Page 40 of Veiled Justice
‘Hannah Belham, miss.’
‘Thank you, Hannah.’ I paused. ‘What are you?’ It was a rude question in any social circle but I didn’t have the time or energy to fathom out the answer.
She didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’m a witch,’ she replied, ‘but I’m not particularly adept at it. I’m far better at cooking than making potions.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘And I’m not a good cook.’
‘We all have our strengths.’
She brightened. ‘Mine is cleaning.’
I wondered if she did laundry as well as housework. ‘The dress Miss Carnforth wore last night – where is it?’ I asked casually.
She looked confused. ‘The dry cleaners, of course.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Dry ’n’ Fix, miss. They pick up and drop off laundry to your home and they fix any rips and the like.’ She pressed her lips together disapprovingly. ‘There was a tear in the bodice, courtesy of Mr Squiggins.’ She glared heavily in his direction.
I thanked her again then stepped aside and Googled Dry ’n’ Fix. Once I’d found their number, I left a voicemail asking them not to dry clean and repair Miss Carnforth’s dress. Louisa might not want to press charges against Tom Squiggins right now but maybe she could be persuaded to later. If Squiggins had gone so far as to rip her dress then whatever had happened had been more than the grope she’d tried to shrug off.
I looked for Krieg but was distracted by a constantly changing dance floor decorated with a mesmerising array of flowers. To one side a pair of dryads were encouraging them to grow and ripple in time with the music, as if Nature itself were dancing.
Anger seared through me as I recognised one of the dryads: Ash Aspen.
Ash Aspen was the name that he was currently going by, but his real name was Jude Jingo and he was the Al Capone of the Other realm. It was a little-known fact that he was one of the rarest Other beings that existed: a doppelganger. I’d come across his corpse and had been investigating his murder when it transpired that he wasn’t dead at all. At the moment of his death, he’d transferred his soul to the nearest supernatural, which had been the dryad who was trying to kill him: Ash Aspen.
Now Ash was dead and Jingo was wearing his skin. Because he had access to Ash’s powers, Jingo had used them to kill the local dryad elders and get away with the murders under the in-house principle: the Connection couldn’t investigate same species murders unless we were invited to do so.
Needless to say, fearing for their lives the other dryads didn’t invite me to investigate. It burned me every day that Jude Jingo was swanning around wearing another man’s skin. I started towards him without conscious thought. Krieg caught sight of me and joined me.
Jingo smiled as we approached him. ‘Inspector Wise,’ he greeted me, eyes roving over my dress. ‘How delightful to see so much of you,’ he drawled.
I smiledtightly. ‘Fuck you.’
Next to me, Krieg gave a warning growl. Jingo looked at me and then studied the ogre’s bow-tie. He gave a little laugh and held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘She’s all yours, old boy.’
‘I am allmine,’I hissed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Enjoying fine food and wine, just like everyone else.’ To prove his point, Jingo snagged a floating canape and devoured it in one bite. He took a leisurely sip from his champagne flute, which remained full no matter how much he drank.
‘Were you at Quintos’s party?’ I asked. Neither his name nor Ash Aspen’s had appeared on any of the guest or staff lists I’d seen, or in Channing’s notes.
Jingo raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you need to caution me, Inspector? Read me my rights?’
‘This is the Other realm,’ I snarled. ‘You only have the rights that the Connection grants you.’
His smirk widened. ‘Lucky me that they give their citizens so many.’
‘Were you at Quintos’s masquerade ball?’ I repeated.
‘No, I had another engagement. Besides, I understand the Carnforths’ shindig istheparty of the season. I couldn’t miss this.’ He gestured at a man leaning at the bar next to a beautiful woman. ‘That,’ he lowered his voice conspiratorially, ‘is Mr Cantle. He has a doting wife and three children.’
The man had a handlebar moustache, middle-age spread and a stunning woman on his arm. I didn’t need to ask her what type of Other she was: even from this distance I could see that she wasa succubus, a woman who fed on sexual energy. Her eyes all but rolled back in her head as the man at her side stroked her in places he shouldn’t have done in public.
‘That,’Jingo said, amused, ‘isnothis wife.’ He set the champagne flute down and rubbed his hands gleefully. ‘Ilovethese soirees.’
Next he pointed at Katz. ‘That’s Caspian Katz. His father, Dean Katz, is a narcissistic piece of shit. He owns one of the biggest PR firms in the country and little Caspian wants a slice of the pie but Daddy Dearest keeps saying no. Caspian is not used to being told no.’
He indicated a pregnant woman with voluptuous lips next to a far older man. ‘Andthatis Pamela Rollings. The man next to her is her husband, Billy Rollings, and that isnothis baby.’
