Blood Exposed Read online

  We walked over to the marquee, unzipped one of its doors and let ourselves in but its vast interior was now dark, so we grabbed a chair each from the nearest booth and dragged them outside. The policewoman produced a notebook and pen, flopped into her chair and leant forwards towards me in a motion I took as encouragement to start talking. Which is why I sat politely on the edge of my chair, smoothed my robe around me and waited, saying nothing.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” the policewoman finally said when it became obvious I wasn’t going to blurt out why I had stabbed Abigail.

  “A very good place to start,” I replied, channelling my best acting skills to maintain a straight face while the introduction to the Sound of Music song played in my head, along with visons of my mother skipping around the house singing “Doe, a deer...”. The policewoman gave me a look that said she knew where I was going with my comment but she wasn’t Maria von Trapp.

  “Your name?”

  “Riley. Riley Lowe.”

  Twenty minutes later, she ran out of steam. She had asked all the questions she could think of at least three times from different angles, and I still hadn’t confessed to murder. With a stern warning to make myself available if I was needed for further questions, and an implication that there most certainly would be, she turned me loose. Like a good little backstage person, I returned my chair to the marquee, then I hauled up the hem of my robe and legged it across the grass towards the hotel as fast as I could run.

  I dodged the traffic thundering down Deans Avenue and weaved my way through the vehicles that filled the hotel’s carpark. As I jogged towards the hotel entrance I glanced automatically towards our van, parked in its usual spot at the back under the oak tree. Something had been dumped on the ground by the rear wheel. I stopped and walked back down the row of cars until I could see the van from a better angle. The something was a person, sitting against the wheel with their arms tucked around their knees and their head down, a hood pulled forwards over their face. Whoever it was looked miserable. I walked quietly between the cars towards them.

  “You okay?” I asked as I approached.

  The head turned towards me. Kyle lifted one hand to show me the hamburger he was bolting down and nodded. I slumped down beside him.

  “What’s up? Why are you hiding out here? And what happened to your gorgeous costume?”

  Kyle looked down at the junk food in his hand and at the ripped jeans and scruffy hoody he was wearing.

  “I needed a break from all the drama. And I needed some real food.”

  “You’re not at the banquet then? Well, obviously not, if you’re sitting out here leaning on our van eating takeaways. Dumb question.”

  “Too expensive. It cost enough just to travel down here and stay in the hotel. Can’t afford the extras. Pity though, the menu looked really good. Not that Kristi would have eaten anything. There would have been something wrong with whatever she was offered.” He took a giant bite out of his burger, chewed and swallowed, then gave me a wry grin. “Sorry, I’m venting and I’m starving. If I see one more home-made vegan kale chip or tofu bar I will ... oh, I don’t know what I’ll do ... I’m just over it. I had to drop the steampunk persona for a bit and just get away and be myself for a while.”

  “That’s okay. Vent away. I won’t tell anyone.” I reached over and stole one of the chips out of the bag at his feet. “And I apologise if my idiot friends have been hassling you.”

  “No, they’re okay. A bit weird and I’d love to know how they do that expanding thing with their teeth, but they’re okay. At least what they do is clever. Not like Kristi. She’s just getting embarrassing. Do you know she actually believes that vampire rubbish she’s been spouting? I mean, dressing up as vampires is a bit of fun and, who knows, they might even exist – hell, your mates might even be real ones – but Kristi isn’t. And it scares the hell out of me that she thinks she is. That scene in the panel today was the final straw. Actually, I need to apologise to your mates. I shouldn’t have gone off at them the way I did. It wasn’t their fault my girlfriend has gone barking mad.’

  “Where is she now? Is she okay?”

  “To be honest? I don’t know and I’m not sure if I care. Here, have another chip,” Kyle picked up the bag and offered it to me. We munched one each before he spoke again. “It’s getting dark so she’s probably taking her usual two hours to get dressed and put on her make-up. Then she’ll go out walking. We were supposed to go to the concert that’s on after the dinner but she’s refusing to be in the same room as that guy who was on the panel. She says he’s a vampire hunter sent here specially to track her down and destroy her, so she’s going to walk the night and commune with her own people.”

