen. Another thing he hated about modern society—the constant noise.
“There’s a call for you on line one.” The constable made a face. “It’s the mayor.” She wasn’t a fan, though few people seemed to be, anyway.
Waters raised his eyebrows. “What did I tell you? How anyone voted for the bloke is beyond me.”
Jin groaned and reached for the phone on his desk. Was this what normal life looked like for a vampire posing as a detective? At least he could mind-control the concept of an investigation into Samantha’s death right out of the Dunloe City Council.
His hand paused on the receiver. This clown was worried about parades and tourists? They didn’t have an inkling of what’d been living right under their town for the last two centuries. If they knew what Holly, Fiona, and Samantha had given to save them, they’d… No, they wouldn’t understand. Humans feared what they couldn’t explain. It was just how things were, which was why he had to change the mayor’s mind. Permanently.
Knowing he couldn’t put it off any longer, Jin picked up the phone.
* * *
Patrick eyed the group of old human men who sat at their usual tables in the centre of the Union Reef Arms’ bistro, trying his best not to roll his eyes.
The regular lunch crowd was thin, likely on account of all the goings-on in town. A lot of witch families had left, abandoning the Trine and breaking the coven. Only Holly and Fiona remained to watch over the anomaly, and while Patrick couldn’t help with magical maladies, he could assist in other ways…like information mitigation.
Returning to work in the pub hadn’t exactly crossed his mind, but life went on despite all the bad. Time was a concept not lost on a vampire who’d been walking the planet for almost three centuries. Time waited for no one.
He busied himself behind the bar, wiping down the countertops as he listened to the old fellas bandy about their rumours. If there was any truth to their theories, he’d set them straight.
“Kate, Miranda, and now Samantha…” Mr. Porter was saying. “It’s a damn tragedy, is what it is.”
“She lost everyone,” Mr. Medley proclaimed. “Her husband and her only daughter. It’s no wonder she dropped dead like that.”
“I dunno,” Mr. Fraser said in his gravelly voice. “Billy Franklin said he heard the coroner say something about suicide.”
“Samantha Dunne? Suicide?” Mr. Medley scoffed. “I don’t think so.”
“Loss like that does strange things to people.”
“Still don’t believe it,” Mr. Medley drawled, lifting his beer.
“And Hank Judge dying in a car accident…?” Mr. Fraser hissed. “That don’t seem strange to you? It all seems a little…”
“A little what?” Mr. Porter asked. “Tightly packed?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear about the vandals at the gaol?” Mr. Medley asked. “Broke down the front gates. With what, I dunno.”
“Gates like that?” Mr. Fraser stated. “It had to be a truck.”
“Then where’s the truck?” Mr. Porter asked.
“That’s for the cops to find out, and what a bang-up job they’re doing.” Mr. Fraser rolled his eyes. “Incompetents, the lot of them. That new detective, the Asian guy—”
“Detective Xu,” Mr. Medley stated.
“Detective Xu,” Mr. Fraser went on, “seems to spend most of his time running after that Burke girl when he should be doing his job. Asking him where the truck is, is a waste of bloody time.”
Patrick smirked and picked up a pint glass. Polishing it with a tea towel, he wondered if he should tell Jin. Their relationship had mellowed since Holly had helped him free his mind from the Trine’s influence, but he felt like Jin still harboured a secret grudge. He was responsible for turning him into a vampire, among other things.
“What else did you hear from Billy Franklin?” Mr. Porter asked. “That fella has a mouth bigger than a trout, always flapping his gums about something.”
“Apparently, there’s some trouble with Ed Holland’s canola crops,” Mr. Fraser stated. “They sow this time of year, but the soil is all funny. His potato crop is ready to harvest too, and there’s some new blight.”
Mr. Porter drank a large swill of beer. “Wow, something normal for a change.”
“I thought you were going to start talking about aliens and UFOs,” Mr. Medley said with a snort. “Like Dunloe doesn’t have enough weirdos hanging about.”
Patrick hesitated. A new blight? Usually, he wouldn’t pay much attention to the agricultural goings-on, but after all the magic that’d been unleashed around Dunloe, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few side effects. Maybe this ‘blight’ was one of them.
“Patrick!” Mr. Fraser bellowed, holding up his empty beer. “Another round!”
He pulled three beers, loaded them onto a tray, and ventured over to see what else he could glean from the rumour mill.
“Do you old fellas talk about anything other than other people’s business?” he asked with a chuckle. “I work behind a bar, and even I can’t keep up with all the latest gossip.”
“A young buck like you?” Mr. Medley scoffed as he took his refreshed beer. “You should be living it up, chasing girls. You got one of those yet?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Not at the moment. Apparently, all the good prospects left town.”
This sent the group of old men into fits of laughter…and triggered Mr. Porter’s emphysema.
Mr. Medley spoke first. “How’s business?”
“Slower than usual,” Patrick replied. The bistro seemed to echo his words, the empty room ruthlessly mocking him.
“This whole town’s gone to the dogs,” Mr. Fraser said. “I won’t be surprised when all the shops on Main Street shut down. Give it six months and this place’ll be a ghost town.”
Patrick wanted to say that even the ghosts had moved out, but he just shrugged. “It is what it is. There’s been a lot of loss lately, and people are still trying to process it all. Things will pick up again.”
“Oh, to be young again!” Mr. Fraser exclaimed. “When you’ve been around for as long as we have, boy, you give up on that kind of hope.”
Patrick laughed. “If you say so.” He remembered Dunloe when it was little more than a dozen rudimentary tents pitched in gritty clay—and he knew this town had seen far worse. “Can I get you blokes anything else?”
“Another beer in about fifteen minutes,” Mr. Fraser declared as Patrick cleared the empties.
Patrick breathed a sigh of relief as he returned to the bar. The rumours weren’t that bad. Nothing that wasn’t predictable or easily contained if they started to run a little wild.
The trouble with Ed Holland’s crops worried him though. It was possible it could be linked to something supernatural, but the chances were low. Still, any chance was enough to warrant concern.
He loaded the used glasses into the dishwasher under the bar and frowned. The anomaly was free of the vortex now, though from what Samantha had told them, it should remain dormant unless someone tried to channel the magic locked inside. But what if there was a leak? Hazel Burke had maintained an almost two century connection to it, and it’d corrupted her beyond recognition.
Honestly, what did any of them truly know about the anomaly? Nothing.
Patrick took his mobile phone out of his jeans pocket and unlocked the screen. He knew a certain earth witch who would have specialised insight on unknown blight and strange soil.
If there was anything magical about what was happening over at Ed Holland’s farm, Fiona would know.