“Yeah, very perplexing.”
“In what way?”
“One minute they’re there, then they’re not. No clues. No leads. Nothing.”
“Nighttime, daytime?”
“No set time of day. Sometimes morning, sometimes late at night. The last one had just popped out to grab some lunch. Never came back to work.”
“No identifiers that would link them together?”
“Human. Young. All genders.”
“Pretty much the entire human population of Motham, then,” Clare remarked. A human over the age of thirty was almost unheard of in the city of monsters.
Saul hesitated. “Wanna come back and work on the case?”
“No! No way,” she said quickly—too quickly.
“All those Tween murders keeping you busy, are they?”
“Haha, very funny.”
“At least we see real action in Motham.”
“I like the quieter pace.”
“Who are you kidding?”
Herself. She was kidding herself, wasn’t she? Over and over again.
“I even approached Oliver Hale,” Saul rumbled on. “Asked him to come back and head up the case.”
Clare gagged, nearly swallowed her tongue.
“Ah, great,” she almost squeaked, then lowered her voice to a gruff tone. “Good move.”
“He refused.”
She really wasn’t sure if the sharp twist in her gut was relief or disappointment.
“Like you, he says he’s perfectly happy where he is.”
“Selig’s a great city from what I hear.” Clare tried to sound like she couldn’t give a damn.
“Yeah, but a case like this—you’d think it’d bring Hale back from heaven itself.”
“Vampires are immortal, so heaven isn’t really on the cards, is it?”
“Okay, hell then.”
“Much more apt.” Clare laughed. It sounded hollow as fuck.
“Think about it. We have a vacancy for a senior detective. You’d be a great candidate.” Saul let out a rueful chuckle. “Probably our only candidate.”
Clare chewed on her thumbnail, frowning. “Gotta go, I’ve got another call coming in,” she lied. “Give my love to Harriet and the girls.”
“Will do. Think about it. Okay?”