  Kyle said the last few words in a passable imitation of Kristi and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “What about you? Are you walking and communing with her?”

  “Hell, no!” He turned to face me, squirming to make himself comfortable on the hard ground. “You’ll probably think I’m dreadful but I’m going to ignore her. I’m going to go to the concert, in these clothes, not what she gets me to wear to match her, then I’m going to get a decent night’s sleep in the bed I’ve paid for. Walking around cemeteries and falling asleep on gravestones was not my intention for this weekend, nor is it my idea of having a good time. Am I awful saying that?”

  “No. Not at all. I think you’ve got to do what’s right for you.”

  “Yes, I do. So that’s the other thing I’ll be doing this evening. A lot of hard thinking. And I can tell you now, Kristi is not going to like my decisions because they will not include playing her game any longer. Damn, I wish I had paid to go to the banquet. I’m still hungry.”

  “So am I. I was going to watch the jousting then get some food before the others got back, but Abigail kind of ruined that. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we see if the kitchen has got any left-overs we can scavenge. I’ll pull a sob story about getting held up over in the park with the police. It might work.”

  “The police? What happened? I saw the flashing lights but I thought they were pulling up someone for speeding. And what did you mean by Abigail spoiling your dinner?”

  I hauled myself to my feet and held out a hand to Kyle, who took it and let me pull him to his feet. Shaking himself like a dog, he pulled at the bottom of his hoody to straighten it over his slender hips, before lifting one hand to flick a lock of sleek, black hair back from where it had fallen over his face. Simultaneously, like choreographed dancers, we reached for our hoods and rearranged them around our faces, then giggled as we each noticed that we were inadvertently copying each other’s movements. His grin went all the way to his eyes, which I couldn’t help noticing were a deep green with flecks of brown. We stood for a few seconds longer than we should have, Kyle’s eyes twinkling, me soaking in the warmth of his smile, until he broke the spell by bending down to pick up the empty chip packet. Reality returned and I remembered Abigail. And Severn. I remembered I had a boyfriend who was waiting for me inside the hotel.

  “Come on, let’s go find some food and I’ll fill you in. It’s a long story.”

  The foyer was empty as we made our way into the hotel, but Severn must have had his vampire senses on full alert as he came down the hall to meet us. He inclined his head slightly towards Kyle, taking in his changed appearance, and raised one eyebrow, which I took to be several questions at once, including why were we together. Kyle beat me to the answer.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry about having a go at you earlier. Put it down to lack of food, lack of sleep and a crazy girlfriend. I apologise.”

  Severn stood back, looked Kyle slowly up and down, looked at me, then nodded and extended his hand to shake Kyle’s. “Consider it forgotten.” He turned to me. “Riley, I see they let you go from over the road. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I just had to make a statement. It’s the same detective that did the Tasha thing, so ... well, you know what I’m saying ....”

  S
evern knew exactly what I wasn’t saying. That detective still had some difficult questions for Severn about some very old fingerprints.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “I met Kyle in the carpark and we are both starving. We’re going to see if the kitchen has got anything spare we can eat. We’ll meet you back here and I’ll fill you both in on Abigail. Maybe one of you will know where I saw the design on the sword that was sticking out of her.”

  Kyle followed me meekly down the corridor but, by the look on his face, I thought I might have put him off eating any more food.

  I don’t know what impression we gave the kitchen staff, Kyle looking like a street kid and me in a monk’s robe, but it worked. One of the servers spoke to one of the chefs who waved at us from the other side of the kitchen, then grabbed two plates and filled them with food. We offered profuse thanks, promised to return the plates, then scarpered back to the foyer where we found comfy chairs and two vampires waiting for us.

  “The Rev’s upstairs, practising with the music group,” Severn explained as Kyle and I dived into roast mutton swimming in gravy and surrounded by a colourful array of tasty vegetables. “But we want to know what’s going on over in the park. Fill us in.”

