Clive sat in the breakfast bar of the hotel. I wasn’t really that hungry, but had agreed on meeting up with him in the morning to talk. He gave me a kind smile as I sat down.
“I noticed that girl left this morning,” he said, giving me a wink. I sighed. “Yes, she spent the night up here. If you want extra money for that I understand,” I replied as I took a bite from a bun.
“Just stayed the night?” he asked, winking at me again. “Yes, just the night. Nothing happened.”
I ate some more buns as I sipped coffee and we talked about nothing in particular. After an hour I got up and thanked Clive for the breakfast. I placed some money for the room on his plate and walked out.
I should tell Fraza about what happened, but I wanted to do that later. First I wanted to go to the vampires; I had forgotten that that was the reason I had called Kendra over to the hotel. The way she had looked had made me try to palm the case off onto her, but not anymore; last night had showed me something. I had to see this through to the end. It might be just one girl, but what if that one girl was Rikku or Fraza? I would hunt down the cop who had let them die. This girl was a daughter, maybe a sister, mother, lover; she was a whole lot of people in one person, and that was why I had to save her. There was no turning back now, no more excuses. I would find this girl and save her, and whoever was helping that guy I would find them and make them sorry for doing this; they would know that this was not, nor ever would it ever be, the masterpiece of the murderer. He would go into the black abyss of just another deranged dead human; he deserved nothing more than that.
I would tell Fraza later what had happened last night. Yes, it had been wrong of me, and of Kendra too, but it did not matter. I didn’t hate myself for it; it was something that just happened, a mistake.
I sighed. I was lying to myself. Kendra had grown on me, and even I had to admit that there was a certain attraction to her that I could not resist. But I was going to marry Fraza, and her I loved most of all. Rikku might be pissed, but she had been like that the last few weeks anyway, ever since Fraza had started to mother her a little; the same thing Rikku did with Didymus.
I got in my car and lit another pepper leaf. The voices had come back, telling me what a slut I had been, how I had soiled myself by sleeping with that half-breed vampire. At times I couldn’t help but notice the voices gave a voice to my own fears and thoughts.
I inhaled deeply from my smoker deep, and relaxed a little. I considered myself crazy for going to the vampires for help after asking the lycans. Sure, the civil war had been averted, but they still were at each other’s throats. I had to get a citywide search started for this girl, even if it meant doing things that were crazy. I had to see this through to the end, and making things easier by having the city search for her was all I could think of.
If the murderer had an accomplice he would certainly be forced into action, maybe even sooner than he had wanted, and creatures tended to slip up when pushed; so we had to start pushing and shoving until he made that one mistake that could put the large pin on the map, so that the entire police force would know she was there.
I could see it happening; the police rushing in, arresting the person who had helped the murderer, and the girl saved from a certain death. We had been wandering around in a rat’s maze when we followed the riddles; doing exactly what the murderer had wanted. It was time for us to take control of the maze, to set the traps, and the best way to achieve that was to get the vampires’ help in the search. And then to use the only thing worse than the bloodsucking vampires in this city: I had to use the human press.  

Next Chapter: A powerfull ally