Shadow of Justice by Jess Faraday

Author:Jess Faraday [Faraday, Jess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, Paranormal, Gay
Publisher: Blind Eye Books
Published: 2019-10-28T18:27:30+00:00

As I walked down the street, the slam of the door behind me still ringing in my years, satisfaction lightened my steps. I was certain there’d been more to last night’s incident than either the chief inspector or his wife was letting on. There was no evidence of an intruder beyond the word of a purportedly unstable young woman, but now I at least knew of the obscene book.

Though it wasn’t specifically about vampires, it was about bloodletting as a spiritual and sexual practice. And the fact that both Miss Masterson and the Wakefield girl had claimed to have been attacked by vampires seemed too close to be a coincidence. I fingered the card in my pocket. The hurried slap of shoes on the pavement behind me pulled me from my thoughts.

“Constable!”

I turned. Mrs. Avery clearly hadn’t sprinted anywhere for some time. As she was catching her breath, she pressed a wad of cloth—a dishtowel, perhaps—into my hand.

“Found this…under Miss Adelaide’s bed…when I was cleaning this morning.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it weren’t there when she went to bed last night, and I never seen such a thing before in me life.”

It was a brass device about an inch wide and a little longer than my thumb, with one end squared off, the other rounded, and a thumb-switch on one face. When I pushed it, two sharp prongs shot out from the squared end, nearly impaling my index finger. I opened my mouth to ask Mrs. Avery what she made of it, but she had gone.

That decided it. The next stop would be the antiquarian pocket of Paternoster Row. I’d been meaning to pay a visit to Fiona MacGregor, who ran the scientific bookstore where my father used to work, and now I had an excuse. MacGregor’s Scientific Books sometimes also trafficked in odd bits of laboratory equipment and other paraphernalia. Mrs. MacGregor might have some insight into the purpose of the strange device that almost cost me a finger. On top of that, I was certain I’d seen an occult book shop not far from MacGregor’s. Perhaps they could tell me about Semen Sanguis.

The disastrous night before was fading fast in my memory. Suspension or not, following this line of investigation had been exactly the right thing to do. And precious few things in the past month could have been described that way.

I glanced at my watch. It was after four. My uniform had been necessary for visiting the Mastersons. However, something told me that the clerk at the occult book shop would be more forthcoming about the little book of rituals if he thought he was speaking to a customer rather than a police constable coming to charge him with obscenity. There was just enough time to throw on a set of civilian clothes and make my way there before the shops closed for the night.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.