  I did that, between bites of the delicious food, then backtracked when they started asking me questions and gave them the whole story from the time Caleb, Anita and I had left the hotel to watch the jousting. Aiden seemed genuinely interested in the knightly battles, but I suspected he was hoping there had been lots of blood. I disappointed him when I said I hadn’t seen a lot of blood on Abigail either. I supposed it had all drained away into the grass underneath her. Not that I wanted to think about that any more than I had to.

  Answering questions from the three guys was as bad as giving my statement to the policewoman – I repeated myself so many times my head was starting to spin.

  “Enough!” I finally held my hands in the air and waved them to stop. “You know as much as I do. Can we stop now?”

  “Sorry,” they all muttered in unison. I grabbed Kyle’s empty plate, stacked it on top of mine and marched off down the corridor to return them to the kitchen. When I returned, Kyle had gone.

  “He’s gone up to his room,” Severn explained. “I gather things are not happy in Goth K land?”

  “Yeah, I found him outside, sitting on the ground, leaning against our van, stuffing himself with a burger because he was so over her vegan food. He’s sick of vampires too.”

  “Shame. He’s the one of the two I would most like to turn. She’d be a liability but he’s all right without the crazy make-up.”

  “You never know. He might still be up for it. But, more importantly, what’s happening here? When’s the Rev performing? Did you know he could play a shawm”

  “I learn something new about the Rev every day.” Severn looked at his watch. “Come on, you two. We should be getting inside. The banquet should be almost finished and the entertainment will be starting soon.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We let ourselves into the empty conference room, made ourselves comfortable in our usual seats along the back wall and waited for the extravagantly costumed convention attendees to wend their well-fed ways from the dining room. I took out my phone as people started to come into the room, snapping pictures to show Mum later as I knew I would never remember all the materials and braiding that Mum would want to hear about in detail. Everybody had made some attempt at creating a medieval costume for the event, and some were spectacular, although others looked suspiciously like old bridesmaid dresses from the local op-shop, or rejects from a religious cult. One of the last stragglers to come in was Kyle, who had relented to peer pressure by swapping his hoody and sneakers for his black, silk shirt and those to-die-for amazing boots, but kept his new determined independence by matching them with the slightly dirty, ripped jeans he had been wearing when I found him. The effect was even more stunning that the whole costume had been.

  I gave him a small wave and felt ridiculously pleased when he waved back, then I felt guilty for feeling pleased, so I turned in my chair to give Severn a quick kiss, just to remind myself where my attention was supposed to be focussed. Severn wasn’t focussed on me though. His head was turned the other way, in deep, but almost silent, conversation with Aiden, the two of them communicating in pure vampire – barely whispered words punctuated by tiny hand movements and shoulder shrugs. I wondered if I would learn their unspoken language if I turned into one of them. Would that help me to feel like I was really part of their tight-knit group, instead of the spare wheel, trailing along at the back of the pack? I looked back over the audience.

  Kyle had waved away an offer of a chair beside a Rapunzel clone and was settling down between Queen Elizabeth the First and the Sheriff of Nottingham. If he had turned down an offer from the dazzling blonde, he must still care for Kristi even though he was angry with her behaviour. He leant sideways to say something to the Sheriff and I saw them both laugh, sharing whatever the joke was. I glanced back at Severn but he was still in conversation with Aiden and I wasn’t sure if I should butt in just to feel included, or just sit there, staring around the room, wishing Anita was there so I could have someone to talk to as well.

  I wriggled in my chair, wanting something practical to do, but Ngaire had insisted on the concert being as medieval as possible, so we had no microphones to think about. Instead, all we had to do was sit back and wait for the Reverend to make his appearance. The room had been set up much the same as it had been for the grand opening, with the elaborate fake thrones in place for Ngaire and Gerald, who waited until all the audience was seated, then processed in with accompanying trumpet fanfare, but without the piper or the deerhound.

