Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,22

speak English."

Sliding past Vicki in the narrow hall, the girl sniffed, obviously disapproving. "Maybe he doesn't speak English," she pointed out.

This time, Vicki didn't bother to hide her smile. "Mr. Chin has been speaking English a lot longer than both of us have been alive. His parents came to Vancouver in the late 1880s. He used to teach high school. He still teaches English as a Second Language at the Chinese Community Center."

Bright green eyes narrowed accusingly and the girl glared up at Vicki. "I don't like being patronized," she said.

Vicki nodded as she closed the door. "Neither do I."

During the silence that followed, Vicki could almost hear their conversation being replayed, each phrase, each word tested for nuance.

"Oh," the girl said at last. "Sorry." Then her brow unfurrowed and she grinned as she offered a compromise. "I won't do it anymore if you'd don't."

"Deal." Vicki led the way through her tiny living room, pushing her leather recliner back upright as she passed, to her equally tiny office. She'd never actually had a client, or potential client, in the office before and there were a couple of unanticipated problems. "I'll, uh, get another chair from the kitchen."

"It's okay. This is fine." Shrugging out of her coat she settled both herself and it on Vicki's weight bench. "Now, about this job... "

"Not yet." Vicki pulled her own chair out from the desk and sat down. "First, about you. Your name is?"

"Coreen, Coreen Fergus." She continued on the same breath, obviously feeling that her name covered all the necessary details. "And I want you to find that vampire that's been terrorizing the city."

"Right." It was too early on a Monday and the latest death was too close. "Did Michael Celluci put you up to this?"

"Who?"

"Never mind." Shaking her head, Vicki stood. "Look, I don't know who put you up to this but you can go back to them and... "

"Ian Reddick was my ... " She frowned, searching for a word that would give the relationship its proper weight. "... lover."

"Ian Reddick," Vicki repeated and sat down again. Ian Reddick, the first victim. The body she'd found mutilated in the Eglinton West subway station.

"I want you to find the thing that killed him."

"Look, Coreen," her voice dropped into the professional "comfort tone" that police officers worldwide had to master, "I recognize how upset you must be, but don't you think that's a job for the authorities?"

"No."

There was something utterly intractable in that "no." Vicki pushed her glasses up her nose and searched for a response while Coreen continued.

"They insist on looking for a man, refusing to acknowledge that the paper might be right; refusing to consider anything outside their narrow little world view."

"Refusing to consider that the killer might actually be a vampire?"

"Right."

"The paper doesn't really believe it's a vampire either, you know."

Coreen tossed her hair back off her face. "So? The facts still fit. The blood is still missing. I bet Ian would have been drained dry if he hadn't been found so quickly."

She doesn't know it was me. Thank God. And again she saw him, his face a clichéd mask of terror above the gaping red wound that was his throat. Gaping red wound ... no, more as though the whole front of his throat had been ripped away. Not ripped through, ripped away. That was what had been missing; the incongruity that had been nagging at her for over a week now. Where was the front of Ian Reddick's throat?

"... so will you?"

Vicki slowly surfaced from memory. "Let me get this straight. You want me to find Ian's killer, working under the assumption that it really is a vampire? Bats, coffins, the whole bit."

"Yes."

"And once I've found it, I drive a stake through its heart?"

"Creatures of the night can hardly be brought to trial," Coreen pointed out reasonably but with a martial light in her eye. "Ian must be avenged."

Don't get sad, get even. It was a classic solution to grief and one Vicki didn't altogether disapprove of. "Why me?" she asked.

Coreen sat up straighter. "You were the only female private investigator in the yellow pages."

That, at least, made sense and explained the eerie coincidence of Coreen showing up in the office of the woman who'd found Ian's body. "Out of all the gin joints in all the... " She couldn't remember the rest of the quote but she was beginning to understand how Bogart had felt. "It wouldn't be cheap." What am