We left the diner after enough coffee to keep us awake for days. Shoda had kept refilling and trying to make small talk, but neither of us was interested so she quickly gave up and tended to others in the diner. As

I dropped Victor off at the school and drove myself home. I didn’t want to spend another night at home without Fraza, but I couldn’t face the thought of going to her place. As I parked up I saw Kendra sitting on the sidewalk; her face was pale, her eyes red and she hissed at the occasional passerby. I got out of the car and walked over to her.

“You okay, Kendra?”
She shook her head and hissed at me. “Blood craving,” she said.

I had heard of this state for the damphire, it occurred when they hadn’t fed or taken medication for a long period of time. I sighed. “And you came to me with this because?” I asked her as she got up and walked to my door. “Do you think I have any blood at home?”

She looked at me with red eyes, and I could see she was fighting the urge to pounce on me and suck me dry. She nodded. “You told me you keep it in your fridge for when vampires come to visit,” she hissed.

I smiled. She had a good memory; it was true I kept a couple of blood packs in the cold storage of my house for vampire guests, just like I always kept other creature-specific things in my house. I had always been taught by my parents that was what a good host did for her guests.

The doorman looked at Kendra and then me, and asked, “Will Miss be using the stairs or should I call down the liftboy?” It was a coded question, what he in fact was asking was if he had to call the police over and if I was in trouble.

I smiled at him and shook my head. “No, my good man, I will press the button myself.” Also a signal: that all was well, and I did not needed help. He smiled and nodded.

As we reached the top floor I walked to my door and invited Kendra in; she might be able to withstand sunlight but she still had to abide by other vampire rules, such as requiring an invitation to be able to enter someone’s home. Rikku hissed loudly as she saw Kendra, and Didymus made a run for the balcony.

I smiled at Rikku. “Don’t worry, Rikku, this is Kendra. She works for me; she’s just a little out of blood.” I walked to the cold storage, took out a blood pack and threw it to Kendra.

She sunk her fangs in it and sat down on the floor while slowly sucking on the bag. The redness in her eyes receded and her stark blue eyes returned as she suckled on the blood pack.

“Feeling better?” I asked her.
She nodded as she finished the pack, then got up from the floor. “I am sorry for that; I was out of emergency stash at the office,” she said.

I smiled and looked over at Rikku. “Come on, don’t worry Rikku. She isn’t dangerous, she has a lot of restraint when she is like that,” I told her as I slid her some fish treats.

It was true, I had seen vampires in blood craving and they were like rampant beasts; nothing could stop them. Kendra showed amazing restraint.

Rikku took the treats and hissed at Kendra before going to the balcony to join Didymus. Kendra got up and took a seat next to me.

“How do you deal with all that stuff?” she asked. “You mean the private detective work? It’s not hard actually. You will learn from every case that spirals into a clusterfuck. Every time you end up discovering that there was more to that coupon-cutting grandmother, you learn that there is nothing you can do to change it. It’s in their nature, and as soon as you realize that, you will learn to put it behind you. It’s just a job.”

She looked at me and nodded. Her face was still looking a little grey, and her hair was greasy. She clearly hadn’t been sleeping, the cases keeping her up; the dark side of the city and its people were getting to her.

I put my arm around her. “I’ve been through this too, Kendra. Luckily I was already addicted to pepper leaf at the time, but it still took its toll on me. Just stick to your blood packs and you will get through it.” I stood up. “So did you only come here for the blood?” I asked.

She shook her head and looked up at me. “I need your help on this one. Nothing in it makes sense, it’s like the secret compartment has a secret compartment, and so on.” She sounded desperate. She took out a folder from her jacket, placed it on the table and opened it.

As I looked over the file and the notes she had made, I could see that the case she had been working on was indeed a strange one. Her work had been extensive; she was better at keeping records than I was.

“So what do we have here?” I asked, noting that she had calmed down a lot; the frenzy was out of her system.
She gave me a crooked look as she bit her lip. “Well, we were hired to find a missing daughter,” she explained.
“That sounds straightforward enough.”

She nodded. “That it does, but the thing is … there is no daughter.” I looked at her blankly. “Well that’s even more straightforward then. Call the asylum, have them pick up the client and all will be well. That was the way it went: if you were hired by someone who clearly strayed from the path of sanity, you called the asylum.

Kendra shook her head. “There is no daughter, but there is a missing person,” she said as she took several files out of the folder. “See that? The mother and daughter look a lot alike, and that is because they are alike: the daughter is a clone of the mother. As you know, cloning has been outlawed and most clones are being recovered and … well, ‘processed.’ The mother in this case – or rather the ‘original’ – thinks she is at the processing plant. But when I went to the plant, they said they had no information on the girl.”

Almost immediately, I knew where Kendra had gone wrong. When clones had been outlawed, most of them had fled the city into the wilderness. Of those who remained, some befriended or corrupted city officials. Those officials worked the system, falsifying records to give the clones a legal status as the “child” of their original DNA donors.

In making her enquiries Kendra had inadvertently revealed to those at the processing plant that a clone had been living with her “mother.” By doing her job well, Kendra had potentially messed things up pretty badly for the client. It explained why she was so nervous: to her it must have felt like she had killed the girl herself.

We looked at each other, and her eyes were filled with tears. This was her first big screwup, and those were never easy; but it was rite of passage in this field of work.

“Don’t worry, Kendra. I’ll settle this,” I told her.

Next Chapter: The processing plant