  The first few acts had me wishing I had found an excuse to go home as we were subjected to a variety of performances that would never have made it onto the stage at Mum and Grant’s shows. A woman dressed in sacking and festooned with a headband of trailing ivy spouted flowery poetry, followed by a badly-acted scene from one of the Shakespeare tragedies, although I had no idea which one as the actors spoke so softly that, without microphones, nobody could make out what they were saying. The third piece was a long Icelandic saga performed by Other Viking, the man from the trebuchet whose name I hadn’t yet discovered. I could tell by his deep-voiced delivery, full of dramatic pauses and accentuated by much pacing across the tiny stage, that the saga spoke of some great, heroic journey, but it was spoken in Icelandic, or possibly Old Norse for all I knew, so again, I had no idea what was actually going on. The audience loved him though, and he ended with a standing ovation that I felt obliged to join. I noticed Severn and Aiden remained seated.

  They were, however, the first to hoot catcalls when the music troupe arrived. On the stage, Gerald stood up to thank his good friend, Eric the Beserker, then announced a change in the advertised programme.

  “Unfortunately, the music troupe lost a player today as one of their members had an accident. He’s not too badly hurt, just a broken arm, but it does mean that we have a special guest playing for us this evening. Standing in on shawm this evening is none other than one of our technical crew, the Reverend Father David Rochester. So please, Ladies and Gentlemen, give a warm welcome to our music troupe, all the way from the court of Joanna of Flanders, it’s ... the Brittany Spears!”

  Beside me, Severn and Aiden whooped and hollered as the four musicians entered, not dancing and playing as they had the previous night, but walking sedately to take their places on the chairs already placed for them on the tiny stage. Once seated, Caleb lifted his violin to his shoulder, gave the others a brief nod and launched into their first tune. As he played I thought his violin sounded, and even looked, slightly different to the one he usually played and as the piece ended, and Caleb introduced the players and their instruments, I learned that it wasn’t his violin at all, but actually something called a vielle, which was older than the violin and definitely something the Rev would have been familiar with as a child.

>   The Rev’s shawm looked like a large recorder with a flared end but made a much louder and reedier sound than the ghastly plastic thing I had played in primary school. For the first two pieces, he played some kind of descant with Anita’s flute, behind Caleb’s vielle and underscored by the driving beat of the hand-held drum, but then Caleb announced the Dead Can Dance Salterello and the Rev’s performance held me spellbound, totally selling me on the shawm. Against the percussion, he gave a faultless solo performance, flitting his fingers rapidly over the holes in the long wooden tube, filling the room with the shawm’s eerie, haunting sound. By the time he had taken a bow to the audience’s second standing ovation for the evening, I had forgotten all the times I had tried to break my recorder, my bad memories replaced by a burning desire to learn this strange instrument. Beside him, as the crowd yelled their approval, Anita’s grin stretched from ear to ear.

  As their set ended, I nipped out of the room to catch them as they left, joining in with their round of group hugs and high-fives.

  “You were awesome,” I said as I threw my arms around the Rev’s neck in a hug.

  The Rev extricated himself from my grip, fending off my praise with a quick shrug of his shoulders and what would have been a blush if he had been capable of flushing red.

  “Are you sorted with the police?” he asked. “Because I’m finished here and I think we should leave as soon as we can.”

  “Yeah. I’ve given my statement so I presume I can go.”

  “No!” Anita stepped forwards and grabbed my arm. “Please don’t go yet. We’ve still got to give our statements. Riley, will you stay with me? Mum’s on late shift tonight and is coming as soon as she can get off, but I don’t know if she’ll get here before the police want to talk to me.” Anita gave the Rev and I a wide-eyed pleading look that reminded me of her toy rabbits. “You guys can go. Riley can come home with me.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, seeing relief flooding her face. “Yeah, I’ll stay. After Tasha, the police don’t scare me. You lot ...,” I swung my glance to include Severn and Aiden who had heard our conversation through the wall and were coming towards us down the corridor, “Go, get out of here.”